How the Free Peoples Live
What counts as a tribe. Any people that rules itself, pays no tax to a great power, and would be missed if it were gone. Size does not matter. The Cherüsh are eighty thousand riders, and the Uusung's Long Dark camp is forty people. Both are tribes.
Where tribes live. In the gaps. Every great power rules a heartland and claims a frontier, and the frontiers are wide: the Spine's high valleys, the Greenwarden, the Grass Sea, the Sunmaw's deep dunes, the Verdant Deep, the Frostmarch's far north, the coasts and islands, the road itself. Tribes live where the great powers cannot be bothered to go, or cannot pay to go, or went and failed.
How tribes are born. A clan splits over a feud or an inheritance. Folk fleeing a purge or a famine find a valley. A leader men will follow binds three villages into one. A great power pulls back its frontier garrison, and the people it ruled find they can rule themselves. A trade road opens, and the people who work it become a people.
How tribes die. A great power decides the gap is worth filling. A leader dies with no one to follow him. A famine, a plague, a Wolf Winter. A larger tribe swallows them. They do well, become a kingdom, and are a tribe no longer. Or they drift into a great power's markets one family at a time, until nobody remembers the name.
Tribal status. Each people below is marked: RISING (growing in numbers or power), STABLE, FADING, CONTESTED (fought over, or fighting within), or VANISHED (gone within living memory, the name still known).
The confederation problem. The tribes of Aethorra seldom join, and when they do it is the most dangerous thing on the continent. Tontanor did it in 455 and frightened two empires for fifty years. Sarsak Tolmar has done it now. Every great power's chancery keeps a list of which tribes could join, and prays.
Plates of the Free Peoples
The Cherüsh Horde
The Waheli
The Dunmorrow
The Tzalan
The Uusung
The Qaflan
The Drift
The Hizkari
The Salt Brotherhood
The Ember Pilgrims
The Register of Tribes
The Karzhan Spine (Mountains, West)
The Dunmorrow Delvers — STABLE. The mountain-miners of the northern Spine. Not one tribe but nine holds, each cut into its own mountain, each under a Thane, meeting in the Deep Moot once in ten years. Harrowdeep (Thane Grurn) is the largest. The others: Ironvein, Coldshaft, Sallowdeep, Marrow's Gate, Hammerhold, the Nine Lamps, Graywater Hold, and Under-Venei, which sits beneath Venei's Throat and charges the Waheli and Aldmere both for the tunnel. The holds quarrel without end, and since the kingdom fell they have never once fought each other. Tesk Deepsong's Restorers are strongest at Hammerhold.
The Stairfolk — FADING. ~2,000. Goatherds and guides of the Stair pass, between Aldmere's Westmarch and Tharax. Neither realm rules them; both use them. They know every path over the Spine that is not a pass, and have sold that knowing to smugglers, Tyrthas hunters and Bound runaways alike. They are dying out, because their young leave for Kemvos and Tharxa. They speak a Tharaxi tongue with Aldmere words in it. Faith: a mountain spirit they call the Watcher, a single stone face high on the Stair that they say turns its head in winter.
The Vargate Clans — STABLE. ~6,000. Three hill-clans of the northern Spine's eastern foothills around the Vargate, between Aldmere and Hrodvald. Half Hrodvald by blood, Aldmere by grain. They raid nobody, sell timber, toll everybody, and marry their daughters into both the Northmere lords and Clan Nugag. Their chieftain, Grerik Coldbrook, is Duke Durift's cousin and Thuba Nugag's brother-in-law, and that is the kind of thing that keeps a small tribe alive. Faith: the Hearthfaith in the valleys, the Old Ones on the ridges, and nobody minds.
The Screefolk — FADING. ~800. The last of a Spine people older than the Dunmorrow, living in cliff-caves on the western face above the Greenwarden. Small, dark and silent. They herd chamois, eat lichen, and paint the caves with ibex in red ochre that the Dunmorrow say is older than the Underkings. The Waheli trade with them and shield them. They have no chieftain, only a Painter, always a woman, who keeps the caves. They are nearly gone. Nobody outside the Spine knows they exist.
