You meet a young Celd on the road, scouting ahead of her clan. She introduces herself as Shan, and says that it was she who built Giant Finger Castle (exactly what it sounds like) together with her brother.
Reasonably suspicious (quite an old castle, that), you ask for her brother's name. She says her brother's name is Hong, and that although he is an effeminate lout, they fought side by side against the giants a few hundred years ago. She then adds that her brother's name is Cairenn, and he is twenty-three and quite handsome if you are interested?
She's not a compulsive liar; you've actually met a remarkably honest Celd! Her name is Dara ap Shan. Her brother is Cairenn ap Shan; Shan and Hong are clan names, passed down from folkloric ancestors. She is not, in fact, 600+ years old-- she's 22. You breathe a sigh of relief. Everything makes sense again.
You and your friends assess the situation and decide to rob her blind. Then she breaks every bone in your arm.
* * *
Celdic heroclans are seminomadic communities of ~60 (30 adults and 30 children) that are simultaneously a singular folkloric hero, specifically an ancestor who survived the end of the world.
The heroclan is both communal and individual, practical and exalted, at once eking out a living and seeking adventure in the treacherous hintercity.
In the Celdic perspective, this is a form of immortality earned by the City's surviving vanguard. They have earned the right to walk its roads and sample its hunting grounds forever, to see their lineage extend into eternity.
Talking to a Heroclan
For the most part, treat heroclans as rival adventurers. They take a single turn in combat, and speak as a single entity when conversing with outsiders. They tend to travel with eclectic bands of hangers-on and tamed beasts, much like player characters do. (the best way to make a heroclan is to play a solo rpg and see what comes out)
Heroclan duality is context-sensitive: the Celd who is actively representing their clan is their clan, and the clan is the hero, so the Celd is the hero in that context.
A heroclan is not a hivemind. The members are individuals, capable of keeping secrets, forgetting things, getting sick or injured or falling in love, etc. on their own. They can fail to live up to their ancestors. They can forget their roots.
[digression: Clanhood is not a performance, but it does have performative elements. The ancestors are passed down thru storytelling tradition; in Shan's case, this is a 14'x24' quilt that depicts his many exploits. He has a definite character in these stories, and leaning into that helps lubricate inter-clan relations-- the Hongs would be very upset if they met up with Shan and found him lacking in courage.]
Being a Heroclan
Heroclans are exogamous, and maintain long-standing relationships with their fellows for marriage and trade.
When many clans come together to accomplish a common goal, it's called a tribe (basically an adventuring party of folkloric heroes, as well as a big and very messy intermingling of Celds).
Heroclans are living, breathing identities: marrying into one makes you part of it, marrying out takes you out of it; they can split in two opposed halves, or fuse with neighbors; they can die, if forgotten.
[digression 2: disrupted oral traditions and demographic collapse can also kill them. Starvation is especially lethal-- as much as they function on storybook logic, heroclans are still subject to the offscreen material reality of being ~60 people]
(Heroclans also have a class, and gain xp collectively, see below)
They can be hunter-gatherers, nomadic pastoralists, and sometimes stationary agriculturalists. If it comes up, there are 1d4-1 births and as many deaths per year.
All of the above is set dressing to justify this generator. It began as a jscript that built interconnected clans of 60+ named npcs (ripping off archon's navigators completely) with extensive family trees, but it had no sauce. So I returned to my favorite mechanic: treating abstract concepts as people.
