> If you want to reside in a foreign land, you do totally change your community obligations and social position. Take it from me. Or take it from Loz. We're both expats.
Depends on whether you go there for good, or whether you know it is an exile for a fixed duration.
In my case, some 13 months spent north of the Arctic Circle did get me some community access in my new place, but left the old ties alive. (Taking off a week for christmas, of course, helped fulfill some of those duties... playing host for travelers from home did at the other end.)
Of course, I joined a local community there (my job).
ObGlorantha:
The usual tool for "roving adventurers" retaining their social network is the heroband.
Rather than the free-wheeling adventurer, I guess a more common type is the group of questers wandering about to achieve some insights. The Orlanthi have even institutionalized this for individuals who managed to resist all their aunts' efforts to get married. They are sent on a Wanderlore mission. "At first, Sartar appeared to be just another Wanderlore adventurer."
Probably a pilgrimage repeating the preparations for the Downland Migration - an individual feels that his community is too stuck in its ways and sets out to explore new opportunities.
Another case is the custom of journeyman craftspeople to go on the journey. In this case, their community - a guild for urban craftspeople, an artisan cult for rural ones - sends out their freshly initiated members to gain some experience elsewhere, and either to return to their fold, bringing back these experiences, or to settle down elsewhere and provide another node in the network of exchange of knowledge, material, etc.
That's the background for a story I'm writing at this time... partially based on what a character of mine experienced in his adventuring.
Much of this is covered in the "Reasons to leave home" sections with the cultural keywords, only the Wanderlore hasn't been spelled out for Heortlings or other Orlanthi.
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