Leaderless Clans

[Jex]

So, while I'm still working on my current Marshedge project, I've also been (perhaps prematurely) thinking ahead to other projects I want to work on once that's finally finished... and another question came up.  Though @Jason Farrell suggested possibly consolidating future questions about Marshedge into a single thread, I thought this topic perhaps warranted its own thread since it's not aboutr Marshedge, and since it's general enough that I thought others might be interested in it.

Essentially, I was wondering how long it usually took for a clan to choose a new chieftain after the previous chieftain dies or otherwise leaves office, and how much that time could vary.  I gather generally the chieftain position is refilled relatively quickly, but I wanted to explore whether there might be exceptions in particularly contentious clans, and how long a clan could conceivably go without a chieftain.  The Pegasus Plateau & Other Stories, of course, does describe the Locaem tribe as having been leaderless and rife with infighting since their last King was killed in the Dragonrise, but (a) that's an entire tribe, not a clan, and (b) it's unclear just how long the Loceam have been leaderless, since it's not specified when that description is set (unless I missed something).

The most complete description I could find for how chieftains are elected is in Sartar - Kingdom of Heroes, which was written for a previous edition of RuneQuest but I assume is still mostly accurate where it hasn't since been explicitly contradicted.  I'll go ahead and quote the most relevant bit:

Quote

All candidates give their speech and after everyone has been examined, a general election is held. All adult members of the clan have a single vote, regardless of their other rank. Usually the candidates are brought forward, starting with the youngest, and a voice vote is taken. If a verbal vote is not sufficient to differentiate the winner, an election is taken with each person placing a spear head into the ceremonial election basket of their favored candidate.

The winner must have a plurality of votes. After a single candidate has been chosen, he is acclaimed by a wapentake — all members shout and bang their weapons on their shields with as much noise as possible. After this acclamation, the priests and priestesses obtain a vow, then bless him. Then all retire for a great feast of celebration.

 

If only a plurality of votes is needed, it seems to me very unlikely that an election would result in a tie, so presumably once the election is held the chieftain is chosen fairly promptly... but maybe there are circumstances under which the election is delayed?  I'm considering, perhaps, a situation in which there are several vying candidates in a particularly disputatious election who have each been maneuvering to delay the election until they can be reasonably sure of having a majority of votes behind them, so the clan has been without a chieftain for two seasons while the candidates feud and scheme and gather supporters, and has been led in the meantime by the rest of the clan council (albeit much less effectively than it would be with a chieftain).  Is that at all a reasonable possibility, or is it unrealistic for a clan to go without a leader for that long?

[Squaredeal Sten]

57 minutes ago, Jex said:

So, while I'm still working on my current Marshedge project, I've also been (perhaps prematurely) thinking ahead to other projects I want to work on once that's finally finished... and another question came up.  Though @Jason Farrell suggested possibly consolidating future questions about Marshedge into a single thread, I thought this topic perhaps warranted its own thread since it's not aboutr Marshedge, and since it's general enough that I thought others might be interested in it.

Essentially, I was wondering how long it usually took for a clan to choose a new chieftain after the previous chieftain dies or otherwise leaves office, and how much that time could vary.  I gather generally the chieftain position is refilled relatively quickly, but I wanted to explore whether there might be exceptions in particularly contentious clans, and how long a clan could conceivably go without a chieftain.  The Pegasus Plateau & Other Stories, of course, does describe the Locaem tribe as having been leaderless and rife with infighting since their last King was killed in the Dragonrise, but (a) that's an entire tribe, not a clan, and (b) it's unclear just how long the Loceam have been leaderless, since it's not specified when that description is set (unless I missed something).

The most complete description I could find for how chieftains are elected is in Sartar - Kingdom of Heroes, which was written for a previous edition of RuneQuest but I assume is still mostly accurate where it hasn't since been explicitly contradicted.  I'll go ahead and quote the most relevant bit:

If only a plurality of votes is needed, it seems to me very unlikely that an election would result in a tie, so presumably once the election is held the chieftain is chosen fairly promptly... but maybe there are circumstances under which the election is delayed?  I'm considering, perhaps, a situation in which there are several vying candidates in a particularly disputatious election who have each been maneuvering to delay the election until they can be reasonably sure of having a majority of votes behind them, so the clan has been without a chieftain for two seasons while the candidates feud and scheme and gather supporters, and has been led in the meantime by the rest of the clan council (albeit much less effectively than it would be with a chieftain).  Is that at all a reasonable possibility, or is it unrealistic for a clan to go without a leader for that long?

To me this is definitely where your Glorantha can vary so as to make your story happen.  

If you want to help that along, then have external circumstances such as the Lunar occupation divided the clan and its Ring?  I can definitely see that a ring divided three ways may have failed to set an election date.  And / Or perhaps the old chief may have died, resigned, or been removed just before or during harvest season, and the Ring decided to wait until harvest was finished rather than risk causing a famine by taking everyone out of the fields at the wrong time.

