Rover

Although never particularly numerous, the people known as the Rovers deserve a great deal of credit for turning the Noriki into a distinct group. Hailing from small farming and fishing communities on the northern shores of the Western Sea, they were sailors, warriors, freebooters and merchant-adventurers who spoke a language related to that of the Garipy. They plied the waters of the Three Seas and beyond, raiding, trading, and setting up new kingdoms. The Rovers excelled in iron production, for their lands possessed iron mines in abundance, and because their journeys often took them to cities that used to belong to the Empire of the Friaziny, they became experts in the crafting of weapons and armor, especially spears, axes, and broadswords, and mail of various kinds.
A century and a half ago, Rovers from Birma began to frequent the Moiva River and the Korgui foothills, where a number of Kuz’ and Galindy peoples, as well as the Labdy Ivliane tribe, lived. They were attracted by what was already a lucrative fur trade flowing south to the lands of the Rakhmany, and they set up several trading forts. One of them married the sister of the Fogarma Khan, who ruled over Labdy to the south, and set up a rudimentary khanate, which his Kuz’ subjects began to call, after their own manner, the Khanate of Nor’. This first Nor’ state was short-lived, and its rulers were frequently expelled. But the subject tribes were fractious, and preferred to have outsiders ruling over them to keep the strife between them from destroying them all. They called in a Rover warlord named Ulf Soelvtand the Silver Fang, along with his two brothers Arvid and Bjarke to bring order to them. Besides being admired for their military prowess, it was rumored that these brothers were sought by volkhvy because they belonged to a famous line of skinshifters. After Arvid and Bjarke died, Ulf Soelvtand became the sole ruler, and founder of a dynasty that still exists today. His descendants, to whom he passed down the ability to change into wolf form, expanded the domain of the Nor’ realm south, to the Khavzai river and the Baklan Mountains. Here, the Rovers forced their way in to a slave trade of captive Labdy, who were sold by Fogarma to markets in the Rakhman lands.
In less than a century, Ulf’s descendants had either subjugated or married into all the main Golden Labdy tribes, meaning that all their princes were now at least partly of Rover descent. They founded a new dynasty called the Alferovichi (after Alfii, as the Labdy styled Ulf Soelvtand). Though the dynasty survives to the present day, and any true prince must trace his lineage to Alfii (or be married to one of his scions), the Rovers’ victory was at the same time their undoing. Within three generations, the princes were already given Labdy names at birth. And even though rulers frequently spent their youth in Birma, or sent their to raise armies, within another century, they were completely assimilated by the Labdy. The name Noriki, originally applied only to the Rover rulers and their companions, was now applied to the people who lived under their rule as well.
In appearance, they differ little from the Labdy majority, being perhaps only slightly taller and fairer (though some are born brown or dark of hair). A few princes are born with yellow-green eyes and larger than normal canines, displaying their lupine heritage. They dress like the Labdy princes or well-to-do peasants of old, preferring embroidered shirts, fine headdresses for women, leather boots, imported caftans, and fur outerwear in the winter. Initially, they evinced a preference for heavy weapons (broadswords, maces, axes), heavy mail, and heavy warhorses, but in the last century, a more light-cavalry style arsenal originating from the steppes has begun to predominate. Marked differences in character between the Alferovichi and other segments of the population have also broken down over time. Initially, the princes were a separate caste that prided itself on its freedom and fearlessness.