Painted Tribes

"The Land Remembers"

The Painted Tribes have been a blight on Kenshi since the fall of The First Empire. Consisting almost entirely of sub-humans and residing in the far North, little is known of these devolved tribesmen. They are split into three tribes but are ultimately led by The Grand Wizard from their Capital of Old Cat.

Findings on the Painted Tribes

Written by One-eyed Ruko, Dead Cat Master Outrider

You don’t cross into the Cannibal Plains without knowing the rules of the hunt. They aren’t our rules, they belong to the Painted. We call them that because of the way they stain their skin, marking themselves in the blood of their prey or the crushed pigments of the land. The color they wear tells you everything, if you live long enough to understand.

Painted Red

The Painted Red are the worst of them. Blood-drinkers, marrow-splitters, the ones who take their time. They soak themselves in gore until their skin is stained deep as rust, wearing their kills like a second skin. They don’t just eat their prey; they make a spectacle of it. If you see a camp where the bones are stacked high, where the air reeks of rot and laughter, you’ve found them.

Painted Green

The Painted Green are different, not as wild, not as slow. They blend with the land, covering themselves in mosses and dyes, moving like wraiths through the fog. These ones are the hunters, the raiders. They don’t waste time with torture or spectacle, they take what they need, flesh, tools, even captives, and vanish into the trees. You won’t see them coming, but you’ll feel their eyes long before the trap is sprung.

Painted Black

And then there are the Painted Black, the elders, the war-leaders, the ones who have lived through enough slaughter to command the rest. Their bodies are smeared in soot and char, some even tattooed with the burned remains of their enemies. They are the kings and queens of the wilds, the ones who decide which villages die and which survivors are worth keeping. If a Painted Black sets their sights on you, you are already dead, you just haven’t stopped breathing yet.

The Painted Tribes aren’t just beasts, though. They have laws, rituals, a purpose. They carve symbols into their flesh, speak in tongues that no outsider understands. Some believe they are warriors from another age, trying to reclaim the world in the only way they know how. Others think they were cursed by the old machines, turned feral when the world burned.

Me? I don’t care about the why. I just know that if you step wrong in the north, the Painted will take you, and they will make you a part of their stories, whether you want to be or not.