The Gap Wardens — CONTESTED. ~1,500. A tribe by trade, not by blood: the mule-drivers, inn-keepers and porters of the Tharaxi Gap, who serve every army that passes and belong to none. Half are Outdwellers of Tharax, half bastards of the Castavari masesben, the rest Qaflan who stopped moving. Tharax puts up with them; Castavar pays them; the Fourth Crusade will decide whether they are still there next year.
The Greenwarden (Forest, West Coast)
The Waheli — STABLE. ~30,000. Not one people but the Circle of Roots and the seven Groves it rules, each around a mother-redwood: Hollowmere, the Edge (Maesra's), Deepshade, the Fallen Grove, Moss Harbor on the coast, the Venei Grove by the pass, and the Old Grove, where Elder Wiroll sits and where no outsider has ever been. The Groves are not alike. Moss Harbor fishes and trades with the Salt Brotherhood; the Edge kills; the Old Grove does neither and is obeyed.
The Bark-Singers — FADING. ~400. A heretic offshoot of the Waheli, cast out a hundred years ago for teaching that the sleeping Builders in the redwoods should be woken. They live in the forest's deepest northern marsh, where the Circle does not go, and sing to the trees at night. The Waheli say the trees have begun to answer, and they are afraid.
The Coastwrights — STABLE. ~3,000. Fishing villages on the rocky coast west of the Greenwarden, suffered by the Waheli because they never enter the trees. They build boats from driftwood only, since cutting is death. They trade with the Salt Brotherhood, Castavar's Tandosa, and Moss Harbor's Waheli. Faith: the Salt-Sworn. They would be Castavari subjects if Castavar could reach them by land. It cannot, except through Aldmere's passes and the Waheli's forest, which is to say not at all.
The Frostmarch And The Pale Waste (North)
The Hrodvald Clanholds — a great power, not a tribe. But its edges fray into tribes:
The Uusung — STABLE. ~5,000 across the Waste. Twenty or so camps, each named for its place: the Long Dark (Lilvuq's), the Whale Bones, the Blue Ice, the Last Fire, the Door. They meet once a year, at the Long Dark's vigil, and otherwise never. They keep reindeer, hunt seal, and speak a tongue no Hrodvald but Statha knows. What lies north of the ice is theirs.
The Nugag Marches — the Deep Cold half of Clan Nugag is a tribe in all but name, and may split from the clan if the Ice-Callers grow.
The Barerk Whalers — RISING. ~4,000. A coast people of the northeast, inside Clan Barerk's lands but not of it: Hrodvald, Kaishoni fisherfolk who fled the sack of Shanyo in 763, and Uusung who came south, all mixed. They whale in open boats, speak a mixed tongue, and worship the sea. Clan Barerk taxes them and cannot rule them. They have begun choosing their own Harpoon-Master. Fevstel watches, uneasy.
The Wolfmarch Outlaws — CONTESTED. ~1,000 and shifting. Not a tribe yet, but becoming one: outlaws, oath-breakers and drolak-refusers cast out of every Hrodvald clan since the Concord of 877, living in the taiga between Durtha and the Grass Sea. They raid the clans that cast them out. They have a chieftain of sorts, Golen No-Clan, who was Kruman's nephew. Selra wants them dead. Kruman, quietly, wants them.
The Heartlands And The Lake (Center)
The Drift — STABLE. ~8,000. Nine barge-towns on the Wenvorm, the Nollen and the Tsanha: Threeoars (Helm Rindlith), Slowwater, the Mill Reach, Seven Ropes, Surmave Float (which lives on the lake itself), Mudbank, Tsanha-Drift, the Lantern, and Ford's End at the Tontanor fords beside Tolmar-Buyor, under Cherüsh protection since 1141. Each Helm is chosen by his town, and a Helms' Moot meets at the Wenvorm mouth every spring. Faith: the river's own, and the Drowned Court on the lake.
The Marsh Reeds — FADING. ~2,000. The reed-cutters and eel-trappers of the Northmere marshes, north of Lake Surmave. Aldmere claims them and has never collected a tax. They live on stilts, speak old Vareth, and keep the Hearthfaith with one hearth more, for the marsh itself. Thalmirn's new dikes are draining them out of the world.