Maybe the first meeting produced no majority vote and adjourned in a bad mood?  Do the Orlanthi do run-off elections?  I'm not sure that has ever been defined. 

But two seasons does sound like a long delay for a clan that might have 800 members, maybe 500-600 adults, most of whom live within a couple of hours' walk of each other or at least of the largest village.  Would one season work for you?  if not, invent more extenuating circumstances.  Maybe in Dark Season the Uz raided?  Was there an outbreak of disease?

 

 

[Zebraman1]

"All adult members of the clan have a single vote, regardless of their other rank"

For story purposes perhaps a situation where there is an internal dispute about who exactly is a member of the Clan. Perhaps some clan members are considered outlaws, or foreigners by other members of the Clan and shouldn't have a vote, whilst others say they are members of the Clan and are entitled to vote.

Or perhaps Euramal trickster magic is causing confusion and no one can even count the vote...everyone comes to a different total.

Maybe there is a curse on the Clan and the next chieftain will die quite horribly. So noone wants to stand for election.

 

Edited January 1 by Zebraman1

[Darius West]

10 hours ago, Jex said:

.Essentially, I was wondering how long it usually took for a clan to choose a new chieftain after the previous chieftain dies or otherwise leaves office, and how much that time could vary.  I gather generally the chieftain position is refilled relatively quickly, but I wanted to explore whether there might be exceptions in particularly contentious clans, and how long a clan could conceivably go without a chieftain. 

I believe that leaderless clans who can't agree on a new leader generally split up and go their separate ways.

Edited January 1 by Darius West

[soltakss]

10 hours ago, Jex said:

The Pegasus Plateau & Other Stories, of course, does describe the Locaem tribe as having been leaderless and rife with infighting since their last King was killed in the Dragonrise, but (a) that's an entire tribe, not a clan, and (b) it's unclear just how long the Loceam have been leaderless, since it's not specified when that description is set (unless I missed something).

The Bilini Tribe was also leaderless for a while, after Haakon the Swimmer is killed. There were two attempts at electing a Tribal King, the first failed due to feuds erupting and the second accepted Bolthor Brighteyes as King.

10 hours ago, Jex said:

If only a plurality of votes is needed, it seems to me very unlikely that an election would result in a tie, so presumably once the election is held the chieftain is chosen fairly promptly... but maybe there are circumstances under which the election is delayed? 

Having a plurality means that the highest number of votes wins, even if it is really close, so the election is straightforward unless there is a tie. 

However, the devil is in the detail, as the politicking and jockeying for position beforehand is what generally wins these elections. Candidates' kin would probably vote for them anyway, as would their steadfolk, but other people are not as committed. Candidates with little support might try to delay the vote, or seek to disqualify candidates.

[David Scott]

10 hours ago, Jex said:

If only a plurality of votes is needed, it seems to me very unlikely that an election would result in a tie, so presumably once the election is held the chieftain is chosen fairly promptly... but maybe there are circumstances under which the election is delayed?  I'm considering, perhaps, a situation in which there are several vying candidates in a particularly disputatious election who have each been maneuvering to delay the election until they can be reasonably sure of having a majority of votes behind them, so the clan has been without a chieftain for two seasons while the candidates feud and scheme and gather supporters, and has been led in the meantime by the rest of the clan council (albeit much less effectively than it would be with a chieftain).  Is that at all a reasonable possibility, or is it unrealistic for a clan to go without a leader for that long?

I would add in from Lightbringers 29, one must be a lay member of Orlanth Rex to be a candidate for clan chief. Given it's not useful for most clan folk to be lay members of this cult (other than thanes / nobles), most candidates would need to go to an Orlanth Rex initiate (it doesn't say temporary initiate) to gift them (per LB 29). This would mean going to the tribal King of the Lismelder. Reading that paragraph, I'd suggest it needs to be done on a seasonal Orlanth Holy day, as it's an important undertaking. So the maximum time without a chief would be a season.

[jajagappa]

12 hours ago, Jex said:

Essentially, I was wondering how long it usually took for a clan to choose a new chieftain after the previous chieftain dies or otherwise leaves office, and how much that time could vary.  I gather generally the chieftain position is refilled relatively quickly, but I wanted to explore whether there might be exceptions in particularly contentious clans, and how long a clan could conceivably go without a chieftain.

As David noted, a season is likely the maximum time - anything longer and the clan is likely to fall apart with families joining the neighboring clans for protection.

If a clan has one dominant family/bloodline, then choosing the clan chieftain is likely to be the next member of that family who is eligible and favored by the clan's leaders and the community as a whole.

