I suppose that a tidally locked planet does have poles... they turn at the same speed that they rotate around their star, so rotating every 55 days or so produces a very weak magnetosphere, and the problem is compounded by a cooler core, which would further weaken it. thankfully scientists have become optimistic that these planets would develop thicker ozones from the very radiation that would strip them of their atmospheres. This thicker ozone means Earth-like radiation levels on the planet's surface and shields the atmosphere from blowing away. Back on subject though, I guess even if the magnetosphere barely reached above the atmosphere, it would be enough for a compass to detect. Using the planet's poles and the placement of it's sun in tandem with the moons means navigating would actually be pretty straightforward.

And just to throw it out there, there's always sky color as reference. It would be whitish, greenish, blue at the apex, and the further away you go, the more orange/red the sky would become. These sky color zones might be perceived as entirely different "worlds" by primitive people. Governed by different gods or spiritual entities. After all, there would be marked differences in temperature and humidity from one to the next.

I figure the moons would have learned how to get along before recent billions of years... the red dwarf I finally settled on is already 8 billion years old, meaning the tidally locked planet is also most likely very old. I'd assume that they are the product of debris clouds either from the solar system's formation or stuff swept up later over time, and it would have been before life evolved on the planet because as you point out, there could have been serious collisions at that time. Each moon would represent debris that was swept up in it's path, cleaning up it's zone as it formed.