The Tontanor Ghosts — VANISHED (502) / RISING (1141). The settled people of the old Charnazin of Tontanor, scattered when it fell. Their children's children farmed along the Tsanha for six centuries under Aldmere, under Caelvenne, and under nobody. Sarsak Tolmar has called them home to the ruins by name, and some are going. Whether they are Cherüsh, Aldmeri, or a tribe born again is the whole question.
The Grass Sea (Steppe, East)
The Cherüsh Horde — RISING. ~120,000 people, 80,000 riders. A league of tribes, not one, and every rider knows which: the Cherüsh proper (Sarsak's), the Shiygöl (horse-breeders, loyal), the Shusa (the largest, hungry for more, Juryan's), the Angsit (the old olriq's tribe, beaten and bitter), the Nintang (far eastern, half Kaishoni, trading with the Rampart), the Jilmu (raiders, not to be relied on), and the Blue Riders, a brotherhood of the faith under Bagoq who answer to the sky before the Tolmar. When men ask whether the Horde will hold, this is the list they mean.
The Tsanha Bargemen — these are the Drift. Ford's End is now under Cherüsh protection, which has made it either the richest barge-town or the first hostage.
The Saiga Followers — STABLE. ~3,000. A people older than the Cherüsh, who follow the great saiga herds across the whole Grass Sea on foot and have never owned a horse. The horse tribes hold them sacred and a little foolish. They know where the water is in every season. Bagoq asks their counsel. Sarsak has offered them horses; they said no.
The Stone-Sitters of Tontanor — VANISHED / STIRRING. Kin to the Tontanor Ghosts. The ruins have held a hermit or two for six centuries; now they hold a camp.
The East (Kaishon'S Frontier)
The Rampart Squatters — RISING. ~10,000. Along the outside of the Long Rampart, in its shadow, a people has grown that Kaishon will not admit is there: deserters, discharged conscripts, Nintang half-bloods, tribute-caravan drovers, and their children. They farm the wall's ditch, trade through its gates, and are the only people who deal with both the Rampart and the Horde. General Dezau hires them as scouts and denies it. Makok has ordered them cleared three times.
The Tsenkin Hill-Folk — STABLE. ~15,000. Mountain villages above Lake Tsenkin, inside Kaishon's borders, that have never sat an examination, never paid a tax in coin, and keep the Unseen Kin in the open. Kaishon's magistrates call them "the un-measured." They send the archive-city its ginseng, its silk-goat fiber and half its servants, and the ministers pretend they are Kaishoni. They are not.
The Chaiyo Boat-People — STABLE. ~6,000. Families who live on junks in the Chaiyo estuaries, fish the tuna run, and have not set foot on land in generations. Kaishon taxes their catch at the dock and has no other hold on them. They trade with the Salt Brotherhood when the Brotherhood comes east, which is more often than Kokrin knows.
The Verdant Deep (Jungle, Southeast)
The Tzalan — RISING and CONTESTED. ~60,000. Not one people. Sutzam (Ixatl's city, the pyramid cult) rules perhaps twenty thousand; the Nhal River Villages (Chelpan's) another twenty; the rest are the deep-jungle peoples Ixatl is binding or swallowing: - The Canopy Folk — STABLE. ~5,000. They live in the high branches, never come down, hunt with blowguns, and were the first to follow Ixatl, because he gave them the ground. Kaltzi was born here. - The Serpent Clans — RISING. ~8,000. Pyramid-dwellers of the southern ruins, older than Sutzam, who kept the Sun-and-Serpent faith when the river villages half forgot it. Ixatl's priests are drawn from them. They think he is their tool. - The Mud-Eaters — FADING. ~2,000. A scorned people of the Nhal's delta swamps who eat clay with their fish, and whom the jungle fever is said not to touch. Both Kaishon and Zarvand have tried to buy the secret. They have none; they are only the ones who lived. - The Bitter-Bark Keepers — CONTESTED. ~1,500. The single village that grows and makes the fever cure. Chelpan guards them; Ixatl wants them; every garrison on the river would kill for them.
The Cinder Teeth — STABLE. ~9,000. The Hizkari: five clans of the slopes (the Matron's, the Seep-Keepers under her son Hizikaad, the Swift-Nesters of the cliffs, the Ash-Shepherds, and the Vent-Walkers, who go into the hot tunnels and come out strange). The Iron Matron rules them by being the one they all fear.
