Mountain Folk

The Mountain Folk are scattered through the great ranges of Vala, Taziondale, Kijinxi and further still. Lowlanders speak of them as one race. They are not one anything. There is no shared nation among them, no ruler over them and no single culture between them, and a clan on one range will often have more in common with the valley people below it than with Mountain Folk living a few hundred miles away.

What They Hold in Common

Hardship, and what hardship teaches. Strength is deeply respected, but strength is not narrowly meant. Enduring hunger is strength. So is crossing a frozen pass, defending your kin, mending a broken tool, and carrying an injured companion the rest of the way home.

Nor is surviving counted as something a person does alone. Someone who comes through well while letting their clan go hungry is powerful, which is not the same thing as admirable, and the difference is not one they leave unsaid.

They live in small defensible places built into cliffs, valleys, caves and the ruins of older mountain work. They prize practical skill, plain speech, personal responsibility, and spending scarce things carefully. Waste is held to be foolish and also wrong, which are two separate objections, and they make both. Hospitality varies a great deal from clan to clan, but where shelter has been given, harming a guest under your own roof is a grave offence across much of the high country.

What Is Said of Them

It depends entirely on which mountains, and on who is doing the saying.

Near Kijinxi they are talked of as recluses and savages and raiders, and as servants of giants. The truth about giants is more tangled than the insult allows. Giants are usually rivals, violent and territorial and genuinely dangerous, but temporary alliances get made, marriages happen, and clans of mixed blood are not unheard of.

In Vala they are taken for keepers rather than raiders: secluded people holding high passes, sacred peaks, forgotten roads and old mountain traditions. Some communities guard places whose importance the lowlands stopped remembering a long time ago.

In Taziondale they are known instead as craftspeople and traders. Their smiths, stoneworkers, miners and caravan guides are sought after, and several clans run profitable routes through country almost nobody else can cross safely.

In the West

One of them has come this far, and he came in somebody else’s service. Nagan Lowlander Thuluta is master of horses to the Free Folk, a long way from any range and among a people who are not his.