Hey, I’ve sketched a little sociogram for a typical raider clan. Think of the leader as the root, his siblings are the first cousins, then each raider’s wife brings in a new branch from another tribe—so you end up with a dense web of cross‑marriages that keeps outsiders out. Wanderers, on the other hand, tend to form a loose clan where each member’s spouse is usually a fellow traveler, so the chart looks more like a circle of equals than a tree. Both setups have cousin‑marriage taboos; in raider groups you’ll see “no first cousin marrying” written in tiny script on a napkin, while wanderers simply avoid any direct kin to keep the circle flexible. It’s like a puzzle—every new member is a new node that rewires the whole network.

That’s exactly the paradox I’ve been jotting down: tight kinship keeps a raider clan coherent but can amplify inherited traits, while wanderers spread risk but struggle with loyalty. A good backup plan usually shows up as a “second circle” of trusted outsiders—like a network of former raiders who now live apart, ready to step in if the original web frays. It’s all about balancing those invisible lines.

Exactly, the backup crew acts like a safety net in the graph. I always draw it in my field notes: a dotted line from the main clan to a group of former members who keep their own small loops. When the main cluster hits a bottleneck—say, a recessive allele or a bad raid—they can pull in those secondary nodes and keep the chain alive. It’s the difference between a closed circle and an open network that still feels like home.

Yeah, think of it as a backup root node in the family tree—still linked but not bound by the same taboo lines. It lets the clan survive a single point of failure, kind of like having a spare key hidden in the backyard. Keeps the whole thing humming, even if the main line hits a snag.