#a weak chief is a death sentence. when a chief needs a heir everyone elegible in the village is tested brutally

[vroomian]

I am in love with your new oc. I also have questions. Wives are pushing for more wives to get better standing. Why do they need better standing? Is someone hunting them? Are those clans trying to take away children? Is ocs dad involved? Is there some separate threat/motivation?

Oh man okay that is a question with some world building answers. Okay so wives are magic batteries and the husband acts as a focal point to direct and focus the power. The more wives the more magic you have at your disposal. It’s a status thing absolutely but there’s also a very serious reason: swarming season.

The world is basically a desert and there’s a reason for that. There are Things in the desert. I’m not gonna call them monsters because they’re not alive and can’t really be killed. They’re more of a semi physical manifestation of pure hunger. They eat everything. Metal, wood, people. The reason the clans don’t travel outside of certain seasons is because it’s hella dangerous.

For most of the year it’s manageable. The things wander the desert but dont leave set areas, so the clans are safe enough. They’re less dangerous when the sun is out. Then Comes the rainy season, three straight months of rain — and the creatures start to swarm. Something happens and they become ravenous and go after everything. Including entire clans.

This is where the clan system comes in. The clan bunkers down inside their walls and the chief activates an array of protection around the whole clan. Anyone not inside the array will die, straight up. This is serious magic, the type of thing one person can’t do alone — hence the wife system. The marriage is more than physical, it’s magically binding. When mc touched 1st wife she literally snapped the bond between her and her awful husband. Everything else aside, The one job a wife has is to pour everything they have into this spell. If they die, they die. And wives do die maintaining the barriers every single season. They get drained or scorched or simply to exhausted to go on.

It’s grueling work, and it has to be done by one family at a time. If you don’t have compatibility between magics they could reject each other and make the barrier collapse. The husband, who’s usually the chief because they have the best control and most mana, has to maintain the barrier constantly. One slip up could kill everyone. This is also the reason why no one would care if a chief abused anyone. They’re the strongest. There’s no other options. There are other strong marriages in the clan usually so there’s someone who can take over so the chief can like sleep and stuff, but they don’t last nearly as long.

So: yea there’s a very good reason to have more wives if you can take them. If you can take more wives and you fucking don’t… well. Youd make a lot of enemies basically. Especially for someone like mc, who has 4 wives and shows no strain! That’s enough to make her the cheif of a lesser clan, and upgrade that to major when the children start hatching.

There used to be five large clans, but the chief fell in love and swore to take only one wife. There’s only four large clans now :)

There is also some conflict between the clans naturally. Strong clan = big clan, more wives = more children, more children = bigger clan! Egg, which I’ve decided to call Sparks actually (because eggs sounds stupid), do get stolen! If you can get a spark early enough, like in the first month or so, you can feed the spark your magic instead of the parents magic, the spark will eventually imprint on you instead. The mark on the spark will even change. This is considered, ethically, between rape and kidnapping as a crime btw, so you’d make some bitter enemies, but that doesn’t stop people from doing it! 4th wife’s father is a chief and he’s definitely done it.