Adopting an outsider to an Orlanthi clan?

[Alex]

3 hours ago, Joerg said:

Your target community would usually place you in one of its households, or as a follower of one of its influential members if your status and abilities warrants that. Basically, the point of adoption is that you take on a role in your new community, with a primary set of contacts, and the rest just in the background.

For adoption per se, I can see that in some cases working 'top-down'.  You go to the chief and ask to be taken in (or 'discreetly let it be known' that you'll accept Duty if they Greet you to that extent, whatever is customary and consistent with the pridefulness of all concerned).  They then have to put you someplace.  More often I'd guess it's bottom-up, where it's clear who'll you be joining first (a distant relation, a kindly stranger, a cult connection, etc) and the clan later formalises that (or not, as the case may be).

For marriage, you have a pretty obvious expectation that the incomer live in the same household as the local-yokel spouse.  (Maybe a different household from previously, but likely their parental one initially.)  Of course if the marriage is entirely political, you could have potentially hilarious examples of the 'separate bedrooms' trope where they actually live at opposite ends of the tula, and still notionally be complying with spouso-local law and tradition.  If you dispense with even that, you can go full European royalty and have the parties to the marriage living in different countries or landmasses.

The least clear part is how the most formal parts of membership work for the in-marriers.  The wapentake, the wyter, and so on.  Do they remain officially separate?  Do they 'multiclass' in both their clan of origin and their clan of habitation?  Is it specified in the marriage agreement and rite itself?  Is it -- and I think this is my current best guess -- essentially dealer's choice?

Clearly when a marriage is terminated -- at term, by divorce, or by death -- the in-dweller will have to make a decision whether to leave or stay -- they may have children or other interests to look after.  Presumably that'll nail down their clan membership fairly definitively at that point.

[French Desperate WindChild]

7 hours ago, Alex said:

For adoption per se, I can see that in some cases working 'top-down'.  You go to the chief and ask to be taken in (or 'discreetly let it be known' that you'll accept Duty if they Greet you to that extent, whatever is customary and consistent with the pridefulness of all concerned).  They then have to put you someplace.

i would say, "first the chief owes you a favour then"...

As a chief (or ring member), I will never accept a foreigner to ask me roughly (or not) anything to join MY clan. 

It must be in my (clan) interest to propose you such a favor: you were nothing, and I propose you to be a (wo)man. And I would not propose a mercenary who succeeds to kill one monster once to join my clan, of course if (s)he is a holy hero, it could be different, or if (s)he knows something secret about me ... or ....

So, for me, that's not the chief's job to find you a sponsor/family/someplace when there is no strong passion (rqg >75% ?) between the chief(or ring member) and you

 

if you're not a hero, find a husband / wife, become a tenant for some farmer, things like that.

 

Of course , when a clan is looking for people to expend itself (like dorastor campaign) that's different