First I wanna thank the patreons who supported me in drawing this lore doodle, seriously it means the world! thanks a billion!

Alrighty Time for a bit of a more technical lore doodle as we're talking about tribal social organization

Which is more or less the dominant mode of social and political organization both in the Awakening and Thalmvar and, while it isn't the only thing, it is the most common

But first an important caviat and disclaimer

This is a VAST generalization of a style of social organization that can vary SO god damn much, I cannot summarize all the ways a tribal society can form and organize, so this is the bare basics of the concept

But with that out of the way,

Time to ask the golden question that people throughout the entirety of written history has struggled to answer

What is a "Tribe" anyways?

It's actually a word that has a ton of meanings, misunderstandings, and contextually distinct interpretations that vary in time and place. It's been used to paint people as uncivilized, it's been used to associate oneself with a social, cultural or ethnic group, frankly its a vague word. In the most literal definition of the word anthropologically, a Tribe is a group of people who share a common culture, history, and worldview! Which is also...

Vague. Very vague

A more precise definition outlined by Anthropologists such as Edward Tylor, Franz Boas, Winthrop etc. and many anthropologists since then would loosely define a tribe as:

A culturally homogenous, nonstratified society possessing a common territory, without centralized political or legal institutions, whose members are linked by extended kinship ties, ritual obligations, trade obligations, linguistic and cultural unity, and geographic relations
Essentially, a Tribe in a human context is a series of families in a defined region that share a culture, language, perhaps a way of life. A people who are unified by intermixing kinships (marriages for example) who share economic, social and political bonds that link them together along with their shared culture

But at the same time, they don't have formalized institutions, there is no government that manages all of this, it's managed by the people™️
That would be what a tribe is in a drek context. Or really in an orm context, i think going forward saying draconic will make this a bit less focused on the drekir as all dragons can and do participate in tribal societies, even if drekir are the majority of those dragons

So Lets apply that above definition to a Draconic tribe

As a very basic and perhaps overgeneralized model you can look to the drawing. A tribe is functionally a series of dens that unite into larger clans, and those clans may then unite into larger tribes

So lets break that down

Dens are something I have talked about at length before, with ready info on the main loresite as dens are important! They are functionally draconic families. Even if they aren't related by blood a den is, much like a human family, the smallest relevant social and political unit in a tribal society. While I have talked about the social aspects of dens before, I should elaborate on how dens fit into a larger clan.

if you also wanna see how drek dens work: https://thelonghikecomic.com/2024/0.....-organization/

Dens are usually egalitarian in organization, and are usually self sufficient and self governed.

Your average den is gonna be able to care for its own very local matters, source enough food, water, and supplies to survive even when isolated entirely. Though sustaining oneself and thriving are two very different matters. But point being each den can get by fine enough. Likewise while there may be people who come up to temporarily lead a den, there is no real 'leader', rather the den is organized egalitarian, usually according to the skills and merits of each individual drek to the problems that need those skills. While there are some communities that are entirely isolated dens of drekir or ormer, this is very uncommon and usually dens within a region communicate and work together for mutual betterment.
And through that mutual betterment and trade, social and political bonds are formed!

and then you start to see the formation of clans

Clans are the next level of tribal organization within draconic societies and are a collection of various dens, usually within the same region, that regularly communicate, coordinate, and trade kinship and resources. This higher degree of communication and trade helps dens go from surviving to thriving. Having a larger informal network of dragons with which one can trade food, tools, materials for the making of various clothing, wares, etc. As well as work with directly for construction projects, cooperative hunting and subsistence, mutual defence from external threats, etc. Helps raise the standards of living of each individual den.

You work together, things get better!

It also helps keep a region stable politically. As when dens are reaching out, forming councils, etc. to communicate effectively it can help keep internal violence from sparking and give avenues to resolve disputes within the clan. If each den is able to agree on established hunting territories for all their people, there is a clear line that everyone understand of where they can and cannot hunt without permission. If there is a dispute between two drekir of two different dens, the larger clan can get involved to help resolve the dispute in a way that is both less subjective and less violent than what two angry drekir might do

The clan can also work together in emergencies on a scale that an individual den simply cannot. If a (topical) hurricane sweeps through and completely levels a coastal village, killing several of those dragons within the village, then the larger clan can coordinate resources and labor to help rebuild the village and aid those dragons in distress. Also, as seen in the comic, if a violent bandit den comes marching through its very difficult for an individual den to deal with. But a larger clan or even tribal level effort could dislodge such problems

Clan politics are often maintained in a lot of ways

A thing I have already rambled about in depth is Reciprocity. Each den pitches in so each den helps out when its needed! I'll link to the reciprocity ramble here:

https://www.furaffinity.net/view/55685067/

But there are of course other practices that you often find between dragons of a clan to help maintain their political ties. The first and most common is kinship, sorta like with humans but with less marriage.

