“The Primary and Secondary clans are also called the great clans or greater clans, though the term can refer to any clan that earns it in the popular consciousness.”

Taking a sip of Liquid Vigor, he continued.

“The classification and assigned spring of any given clan is determined personally by the Revenant King when he wakes up each seventy-seven years or so, which is the cycle of the Seven Suns Equinox. Don’t ask, I don’t know how it works, it’s just… Bam, seven suns in the sky for a day, only visible from Borea. Each clan recounts their deeds before the King, and he somehow perfectly determines whether claims are truthful or not, then decides which clans get what. Feats achieved in wartime or during hunts are the most valued, but wargames and holmgang duels are also counted so as to not drive our people into pointless warmongering. Now, seventy-seven years is plenty of time for a clan to get dug in, and it has been a few times that the King has had to actually leave his throne room to pacify an upstart clan that didn’t want to give over their spring. Those… Those clans don’t tend to ever recover their former heights.”

“So there’s a nobility of sorts, but the actual stratification of the class is arbitrated by the Revenant King as a… Divinely appointed judge of sorts, or an analogue to one at least,” Zel thought aloud.

Nodding, Jorfr continued further. Bitterness crept into his voice with each subsequent word: “Holmgangs, hunts, and wargames have gained overwhelming importance in the relatively peaceful times of recent centuries, and with them, so has the ability to win in a not-quite-real battleground. The possibility of death and injury are still a fundamental part of participation, but it’s nevertheless only a fraction as lethal as real combat outside of to-the-death holmgangs… And nobody does those unless it’s to rectify a truly severe personal conflict. Now, what do you think happens when the upper class of a society is determined by performance in duels, hunts, and wargames? When great success in such events brings fame and wealth?”

Victor cut in with a vitriolic answer: “...The ambitious groom their offspring solely to perform in the games. Social climbers by any other name. ”

“I would not call it comparable to marrying your children off to nobles, but you’re not entirely wrong. The issue is not kids being forced to become warriors, you don’t need to force a Borean child into that. It’s what the great clans do,” the Borean rebutted. “The great clans often throw all their resources behind ensuring a single child’s success, usually a boy. With all those resources, private trainers, round the clock access to a primary spring, the best equipment money can buy… Even someone who would otherwise be mediocre can become a powerhouse, and by the ancestors do they make sure nobody forgets it. Of course, wealth does not directly dictate social class, but that does not lessen its utility. Direct descendants of our greatest warriors are treated in a manner that may as well mean they are nobility; success in holmgang, in the hunt, even in the occasional raid are all things directly influenced by the Clan’s ability to prop up their representatives… And this is why most of the great clans are terribly wealthy mercantile families. They are not all bad, to be clear; but many have allowed the money and power to go to their heads, become conceited and callous, just like the rich and highborn do everywhere else.”

“And you want to try to rectify the system by leveraging the greater weight of real deeds compared to wargames,” Zel nodded. “I assume the Seven Suns Equinox is coming up quite soon, then?”

“Two years or so, yes,” Jorfr said.

“Far be it from me to criticize something I don’t understand, but isn’t there some… More active regulatory body?” Zel questioned. “It’s all well and good to have a superhumanly wise and just king, but that doesn’t help run things when he only makes policy changes once or twice a generation.”

He replied: “Oh of course, we have a council of elders elected from amongst members of all clans regardless of standing in the games, using a single transferable vote system based on region. They could wake the King up and restructure the whole spring assignment system if they so choose! Take a guess why they do not.”

“...The Council is controlled by spring-holder clans?” Zel asked. She found it extraordinarily amusing that, of all things to really get Jorfr talking, it was the political problems of his homeland. The Borean’s true intellect rarely shone through as readily, and it made for a truly stark contrast with his slab-like brow and square jaw.

Jorfr agreed: “Spot on. They technically don’t have the majority, but they have just about enough seats to sway any vote the way they want it to go, and of course they all work together to preclude any changes to the system which benefits them. More than a few times have the rulesets not been updated because it would harm one of the greater clans’ strategies. It’s mostly the Secondary Clans pulling the shady shit, since even the weaker Primaries like the Ramdalls don’t need to worry about their position. A small mercy, at least the council are generally good at their jobs in other aspects; the shadiness begins and ends with access to the springs.”

“So you want to snatch a spot in the council for your clan in the hopes of breaking that majority, or…?” Zel asked.

Sighing, Jorfr admitted: “‘I… Did not plan that far ahead. My actual reason is mostly personal. Not only did my clan get cheated out of a victory which would have nearly guaranteed our position as a Primary Clan for the next cycle, three of the Primary Clans conspired to manufacture false cheating allegations against us so that we couldn’t be made a Secondary or Tertiary Clan, either. It’s all but an open secret by now, but it’s… One of those inconvenient truths that you don’t want to go trumpeting out loud if you don’t want the greater clans to come down on you.”