The Sunmaw (Desert, South)
The Deep Sands Nomads — STABLE. ~15,000. The oldest people of the Sunmaw, there before the Sarvani Khaasareem and to be there after. Six tents (great clans) that move between the deep oases the Khaasar's maps do not show: the Durkis, the Kumir, the Wind-Eaters, the Salt-Walkers of the Shorooq flats, the Addax Hunters, and the Whisperers, who claim to hear the spirits of the dunes and are the Sunmaw's oracles. Zarvand claims them and has never found them twice in the same place. Mozaaft was born to the Kumir.
The Qaflan — STABLE. ~40,000. Twelve caravan clans, each with a road: the Wheelwrights (the Golden Road), the Salt-Bearers (the Spice Way), the Fur-Road Qaflan (Vargate to Krasvuv), the Tsanha Qaflan (now bargaining with the Cherüsh), the Ember-Carriers (who shelter the Pilgrims), and seven smaller. Zesose the Wheel's Wheel-Breakers are the thirteenth, unacknowledged, and growing.
The Tomb-Watchers — FADING. ~300. A tribe that is a priesthood by birth. They guard the Tomb of the First Khaasar in the desert north of Mazbaaran, claim descent from his bodyguard, and have not left the site in nine centuries. The Khaasareem feed them. Faasheer has said he will stop.
The Baamarsh Converts — RISING. ~2,000. Zarvani of the Baamarsh coast turned to Castavar's Berrode by the missionaries of 690 and those who came after, and kept alive by Castavari gold. Not a tribe by blood, but they have become one: married among themselves, walled in their own quarter, hated by the Rahaasheem, and the first thing that will burn when Faasheer is crowned. Some are already fleeing to the Cinder Teeth.
The Southwest And The Sea (Castavar'S Edges)
The Salt Brotherhood — RISING. ~12,000. Nine crews (fleets), each a tribe, each choosing a captain for the Brotherhood's council: Wreckers Cove (Vex's), the Reef-Runners, the Black Sail, the Drowned Kings (who claim Vexara's line and dispute Vex's), the Tandosa Ghosts (Castavari deserters), the Long Reach (who go east to Chaiyo), the Salt-Wives (a crew captained and manned by women), the Coastwright Cousins, and Two-Fathom's Hold (Chobecho's, the stores fleet, which never fights and always eats).
The Grove Villages — CONTESTED. ~80,000 believers, no tribe yet. The Grove of Lasdara is a faith, not a tribe. But in the deep cork-oak country of southern Castavar there are villages where every family is Grove, every priest is a Masker under the cassock, and the Office of Truth has stopped going. If Castavar breaks, they will be a tribe by the next harvest.
The Upland Shepherds — STABLE. ~5,000. The fine-wool drovers of the Puesdro silver mountains, who walk the old drove-roads with the seasons, pay the Grandees one sheep in ten and the king nothing, and keep a law older than the Berrode's. Every Castavari knows an upland shepherd cannot be arrested on the drove-road. The Office of Truth has never tried it.
The Roads (Everywhere)
The Ember Pilgrims — RISING. ~4,000. Not a tribe, and becoming one: the Pilgrims have begun to have children, and the children have nowhere to be from.
The Tinkers' Wain — STABLE. ~3,000. Wandering smiths and menders, not Qaflan, who mend rather than carry. They travel in painted wagons, speak a cant, marry only each other, and are welcome in every village and trusted in none. They come down, they say, from Dunmorrow exiles. The Dunmorrow deny it and buy their work.
The Lantern Road — RISING. ~1,000. A new thing: players, singers and puppeteers who travel the seven realms telling the same stories in every tongue. Sauld Half-Sung sang with them for a year. They have begun carrying news faster than the Qaflan, and the Quiet Office has noticed.
Voices of the Free Peoples
Mother Hamen
A round, brown, shrewd grandmother with a hundred grandchildren and the memory of every debt owed to the Qaflan since her own grandmother's time. Wears a headscarf embroidered with the twelve clans' signs. Speaks every trade language on Aethorra with a Qaflan lilt.
Zesose the Wheel
Handsome, restless, tattooed with a broken wheel where the whole one should be. Cast out for carrying a Zarvani prince's letters for gold instead of wages. Now runs a rogue caravan on the Spice Way that takes sides for pay.