Now this practice does vary between drekir, ormer and mavõtur.

With drekir, you see a lot of practices of dens exchanging members of their dens for relatively long periods of time. For a year or two the drekir of one den may live with a neighboring den and vice versa, integrating into their local community and helping out before eventually returning home. This helps establish social bonds, everyone can have someone who has met with their neighbors and understands how they think. It helps lend perspective as well as help humanize your neighbors in tenser times. Just like with humans and marriage, you don't wanna club your neighbors if one of your own denmates sees them as kind, deep people. The same also goes on the other side.

With Ormer, its more common to mix their offspring dens together to form larger adolescent and adult ormer dens. This is both important for genetic diversity! But also the parental dens can work together to raise the offspring dens and thus, come to understand eachother better, maintain that clan bond, and come to the table with more understanding

with Mavõtur they uh... I mean they don't need to practice these things as usually other mavõtur are so rare when they meet up its enough of an event to avoid coming to blows if, for nothing else, survival and the pleasant social interaction with a rare being of their stature. but even then, it is common for Mavõtur to arrange marriages of their young adult offspring as a way of establishing goodwill between nests. Which really is a lot like how humans do political marriage.
Moreover there are economics

Every den can get by. But every den does not have access to everything. That fishing den may have a lot of fish, and fish scales, and seashells, but they sure don't have access to the reeds and hides and insect flour of the inland dens. And so, trade! The interchange of resources and goods and services between the dens of a clan helps also provide an economic unity. Everyone wins when everyone can barter for everything they want, and that economic interconnectedness helps improve the quality of goods, the variety of goods, and the quality of life of each den

I would dare say most commerce in a tribe comes more from the trade between dens within a clan than from external long distance traders. The rhythm and interchange of local barter, goods, services, entertainment, etc. is a driving force that pushes the dens of a clan together and drive them to work together.

It also provides a powerful lever for uncooperative dens. Effectively if a den in the clan is belligerent, the other dens could simply cease trade with them, sanctioning them to deprive them of all those nice goods and access to the mutually beneficial quality of life.

Which, in turn, can twist the arm of that den to cooperate

And lastly on the largest scale, you have the Tribe

The Tribe is a collection of one or more clans! A tribe can be one clan, but really its the whole network. Most tribes are made up of at least two or more clans and is broadly an informal extension of the clans and how they do business Of course the catch is the physical distance between clans is often further than between the dens in a clan, so the clans may not communicate as much as the dens in each clan.

But that doesn't stop them. And most of the same aspects that join a clan together often scale into the larger tribal group
Dragons may quite regularly send out caravans to work and trade with their far flung neighbors in the highlands, live with them for some time and exchange dragons for a time. Likewise, in terms of coordinating in emergencies the same can apply on a larger tribal level similarly to how it functions on the clan level. Often under very serious threats, tribal confederations may unite under a council of short term leaders to effectively coordinate vast resources and personnel to deal with dangers.

If a volcano has erupted on an island, effectively destroying the island and endangering whole clans on that island, the larger tribal group from the surrounding island chain may mobilize and coordinate to help their dragonkin as much as possible

Likewise if there is a serious Sivilão incursion into a region that no clan can individually handle, a larger force of warriors and militia may organize across the whole tribal network to fight back that threat as best they can. Similarly to Clans, Tribes also have a lot of social and political levers that can get pulled to pressure belligerent dens or whole clans to kindly "not rob caravans sailing across the coast thank you."

So really

If you're a drek or an orm, you're likely to live in an egalitarian den that is quasi independent from all the other dens around you. And also your den would regularly interact with the other dens around you, from which you may consider your clan of sorts. And also you may reckon the politics and situation of your clan relative to the other neighboring clans that also share a language and generally agree upon a culture, that being the tribe of which you're in.


Now lets cover some things a Tribe is not

A Tribe is not a single monolithic culture

They share a culture but it's a bit more complicated than that, they are part of the same linguistic, cultural, and geographic group overall but there are often variations usually driven by the environment any specific den finds themselves in their regions

You can see such in the first image of the independent dens. Each den is a part of the clan but they often live differently

The coastal den is a fishing village.

The Lowland den in the more wooded crevice is more of an insect farming community

The Tundra den and the Foothill den are likely more seminomadic hunter/gatherers

They all speak the same language generally, and they all agree on a lot of cultural basics but they aren't exactly the same culture, there is variation that varies within each individual den

Usually these distinctions are minor or moderate, such as different dens worshiping different gods in the same pantheon, or putting emphasis in certain technologies more relevant to their day to day lives, or even practicing differences of clothing, or even speaking a distinct dialect of what is the shared language

And this expands on the tribal level

The Highland Clan on the image most certainly lives a pretty heavily different life than the lowland clan in this example. Likewise those mountain dragons likely have more distinct differences culturally and ideologically to the lowland dragons. They may have a moderately different religion, pantheon or local folklore. They may dress differently and have familiar, but different customs to the Lowland clan. They may also have different sorts of technology they mess with due to different priorities

Now to be clear, they are all in the same culture, they will about always agree on the basics. But they live some distance from eachother, so there are distinctions!

