Romaji's culture idea 2

History of the idea:
* Area used to be like the surrounding areas, but 300 to 500 years ago, things changed.
* A stranger came to [Major town], and began promising magic and good fortune to those who agreed to join him in his club.
* Obviously, people were sceptical, but through mysterious means (actually just luck and foriegn technology, but that was kept secret), good fortune came to those who joined him.
* this lead to his cult growing, as he leveraged common cult techniques, like cutting off people from those not in the cult, leading them to be very invested in pulling those they know in, as well as tiers, that favored people who shown more devotion to him.
* One requirement to reach higher in the cult was to form "Synergies" (which would later become Clans), or groups of people who go by a common name, and share as much with each other as possible. (Initially, this included sleeping in the same bed, and being naked indoors with others. This didn't last after the end of the cult)
* As culture was warped around this cult, people began to push their children into making "Synergies" as soon as possible to help their place in society.
* Of course, cults don't last forever, and after their leader died, the external motivation to form these clans instead of more traditional structures was gone.
* However, many people grown so close to their clans that they didn't want to break up, and they felt most comfortable with their children continuing the tradition, given that there were very few examples of traditional families left.
* In essence, almost everyone in the wake of the collapse of the cult saw no reason to do the dramatic change back to normal family structure.

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The system:
* A child is raised by an existing clan, where they are referred to a name given at birth, and if needed "of [parental clan name]" is added.
* Children meet those from other clans through school or some other kind of common place, until their age of transition. They do live at home with their home clan/parents
* At the age of transition, they create a clan with other people they know who are also at the age of transition, usually creating a clan from 3 to 5 (though rarely, up to 9) people, that they will spend their entire adult lives with, with rare exceptions in the case of unresolvable conflict.
* Adults in a clan live, and more often than not work together, and use the name they came up with for their clan over their birth name, Unless it is necessary to seperate them from the rest of their clan
* Because not all clans have the proper mix of sexes to produce offspring, adoption rates are very high, with sometimes women giving birth to give their child to another clan if the other one can't produce their own.