Thommy H:
Where does everyone get this stuff about “clans” for Chaos Dwarfs anyway?
Thommy H:
I've always been under the impression that much about them had not changed, I can't see any reasons for them not to have it. It hasn't been stated either way in canon or non canon fluff.According to the canon, all Chaos Dwarfs are bound by kinship to a particular Sorcerer. I don't know if this is what you mean by "clan".
Grimstonefire:
A sorcerer has to come from somewhere, so having him lead his clan would not be unusual. The clan system is an essential dwarfish characteristic imo, without this we’d be just like manlings, which would not be terrible, but nowhere near as characterful.
I don’t see them having a feudal system (bretonnians), or a regular autocracy or dictatorship (astragoth would need backing of coven, which needs support of regional councils of elders etc). Having a coven based on religion, backed up by a powerful administrative system of economically and politically seperate regions is closer imo.
Thommy H:
A sorcerer has to come from somewhere, so having him lead his clan would not be unusual.Yeah, he gets born, then goes and joins the Temple and, when he's the most powerful Sorcerer of his house/clan/family/whatever (?) he takes control of all his kinsmen. This would be the "clan" in your model, I suppose. Chaos Dwarf society is more like a collection of absolute monarchies though, at least according to the canon accounts. The Sorcerers rule over their followers absolutely and vie amongst themselves in the Temple for influence, wealth and slaves.
Grimstonefire:
I wouldn’t call kinsmen followers, and he wouldn’t need to ‘control’ them. He could simply be the head of the clan, or the leader of many clans. A bit like a godfather character; a wealthy noble who owns a huge amount of land but pays his clan kin like a big business rather than controlling their actions.
Using my concept it would be perfectly normal for their to be dozens of nobles/ noble families in any region that would be wealthier than the sorcerer leading their clan. Using your concept would that be normal?
Thommy H:
Well…it’s not really “my” concept…it’s kind of what the official fluff says. The Sorcerers are the masters of Chaos Dwarf society, and they rule over all the Chaos Dwarfs who are their kinsmen with an iron fist. They belong to them. It’s not like a business relationship.
It’s cool to expand and change things, but it’s going to be difficult to discuss fluff like in this thread if there isn’t some common ground about the basics.
Grimstonefire:
I don’t doubt that the rule over them as leaders and that they are extremely powerful. Perhaps I have missed the part in the fluff where they have actually enslaved the other chaos dwarfs?
To be honest the difference between what you think and what I think is all down to different interpretations.
For instance:
‘All the chaos Dwarfs belong to one of the chaos dwarf sorcerers, they are his subjects and also his kinsmen. bonded by ties of blood loyalty which all chaos dwarfs deem unbreakable’
‘Each chaos dwarf sorcerer controls part of the city, with it’s workshops and forges, slaves and warriors, as part of his personal dominion’
Here we differ. I understand your interpretation, but my view is that is it perfectly acceptable for there to be DZ nobles that are richer than the sorcerers. Something I seriously doubt would be possible under a feudal esque system, they would just take everything because they could.
Subjects; yes. They can trade or move to other regions etc as they see fit. Would the sorcerer have 100% absolute control in all things? I doubt it somehow…
Belong; yes. The sorcerer is the head of their part of the clan system.
Control over warriors; yes. He controls them because they are part of the clan system he rules.
Pay those who work for him? You say not (a feudal system). CD are greedy and ambitious, and with a few hundred sorcerers compared to (using my example) 81,000 DZ + 3m slaves it would not a lot take topple them. If they deal with them in a business like manner things run a lot more smoothly. Ambitious generals and nobles have another reason to be loyal other than simply because of blood ties.
It’s basically the difference between:
‘I am your master now. That house you live in is mine now and I’ll let you live in it if you pay me, your business is mine now too and you’ll work there for free as my servant’.
And
’Think of me like a godfather. This is your house, live in it and pay a hefty tax on all business dealings to me’.
So the difference between our views is not actually that different, and seeing as the fluff can be interpreted in different ways there is no right or wrong way of thinking about them. 
