Norn
Norn is the northernmost component of the @Kas
Structure
While the stereotype of Norns regards them as unlearned, cultureless, superstitious, and only ‘grandfathered in’ to the empire, Norns have been a disparate, insular culture for centuries, but have not been idle in their development, which has followed a direction clear and away from the whole of the rest of the empire.
Norns don’t recognize clans in the sense of kinship, but instead identify others’ social ties by their Gard, the fortified, permanent settlement to which they pledge their allegiance. Gards are essentially castles: a town surrounds them and surrounding that are fields and pastoralists living under their protection.
Unlike the Fey, with their sprawling domains and fluid borders dictated by a delicate dance of bureaucracy, A Gard is only a Gard if it’s protected. Fortunately, with their plentiful, dense woodlands, tall mountains, and hardy population, Norns have become very, very good at building walls, towers, and embankments. By tradition, larger Gards are divided by coincentric, circular fortifications, extending out as a literal sphere of influence. Gards are plentiful, and their rulership is typically draconian. There is no ‘theory of rule’ in Norn, as Gards are often established or taken by a charismatic individual who knows how to wage war, but no idea how to rule. Some may be led by warlords, chieftains, elders, or even Valar-- a type of Occultist shaman.
Some Gards are even ruled in exotic ways, drawing in followers with the promise of foreign civilization and enlightened rule by nascent or foreign theory. Some are honest idealists, others are two-faced petty tyrants, hiding their autocracy behind a veil of intellectualism. These exotic Gards are often short-lived and simply leveled by larger, more belligerent Gards, intent on punishing their arrogance.
To the Valar, who stargaze as a trade, imagining Norn viewed from the stars, the fires of the Gards would appear as a constellation, shifting with the seasons. The poetic term became popular among the Nornic people. As they came to form a regional identity, such as it is, they have adopted the term as a tagline to describe the Nornic model: a constellation of man.
Defection and desertion are common, and while they are punished if convenient, they are an expected a part of any Gard’s life cycle and have contributed to a large population of mercenary warriors and adventurers, hired for coin to protect, dominate, oppress, liberate, or conquer. Some powerful mercenaries found (or conquer) a Gard themselves, adopting a state of ‘stationary banditry’. Some converted to a more peaceful lifestyle, saving war for the war season but some continue to be a belligerent blight on Nornic stability to this day.
Predictably, many of these mercs have been drawn away from Norn by the Catharate. Ironically, the Catharate has few strongholds in Norn, and the exodus of sellswords have left Norn less protected by the populations of Fiends and Cambions who wander the icy north of Acris.
Territories
Border to the End of The World:
More than anywhere else in the empire-- excluding, perhaps, the Swathe-- Norn’s geography is incredibly hostile towards anyone mad enough to live there. To Norn’s north, beyond the Mare Temenae lies the Northern Darkness, a vast icecap, covered in perpetual blizzard, where many of the great horrors of the world have been banished. Some thrived, some seek revenge and head south.
The icy blasts of winter cold from the north make Norn a very rainy, snowy place, with much of it iced over six months out of the year, and days are either frighteningly short or absent near the northern coast. Snow is a matter of life everywhere, though the southern inland plateau finds itself almost temperate, well wooded with evergreen stands, hot springs, and peopled by humans eager to prove by might their right to live there.
Norn is not so cold that it deters the abundant domestic threats that reside there. Thin resources breed bandits, raiders and warlords. Intragard conflict even bears a name and a specified timeframe: summer is war season. To attack during a harvest, or while winter and dark coats the land in deadly cold is a sign of desperation, a rejection of honor, or an idiot sending half of his warriors to a pointless, icy death.
Beyond humanity itself, the second most populous threat is that of Fiends and Cambions. Norn is far from any throne, but the Glass Demiurge called to them through the stars and through fate and time, and thus, much of her Numena has fallen on Norn, breeding Fiends that are calculating and organized, with knowledge stretching to dimensions hidden from Mortal sight. They particularly despise Valar, as the root of the Glass Throne, the force of Atoma Mu- the ‘ordering of the mind’, demands that Knowledge be collected and protected from rogue elements, distributed only to the deserving. With the Glass Demiurge gone, Valar who continue to practice their art in the service of humanity instead of in Her name is theft and apostasy. As such, the Glass Fiends tend to conduct organized, surgical raids, tearing up anything that elevates Man from beast, and jealously protect the relics, arts and revelations that the Glass Demiurge would collect and award only to the worthy. Everyone is decidedly unworthy now.
The belligerence of the people of Norn is mirrored by the wildlife, who must also compete to decide who survives and who starves. Due to the climate, most animals in Norn are mammals, with some particularly fearsome lineages surviving and thriving from the age of glaciation to the frosty isolation of today. Creatures such as Mastodons, Sabertooths, Bears, Hairy Boars, Wolves, Shaggy Rhinos, Yetis-- and dire versions of such-- command the wilds, supported by more humble beasts, such as Elk, wild and domestic Sheep, Mountain Jackals and Wolverines (referred to as Skunk-Bears by Norns). Norns know how to hun, cook and eat anything that they can take in a fight, and ‘living off the land’ is less of an ideal, and more of necessity. Creatures such as amphibians, insects and arachnids exist too, and have adapted to the cold, even embracing it to bring a more personal touch to death by hypothermia, such as the Frost Worm, the icy toad Snaertaxe, and the nightmarish and nigh-legendary Corpsespinner.
An Earthborne Constellation
Type
Geopolitical, Protectorate
Capital
Demonym
Nornic
Government System
Monarchy, Elective
Power Structure
Semi-autonomous area
Economic System
Mixed economy
Official State Religion
Location
Controlled Territories
Neighboring Nations
