Realm of the Mammoth Lords
The Realm of the Mammoth Lords is a savage, windswept wilderness renowned for the primeval beasts that inhabit it. Aurochs, cave lions, glyptodons, smilodons, woolly rhinos, and several varieties of mammoths and mastodons are just some of the massive creatures found here.
Native Kellid tribespeople hunt the various herds of great beasts that roam the land. These groups live a nomadic existence, moving on when prey grows scarce. Family units combine together to form tribes, which in turn combine to form “followings” under the leadership of powerful and daring warriors. Upon a leader’s death, followings often break apart into smaller tribes again.
The rugged, snow-topped Tusk Mountains split the Mammoth Lords’ realm. The largest pass through the mountain range shelters the small Kellid trading settlement of Hillcross, while the mountain heights are the domain of hostile frost giants. Mammoth Lord followings frequently raid giant tribes, capturing and enslaving young giants to raise them as foundlings and teach them the ways of the great open plains.
On the realm’s northeastern border, at the foot of the Crown of the World, lies a series of deep craggy valleys warmed by hot springs and volcanic vents. Here among tropical plants dwell dinosaurs and prehistoric animals, and nestled deep within the mountains is a cavernous pit known as the Earthnavel. This passage leads to a primordial lost world far underground called Deep Tolguth, an underworld with its own false sun, inhabited
by great saurian beasts from another age. Far to the east of the Tusk Mountains lie the Thunder Steppes, a vast tundra once inhabited by a multitude of Mammoth Lord followings and tribes, but now home to abnormally aggressive megafauna and other creatures contaminated by the demonic taint of the Worldwound.
In a realm where aggressive strength is key to survival, numerous Kellid tribes venerate Gorum, while a few renegade followings even pay tribute to Rovagug for his destructive might. Most also revere Desna as the goddess of travelers, depicting her as a gallant woman astride a powerful elk. The folk of the Realm of the Mammoth Lords are suspicious of the foreign magics of outsiders, and shun them in preference for the traditional rituals
of their bloodspeakers and elder shamans. These superstitions stem in part from the hostile lands that border their realm—the icy witch-held lands of Irrisen to the west, and the malignant demonic cancer of the Worldwound to the east. These expansionistic domains encroach on the realm’s borders, and held at bay only by the raw barbaric ferocity of the Mammoth Lords and the unforgiving, desolate nature of the realm itself.
History
The Realm of the Mammoth Lords is a timeless place that flows with the rhythms of nature and the dictates of the seasons, and as such does not measure its history in the same way as civilised folk who obsess over dates and years. The timeless nature of the land and its inhabitants' technologically simple lifestyle means that the Realm of the Mammoth Lords' history is less filled with the betrayals and political turmoil typical of other lands. The biggest event to beset the Realm of the Mammoth Lords in recent times was the death of Aroden and the subsequent creation of the Worldwound, which created a new threat to the east. What was once the similarly-minded barbarian kingdom of Sarkoris, was soon overrun by hordes of ravenous demons that now raid along the Mammoth Lords' eastern border.
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Tundra
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