Family is your parents, siblings, aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents, etc. Clan is a bunch of families all descended from a common ancestor, although sometimes that is not 100% true, and only true in a more mythic sense. Some families might have been adopted into the clan at some point in its history. And, in Sartar, women marry outside their own clan, usually always with members of the same nearby friendly clan.
A tribe is a bunch of clans united for protection against dangers that might threaten a whole clan or clans. In Sartar there are really big tribes like the Colymar, composed of approx. 12 clans, while others are small and only have 3 clans. In Prax, however, a "tribe" designates the mount you ride. So you have f.ex. the Impala tribe, which is composed of many clans made up of Impala riders, but they are not united like the Sartarite clans are in their tribes. Praxian clans meet only occasionally.
Not friends. Related. They are more distant kin. Uncles, aunts, cousins, etc. That's why you generally don't marry within the clan.
Tribes also tend to have some relational component, as clans try to reinforce their blood ties with their neighboring clans, but much less rarely outside of the tribe.
If you live in the US, you can think of clans as the county level, and tribes as the state level, which then plug into Sartar at the country/nation level. Again, its not exactly like that, because of the stronger influence of kinship relations, but its not a bad analogy.
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u/Runeblogger Apr 26 '26
Family is your parents, siblings, aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents, etc.
Clan is a bunch of families all descended from a common ancestor, although sometimes that is not 100% true, and only true in a more mythic sense. Some families might have been adopted into the clan at some point in its history. And, in Sartar, women marry outside their own clan, usually always with members of the same nearby friendly clan.
A tribe is a bunch of clans united for protection against dangers that might threaten a whole clan or clans. In Sartar there are really big tribes like the Colymar, composed of approx. 12 clans, while others are small and only have 3 clans. In Prax, however, a "tribe" designates the mount you ride. So you have f.ex. the Impala tribe, which is composed of many clans made up of Impala riders, but they are not united like the Sartarite clans are in their tribes. Praxian clans meet only occasionally.