Thommy H:
“Belong” seems like a pretty strong term to me, that’s all. I’ve always read that passage as an indication that the Chaos Dwarfs have a very rigid society, and that they’re all absolutely loyal to their Sorcerer. Certainly the way the armies are described elsewhere implies that they’re all essentially personal retinues of Sorcerers, with the Lords subordinate to them. Even Zhatan, the most powerful Chaos Dwarf Lord described, is a follower of the most powerful Sorcerer rather than a leader in his own right.
Grimstonefire:
I would have to agree with you on that. Everyone, no matter their rank in society is always subordinate to a sorcerer by rank (unless they are a high sorcerer etc). Maybe not by decison making abilities, but certainly by social class. I.e. a really old general may be technically a lower class than a sorcerer in peace time, but in war may be the boss.
Something else I was never too clear on is where the sorcerers would spend most of their time? If they wanted to be as ambitious as possible would they need to be present in the sorcerer council meetings all the time? Or would they stay at home with their kinsmen and send someone to register their vote and speak for them? The distances are so great, that either they are seperated from the clans under their influence most of the time, or from the council meetings.
I guess the main question in my mind is how would a sorcerer effectively adminster to all the things they would need to do? Having a powerful ruling elite, each with enough power and money (and a degree of autonomy) to keep them begrudgingly satisfied would help administer things.
These would then have slaves under their control, and would in turn allow CD under them to have slaves.
In terms of how a clan structure would work in practice, it’s pretty well described between grudgelore and stone & steel. As an example:
Karak Azul:
1 royalty clan
Loads of named runesmiths/runelords/brewmaster/ironmaster/priestess/ancestors/ thanes
1 engineers clan
2 brewing clans
2 mason clans
2 mining clans
3 jewel smith clans
5 metal smith clans
2 carpenter clans
1 lode wardens clan
1 prospectors clan
Estimated population 40,000
Basically each clan is solely dedicated to a specific thing. They trade amongst themselves as they see fit, with very little influence from above. If I recall correctly I’m fairly sure the clans do pay the king in the dwarf example as a tithe. Not sure about a business tax, but that could work as well (more fair).
Most of this could be exactly the same for CD, but swap the heriditary royalty clan for a collection of sorcerers, and above that put a high sorcerer.
wallacer:
I’ve always regarded CD society as a collection of semi-autonomous autocracies bound together by devotion to Hashut, greed, racial identity and fear of the power the Sorcerors possess.
In effect it is a kind of corrupted version of Dwarf clans, except instead of clan heads CD have Sorceror Lords.
In D&D terms, I guess you could describe it as a kind of lawful evil republic.
Grimstonefire:
I guess an argument against having clans is that (using my numbers for reference), the vast majority would be say 100-250 Dawi Zharr in total. Some even smaller.
In the dwarfs example a clan might be nearer 2000 dwarfs, so realistically smaller clans may not be sustainable over millenia. People could marry into other clans, or combine them, but they would probably eventually all be so interlinked that their historical identity may be lost?
wallacer:
In other words thay’re more like gangs than clans. Seems fitting somehow.
Kera foehunter:
i don’t think gangs could last with larger clans. The clan would just take them out!!
greed would destroy the gang
Thommy H:
Grim, my interpretation of the organisation of Chaos Dwarf society hinges primarly on the idea that Zharr-Naggrund is their only city of any note (which is repeated in a number of sources) and everything else is just an outpost with a pretty specific aim (fortress, mining complex, quarry, etc.). Zharr-Naggrund is where everything happens - the Sorcerers live there and divide it up amongst themselves, so you could think of it like a pie chart. Ghorth might control, say, 30%, Astragoth 20%, with the remaining 50% divided up between the rest.
Outside the city, the Plain of Zharr is just peppered with mines, quarries, factories, refineries, oil fields, etc. etc. depending on what the resource at hand is. Each Sorcerer would have a percentage of these under his dominion in the same way as parts of the city, or it’s possible that they just send everything to Zharr-Naggrund and let the Sorcerers fight over it. This is probably not that likely, because there would have to be some Chaos Dwarfs overseeing the industrial operations, and they would owe fealty to a particular Sorcerer. We might imagine that this is where a lot of Ghorth’s power base lies.
