Not actually related

[cmdr_zoom]

Today, while I was hard at work preparing legal documents, a little part of my brain was trying to figure out how property, inheritance, etc works for a tribal/feudal society of imaginary lizard people.

Comments

I'm probbly over thinking it....

[gwyd.livejournal.com]

If it is any help, writing tends to first be used for the keeping of tax records, followed fairly quickly by the recording of hymns. Your lizard people likely have written tax and property records if they are organized enough to be feudal. How centralized is their government? If they are tribal, instead of centralized as your post suggests, likely the inheritance system is traditional and not written down. Popular patterns are primogeniture, ultimogeniture (youngest inherits), or partible (All children inherit). Another thing to take into account is gender relations among the lizard people. Does one gender inherit or both? Which one?

There are also variations involving movables, such as the Spanish reconquista one where the women get all the movables except the horses and weapons, which go to the men. This could get ugly as when the patriarch died, the female children could divide the mother's clothes, even if she was still alive. O.o this is rare. Generally movables are partible or assigned in wills, which your culture may or may not have depending on literacy. Generally written wills are for the well off until relatively modern times.

Re: I'm probbly over thinking it....

[cmdr-zoom.livejournal.com]

If you're overthinking it, so am I. :)

Taxation is actually pretty simple (it helps that the game, and thus the society, is rather cartoonish), in that it doesn't really exist. Almost all Stuff really belongs to the chief(s) above you; you're just holding/using it for them. If you die by accident or old age, it goes back up the line to them. If you're killed in war or defeated in a duel, it goes to the guy who beat you. You are expected to give a portion of the spoils to the chief above you; if you don't, and he wants to force the issue, he can formally ask. Only males can hold Stuff - females are considered part of the Stuff, which means they can be bought/traded, or won and lost in duels.

[jack-rowen.livejournal.com]

Don't you hate it when that happens?


You're in the middle of something completely unrelated and suddenly ideas begin popping into your head but you have to focus on what you're doing and can't write anything down?


That's happened to me at least 5 times in the past three days and I'm about ready to snap.