Werra wrote:Arioch, can you talk about Loroi family structures? In general but specifically on how they trace their ancestry. Where is the cut-off point for example? Would a direct descendant of the 40th generation (or however many fit into a single lifetime) be considered part of the clan still?
Family structure varies by local culture, and it has become complicated, especially since the traditional clans were abolished at the end of the Splinter Wars in 1402. For the most part, individual female Loroi warriors define their lineage relative to a particular notable female ancestor, and there is no limit to number of generations removed (in some more traditional families, the older, the better). But whether or not you are considered part of the same family depends on the personal and political relationships of you and your immediate female relatives to the rest of the family group in question. Much like in our society, I think.
In the early clan culture of Western Deinar (Zaral and Arran), the family structure was strictly matrilineal and fairly uncomplicated: every female offspring of a female clan member who passed the warrior trials was considered a clan member and took the clan name. Caste and clan were mixed up together; each tribal nation effectively had its own caste (or castes). As the nations grew into empires and the cultures grew more sophisticated, and nations began to specialize and regionalize, and as clever matriarchs began to use male offspring as tools of alliance and expansion of the clan, then male lineage sometimes became a factor. A large nation would have multiple sub-families with different names often linked to the main family through a male ancestor. Also, sometimes sub-families with the main clan name would revolt or change allegiance. It became more complicated.
In pre-contact Perrein, many of the families (especially in the highlands) were patrilineal, and so things were more complicated from a much earlier stage, as well as being more varied in the starkly different highland and shadowland regions.
With starflight and reunification of the splinter colonies, there was both a merging of different cultures and a radiation of new sub-cultures as new colony worlds were founded, separating some clan groups. Over the next several hundred years, and especially after the Delrias wars and the acquisition of large amounts of new territory, these old and new cultures clashed over whether the Loroi were to be a single nation, or multiple nation-states. These conflicting visions of the future of the Loroi culminated in the Splinter Wars, a series of civil wars that spanned the better part of 80 years. The wars concluded with the centralization of the empire under a single matriarch, the First Loroi Emperor Loremark, who abolished the traditional clan affiliations and reorganized the castes as nation-wide professional specializations rather than regional polities. Clan governing structures became caste and government structures.
In the current time period of the story, family affiliation can be somewhat fluid. Many ordinary warrior Loroi who live and work in the colonies or in the Fleet or other remote posts may have illustrious ancestral connections, and perhaps even political alliances with the ancient family group back home, but their day to day lives center mostly around their group of local colleagues (which may, in some cases, include some blood relatives). Loroi with planetside jobs, especially on the old homeworlds, may have very strong family connections and may even live and work together with large numbers of relatives in the old clan citadels (though the clan names have been abolished and most of their governmental power reduced, the old families still exist). Even if you are the 686th great-granddaughter of Salinn Bladestorm, or the 34th grand niece of Azerein Greywind, whether you are considered to be part of the same family with the rest of that matriarch's descendants depends on the location, status, relationship and political activity of you and your immediate relatives. Closeness of family relations often depends more on proximity and friendship than it does strictly on biological relationship.
For female civilian Loroi, who are mostly the offspring of warrior females, lineage can be a status factor in civilian society even though such individuals are no longer acknowledged as part of the warrior family. ‘Family’ for ex-warrior civilians consists of local friends and colleagues and direct offspring, if any.
Males exist mostly outside family society in their own specialized culture, though maternal lineage does affect status within that culture, and affluent female family members sometimes do interject themselves into the affairs of a high status male.