Further away, it gets a bit sketchy. Is Gorgoth divided up between Sorcerers? It’s possible the far-flung fortresses are largely independent, ruled over by the Temple’s conclave as a whole (which means Ghorth, to all intents and purposes, since he’s the most powerful Sorcerer, though Astragoth has a lot of influence as High Priest). It may simply be that, while the Sorcerers keep a close eye on the shifting borders of their territory within the city and the Plain of Zharr, for the average Chaos Dwarf, society is controlled by “The Sorcerers” as a whole.
Plus, you may need to take into account Castes. There’s some support from Black Library novels and an implication in the official background that Chaos Dwarfs have strictly deliniated roles in their society. Rather than each Sorcerer’s domain being specialised, we could imagine Zharr-Naggrund to be divided both radially (between Sorcerers) and laterally (between Castes), so that each Sorcerer has a cadre of Warriors, a cadre of Artisans, a cadre of Labourers and, of course, many many slaves at the very bottom.
My feeling is that you have to move outside of how regular Dwarfs work. Chaos Dwarfs are supposed to be a twisted reflection of their western counterparts. So racial pride becomes xenophobia; intolerance of weakness becomes cruelty; respect for age and experience becomes pointless veneration of the insane Astragoth; love of wealth becomes all-consuming greed; distrust of outsiders becomes paranoia; respect for craftsmanship and engineering becomes a willingness to enslave Daemons to make bigger guns; loyalty to ones kin becomes absolute obedience to the higher Castes (or whatever).
It all adds up (potentially) to an insane, totalitarian state, canabilising everything around it for short-term gain with no interest in the consequences. Industry gone mad, and the worst excesses of facism.
Grimstonefire:
I think in the current fluff (WD presents), that Zharr Naggrund is the only city, so not even any small towns anywhere. This makes for a pretty dull map. 
Whether they stick to this in a new book we just don’t know.
The way you describe the way they divide up the one city could equally be applicable to clans as well. If the vast majority of the population is within a single city you could have huge clans, more like 3000+. It would make it much easier to divide up the population. For example:
A clan of 3000 produces 1 sorcerer. He retains his links to his kinsmen and rules his clan. Dozens of clans of 200 etc have no sorcerers, so they are just swallowed up in the boundary of another sorcerer. Think of the clan system like divisions of a business; each one has expertise and specialises in something, rather than having a business of 80,000 staff and saying let market forces decide what you do. Keeping clans as well is a way of venerating ancestors, and keeping an accurate tally of grudges, so it’s quite characterful.
I’d have to agree on your description of the dwarf elements gone mad. Those psychological things are what makes a chaos dwarf different.
Grimstonefire:
Split as it’s an interesting topic and I wanted to keep the other one focused for feedback.
Something else I was considering earlier IF there were chaos dwarf clans is that you’d need a craftguild specifically for extortion, assassination, ransoms etc. Basically the sorts of things that would be abhorant to Dwarfs, but for CD is a legitimate profession requiring lots of resources.
Seeing as it’s also relevant, I asked over at bugmans and got some pretty good feedback on how the dwarf system works, which you can read here:
Summary:
A dwarf king increases his wealth from:
Tax coming in from trading arms/ armour/ other items/ iron ore/ coal/ cut stone/ precious minerals etc
Taxes on trade routes
Maintaining things in contracted work (masons, stonecutters, smiths etc)
He takes on the cost of embarking on campaigns by buying goods off the clans in his hold or others, then compensates them when they are out campaigning for lost work time (he hires them as warriors). After the campaign he buys loads more stuff to replace or mend the gear that was lost.
In practice I can’t really see the Chaos Dwarf system being significantly different. An example I gave in that thread was that if the dwarf had a VAT equivalent of 5% on all trading activities that went to the king, the CD equivalent may be 30% etc. High enough that the greedy CD are really encouraged to work a lot harder.
Having specialists in every area would be more efficient in the long run.
Maybe the CD would take a bigger tax take from other clans who pass through their traditional regions etc?