Helm Rindlith of Threeoars
Barrel-shaped, sun-brown, tattooed with river-fish from wrist to shoulder, one for every year on the water. Runs a floating town of four hundred souls that has drifted between Aldmere and Caelvenne for thirty years and paid taxes to neither. Smuggles what pays and ferries what doesn't.
Pell
Skinny, quick, gap-toothed, can swim the Wenvorm in flood and pick a lock underwater. Knows every quay-master on the river by sight and which ones take bribes. Wants to see the sea.
Elder Wiroll
Skin like bark, hair like moss, a voice that sounds as if it comes from somewhere behind him. Has not left the Greenwarden in seventy years. Speaks to trees and, the Waheli insist, is answered.
Maesra of the Edge
Green-stained fingertips, bloodroot paint on her cheeks, an arrow-nick through her left ear from a Castavari logger's crossbow. Watches the Venei's Throat road and has killed six trespassers, each with one arrow. Has also, twice, let one live: a lost Aldmere child and a wounded Ember Pilgrim.
Viwal Stainhand
Named for the black bloodroot stain on his whole right hand, the mark of the Waheli's executioners. Enjoys his work. Believes the forest would be safer if the Greenwarden's edge were a hundred miles of corpses.
Sarsak Tolmar
Bow-legged, wide-faced, with a sparse black beard, a broken nose, and a long puckered scar from a rival's saber across his chest. Wears felt and a single Kaishoni silk sash he took from a tribute caravan. Speaks Cherüsh, Kaishoni, and rough Aldmere.
Ghorsan
Wide, weathered, gap-toothed, missing the last joint of both little fingers, cut off in mourning for two dead sons. Rides as well as any warrior and runs the Horde's camp, its herds, its marriages, and its grudges. Sarsak consults her on everything and admits it to no one.
Bagoq the Elder
Long white hair, a drum, a robe of eagle feathers, and a habit of speaking to the sky mid-sentence. Blessed Sarsak's unification and could unbless it. Believes the Horde should never build a wall because walls are where men go to die.
Juryan Redbow
Sarsak's best young commander and the fastest archer in the Horde; red-lacquered bow, three kills before she could grow her braids. Idolizes Sarsak and thinks his talk of libraries is a joke. Wants to burn Kokrin.
Thane Grurn Harrowdeep
Short, dense as ore, with a beard braided with iron rings and hands scarred white by fifty years at the forge. Descendant of the Underkings and still calls himself one when drunk. Sells starsteel to Zarvand, armor to Castavar, and the same information to both.
Tesk Deepsong
Broad, burn-speckled, with one eye lost to a spark and a patch of hammered gold over it. The finest armorer alive; made Grand Master Tirago's plate and its twin for Prince Faasheer and dislikes both men. Sings while she works, an old Underking hymn.
Sun-Speaker Ixatl
Slight, intense, with jaguar-scars raked deliberately across both cheeks and a crown of sun-quetzal feathers. Speaks in a low steady voice that carries in the pyramid halls. United the jungle villages in six years by faith, marriage, and a few disappearances.
Chelpan
Broad, calm, tattooed with the river's course down his spine, a canoe-man's shoulders. Remembers when the Zarvani spice-forts paid fairly and preferred it. Distrusts Ixatl's fire.
Kaltzi
Small, silent, with dart-frog venom under her nails and a serpent tattooed around her wrist. The best blowgun in Sutzam. Has killed three Kaishoni sentries from the canopy and feels nothing yet.
The Iron Matron
Nobody outside the Teeth knows her name; her own people call her Mother of Fire. Broad, ash-gray-haired, with lava-burn scars glazing her whole left arm and a necklace of obsidian teeth. Has quadrupled the price of naphtha in her lifetime and is now taking Castavari envoys with a straight face.
Hizikaad the Younger
Soot-black beard, burn-scarred hands, the only man alive who knows where every naphtha seep in the Teeth lies. Wants to sell to Castavar. Wants, more precisely, the Zarvani to feel what it is like to be at someone's mercy.
Captain-Queen Sormerva Vex
Tall, sun-black, salt-white hair cut short, a gold hoop in one ear and a hook-scar through the other. Claims descent from the last Captain-King, drowned in 1004. Has taken thirty Castavari ships and hanged no one from any of them, which is her policy and her pride.
