Hill Tribes

The Hill Tribes are the collective exonym for the various human tribes in the mountains around Ruthertown. The term is one used within the wider Diarchy as the members themselves do not consider themselves to be part of a wider whole. An individual Hill Tribesman's allegiance and self-proclaimed affiliation is to his individual clan - called Bande in their language - and then to a complicated and ever shifting kinship group. Clans rarely number more than around fifty members, often very closely related. Occasionally, a charismatic leader will unite a number of clans under their control and will launch a small scale war against their enemy du jour. Often this is a struggle to control important iron routes and the alliance falls apart once the target has been seized, more rarely a genocidal war is launched against a particular kinship group. A large scale unification of the clans has not been seen since the 200s when the War of the Western Tribes resulted in the area being brought under Diarchy control.
Hill Tribesmen are largely werewolf and werebear descendants and lyncanthropy runs true in many families. This long exposure has given the Tribes great experience with handling lyncanthropy and their traditional methods for controlling transformations have formed the standard for the Diarchy's approach as a whole.
The Diarchy considers them to be citizens of the Diarchy, based on the fact that they unquestionably live within Diarchy-controlled territory but successive Lords of Ruthertown have discovered that taxing the tribes - or even enforcing Diarchy law on them - is considerably more trouble than it is worth. As such they are largely left to their own devices. Occasional missionaries are sent in to their lands and the tribes nearest to Ruthertown or other major population centres pay at least lip service to the worship of Land. Further away, tribesmen worship a totem animal associated with their kinship; small scale gods numbering a couple of hundred worshippers at most and with limited power as a result. Their focus tends to be to ensure the fertility of their worshippers and subsequent healthy births.

Leadership

Individual clans practice a number of leadership styles largely clustering around a personal dictatorship by a patriarch figure who is eventually overthrown by a younger male. Periodically one such ruler will attempt to establish a hereditary system which invariably collapses as soon as an heir is incapable or ineffective at ruling.
Kinship groups are administered by "Fodselmend". Fodselmend are shamanic figures with a cross-clan self-appointed remit to ensure the continuance of a particular remit. They tend to be older women, past childbearing age, who decide to take on the role and gain their authority from the approval and recognition of other, already authoritative, Fodselmend. Through informal discussions between themselves they assign individual clans to a given Kinship group and provide the herbs and rituals needed to ensure that forbidden births do not come to fruition. Fodselmend travel between clans, staying with one for a period before moving on to another. Rumours persist of a conclave or council or similar where decisions are made but no evidence of this has ever been found and the majority view is that it is indeed a rumour.

Clan Structure

Each clan is (usually at least) a single extended family laying claim to either an area and the open pit mines within it or a particular iron trade route. While they likely have familial relations with other nearby clans, there is rarely any loyalty shown to other clans as a result and once a child marries into another clan (both males and females leave their parent clan depending on the edicts of the Fodselmend) they are considered part of that new clan. With no stable, long term, leadership structure there is no opportunity for dynastic marriages or the like, even if the Fodselmend were willing to countenance such a not-inherently-productive marriage.
Each clan belongs to a kinship group which are identified by their totem - bear, stone, wolf, etc - there are an unspecified number of such groups with Fodselmend creating or destroying them based on their assessment of the overall health and birth rate of the clans.
Each kinship group carries with it rules for marriages for its members. For example, at a given time males of the Wolf group may be permitted to marry females of the Sky, Bear and River groups while females may marry Eagle or Lake men. The clans don't seem to possess an incest taboo and recreational sex between family members is exceptionally common - the amount of coercion involved in such relationships depending heavily on the people involved. However, as children from such relationships would be forbidden under the kinship system, all possible precautions are taken to avoid childbirth. If pregnancy should result, the Fodselmend are approached and they use appropriate herbs and rituals to end the pregnancy - with no incest taboo there is no judgement attached.