>My best guess is that the chief's stead is just the biggest and/or
>oldest stead with an extra hearth for the chief to use when he's "in
>town" (unless he's local, of course). That means that in the chief's
>stead, the chief would only be the master of his hearth, not the whole
>stead. Plus, an out-of-town chief would spend quite a bit of time
>shuttling back and forth between his home stead and the chief's stead.
>But that doesn't sound right either.
See Thunder Rebels page 33. Most clans have a particular stead (usually the 'founder's stead') that contains the chief's hall and at least one lodge/hearth for each of the clan's bloodlines - for representation and ease of consultation. This stead contains the clan's ancestral shrines and *usually* (depending on location etc.) will also contain the clan's major shrines, the market, the smith, the law rock etc. This is because the clan's weaponthanes live at the stead in the chief's hall.
The chief will also have his or her own family stead. Most steads are not run by an individual but by an extended family, centred around a group of senior brothers. Remember that Heortlings live communally. More generally, when designing a stead, rather than going through a top-down list of what it might contain, I find it useful to think of how the stead was first settled and how it grew.
Our ancestors came to this spot, and chose it because of A. They used B local resources to advantage (streams, caves, ruins, ancient hill forts etc). As the stead grew it became too large for the original palisade and so we abandoned the original lodges and moved to C. (You can still see their stonework on the hill). We first split into bloodlines and cut new steads at D, E and F. As we cut down more forest by the river we had to build a shrine to the river daemon at G. We soon discovered that Uz tended to raid through Ginunga's Gap, so the Rigsdali built a tower there for their star watch. Cattle raiders came up the valley, so we build a bridge at H and cleared cattle meadows on the protected western bank. Later the humakti build a lodge by that same bridge. At first we traded together at Oddi's Flat, but when Sartar build his road the market moved down to I. After four generations, we could not longer collect kindling from the Friendly Wood, and so J. Etc, etc. (There's a stead-gen project in here somewher e :)).
This approach gives your tula a lived-in patina of age, something I look for in good fantasy novels and something I look for in my campaigns.
Cheers
John
The hills of Largertarn
Midst the storms of Ohorlanth
Are two silver horns,
Two breasts childing,
Two steads of lightning.
Midst the gales of Valind
They are two rusted swords,
Twin waves of darkness,
Twin pillars of ice.
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