The Highland People

Highlanders are very light-skinned, with fair hair and light eyes, usually blonde and blue respectively. They are short and stocky, muscular and strong, but hold more weight than others. Highlanders are also very hairy, usually sporting large beards and long hair. They wear tunics, loose-fighting shirts, and often large cloaks topped with fur or made from an animal itself. Many are starting to wear a kilted pattern as well.

Highlanders are headstrong and independent, living secluded to the sovereign empire. They treat each other as family and are warm and welcoming to any other Highlander, but are very mistrusting of outsiders. Stealing and dishonesty is as bad as murder in the highlands.

Each town has a ‘Mountain Maiden’, what the Highlanders call a prostitute. But she is more than that, and helps many young men find themselves at the most important stage of their upbringing, coming into their own as a man. Each town also has a local herbalist/medicine practitioner they call ‘Healer’. They have a rudimentary knowledge of medicine, growing now with the incorporation of Iron.

Highlanders are spread out through several smaller villages dotting the mountains. Each of these villages operate on honor, and work as a community to survive. However, they all do report to a King, who oversees and protects all within the Highlands. Since the Burning War, this King follows the emperor. Highlanders are a very proud people. They make sure they are always honorable, and always do what’s best. However, now there is a deep shame at being conquered by Iron that some still hold to.

Highlanders hold to their old surnames, which used to be called soulnames. They often tell a small story from the family’s history, and some still wear a family crest showing their pride for it. For example, two prominent Highlanders are Kaidryn and Connall Taland. Kaidryn Taland is a Soulomancer, and Connall Taland is a Titan. Their soulname originates from the Blood Age and is a sense of pride to those who know of it. They are descendents of some of those mighty blood warriors of the Taldonian tribe, who were called the Tall-landers by the new Iron Kingdom hundreds of years ago. The name Tall-lander has changed to Highlander in the modern Empire, but the origins can still be seen in the soulname. A Highlander family crest is of an animal or a pattern, unlike Iron Houses which are always an object. But since all the crest were outlawed, each Highland clan, which are now the towns, only hold to their ancestral tartan setts. A sett is a unique tartan pattern of criss-crossed colors that differs from the others. Each tartan is defined by its “sett“, a sequence of coloured lines called its “thread count“. A tartan’s thread count is normally (but not always) mirrored… i.e. 12 yellow, 16 red, 10 blue - 10 blue, 16 red, 12 yellow. And the same sequence is usually (but not always) woven both horizontally and vertically to produce the distinctive check pattern.

A tartan pattern is a clothing fabric with patterns consisting of several crisscrossed colored threads, with horizontal and vertical bands that run through the warp and weft of the fabric in multiple colors. These blocks of color then form a distinctive pattern of squares called a Sett. Most traditional colors in a Sett are red, green, and blue.

To avoid absorbing souls against the Lost, Highlanders have taken to dismembering the creatures with their large axes, or using a hammer to maim them, then leaving them to die or using a longbow to finish them off.
Historically, Highlanders are a new race formed by the mixture of two old tribes from the Blood Age. They were mortal enemies once, but the formation and settling of the Iron Kingdom to the south drew them together and made them inseparable allies. These two tribes were the Taldonians of Virnach, and the Fjornir of the North.

Sayings:

• - As impenetrable as the Ivory Wall. As strong and tall as the Ivory Wall.
• - Acre – measure land, the amount an ox or team of ox could plough in a single day
• - Oxgang – the area that could be cultivated by a plough drawn by one ox in one year.
• - Borough – town with the right to self-govern granted by royal charter (All Highland towns) – Iron installs Iron governers though.
• - Mountain Maiden – a revered town whore, or prostitute, that keeps young men in the town happy until they are married, is usually the one to teach them bedmanners. One in each town, plus their apprentices.
• - Healer – local herbalist/medical practitioner with a rudimentary knowledge of herbs and medicine. One in each town.
• - Honor – the quality of knowing and doing what is morally right.
• - Pannage – Food such as acorns that swine feed on in the woods
• - Passage – toll levied for passage
• - Tithe – one tenth of a man’s produce and income due as a tax to support the church
• - Tallage – tax levied on boroughs
• - A nest egg – the peasant saying explaining why they leave one egg in a nest when collecting from hens. It would encourage the other chikens to continue laying eggs in the same nest
• - “Long may yer bum reek!” – may you live long and stay well
• - Keep your head – stay calm
• - Boggin – foul smelling
• - Dobber – idiot
• - Numpty – idiot
• - Your off your head – you’re crazy
• - Your bums out the window
• - “Heart as big as an oak” – Oakheart saying
• - Strong as an ox, she gets around like an ox ploughing a field,
• - Beautiful as a mountain maiden’s cunt
• - As magic as a mountain maiden’s cunt
• - Healer’s hands!
• - Auroch’s balls! Sharp as an Auroch’s horn.
• - Your tartan is soiled.

