Ohlai Steppe: Difference between revisions
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<blockquote>''“Tundra-wind at dawn, star-swept grass at night.”''</blockquote>The Ohlai Steppe unfurls across the southeastern sweep of the eastern continent, where the grasslands run hard into salt air and the horizon is more ocean than mountain. To the north, the fog-choked reaches of '''[[Myrrun Hollow]]''' bleed into reed flats and half-drowned trails just beyond the last reaches of the Bastion of Aurex; to the '''west''', the stone-and-vow borders of the '''[[Bastion of Aurex]]''' rise like a fixed thought the Steppe refuses to share. Everything else is open coast and wind with the '''Meliaheller Ocean''' on the Steppe’s flank and at its feet, its weather changing faster than a map can be redrawn. Here, the land does not tolerate permanence. Tracks are erased, camps vanish, and only the routes remembered in breath and song remain true. | <blockquote>''“Tundra-wind at dawn, star-swept grass at night.”''</blockquote>The Ohlai Steppe unfurls across the southeastern sweep of the eastern continent, where the grasslands run hard into salt air and the horizon is more ocean than mountain. To the north, the fog-choked reaches of '''[[Myrrun Hollow]]''' bleed into reed flats and half-drowned trails just beyond the last reaches of the Bastion of Aurex; to the '''west''', the stone-and-vow borders of the '''[[Bastion of Aurex]]''' rise like a fixed thought the Steppe refuses to share. Everything else is open coast and wind with the '''Meliaheller Ocean''' on the Steppe’s flank and at its feet, its weather changing faster than a map can be redrawn. Here, the land does not tolerate permanence. Tracks are erased, camps vanish, and only the routes remembered in breath and song remain true. | ||
Revision as of 01:16, 9 January 2026
| Ohlai Steppe | |
|---|---|
| Capital | Tusk |
| Located in | Eastern Continent |
| Population | |
| Landmarks | Tusk; Goatshead Land-Bridge; Sky-Barge Corridor; Wind-Caravan Trails; Whispering Gorge |
| Settlements | |
| Factions |
|
| Coordinates | -14.1651,-34.7261 |
| Campaigns | |
“Tundra-wind at dawn, star-swept grass at night.”
The Ohlai Steppe unfurls across the southeastern sweep of the eastern continent, where the grasslands run hard into salt air and the horizon is more ocean than mountain. To the north, the fog-choked reaches of Myrrun Hollow bleed into reed flats and half-drowned trails just beyond the last reaches of the Bastion of Aurex; to the west, the stone-and-vow borders of the Bastion of Aurex rise like a fixed thought the Steppe refuses to share. Everything else is open coast and wind with the Meliaheller Ocean on the Steppe’s flank and at its feet, its weather changing faster than a map can be redrawn. Here, the land does not tolerate permanence. Tracks are erased, camps vanish, and only the routes remembered in breath and song remain true.
The Ohlai do not claim territory; they keep motion. Their lives unfold along the Singing Paths, migration ways marked by buried stones, bone-chimes, and wind-sunk markers that hum when the air strikes them just right. These paths aren’t merely roads; they’re agreements between people and land, rewritten each season as rivers shift, grasses rise, and the coast gnaws new shapes into the Steppe. Camps are raised to be left behind. Councils convene only where routes briefly converge. Even the dead are honored through Shifting Cairns built to disappear, so spirits can travel unbound.
The Ohlai live as clan-riders, totem-bearers, and spirit-keepers bound to contracts with the living Steppe. Some clans follow ember-harts whose solstice fire-runs warm the veldt; others swear to wind-hawks that circle migrations like watchful gods; still others keep faith with river-serpents guarding the fords where Steppe becomes marsh. The Windbound maintain these oaths through dream-circles and seasonal rites, listening for changes in the land’s will because when a path falls silent, when a herd turns wrong, or when the wind refuses to answer, it’s not superstition. It’s warning.