Thommy H:
Honestly, I wonder if they’d even have these things. Extortion of whom, exactly? I’d think, within the structure of the power struggles they have, extortion would be fairly par for the course. Like Ferengi from Star Trek: exploiting your customers is really a given. Assassination I want to say would perhaps be unthinkable, even for Chaos Dwarfs. Who are they assassinating? Sorcerers wouldn’t take out their rivals, and Chaos Dwarfs are probably too few in number (compared to their slaves) to just off each other for personal gain. I instead imagine “proxy wars”, where Sorcerers set up elaborate schemes to erode their rivals’ power bases by pitting their troops against each other, or placing them in unwinnable scenarios. It could be like a game played in the Temple, where the lives of slaves/members of lower Castes are just seen as playing pieces to be traded and sacrificed for momentary gain. They’re all scheming against each other for temporal power and, like their industry, it serves no real purpose except to perpetuate the same situation forever. Plus it’s all totally pointless because they just turn to stone eventually anyway.
Essentially, I don’t see Chaos Dwarfs operating like organised crime syndicates, which is what I think you might be getting at. Their society is more of a theocratic oligarchy, with a priest caste holding total dominion over all land, peoples and resources. The religion is indistinguishable from the state, and all efforts and resources are devoted to the furtherance of that, creating a very rigid society with little sense of personal property. A Chaos Dwarf defines himself by his position within society, and everyone “knows their place”.
That’s my vision of the Chaos Dwarfs anyway. I think it works pretty well thematically - it’s a twisted reflection of the western Dwarfs, and it seems to fit nicely with their ziggurats.
Grimstonefire:
Extortion of hobgoblin/ goblin/ skaven/ ogre tribes etc. Assassination of trading partners people that refuse to pay (non CD of course, that would probably be illegal), ransom of slaves.
The slaves thing could be a huge money spinner, imagine the money they could demand to return a rich merchant after ambushing his caravan. The CD could say; our representatives will meet you here in one year, you have to bring a cart full of gold etc. Much better than simply throwing him in a burning pit! Which you could do if they refuse to pay
Or of you wanted another equivalent, CD somali pirates of the silver road! :yar
All of this would take resources and professional people. I’m guessing that most CD would not know reikspell/ elvish/ lizardmen language etc. So this ‘criminal’ craftguild would be really quite specialised (hence a professional guild).
Thommy H:
I would think the Chaos Dwarfs might be a bit too short-sighted to bother with something like holding captives to ransom - better to just put them to work in the mines and be done with it. Another important factor in my vision is that the Chaos Dwarfs already have access to all the resources they need. The Plain of Zharr, Gash Kadrak and the plateau of Gorgoth contain more mineral wealth than they can ever process, so the only thing they lack is manpower. Hence the slaves. I don’t think they’d be very interested in money from other races, especially because I doubt they have anything like real trade agreements with other nations - they’re not going to do anything with Imperial crowns but melt them down for the (trace amounts of) gold…
One would assume they’d need certain specialist groups for certain tasks though. I wonder if these might not simply fall under the auspicies of existing organisations though - Daemonsmiths are just a certain kind of Sorcerer (or artisan, if you prefer) and blunderbusses are just a certain kind of Warrior, so assassins or other unsavoury specialists could be part of other groups. The question is whether these professions would transcend the divisions between the Sorcerers’ dominions, or whether they’d simply be part of them like other Chaos Dwarfs. I can certainly see a role for separate groups, which is how I imagine both Immortals and Bull Centaurs functioning.
Grimstonefire:
Just out of curiosty would there be classes in your vision? Having very little personal property implies there would not be many classes at all.
I’m trying to identify an existing political ideology for this. I think you’ve hit the nail on the head, it’s basically a theocratic oligarchy with fascist overtones. Which is ironic consider the current occupants near the lands the CD are historically based on (Iran)…
One thing about greed though, no matter how much you have you always want more. Getting gold off merchants by ransom simply because you can is a reason in itself. Not all CD would want to be miners/ mining clans.
The sorts of races the CD would trade with may not always have proper trade agreements as they are not unified races. At a smaller level I think it would be perfectly normal (say with ogre tribes etc).
I don’t think we’re ever likely to agree on whether they should have guilds & clans or not ;) But then that is part of the fun, having our own vision. I will see if I can find an answer to this, possibly asking gav at games day to get his view.