Hverskepnir
In the deep valleys of the western Fridhalbjerge Mountains live a reclusive people with a strange reputation among the other Jolnir tribes of Heimval. These people, called the Hverskepnir by outsiders, have lived in their valleys as long as the most ancient sagas can recount. It is not only their reclusiveness that makes them strange to outsiders, but certain gifts they possess, believed by outsiders to have been bestowed to them by the purported parents of their race, the gottir Skulta and Eltan.
Settlements
Hverskepnir live in communities spread throughout the valleys of the Fridhalbjerge. These communities are controlled by clans made up of multiple extended families headed by matriarchs. A clan consists of multiple villages spread throughout a region of Hverskepnir lands. Clan villages consist of collections of large wooden longhouses that house an extended family. These longhouses are arranged in a circle at the center of which is a communal space containing gardens, crafting and ritual structures. These compounds are surrounded by wooden pallisades and fitted stone walls. Next to the gate of the compound is a tall wooden tower in which a sentry is posted night and day. The few traders that make their way among these fortified villages have developed the custom of singing loudly as they approach a settlement. Stories they tell each other in drinking halls tell of the misfortune befalling those who approach Hverskepnir villages unannounced and uninvited.
Way of Life
The soil in their homeland is mostly thin and rocky, except for thin strips in the bottomland. The Hverskepnir sow vegetable and herb gardens, but they are primarily hunters and trappers with the knowledge of millenia behind their skills and abilities that give them an edge no normal human hunter possesses. Their staple prey are the wild mountain lanti that roam the alpine meadows as well as the highland dadyr species that live in the hilly forests and valleys. Their competition for this prey are the dangerous, solitary erfidur and packs of mountain skrima. But the Hverskepnir have little to fear from these fierce predators themselves, unless caught isolated and injured.
In addition to meat, the Hverskepnir use the strong bones and horns of their prey to make their tools and weapons, as well as lanti down to weave their fabrics and make cordage. Many villages keep small herds of semi-domesticated lanti for a ready supply of down for their needs.
Traditionally, the only metal they used was bronze, which they mine themselves from copper and tin mines in their hills. Recently though, traders have introduced iron and steel to the remote villages. Like elsewhere in Heimval decades earlier, this metal has become coveted and some of their people have begun to break with ancient tradition and invite certain outsiders to stay with them, those with the knowledge for prospecting, mining and refining the wonderous metal. It had long been known their mountains had deposits of iron, though only utilized in the form of red ochre during rituals.
Hverskepnir communities are usually loosely governed by the elders of the clan's families. However the villages are largely governed by ancient and deeply ingrained traditions and taboos. Leaders' main responsibilities are teaching, organizing hunts and leading rituals. The Hverskepnir are monogamous like most Jolnir cultures, but are matrilineal, unlike every other Jolnir ethnicity. Each family and clan bloodline is traced through the mother. Men who wish to marry must leave their home village and marry a woman from a different clan, becoming affiliated with that clan.
Appearance
Hverskepnir tend to be short for Jolnir, but have very robust builds and facial features. Men average 1.9 meters tall, and women 1.7 meters. Their hair is black and straight, like the Vandir. Also like the Vandir, their skin is a light bronze and their hair is black and straight, like the Vandir. Married men wear their hair long in a single braid while married women wear their hair long as well, in multiple braids that are then bound together. The hair of the unmarried and children are worn loose or bound without braids. Unique to the them are their eyes, which are a light golden hazel hue.
Adult Hverskepnir are tattooed with their clan's totem on their cheeks, their matrilineal totem on their breast and their personal totem on their forehead. Men cannot receive their clan tattoo until they have committed to a clan, either by committing to remaining unmarried in their maternal clan, or by marrying into their wife's clan.
Spiritual Practices
The Hverskepnir are shapechangers. This ability is matrilineal, as are most of the transformations an individual is able to undergo, though this is also affected by personal skill and talent. Shapechanging is an integral component of Hverskepnir ritual practice and inextricably bound to their group and personal identity. These transformations are associated with the animal totems of their clan, family and person. The spirits of these creatures are believed to be bound to their own and they revere them as ancestors as much as their human ancestors.
Hverskepnir also revere the telluric spirits of their homeland as well as those of the moons and suns. Despite what outsiders say concerning their origins, they do not consider themselves the descendents of the gottir Eltan and Skulta and they do not acknowledge or revere the gottir, considering them as much outsiders as the other tribes.
The unique spiritual practices of a clan depend on that clan's totem. Clan Ulfur perform their most important rituals at night, under the red light of Skulta. There they sing their howling song to her in their altered forms. Clan Arur rituals are performed on mountain peaks, under the light of the yellow sun, where they leap to soar and wheel in flight. Clan Bjornur rituals are performed during thunderstorms, during which they wrestle and roar in their massive, shaggy forms.
Rituals are also performed by families, led by the family's matriarch. These are performed on a more frequent basis, within the family longhouse. They include rites of passage into adulthood and celebrations of a member's ability to perform the transformations unique to that lineage as well as others for birth, death and remembrance.
The most private of rituals are personal and solitary. To be acknowledged as an adult, every Hverskepnir must leave the protection of their village and wander into the wild wood. They are charged to survive on their own for one Skultamanu, from the time Skulta is full, to the next fullness, approximately 62 days. During this time, they are not permitted to shapechange in even the most minor ways, such as sharpened scent or sight. In addition to mere survival, they must seek their personal totem. Unlike the clan and family totems, memories of an ancient past before crossing the Isaveg, these totems of are creatures native to Heimval.
These may be changes as simple as special colorations, body plumage, or the growth of large structures such as the sharp, iron-hard beak of an erfidur or the equally hard, black horns of the wild lanti. After their trial is over, they return to their village and present themselves to their matriarch. She pierces the palm of the left hand and tastes the blood for the tell-tale signs of usage of the clan or family forms. Once that test is passed, the supplicant must demonstrate their personal totem through transformation. It is then that they are declared to be adults and receive the tattoo of their personal totem on their forehead.
Foreign Relations
The Hverskepnir relations with outsiders is marked with conflict and mistrust as well as persecution. Most outsiders fear them and consider them to be half beast people, no better than the ettnir or drakir races. But due to the rugged nature of their mountain homes, few have attempted to invade their lands and acquire territory. Those who have, mainly those seeking to control tin mines and more recently, iron mines, have met with nothing but terror and disaster.
Despite this mistrust and fear, there is a long tradition of Hverskepnir warriors among the ranks of Jolnir armies. They are grudgingly acknowledged as immensly brave and capable. They are usually hired on either as frontline shock troops, striking terror with their altered forms, or as scouts, particuarly for their heightened senses of smell, sight and for the Arur, their powers of limited flight. The Hverskepnir have no loyalty to the armies they join beyond what they have contractually agreed, keep to their own kind and leave for their homeland as soon as a campaign is complete.
The closest relationships they have with outsiders are paradoxically with their ettnir neighbors to the north, particularly among those clans such as the Bjornur whose lands lie in the northern reaches of Hverskepnir territory. Some of these northern clans possess personal totems of the ettnir and are able to nearly fully transform themselves into that species. There are tales told of some Hverskepnir men with such a totem leaving their clan to take an ettnir woman as their mate.
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