It's sorta like how we all interact with other folks in real life. For example, Twin Falls, Mountain Home and Moscow are all parts of Idahoan state history, culture, lifestyle and identity. but equally so someone from Boise is likely going to have a somewhat different worldview from someone from Moscow in north Idaho

and its always been like that, and will always be something like that, in some shape or form

And in the DragonScape, that Coastal den still shares a culture with every other den in their tribe! as well as a language, but that doesn't mean everyone talks the same and conducts their lives in exactly the same way.

Another thing that they are not are centralized


Tribes are by their nature, decentralized, there isn't a single government and while leaders on a local level may come and go, there are no permanent leaders, kings, senates, nor despots. Generally (speaking vaguely and overgeneralized here) When political decisions need to involve multiple dens or clans, representatives of such things meet as a Council (seen in the first image). And that council speaks and comes to an agreement that is expected to be enforced. But that said there is no Law, there is no Tax, there is no police officer who will arrest you for breaking that agreement. Rather things are held in line by the soft pressure of ones neighbors, and the hard pressure of punishments that the other dens and clans can exact if cooperation breaks down. If you do a crime in the eyes of the broader tribe, you won't go to jail but it's likely that you will see your neighbors stop trading with your den, or even exclude your den from councils and negotiations/

And if things get bad enough your den may get cut out entirely from the network, violently in many cases!

Things are enforced by reciprocity, mutual benefit, social bonds and kinship, and cultural unity above all else. When those things fail than other, perhaps more violent means, are taken up. Really, at least in my very personal opinion, Tribal societies are in a sense Anarchic societies, ones that maintain order and unity through social practices rather than legal practice and governmental pressure, as there is no law, just the soft cultural norms of the individuals and communities in that tribe

and lastly is that they are not ONLY small nor ONLY big

Really tribes vary wildly in size, basically as far as people of a shared history, culture, and language and communicate with eachother and coordinate effectively. There is certainly an upper limit driven by the limits of how far a people can travel, but that itself can vary on regional aspects. You can get a tribe that is just a single clan, that clan made of three dens of drekir... maybe amounting to some 100 drekir total. You could also find a tribe of over a dozen clans of many dens each, numbering over 2000 ormer, drekir, and mavõtur that all live in the same large region!

Most would likely be somewhere inbetween.

Considering in the real world there are tribal groups of people, such as those in Afghanistan, that number well over 15,000 people, there isn't really a size limit as long as folks can reach and communicate and take part in the same social network

So don't assume Tribe = Small

Of course to wrap up, the system above is intentionally vague and overgeneralized

Like I've said several times, there are a lot of variations in how dragons organize into tribes. There are Clans of drekir that all settle into the same sedentary community just as there are clans of drekir that live independently. There are also clans of dragons that aren't defined geographically, but generationally, leading to complex patchworks of clans across a region. And there are tribes of dragons that live entirely together, such as in the ancient protocities of our history or in the protocities of the DragonScape like Aguk. Of course these structural variations are not as common as the norm, but they do exist, likewise there can exist a lot of other variations! Really the sky is the limit.

If you take a bunch of people, put them in a valley and give them 200 years to self organize they're going to come up with some very different social mechanisms than the other bunches of people in the other valleys

its the beautiful thing about culture! We all go about things uniquely and, while sometimes we come to the same conclusions, we just as often develop unique solutions to unique problems in our unique lives!

So the TDLR

1) This ramble is a Vast generalization of the lives of billions or trillions of dragons and their countless culture, take this as a guideline of common trends more than a hard and fast set of rules

2) "Tribe" is a historically hard to define word as its been used for so many things, but for the dragonscape a tribe is A collection of egalitarian communities without centralized institutions whose members are linked by kinship, culture, language, history, homeland, economy, and overall identity

3) In the more structural view, Tribes are fundamentally collections of Dens that self organize into Clans that self organize into Tribes.

4) Dens are the smallest political unit in draconic society and are self sufficient communities that can get by, but gain a lot by working with their neighbors

5) Clans are a collection of (usually) neighboring dens that are closely aligned and work with eachother socially, culturally, politically and economically. Raising everyone up in the process

6) Tribes are a collection of (usually) neighboring clans that are generally aligned with eachother socially, culturally, politically and economically. Again, Raising everyone up in the process.

7) While tribes share a culture, history and language they are not a monolith. Individual dens and clans themselves will practice their own variations on the overall culture and language that can even be rather significant

8) Tribes are not centralized, there is no defined leader nor government that leads a tribe. They are horizontally organized through informal institutions and not vertically organized through formal institutions

9) Tribe does not equal big or small, their size can vary dramatically!

Be well!