Chobecho "Two-Fathom"
Squat, hairy, cheerful, with a wooden foot and a tally-stick habit. Runs the Brotherhood's shares, stores, and elections. Thinks Vex's kingdom is a fantasy and pirates should stay pirates.
Lilvuq of the Long Dark
Wide-faced, fur-hooded, with snow-blindness scars around both eyes and hands that never shake. Has guided Statha the Far-Seer north of the ice and will not say where. Speaks Hrodvald in a whisper.
Jaamang
Bright, curious, the first Uusung in a generation to walk south to Krasvuv. Trades furs, learns words, and asks the Hrodvald too many questions about their gods. Has been told by her grandfather to come home and has not.
Brother Ash
Gaunt, barefoot, robed in undyed wool, with a Zarvani accent worn down by twenty years of roads and a brand on his forehead from the Office of Truth that he shows to everyone. Was a Rahaash of the Flame; left when he decided all fires were one. Preaches in Aldmere's market squares, feeds anyone, owns nothing, and has twice talked a mob down with his voice alone.
Sister Coal
Shaven-headed, Kaishoni-born, a survivor of the Reach's garrisons who found the Pilgrims on the road and stayed. Quiet where Ash is loud, practical where he is holy: she is the one who finds the food. Has a repeating-crossbow bolt scar in her thigh and a conscript's lamellar plate sewn into her satchel as a reminder.
Tongues of the Free Peoples
Cherüsh
| Cherüsh | English |
|---|---|
| Ishor chunurtay. | The Wide Blue hears. (The greeting, with the witness ending: "I know it does.") |
| Chesh yarbort döklenret. | I rode a horse. (Word order: subject, object, verb.) |
| Chesh yarbort döklentey. | I rode a horse, and I saw it myself. (The witness ending on its own means "I was there.") |
| Qay shamont? | Where is the water? |
| Chesh tsol tüjen. | I don't know. |
| Qis shusa? | How much? |
| Yir cherüsh. | We are free. (The Cherüsh name for themselves, in two words. "Are" is left out.) |
| Yarborttun ghorsotsha jalcharsur. | The horses will go to the grass. |
| Olriq shaghiski churunrat chotur? | Did the chief build a wall? (A question the Blue Riders ask on purpose.) |
| Zaghumnuk yarbort | the sky's horse (the owner ending) |
| Zoqin tsol chilong. | Arrow-flight doesn't lie. (The horse archers' saying.) |
Waheli
| Waheli | English |
|---|---|
| Yeith haetaser. | The Green hears. (The greeting, and the warning.) |
| Ith-withoth yei nierfe. | I saw a deer. |
| Sel-thosoth yamales. | The trespasser will cut a living tree. (A sentence of death.) |
| Siha remeinmanil. | The redwoods are sleeping. (Said of the Builders, and meant.) |
| Hirlith tond ieth. | Don't go. (Said once, at the forest's edge.) |
| Shilas minaes? | Where is the water? |
| Flolnul yei ieth. | I don't know. |
| Veval. | Silence. (A whole conversation.) |
| Mothaeranae hinral | the tree's root (the owner ending) |
Tzalan
| Tzalan | English |
|---|---|
| Lónok xemù. | The Sun hears. (The greeting.) |
| Chitzalak lákchán xal. | I saw a jaguar. |
| Kax sèkon waki'lol yútz. | We don't eat clay. (What the river villages say about the Mud-Eaters, and what the Mud-Eaters say back.) |
| Xuchin kìbol. | The Serpent returns. (The Serpent Clans' creed.) |
| Nhawel lìchix? | Where is the bitter-bark? (The most valuable question in the jungle.) |
| Kax sichax xal. | I don't know. |
| Nhútzo' wutz? | How much? |
| Hèhebú | trees (the first syllable repeated) |
Uusung
| Uusung | English |
|---|---|
| Qinaqasungu haqvuttin. | The Lights see. (The greeting, said looking north.) |
| Natgaqsuu, qaq kiijik. | Grandmother, I hear you. (Spoken to the dead, in the long voice.) |
| Qil kaanuna jupanpisalaq. | We will eat seal. |
| Qaq qupiling maq qugi. | I do not kill the frost bear. (Every Uusung is told which bear.) |
