Mrraneti of Cait, part 3

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Originally uploaded by Randuwa.

THE SOCIAL STRUCTURE

Based on the pride, which is essentially a group of related females selecting mates from a large pool of possibilities, the Mrraneti social structure is best described as a matrilineal patriarchy. This is, lineage is counted through the mother, while authority is held by the father. Outworlders tend to find very confusing the idea that authority should reside in the males, who can be removed at anytime by the females. Even more confusing is the ingrained deference of the pride-masters toward all females, particularly the pride matriarch, the oldest female in the group. They respect her desires although she submits to them.

Beyond the pride is the clan, which consists of all the females within the area of the clan holdings, usually several thousand square kilometers. All are related, and claim to be able to race their ancestry back to a single founder. There is some evidence that the Mrraneti may indeed be a colony of an earlier civilization – or, an even more intriguing possibility, they may actually be a carefully bred race of descendants of the Terran lion, an experiment by some past race like that which preserved cultures from Terra which might not otherwise have been viable.

Each clan is rigorously exogamous, exchanging males freely with neighboring clans. It is custom with the force of taboo that no male may copulate with any female of his birth clan, an injunction passed down through the tradition in tales of horrible calamities visited upon the erring ones.

Because the clan is the highest step on the organizational ladder of the evolving social structure, government is totally decentralized, resting essentially in clan, pride, and individual. The exo-sociologists on the early contact missions were completely baffled, unable to understand how the Mrraneti could have advanced so far in such a short time without a centralized government. The Mrraneti tried to explain that it was precisely because of that lack, but they were misunderstood. As a result, the Federation tried to impose upon them as a condition of membership a republican form of government, but Mrraneti just laughed and refused. It wasn’t until the Vulcans, stuck with their own unnecessary form of republican government explained to them that there were uses for the apparently useless, that they accepted. Their executive officer is called Master-of-Prides and serves primarily as a figure-head, there being no laws for him to execute. The legislative assembly consists of bachelor males who gather together during the mating season (when there’s precious little trading to be done because everyone else is totally occupied) and spend the time telling tall tales, which to no end shocks the human ambassador in residence, because he fails to realize that these males are in the process of editing the Tradition, a very important part of every Mrraneti’s life. As for the judiciary, it is called the Council of the Wise, and is the only body for which there is any purpose recognizable to humans. It consists of the oldest members of each clan, those who have lived beyond the breeding age. Each clan has its own council to setting internal disputes. For interclan difficulties, a very rare occurrence, the Councils get together for a very careful consideration of the Tradition and, after much deliberation, render a decision. Most of the occasional disputes are of a civil nature; crime is a rarity, and murder is looked upon with such horror as a denial of society that the murderer, if unrepentant, is perpetually banished. Murder is so rare that there have been no recorded cases in nearly a hundred standard years. However, increasing outside contamination may alter this.