The Old Gods

Gothi - priests. Warrior priests of the Highlands. Almost extinct in the modern Iron Empire. They were sought out during the Burning War for there was no greater sin in the Iron Creed than worshipping false Gods.
The Old Gods of the Northmen are not omnipotent as are the Gods of the Iron Creed. They are of a different species than humans and the animals below, better in everyway, but still mortal in a sense. They would make mistakes and blunders, warring with one another in bestial fury and were still animals, although there were elemental in nature. They each represented something the Highlanders came to understand as a natural law.

• Bjornskar - The Bear of Storms. The thunderclaps of storms are just Bjornskar slamming his monstrously large bear paws together, preparing for a great fight. It was believed that the great Bjornskar constantly fought the horrible serpent of the sky, Skynslangr, and it is those battles that filled the skies with storms. Usually depicted as masculine, his priests were called Bjorgothi. One such is Alaric, from the Ambush of Alaric in the Burning War.
• Vargr - The Wolf of Blood. Blood, in the Highland culture, represents family and connection as well as its negative connotations. The Wolf of Blood connected family, and showed that blood was necessary to protect that same family. It is Vargr who taught man to stay in families, to be pack animals like his wolves. Vargr also represented ferocity. The Vargothi were his priests. The Bloodwolf Clan originated from a group of Vargothi.
• Gullibra - The Golden Boar. Gullibra was of metal, the gleaming gold of the mountains and was the greed of the rich. The boar would grow fat gorging itself on gold and the greed of men below him. 
• Hrafn and Haukr - The Twin Birds, a Raven and an Eagle. Hrafn and Haukr were the day and night. Hrafn, the raven, was darkness and shadow. Its massive wings would shroud the Highlands in darkness during night. Haukr, the eagle, was light. Its wings would blind the land in warmth during day. Both flew endlessly after one another in an attempt to catch each other. They are deeply in love and want only to be together, but neither is willing to look behind them.
• Thrainn - The Goat of Conflict. A two-headed Goat, Thrainn has a whole head on each end of its strange amorphous body. The Goat represented two decisions, the warring of internal disputes in man, and conflict of commitment. Thrainn would also represent the two sides of fighting in an ironic way, as both sides (in ancient Highland history) were both of the Highlands (so the same being in essence), but fought anyway (the two heads). 
• Hestvitnir - The Horse of Man. The only God to be a true friend to mankind, the Highlanders saw the average horse's usefulness as a mount as a sign from the God that they were worthy of her mighty companionship. Hestvitnir represents stamina and courage, to bolster oneself in all tasks, from farming to riding into battle. 
• Skynslangr - The Serpent of Sky. The true enemy of the Highlanders, they named the Burn as an evil Serpent God of the Sky, Skynslangr. Her gaze was bright and vicious, striking all who saw it with fear. She was death itself, and its cold embrace. She fought for dominion over the Highlands with Bjornskar, intent on destroying mankind and pulling them all into her writhing wound. 

As mentioned above, a major motif in the Highlands was the battle between Skynslangr and Bjornskar which would create horrible storms in the sky and explained the mysterious Burn. It is greatly quelled throughout the Empire, in an attempt to temper the history of the Highlanders, but the land of the Fjornir tribe during the Blood Age that becomes the Highlands was known as Skarsjord: Land of Storms, or Bjornskar's Realm. It was he who they worshipped most.