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====== More on primitive society, the Kindling, and language ======

Just some brainstorming on how vulpithecin social structure works and how it handles conflict. Just as a reminder, The childermoot is the basic reproductive unit of society. It consists of up to twelve sires and dams. The resulting offspring are called a //litter//. Several childermoots taken together form a //shire//, which is a group that controls a defined geographical area and its associated resources. A shire is lead by the oldest males in the group, called variously //sheriffs//, //reeves// or //patriarchs//. When a litter reaches sexual maturity, they are ejected from the shire but the empty nesters remain to help younger moots raise their pups. The patriarchs are taken from this group of empty nesters.



As a rule, conflict //within// a shire is settled nonviolently, with patriarchs and other older males usually acting as mediators. Inter-shire competition uses threat displays that escalate to violence when displays don’t work. In addition to other shires, danger can come from the interstitial group of nomadic maids and bachelors–the newly mature adults that were ejected from their natal shires. These nomads may raid resources from shires for themselves, or they may give those resources to a shire they wish to join once they form their own moot. These maids and bachelors also compete and cooperate among themselves. This social interaction helps these young adults decide who they wish to form their own moot with.



Moot selection highly favors exogamy, with prospective sires and dams being from as many different shires as possible. A newly formed moot may do one of two things. usually they will join a pre-existing shire, at which point the sires and dams will lay their eggs and incubate their womb nest. The shire the moot joins may be the natal shire of one of the sires or dams, or it could be a completely different shire. For any number of reasons a moot may choose not to join an existing shire, and may strike out on their own to form a lone childermoot. This lone moot, if successful, will form the nucleus of a new shire, but it may also simply dissolve without other moots joining them.



One difference between tree dwellers and presapient yinrih is that tree dwellers passively deposited their ink by walking and climbing, with more frequented spots acruing more ink, but presapient yinrih actively marked using their ink. Males would mark the watering holes of potential prey, and females would mark trees that were safe to eat from. Maids and bachelors also marked to advertise their desire to form a moot.



The Kindling was essentially instantaneous, with sapient pups being conceived by nonsapient parents. Language developed rapidly. Sapient maids and bachelors would usually encounter one another after leaving their nonsapient littermates. A simple pidgin formed among these nomads, with a spoken language growing form their vocalizations and a written language growing in parallel from their marking behavior. Sapient yinrih highly preferred other sophonts to form moots, making their litters contain only sapient pups. These second-generation sophonts picked up the spoken and written pidgins of their parents, developing new grammar and syntax. In rare cases, two or more first-generation sophonts were born to a single litter, or sapient pups from different moots within the same shire would encounter one another before their nomad phase, whereupon a pidgin would develop much earlier.



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