Where there are two strong and rival families (or two rival leaders in the same family as seems to be the case with the Taraling clan of the Colymar with Kangharl vs. Leika), then the choice of the next leader is likely the most contentious. This is where you may see clan leaders split between rival factions and much dispute over potential results. Peaceweaving by the Ernalda priestess may be needed (but she is likely in one of those two factions, so the clan might even resort to an outside Ernalda priestess).

If you have them available, you could look at Ian Cooper's The Coming Storm and The Eleven Lights works. The latter includes the Election of a new Clan Chief (p.151-154). 

[Jex]

Hrm.  The main reason I wanted to leave the clan in question leaderless for two seasons was because I wanted to have an adventure where the PCs were instrumental in influencing the choice of the new clan leader, but it was going to be one in a series of adventures and I wanted to have it later in the series when the PCs were a bit more experienced and more respected.  But that's not a necessity, and from all the replies here it seems like two seasons is a bit much—maybe it could be justified by some really extraordinary circumstance, but it's enough of a stretch that it seems like I'm probably better off just having the clan election adventure earlier in the series rather than trying to prolong the clan's leaderlessness to unreasonable lengths.  Thanks for all the replies.

[Zebraman1]

6 hours ago, Jex said:

Hrm.  The main reason I wanted to leave the clan in question leaderless for two seasons was because I wanted to have an adventure where the PCs were instrumental in influencing the choice of the new clan leader, but it was going to be one in a series of adventures and I wanted to have it later in the series when the PCs were a bit more experienced and more respected.  But that's not a necessity, and from all the replies here it seems like two seasons is a bit much—maybe it could be justified by some really extraordinary circumstance, but it's enough of a stretch that it seems like I'm probably better off just having the clan election adventure earlier in the series rather than trying to prolong the clan's leaderlessness to unreasonable lengths.  Thanks for all the replies.

From a GMing perspective there's a few things here that can be separated out 

1. The impact of a clan being leaderless for a season or more. What constitutes a long time will very much depend on the circumstances. Being leaderless for a week before a major battle would be a bigger deal than being leaderless for two seasons during peace. So a single season can certainly feel like a long time if some narrative urgency is inserted.

2. The players influence and reputation to be able to steer an election. Even new PCs can take on this role in fairly standard circumstances. If there are two factions that are mostly deadlocked then the influence of the established Clan heroes, Runelords and Priests on both sides might balance each other out so to speak. This leaves it to the younger neutral adventurers to break a deadlock.

3. Clan elections are a reasonably regular thing considering how violent Orlanthi society is. It may not be a bad thing to run an election very early to establish who the NPCs are and how the election works. Then depending on the length of your campaign run another one in the context of a Leaderless Clan.

4. Election campaigning doesn't need to begin only when the Chieftan is dead or otherwise out of office. Certain NPCs or indeed the PCs may be making it clear that they have ambitions to become Clan chief on the death of the current Clan chief. Thus electioneering could (and probably would) be occuring prior to a formal election beginning. Think gift giving, Initiating into Orlanth Rex, bad mouthing opponents, settling feuds etc. 

5. Similarly, there's leaderless and there is leaderless. A weak, or cowardly, or incompetent Chief may be as much of a threat as no leader at all. And get people talking about perhaps a time for a change is important.

6. Finally YGMV and extraordinary circumstances is the life blood of rpgs. I think two seasons is a long time but not so long as to stretch incredulity. The main thing is to think about is what decisions the Chief would be making that not having a chief during that time is an issue? Bare in mind that Orlanthi culture has plenty of legal mechanisms to sort out disputes without recourse to a higher authority. Similarly it's not as if there is a complicated bureaucracy or infrastructure that needs maintaining.

There are modern European countries that have gone without a leader for longer than two seasons. Since 1950 Belgium takes an average of 98 days to form a government, Netherlands 93. And in 2017 Netherlands went 225 days without a government.

Going 12 weeks without a Chief in a Bronze Age tribal society of 300-400 people isn't necessarily going to be a big deal (though note point 1. For narrative purposes you'd want to add some tension that makes it a big deal).

[jajagappa]

7 hours ago, Jex said:

Hrm.  The main reason I wanted to leave the clan in question leaderless for two seasons was because I wanted to have an adventure where the PCs were instrumental in influencing the choice of the new clan leader, but it was going to be one in a series of adventures and I wanted to have it later in the series when the PCs were a bit more experienced and more respected.  But that's not a necessity, and from all the replies here it seems like two seasons is a bit much—maybe it could be justified by some really extraordinary circumstance, but it's enough of a stretch that it seems like I'm probably better off just having the clan election adventure earlier in the series rather than trying to prolong the clan's leaderlessness to unreasonable lengths.

Just follow the Orlanthi "all" (i.e. 85%) rule. One season max is the norm, two seasons might occur if you've got a two or three way division in the clan, but loyalty to the clan outweighs fragmenting it. After one season, outside influences will increase and internal strife will grow. It will become difficult or impossible to contact the wyter spirit without a clan chief.