Hyyla Tribes

“Lunatics, the lot of ’em. Even the ones who haven’t looked at the thing in the basement. They howl at the sky like wolves, and cover themselves in fat and swim in frozen lakes. Hell of a sight, though, all those seven-foot-tall barbarians with nothing on but a layer of seal grease.”

— Iulia, Belhacinti roughneck

Some landscapes are gentle, temperate, inviting. Others demand respect. Hyylana, with its tundra and its snowfields, its glaciers and frozen peaks, belongs to the latter category. To survive there, one must be cautious, hardy, and patient; the frozen bodies of Belhacinti soldiers buried under hard-packed snow illustrate the fate that Hyylana has in store for the careless and the unlucky.
Though large, Hyylana is a harsh and rugged territory with little in the way of easily extracted resources. Even after it was connected to the pharos grid, it remained isolated for almost a century. Aside from a handful of cursory diplomatic overtures, the rest of Orphan was content to leave this desolate corner of reality to its native people, the Hyyla.
The Hyyla people are divided into a number of semi-nomadic tribes. Each of these tribes has its own individual identity and culture, and many of them have a history of internecine warfare. More recently, however, their opposition to foreign incursions into their homeland has bound them together. War has forged the Hyylic tribes into a nation.

Ancient Ways

In order to survive in their cold and infertile homeland, the Hyyla people have developed a semi-nomadic lifestyle, traveling with the seasons in order to make the most of scarce resources. In most tribes, these resources are shared equally and gathered through various means: hunting, foraging, fishing, trapping, and herding, to name a few.
As a rule, the Hyyla prefer the tried-and-true survival methods of their ancestors to more recent technologies, which has given rise to a reputation for primitivity. The stereotypical Hyyla person is a seven-foot-tall fur-clad brute, whose go-to solution for any problem is violence. This stereotype is false, of course—though there is a bit of truth to the height part.
The Hyyla have a spiritual fascination with the northern lights of Hyylana, which they call the “winter fire.” In Hyylic myth, this phenomenon is the tracks of Brandr, a wolf-spirit who lives in the night sky. Brandr is the Hyyla people’s protector spirit, and it is not unusual for whole tribes to show their respect for it by throwing their heads back and howl in unison at the winter fire.

Winterglass

Next to nothing is known about the people who built Hyylana’s ever-present ruins. Judging from the size of their architecture, however, they must have been enormous—anywhere from twelve to twenty feet tall—and it seems they shared the Hyylic fascination with the winter fire.
This forgotten civilization left behind not only ruins, but artifacts as well. These surviving artifacts are invariably made of the same material, which the Hyyla call “winterglass.” Winterglass is a greenish-blue, crystalline material, cold and semitransparent like ice. It is beautiful; it does not tarnish or break. The method for creating it is lost to time.
While most winterglass objects are inert, some few have captive winter fire flickering at their cores. Inert winterglass is prized by Hyyla and foreign archaeologists alike; “awakened” winterglass is treated as reverentially as a holy object. Without exception, a Hyyla person who wields a weapon of awakened winterglass is a powerful warrior, a great chieftain or hero.
The ancient ruin Brynhal—Hyylic for “burning house”—has long been a site of spiritual significance to the Hyyla. For centuries, its doors were sealed shut, but even then the tribes would make pilgrimages to see the enormous pillars of awakened winterglass in its great outer courtyard.

The First Hyylic War

For centuries, the Hyyla had limited contact with other cultures. They had little interest in traveling the Aether, and their splinter was of interest mainly to archaeologists.
With the discovery of winterglass, the Holy Empire of Belhacint began to take a more active interest in Hyylana. Belhacinti troops began to encroach on Hyylic territory; the tribes drove them back; these flaring tensions eventually culminated in all-out war. The Hyyla were outmatched by the better-armed, better-organized Belhacinti, but the Belhacinti were unprepared for the harsh conditions of the Hyylana winter. The war ground on for almost two decades, with both sides suffering heavy losses but neither surrendering.
During these two decades, the Belhacinti army captured Brynhal, and its mages set to work breaking the seal on its doors. Their success marked the beginning of the end of the war. In the depths of the ruins, they found not only the artifacts which they sought, but also the reason why the city had been sealed in the first place. Many hundreds of them were driven mad or killed by the sight of it; the rest fled in terror.
In the wake of this incident, morale among Belhacint’s troops in Hyylana never recovered. The wind had gone out of the invasion’s sails. Within a year, the war was over.
Since this humiliating defeat, Belhacint has been diplomatic enough towards the Hyyla, in its typically arrogant, intractable way. It is only recently that it has started muscling in on Hyylic territory again—this time for the oil deposits off Hyylana’s northern coast.

The Locked Tomb

Brynhal is a mountain fastness, nestled among soaring, snowbound peaks. It is huge—a cyclopean pyramid of black stone and winterglass whose apex reaches above the clouds. Within its walls, there are lanterns and pillars that flicker with winter fire; there are enormous rooms entirely made of winterglass. It’s a strange place, much of which remains sealed-off and unexplored.
Prior to the First Hyylic War, archeological opinion was divided as to its purpose. These days, the truth is plain. Brynhal is a tomb.
After the war, the Hyyla reclaimed Brynhal, and the tribes gathered to discuss what to do about the dead thing in its depths. It was clear to all that the corpse could not be destroyed, so instead the tribes’ chieftains swore a sacred oath to guard it. To this end, the Hyyla built a settlement within Brynhal’s walls. Most of the Hyyla tribes still maintain a semi-nomadic lifestyle, spending summer on the tundra and wintering in the city, but an oathbound few remain in Brynhal all year round.
To most Hyyla people, Brynhal’s frozen corpse is an object of fear and loathing—but not to all. Some take to worshiping it in secret, which the Hyyla at large regard as rank heresy. The corpse’s guards also act as inquisitors, tasked with stamping out this heretical faith—a task which has proven easier said than done. Now, not only do the Hyyla have to contend with Belhacinti aggression and the native dangers of Hyylana—they are also beset from within by this fanatical death-cult.

HYYLA TRIBES

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Capital city: Brynhal
Head of state: N/A
Languages: Hyylic
Currency: N/A

The Hyylic tongue is as rugged as the land from which it hails.
Example names: Agni, Antir, Astrid, Bryn, Eldred, Enna, Friya, Guri, Helgrim, Hrani, Katla, Orm, Rannek, Sigrun, Stenr, Utahr, Valtyr, Yhyngrad, Yrrik, Ysyr.