Just for clarification, Hertla and her son are Yullar's personal house-slaves - where he goes, they follow. Additionally, the whole point of Krolm's Anvil is to settle power-disputes between the clans; Every generation or so (10 years, give or take) the most powerful clans each send a warhost up to decide which clan is more or less proclaimed leader for a time, allowing for a Rule of the Fittest type of leadership while still maintaining relative autonomy from one another. Losers usually pay high tributes in terms of resources - it's entirely possible for certain smaller clans to join forces and pool together a warhost, even going so far as to meld older, weaker clans into whole new ones in order to have a stronger chance at rising up the political ladder.

Of course, as [i]very[/i] briefly alluded to in the post, it's also possible for clans fade into obscurity or die out entirely, perhaps splitting off and joining others just to survive. The struggle for dominance is a constant dance of variables in the Ulgothe mountains.