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Something's been bothering me about the Winter's Claw Tribe (food, logistics, and Inuits)

Darrosh Jewfist·6/21/2015, 5:34:49 PM·20 votes·14,049 views

So Sejuani very clearly states 'We do not till earth like the Avarosan', right? That means the Winter's Claw Tribe doesn't farm and it appears to simply recruit warriors from the villages it visits.

They also basically live in an Arctic/Tundra environment.

After doing my best to research, the only northern/arctic culture I've found that subsists on a hunter-gatherer culture are the Inuits who, in their peak, numbered some 100,000 - man, woman, and child. And that's an area basically spanning from Alaska to Greenland. Their numbers have grown thanks to the advent of supplies and prepackaged food, but the current number of hunter-gatherers has dwindled quite a bit.

But the thing is, Inuit-Inuit conflicts are very rare. Partly because of their cultural background which is much more communal oriented but also because they're basically scattered across such a wide area since they can't all hunt in the same area or else they'd over-hunt and starve themselves.

So it's like... Sejuani, what are you doing?

I just find it extremely hard to believe Sejuani even knows what she's doing. She has no sustainable supply of food other than raids. Her income and supplies comes from what she seizes. And she has no plan to actually settle down and cultivate a civilization due to her aversion to agriculture. Like, how do the Winter's Claw even survive without agriculture and I guess the short answer is that they don't since Sejuani's the sole sibling to survive into adulthood.

It just seems suicidal. Even if by some miracle she manages to beat out the Avarosan or the Frostguard, Demacia and Noxus will go 'lol, no more food for u' and will steamroll them.

tl:dr - closest example to Winter's Claw are the Inuits and the Inuits don't have the manpower or food to wage war so why is the Winter's Claw going on this suicidal war?

58 Comments

RiotBioluminescence6/22/2015, 12:48:54 AM18 votes

Interesting!

So, to me, it seems that the Winter's Claw tribe is somewhat parasitic in nature. We know they do not 'sow seeds and till the earth' and that Sejuani A) compares her tribe to a wolf, and B) she rides a bloody great big boar. Neither a wolf or a boar is a herbivore in nature, and (while the wolf would prefer meat exclusively) they are both omnivores - they'll eat whatever they can get.

Here's a list of possible food sources that don't stretch the imagination toooooo much, I hope:

  • Reindeer/Caribou (or equivalent)
  • Meat (raw, boiled, roasted, smoked, dried, salted, lye-rotted)
  • Partially digested lichen (from reindeer stomachs)
  • Blood (consumed fresh or used in soup, sausage, or a sort of 'tofu')
  • Milk (raw, fermented, cheese, dried, butter, yogurt)
  • Bones (stock, marrow)
  • Whale/Seal/Walrus (or equivalent)
  • Meat (as above)
  • Blubber
  • Skin
  • Laver/Irish Moss/other seaweeds
  • Birds
  • Meat
  • Eggs
  • Bones (stock)
  • Fish
  • Meat (as above, also fermented)
  • Bones (stock)
  • Polar Bear
  • Meat (as above)

Then, maybe they have herd animals (even if they don't sow seeds) and we can expect there to be lichen (for the reindeer) but any other thin patches of grasses or root vegetables would support these as long as they were highly mobile:

  • Goat
  • Meat (as above)
  • Milk (as above)
  • Bones
  • Boar
  • Meat
  • Bones

Then lastly the two assumptions are that Sejuani's tribe TAKE what they want from the border villages (much in the way the Wildlings in Game of Thrones do) and then we have the added wildcard of there being legitimate Seers and other magic users who could help identify other food sources and/or mitigate hunger.

(Standard disclaimer - I'm only as well informed as any player here - I don't have secret Riot narrative team knowledge on this, as I am not part of that team.)

TTUPhoenix6/22/2015, 2:14:57 AM11 votes

One thing that strikes me is Exact Words (tm):

The Winter's Claw do not till the earth. Other tribes do. If you (Sejuani) capture a village of another tribe, then they're obviously weak, unfit as warriors, yada yada. So it's fine for them to till the earth while the Winter's Claw does the fighting. As a result, she might have a sort-of-serf population of captured tribes or villages who do the farming for her to free up the real warriors to go ride boars or arm wrestle or whatnot.

GreenLore6/21/2015, 7:15:56 PM7 votes

I doubt that sejuani is really eager to make her tribe big,I think she values quality over quantity.

Scarce food resources means that only the stronger ones survive.If you want to live,then help in the upcoming raid and steal their stuff,hunt some animals or search for edible plants.

If you can't survive in the cold then you aren't worthy of surviving at all.

ElJanitorFrank6/22/2015, 3:52:30 AM3 votes

One thing you gotta keep in mind is that this is a fantasy setting.

Meaning they could easily have extremely big fantasy monster to eat up there, plants that grow well in the frozen wastes, magic n shit, etc.

It's a bit hard to compare it to the real world. Especially the Inuit/Inuit conflict, Sejuani is warring with Ahse/Lissandra because they have different values, different cultures, they are Inuits.

And from my understanding, Sejuani is much more based on Norse culture than Inuit culture.

YOLO420SWAGSCOPE6/22/2015, 5:00:04 AM3 votes

remember that this is riot writing lore

Painted Celt6/21/2015, 9:44:41 PM3 votes

There are also North-East Siberian natives who at least partially subsist as hunter gatherers. If I recall properly (I read about this a long time ago), some of them herd wild reindeer, but the herds are treated as more of a natural resource to be tracked and protected rather than a case of developed animal husbandry. From what I know about them, they do occasionally have inter-tribal skirmishes but never on a very large scale due to small population sizes and isolation even between their own tribes.

Ah, found a Wikipedia page on one (Evenks) of the North-East Siberian native groups: "Traditionally they were a mixture of pastoralists and hunter-gatherers—they relied on their domesticated reindeer for milk and transport and hunted other large game for meat (Vasilevich, 620-1)."

"The traditional Evenki economy was a mix of pastoralism (of horses or reindeer), fishing, and hunting. The Evenki who lived near the Okhotsk Sea hunted seal, but for most of the taiga-dwellers, elk, wild reindeer, and fowl were the most important game animals. Other animals included “roe deer, bear, wolverine, lynx, wolf, Siberian marmot, fox, and sable” (Vasilevich, 626). Trapping did not become important until the imposition of the fur tax by the tsarist government."

I don't see any references to their warfare, but I recall seeing a picture of their battle equipment a while back - which was composed of mostly padded clothing and a large triangular wooden/leather "shield" piece across the shoulders.

Matezoide6/24/2015, 3:56:43 AM2 votes

Sejuani is just a crappy leader with no plans for the future. She is going to end up starving to death before the war is over.

Teslablade6/22/2015, 12:54:41 AM2 votes

Also, instead of Vikings, Mongols had a similar lifestyle. Completely nomadic, pillaging and conquering from their mounts.

Teslablade6/21/2015, 6:35:59 PM1 votes

Well, there are also the Vikings...they were nomadic, Arctic-area-dwellers who subsisted on pillaging, and they did quite nicely. And on a side note, the word Freljord (I can't italicize on my phone) sounds more Scandinavian that Inuit. There's a bit of a dichotomy between the cultural inspiration for different Freljord champs. For example, Nunu is more Inuit, whereas Olaf is, of course a Viking.