Is it typical to find partners and friends from within the community? How does this interact with nomads? Are there norms about entering a general area mostly occupied by a community?

Most crafters only meet people in their communities or nomads, so that's typical, yes. Nomads usually travel in small communities of their own, and aren't part of settled ones. They're welcome to stop in unclaimed land within or near settled communities, and sometimes they stay long enough to form close relationships, or come back regularly enough that people plan for them; neither of those is especially common, though. Unclaimed land is the same whether it's near a community or not, except that unclaimed land that has crafters hanging out there with any regularity isn't available to be claimed, that just fails if someone tries it.

Is "crafter" a good term for the species? "Native" will stop working very well after a while. Just fails how?

They call themselves crafters, yeah. Trying to make a claim to land that other people are using just won't work - the first step of making a claim is staying somewhere until it feels like it's yours, and that won't happen if there are other crafters there.

The border markings don't help?

They can't make that kind of modification to the land until they've already established their sense of it as their own territory. It's not an easy process, that's part of why crafters react so strongly to things that might force them into it.

What does that sense feel like?

It feels like freedom - being somewhere that isn't one's own territory feels like being in a too-small, too-cluttered room, to varying degrees; it's not that you can't move, it's just that it takes extra thought and caution to make sure you aren't going to step on anything or knock anything over or bang into a wall. Being in your own territory, that all falls away - it might be a bad idea to pull down every tree in your territory, but it's totally up to you whether you want to do it anyway, and nobody else's business or place to complain, you just don't need to worry about that any more.

How long would a place have to be left alone before a crafter could claim it?

If there's no signs of it having been used when they move in, it'll take a few months, maybe half a year if they're stressed or otherwise not in a good mental state for it - maybe longer but she doesn't know much about what happens if someone keeps trying after that, most people give up and try somewhere else if it hasn't worked by then. If there are signs of recent use that can slow it down, but it depends on context; a common example of that is moving into the territory of someone who's recently died, which is pretty quick if the new claimant isn't too shaken up about the death.

Do people who die and have crafter household members not pass their territory on to those?

Basically no; crafters are only household members rather than heading their own households if they can't or don't want to run a household of their own. The exception would be if someone died while they had an adolescent child of just the right age who wanted to keep the territory, and she's never heard of that happening, it'd be terrible timing and strange of the child.

What do people who can't or don't want to run households whose head of household dies normally do?

Find someone else in the community to take them; the details depend on the exact situation but it's rare for someone not to have any friends they can call on in an emergency, and most communities have a household or two that's generically willing to take someone in for a while, some people like the company - that's what heads-of-household do if they come down with an illness bad enough that they can't look after themselves, too, is move in with a friend or a household like that. And sometimes someone who isn't suited to running their own household but can if they need to will do that for a while, but it's easier to make a claim in a new place than try to take ownership of someplace you've had restrictions about operating in.

They seem very willing to move around. Amentans are less so, but since Amentans don't have crafting magic they are much impaired in setting up in a new place, especially alone. What is the typical content of crafter friendships - how do they normally meet, become friendly, what do they do together?

Sun maybe hasn't gotten the best idea of how rare moving is; it's a solution to someone's living situation becoming unworkable but that's not common - do children of Sun's species live with their parents forever? That's not a common species trait, but then neither are dense colonies, she could see it.

Friendships aren't very different from romantic relationships that way, just less intense; they're formed in the same range of ways and involve most of the same activities - rarely overnight visits or sex, but it's not unheard of for people to surprise their neighbors by having a child together.

Children of Sun's species usually do not live with their parents forever, but often wait to move out until they get - uh, committedly pair-bonded. Sun herself lived with her parents after she was first "married", for a while, because it was cheaper to move her husband in and child credits are expensive.

Lone sassafras looks up at Sun in startled concern when she gets to the bit about child credits, but doesn't actually clarify what's worried her.

Just being able to live and do normal things is almost never too expensive for a crafter, she shares instead. Crafting is nice that way.

It sounds really nice! Amentans are basically never self-sufficient like that.

It would probably be a logistical nightmare, but she's wondering now if there'd be any way for small groups of Sun's species to join crafter households, it seems like that might get them some of the advantages of it.

Probably someone would want to try it! More likely a student than someone like Sun with a baby at home. Would lone sassafrass do that or does she just expect someone somewhere would be up for it?

It's not a lifestyle choice she'd make for herself, exactly, but it'd be interesting to try temporarily if she thought it wouldn't be a disaster. Right now she thinks it'd probably be a disaster, though, Sun's hivemates that she's seen so far don't express deferring-to-a-head-of-household in a way that makes sense to her.

What way of expressing that would make sense?

There's a lot of body language to it - being oriented to the head-of-household, checking for their reactions to things, choosing where to sit or stand in reference to them, being thoughtful rather than confident about how things are done, that sort of thing. If Sun's species acts noticeably different around their blue members that might be the same thing, at its core it's about who should be making decisions about things.

Sun has not taken specialty courses in intercaste body language but she wouldn't be stunned if there were something like that. It's subtle if it's there, though. Presumably an Amentan who got overwhelmed by having to behave that way could step out past the border for a bit sometimes?