The Nomadic Northerners
In the far northeast, you will find the Aneira, they are a group of nomadic warg riders, who live by herding llamas, hunting yaks, and gathering nuts, berries, and mushrooms in the forest. They have since been forced to become partially urbanized, and they have also become a subject of the much more populated Yeno, to their south, which has seen their numbers dwindle even further. It has gotten so bad that the majority of the ethnic Aneira population now lives in the city of Vilyanor, which was one an Aneira fishing town, before it was conquered by Yeno.
They used to roam as far south as the edge of the desert, having called the entirety of the grasslands their home, but now they are restricted to just the tundras and the pine forest.
Government
They aren't as much of a single country as much as they are a collection of large extended families, that come together once a year to discuss matters of great importance. These families are called clans, and each clan has a head, which is the eldest male in the most senior branch of the family. These clan heads are called chiefs, and these chiefs are typically the ones who come together with the other chiefs to decide things.
Besides the once-a-year planned thing, as they call it, they also sometimes meet by chance, or they plan to, in order to trade or share information.
History
The Aneira are an ancient people that can trace their heritage back to the first people to live east of the black mountains, they were the first to come to these lands, and they were the first to domesticate the warg, but due to their preferred nomadic lifestyle, and due to them never having any large centralized states, they were unable to keep up with their settled neighbor, who inevitably outgrew them and conquered most of their ancestral lands, some of which a very long time ago.
Now their population is hanging on by a thread, desperately trying to modernize and convert to a settled lifestyle, so they may avoid being erased from the earth completely.
Religious Customs
They follow a branch of human paganism, but unique to them is the veneration of the ancestors, they do this by preserving the bodies of their falled friends and family, and lay them to rest in the clan crypt, these crypts are all built in the mountains, cast stone structures. Whenever such a crypt runs out of room, they will all work together to expand it, or build a new one, often not far from the old one, all the active crypts are within Aneira lands, although there are many old abandoned ones in the Yenoees side of the mountains, a remnant of their lost days of plenty.
Mummification
In order the preserve the bodies the best, they remove all the organs, storing them in separate clay urns, even the eyes and the brain. When all these are removed, they will cover the body in rough salt for one week, in order to drain as much of the moisture as possible, and then, they will be washed, and massaged with a substance made from yak fat, and tree sap, then they are wrapped in animal skins, and put into large stone tombs.
These tiombs will be put into slots in the crypt wall, and sealed.
The crypts themselves are all underground, and very cold, which contributes to the preservation of the remains.
Gifts to the Dead
Besides the jarred organs, a dead person will always be left with gifts from their family, which will be laid on the stone altar that is in from of each sealed tomb, this could be anything from pots, jewelry, tools and weapons, or clothes. when a crypt is visited, the relatives of the fallen will leave flowers and food for the departed, as offerings.
Read more about Aneirnian Culture here: Aneirnians
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