Keshari is a region located in the Northwest of Crestfall. It is a mysterious land, populated by the reclusive and isolationist
kenku tribes.
Geography and Landmarks
Keshari is a mountainous region, marked by temperate forests and shrouded in a thick layer of mist for most of the year. The trees native to the region are known to grow especially tall, with the largest specimens towering at hundreds of feet in height.
On the ground level, the valleys of Keshari are home to a variety of terrains, ranging from grassy clearings to damp marshland. The region is home to a wide variety of flora and fauna, including a variety of wild rice that is particularly useful in the fermentation of rice wine.
Demographics and Culture
Keshari is the home of the nine kenku tribes, with each tribe living in isolation and meeting only in times of crisis.
Due to past injustices inflicted upon them by the other races of Crestfall, the kenku are highly reclusive and secretive, as well as highly distrustful of outsiders. To allow a non-kenku within the inner walls of a kenku village is considered an act of treason; by the same token, any kenku that willingly leaves their village is treated as a deserter and retroactively exiled from the tribe.
While each of the nine kenku tribes are unique in appearance and culture, one commonality among the tribes is their dedication to the practice of martial arts, with each of the nine tribes specializing in their own monastic tradition which has been honed and perfected over generations of practice. Each of the tribes' monasteries protect their techniques and traditions with the utmost secrecy; a common rule shared throughout all the tribes is that teaching the techniques of one's monastic tradition to an outsider is strictly taboo, even if the outsider in question is a kenku from another tribe.
While the kenklu tribes' autonomous lifestyles mean that there is no "capital" of Keshari to speak of, the abandoned kenku city of Mopou Ka is considered neutral territory shared equally among the nine tribes, used as an inter-tribal meeting ground during times of particular crisis where the pooling of resources becomes a necessity. During these sufficiently fraught times, representatives of each tribe are sent to Mopou Ka in order to speak and negotiate with the representatives of each neighbouring tribe, often resulting in terse affairs as each tribal representative works to find a solution to the matter at hand as quickly and efficiently as possible in order to return home and continue their tribe's isolation.
While kenku society has upheld the tenets of their laws for generations, dissenters to the old ways have been known to emerge from time to time. In the past few decades in particular, a religious movement has emerged among groups of kenku that engage in self-imposed exile from their tribes in order to explore the world beyond the borders of Keshari. This movement is known as the Heresy of Kraugh, named after a kenku of the Raven Tribe which entered a self-imposed exile in 981 ME.
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