Miqo'te naming conventions for different Seeker tribes

[Naria]

I always got the impression based off of Seeker lore, that a Nunh normally doesn't keep his post for very long, a few years at most. Fighting challenges would take its toll and soon enough he would be defeated and knocked back down to Tia--if they survived. That would make more sense as far as preventing inbreeding at least. Neither of the tribes we have seen in depth really follow the lore closely but both have long serving Nunhs, so I could be wrong about that. That added with what seem to be more metropolitan tribes like the "Y" and the Seeker sibs from Moonfire Faire and I have to wonder how many Seeker tribes are actually traditional anymore.

I don't recall anything saying that the Nunh normally raise the children though? Just that they rarely become leaders. I would assume normally that their main occupation as a Nunh besides fathering children would be preparing to defeat challengers.

[Iscah]

of course, the only nunh hopefuls we know are from the U or M tribes and they are both rather odd, lore breaking tribes. And we don't have ANY in game tribe that follows the lore we were given for them so idk. :l

I super want to visit a Normal tribe. with little miqittens running around, and a Nunh that is raising kids not leading.

Neither of the tribes we have seen in depth really follow the lore closely but both have long serving Nunhs, so I could be wrong about that.

I'm not sure where the impression is coming from that the U and M tribes aren't traditional? They fit the description. Mostly women, one nunh, a few adherent tias waiting for their chance to take over. The only oddity is that the role of nunh is treated as equivalent or tied to being leader, instead of being appointed separately, but that's not a huge deviation from the overall setup.

And I'm not aware of any reason to think that the nunh's role involves raising kids just because he's the father (or "the tribe's breeding male who sired them" as the naming conventions put it, which suggests a much less personal connection). It's a completely different social structure - children are more likely raised by their mothers and aunts, while the nunh's job is to protect the tribe and defend both people and territory against outside threats. Maybe he takes an interest in the kids, maybe he doesn't.

A lot can potentially be extrapolated from information on lions' social structure - from the Wikipedia page:
- a lion pride is usually around 15 lions, can be up to 30, with adult females, a few males and their cubs
- males leave their maternal pride when they reach maturity, and may travel far to find new territory
- some lions are "nomads" and not part of a pride, but may settle in one later; lions in a pride may choose to leave and become nomads
- lions in a pride tend to have fixed roles: some females take a role raising cubs
- cubs are reared communally rather than specifically by their mother
- males "must defend their relationship with the pride from outside males who may attept to usurp them"

(We'll hope the bit about a new incoming male tending to kill any existing cubs doesn't hold true for what's considered acceptable in Seeker society... but you could certainly do something with it in a darker story. "Adolescents being forced out of the pride" too, for something less grim.)

There's also a bit on Asiatic lions that sounds like Keepers of the Moon: males are solitary or in small groups; females associate with other females and their cubs; male and female only come together to mate. That matches Keeper structure with a family unit of mother and children, possibly living in a group with a few other families, and the males keeping to themselves.

The way I see it, children belong to the tribe. So they would carry their mother's Letter. If male, they would hold onto that letter as they go out into the world. Then when they find a tribe they want to join, and have the ok to idk trial? for the role of Nunh they drop their Mother Tribe, and adopt the new tribe. If they succeed, congrats they're tribe daddy. If they fail, they probably go back to roaming, using their Mother Tribe Letter.

That's how I figure it works, though not sure if they have to go back to roaming or if they'd just keep on being adherent to their "adopted" tribe. I assume this is what's going on with the two tias in the U tribe.

We also see M'zhet formally request to "rejoin the M tribe as a tia" at the end of the M tribe quests. It's kind of messy since that's already his name prefix but I assume that might be the point at which a roaming tia joins the tribe and is welcomed by his new name.

I think the only way a child would take on their Father's Tribe letter is if they were being raised alone by their father (the tragic back story of at least 1 npc) or their father established an offshoot or double letter tribe.

Even in those cases, they're not taking on "their father's name" because their mother would be from the same tribe as their father.

Oooh I'm getting all sorts of ideas for characters now with "taboo" backgrounds. haha.
The exhausted and nearly incompetent nunh that it trying to establish a new tribe because he got shit faced at a festival.
The overly traditional mother who broke tribal law and is desperately trying to make sure no one notices how little her child resembles the Nunh. Time to play with Character creator again!

Yeah, it opens up all these completely different possibilities of how their relationships are structured and what they're even going to think of as normal.

It does make me once again wonder how they keep track of Tia and Nunh though. I really wish we had a better idea of how the tribes were laid out and how big they're supposed to be. (Just how much inbreeding are we dealing with here?!)

What needs to be kept track of? The tribe knows who their nunh is. Everyone else is a tia.

But yeah, I wish we had more understanding of how the tribes are arranged - though the rule that a tia can become a nunh by claiming new territory and becoming nunh of the area suggests that rather than a single "X tribe" you'd start with one in the very beginning, then one might split off and find new territory and that's also the X tribe but separate from the original. At some point you presumably run out of land to claim but who knows exactly how they manage it.

I always got the impression based off of Seeker lore, that a Nunh normally doesn't keep his post for very long, a few years at most. Fighting challenges would take its toll and soon enough he would be defeated and knocked back down to Tia--if they survived. That would make more sense as far as preventing inbreeding at least. Neither of the tribes we have seen in depth really follow the lore closely but both have long serving Nunhs, so I could be wrong about that. That added with what seem to be more metropolitan tribes like the "Y" and the Seeker sibs from Moonfire Faire and I have to wonder how many Seeker tribes are actually traditional anymore.

I think the amount of time a nunh holds his post is going to vary - how many people want to take on this particular tribe? How strong is he compared to his challengers? An expert fighter could hold his position for years, while others squabble and switch leaders every few months where there are lots of challengers of similar strength.

The thing with "metropolitan tribes" is that just because they're not living in an isolated village doesn't mean they've abandoned their culture entirely. The Y tribe still seems to be following traditional structure - Y'shtola and Y'mhitra are half-sisters to the same father, and the lorebook tells us there are twelve sisters in the family.

As for the R tribe? We absolutely tied ourselves in a knot over trying to make sense of R'fhul Tia's comments, but ultimately we can't judge the state of the whole tribe on what could be some kind of exception to the rule. The tribe structure could still work in an urban setting - all in a shared house or as neighbours. Some might shift away and want to form a pair-relationship with someone outside the tribe, but that doesn't mean there isn't a core traditional tribe structure that remains in place.

(I think there's also the general problem that the person assigned to write a cute fluffy seasonal-quest story probably hasn't read the intricacies of Seeker lore and is just "we need an emotional sob story... and some cute kids. We have that child Miqo'te model, let's go with that.")