A month sounds sensible as you can easily go away on vacation for 2-3 weeks and it wouldn't be good to come back to find your totem gone if you forgot to re-sub or something. A totem status that changes over that 4 week period like UO's IDOC would be cool though.
You should be able to suspend your sub or cancel it. If you cancel it your char is deleted and you're kicked out of tribe. If you suspend it your character is saved and you're a member of tribe for next month or two.
I think something like this could work.
characters should remain saved but considered deleted if someone forgets to resub, pretty much freezing the account. this way tribes aren't taking advantage of inactive players. Paying players shouldn't have anything affecting them if they're away for extended periods of time. if they're paying then they either just really love xsyon or intend to come back.
I'm not sure what jooky is planning about this but i see this as the best thing to do.