Rhonir Tribes

“I witnessed one such amputation myself. A ghost had touched a warrior, and the rot was spreading up her arm. The tchaya took her hand off at the wrist and burned it. What I recall most vividly is the way the young warrior sang, with a kind of defiant joy, even as the shaman was hacking her hand to a stump. That summarizes the Rhonir, I think: joy in the face of adversity.”

— excerpt from the memoirs of an Oroscan anthropologist

Most of Orphan’s splinters are a comfortable distance away from the Howling Void, seething at the heart of the Aether like rot in an apple’s core. Most, but not all. The Ghostlands are close enough to the Void for its darkness to stain them, for large swaths of them to be cast in perpetual shadow and infested with feral ghosts.
If given free rein, these ghosts, and the death spirits which command them, would overrun the splinter in a matter of weeks. Fortunately, the stalwart efforts of the Ghostlands’ native people, the Rhonir, stand in the way of this outcome.
The Rhonir harbor no illusions about their neverending war; it is not one they can ever hope to win, only to prolong indefinitely. This has no doubt contributed to the image of the stereotypical Rhonir person, who is stern, solemn, and assiduous. Outsiders who have spent time among the tribes, however, say that the most striking trait of the Rhonir is not their solemnity, but their joy in spite of it. Their lives are difficult and dangerous, but they endure and fight to protect what they love—and that love is made stronger for it.

The Three Tribes

The Rhonir are a nomadic people, divided by tradition and history into three tribes. Although there are frequent (and sometimes violent) squabbles between these three tribes, there are more similarities than differences between them—and they always set their differences aside to combat their common enemy. Love for one’s homeland and loyalty to one’s people are the highest ideals in Rhonir society.
The three Rhonir tribe are:

• The Akhala Tribe, hard-bitten warriors whose territory edges on the Shadow. They are known to produce the most skilled and seasoned ghost-slayers, as well as the best horses.
• The Iarha Tribe, the keepers of an enormous walking temple and the attendants of the prophetic corpse housed within it. As the people upon whom this corpse vouchsafes its infrequent prophecies, they are the spiritual authority of the Rhonir.
• The Denlir Tribe, often said to be the Rhonir’s armorers. They scavenge parts from the defunct, pre-Shattering war machines that dot the Ghostlands, and then adapt these parts for use. Some of this technology sees use as weapons or armor in the fight against the forces of the Void; some of it the Denlir use to trade with travelers from other splinters—a practice which has made them the richest of the Rhonir tribes.

A Life on Horseback

The Rhonir spend much of their lives on horseback; it is not unusual for Rhonir children to learn to ride before they are able to walk. Knowing this, it’s no surprise that horses occupy an important place in Rhonir society. They are trusted companions and allies in the war against the Void, as well as powerful symbols of the uncorrupted Ghostlands and the Rhonir way of life. This, for example, is why the Rhonir flag depicts three white horses on a yellow field: the yellow symbolizes the steppe, and the horses symbolize the tribes.
Over the centuries, the Rhonir have refined horse breeding to a science. They have also developed a sophisticated system of beliefs regarding the different colors of their horses’ coats. According to this system, white is a particularly lucky color for a horse, while black horses are considered particularly unlucky, to the degree that most Rhonir will not so much as touch one. The tribes have tried to breed black coats out of their horses, but occasionally, by some freak of genetics, a black foal is born regardless. Such a birth is seen as a very ill omen.
This horror of black horses is not without reason. It stems from the apparent leader of the Void forces, the Black Rider: a shadow mounted upon a black steed, perhaps in mockery of the Rhonir. Though the Black Rider has been defeated and even apparently destroyed dozens of times, it always returns.

Magicians of the Ghostlands

The Rhonir go to great lengths to keep the marauding ghosts of the Howling Void at bay. In their endless war, they employ not only horses and steel, but also charms, spells, and sanctified weapons. The source of such arcana is the Rhonir’s shaman-caste, known as the tchaya.
All tchaya are fetchlings. Owing to the Ghostlands’ proximity to the Void, the incidence of fetchling births among the Rhonir is vastly higher than average. These fetchling children, whose births are portentous occasions, are soon taken from their parents to be raised by the tchaya and trained in the ways of a shaman.
The tchaya serve a number of important societal functions. They are oracles, healers, and advisors in matters both spiritual and practical; they are spell-weavers and ghost-slayers. Without them, Rhonir society would surely not survive.

Walking Temples

The Ghostlands are riddled with the remains ancient automatons, great biomechanical constructs of stone and ageless gray flesh which range in size from the merely large to the immense. These automatons are called shrine-beasts, for their temple-like internal architecture and the age-old, mummified bodies housed therein. The shrine-beasts are of great interest to scholars, but though they have been studied intensively, much about them remains unknown.
The largest of the shrine-beasts is Tchernac, an overgrown colossus lying in the midst of a field littered with the remains of broken engines of war. In its interior, the Rhonir have built their only permanent settlement. Tchernac, though inert, is host to a whole biomechanical ecosystem, the workings of which remains a complete mystery.
A rare few shrine-beasts remain functional. These wander the plains, generally docile and unconcerned with the comings and goings of smaller creatures. The Rhonir herd them for use as ambulatory mortuary temples, interring their dead among the ancient mummies. One such walking temple of particular note is the Iarha tribe’s, which is not only the largest known still-functional shrine-beast, but also houses the remains of the sage Odrhac.
Odrhac is the wizened mummy of an elderly man, which hangs upside down from the shrine-beast’s ceiling by a golden thread. Little is known about it; being a corpse, it is not particularly receptive to most lines of questioning. Occasionally, however, it stirs and utters a few cryptic phrases. The Iarha record these pronouncements and disseminate them as prophecies to their fellow tribes.

RHONIR TRIBES

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Capital city: Tchernac
Head of state: N/A
Languages: Rhonir
Currency: N/A

Rhonir is a harsh language full of stark consonant sounds.
Example names: Akhora, Ardran, Dakha, Durnoc, Erag, Ghanar, Khagra, Magdara, Marec, Neva, Orokh, Rasca, Tarrhoc, Tchara, Tcho, Tenahn, Tiko, Torghana, Ulam, Varroc.