Stim

The stim (Anisoran: casa; Pastanan: gens) is the word used for an extended family in an Orkanan context. As a form of organization, it predates the Orkanan Realm of Stoldavia and can be compared to a clan, tribe, or band. In more traditional settings, the stim shares a common household, but in modern incarnations, core families can form their own households, and the stim bond becomes an affiliation on top of that.

In the joint family setup, the workload is shared among the members, often unequally. Grandparents often take the leading roles because they have the most experience with parenting and maintaining a household. Manual labor is more the domain of adult males, but not exclusively so. Caretaking tends to be a female activity, but even here, this is not entirely a gender-defined role. Children help out as well, for example, by babysitting infants or helping with harvesting. Senior members of the household usually oversee babysitting, childcare, and basic education.

Etymology

The word stim is Imperial Stoldish and, as such, is the default name for extended families in an Orkanan society. It comes from the older word steim, which roughly could be translated as "compact." This refers to the practice of extended families living in enclosed, often small dwellings.

Organization

Membership rules and privileges are formulated in a byalag, which is registered as local law. Cooperative ownership of land, means of manufacturing, buildings, distribution of income, and other common arrangements are formulated in this byalag. The stim decides itself who is eligible to participate in meetings (stämma) and who has voting rights on issues. In historical times, stim members without any rights were considered serfs or thralls—people who would require shelter and work for food without any other privileges. This type of serfdom was abolished during the Greater Stoldavic Empire, but reality this tradition carried way into the 76th century in the form of landless tenants and in-house soldiers in some regions.

Although generally interpreted as a closed family unit, most stims tend to be rather open, inclusive gatherings. People can enter stims through marriage, but they never completely leave their stim of origin unless they want to. Both males and females can marry into another stim. Many stims allow membership without marriage as well, for example, the inclusion of an apprentice in case the local economy falls under the skro system. The titles for apprentices (lärling and gesäll) indicate the amount of involvement in the stim, where lärling is an associated affiliation, and gesäll is almost an adoption.

As a general rule, members cannot marry one another, although exceptions can be made if there is no blood bond between the members, as is the case with apprentices. All full stim members share a common family name, which often coincides with the name of the house or locality. Associated members, like people who married into another stim or apprentices, do not carry the name. Serfs had the word från (from) added to the name to distinguish affiliation.

The stim leader is called an alf, which in most cases also includes certain duties within the Orkanan religion that could be compared to priests. In some societies, the oldest male is the alf; in others, the oldest person; while in other stims, the title of alf is passed down before death. More modern stims tend to choose their alf. Beside the alf, each stim has one or more värds (hosts), who serve as liaisons to other stims and the socken.

Local and national legislation defines how stims are formed and under what circumstances they can merge or split up. As a general rule, a marriage between prominent members of a stim is a way for two stims to merge. Most split-ups are amicable, such as when an extended family becomes too large for a single household or the economic activities require expansion elsewhere. The foundation of new stims has to be sanctioned by the socken and/or stift, which is a way to secure affiliation with those higher levels of organization.

Family Business and Skro

Traditionally, the stim coincides with the main economic activity. Historically, this has been the case with agriculture, where the stim equaled the farm as an economic entity. Land ownership, therefore, was the basis of most stims, since land was pivotal in the household's economy. Later, other physical properties like forests, windmills, watermills, loading facilities, and more recently, factories became the equivalent of land ownership. In modern days, even intellectual property can be the basis of a stim. In an Orkanan setting, the extended family business is the backbone of the local economy. Local society, as a gathering of stims, used to be organized in a sort of guild system (skro). In rural Vittmark the skro system was the main economic organization until halfway the 77th century, but under the influence of free market tendencies, most restrictions assoicated with it have been abolished, creating a more open market for production and services.

In Anisora, businesses are often named for the head of the stim (alf), followed by "& stim" (Anisoran: e casa, lit. "and house"), such as La L. Adriano Pontecorvo & Casa Banca ("The L. Adriano Pontecorvo & Stim Bank").