| Kvaq uusung? | Where is the Door? (Asked by southerners. Never answered.) |
| Qaq maq hiqmu. | I don't know. |
| Kvatti nuuq? | How much? |
Maved (road-cant)
| Road-cant | English |
|---|---|
| Hwu-heban? | How much? |
| Idren kwanmon? | Where is the water? |
| Jio vaul bulrime. | I don't know. |
| Nervile vemhaq. | A good price. (Said before any price, good or not.) |
| Maved yakhir. | The road is open. (The Qaflan greeting.) |
| Jio fatoz da-fashraz. | I paid. |
Alliances and Feuds
Standing alliances - Waheli (Moss Harbor) ↔ Coastwrights ↔ Salt Brotherhood: the western sea-trade nobody in Castavar knows about. - Qaflan ↔ Ember Pilgrims ↔ Tinkers' Wain: the road's own people, who shield each other under the Neutrality Oath. - Dunmorrow ↔ Vargate Clans ↔ Clan Nugag: the northern Spine's three-way trade. - Deep Sands Nomads ↔ Qaflan Salt-Bearers ↔ Hizkari: the Sunmaw's water, salt and fire, going round in a circle. - Nhal River Villages ↔ Bitter-Bark Keepers ↔ Mud-Eaters: the river's peace, against both Sutzam and the garrisons.
Standing feuds - Cherüsh (Shusa) vs. Cherüsh (Angsit): the crack inside the Horde, held shut by Sarsak alone. - Wolfmarch Outlaws vs. every Hrodvald clan, and Golen No-Clan vs. Selra herself. - Serpent Clans vs. Nhal River Villages: Ixatl's priests against Chelpan's council. - Salt Brotherhood (Drowned Kings) vs. (Wreckers Cove): who is Vexara's heir. - Bark-Singers vs. the Circle of Roots: whether to wake the trees. - Baamarsh Converts vs. the Rahaasheem: a feud that will become a massacre.
Who could confederate, and what would happen - The Spine. Dunmorrow, Vargate, Stairfolk, Screefolk, Gap Wardens: if the Underking came back, the passes would close and three realms would starve. - The Sea. Salt Brotherhood, Coastwrights, Barerk Whalers, Chaiyo Boat-People: a ring of water-peoples around the whole continent who already trade with each other and have never met as one. Vex has thought about it. - The Road. Qaflan, Pilgrims, Tinkers, the Lantern Road: the people who go everywhere. If they ever chose a side, that side would win. The Oath is all that stops them, and Zesose is breaking it. - The Jungle. Ixatl is doing it now. - The Steppe. Sarsak has done it.
Vanished Tribes
| Tribe | Where | Vanished | How |
|---|---|---|---|
| The Vareth Reeve-Clans | Northern Heartlands | ~200 R. | Taken into Aldmere's shires; their reeves later became the Moot's burgher-reeves |
| The Vexaran Islanders | Shattered Isles | 415 | Kingdom destroyed by Castavar's navy; survivors became the Salt Brotherhood |
| The Tontanor Charnazin | Grass Sea | 502 | Fell apart; farmers scattered; now being called back by Sarsak Tolmar |
| The Marrowmere Wardens | Lake Surmave's north shore | 539 | Lake-guard tribe drowned in the Great Flood of 539; the Drowned Court claims descent |
| The Cinder Folk | Cinder Teeth | 622 | Killed in the eruption; the Hizkari are the remnant who lived on the slopes |
| The Lasdaran Hill-Kings | Southern Castavar | ~700 | Last free Grove chieftains; broken by the first Rislon; the Grove Villages remember |
| The Shanyo Fishers | Kaishon's north coast | 763 | Sacked by the Barerk raid; survivors fled north and became the Barerk Whalers |
| The Old Tsenkin | Around Lake Tsenkin | 890 | Their villages fell into the lake in the earthquake; the Hill-Folk are what stayed above |
| The Frost-Nugag | Far northwest | 1089 | A whole clan-branch dead in the Great Winter; Thuba Nugag's grandmother was the last of them |
Ride With Them
When the Reckoning turns on 1 January 2027, you will be able to make a character and throw in with a tribe, or strike out alone as a settler in the empty places between the realms.