Outsiders often mistake the Ohlai as lawless, but their society is governed by memory rather than codex. A promise spoken beneath open sky has the weight of generations, and to break an oath is to lose the protection of one’s clan, not by decree, but by collective forgetting. Traders from the Bastion and the marsh-edge bargainers of Myrrun Hollow are welcomed with feasts and wolf-dances if they respect the Steppe’s rhythms, but a careless claim of ownership, a nailed boundary-post, or a “permanent” road earns something worse than anger: abandonment. In the Ohlai Steppe, you don’t get chased out. You simply stop being guided and the land is vast enough to let you vanish.
Capital - Tusk, the Living Caravan
| Tusk | |
|---|---|
| State | Ohlai Steppe |
| Population | |
| Landmarks | |
| Coordinates | |
Tusk is not a city of walls or towers, but a living caravan-metropolis that rises on the Ohlai Steppe during the great seasonal gatherings. Bone-pavilions, spirit-painted wagons, and hide tents bloom like migrating herds across the grasslands, each clan anchoring its encampment with ancestral totems that hum when the wind runs through them.
For a season, Tusk is the beating heart of the Steppe. Orcish oath-singers chant sagas that weave together law and lineage; Halfling wind-racers trace bright arcs across the plains in contests of speed and cunning; Katari moon-pilgrims gather beneath Tassaryn's glow to mark the turning of cycles. Trade flows as freely as song, wolf hides for beacon-ink, griefglass wards for spark-goods, and alliances are renewed through feasts, duels, and shared dream-circles.
When the council fires burn low and the convoys scatter, Tusk dissolves with them, leaving only trampled grass and the echo of drums carried on the wind. Yet the memory of its shape endures: each season it rises again, never identical, yet always recognized, a city of oaths and riders bound not to stone, but to the living rhythm of the Steppe.
Hazards & Hospitality
To cross the Ohlai Steppe is to bargain with spirits and wind alike:
- Cyclone Spirits - Dust-devils echoing lost promises; travelers must confess true memories or be buffeted and lost.
- Glass-Jackals - Packs with storm-glass fangs whose crystalline bite sings at night.
- Wind-Leech Fever - Air-parasites that cling to tents and riders, drained only by Bloom-moss vapors.
- Guest-Rite - Wagon-circles must host strangers with stew and sky-tea for one night in exchange for a story never told before.
- Ancestor Stampedes - Ghost-herds that sweep dreamers away when the wind keens in three rising notes.
- Wolf-Rider Tolls - Mounted patrols demanding oaths in lieu of coin.
- Totem-Echoes - Spirit-totems replay ancestral vows, binding outsiders to obligations they cannot read.
Living Mysteries
Rumors and enigmas ride the Breath:
- The Silent Chime - A new wind-stone near the Fleaspark frontier refuses to sing.
- Furless Bison Herd - Ghost-white bison with shifting rune-brands roam the north fringe.
- The Vanished Wagons - Three caravans vanished into a mirage-belt, leaving only a looping whistle-note.
- Whispering Gorge - A basalt canyon that replays arguments days later, louder and angrier.
- The Trickster's Cairn - A cairn that whistles riddles in Simiah tongue, mocking Orc Sky-Readers.
Festivals & Spirit-Races
Seasonal rites bind clans and spirits:
- The Confluence of Banners (Breathrise) - Clans converge at a wind-bone amphitheater to lash banners to fossil ribs and carve omens into marrow-stones.
- The Spirit-Races (Highlong) - Riders mount horses, dream-steeds, or Simiah kite-gliders in races across the steppe, running alongside unseen ancestral herds.
- The Wind-Oath Trials (Leafburn) - Oath-bound disputes judged through contests of memory, riddles, and endurance.
- The Dream-Rider Vigil (Frostveil) - Riders' spirits mount phantom steeds to race the moons across the dream-sky.
Additional rites and risks include Ancestor Stampedes at the Confluence, Oath-Silence for broken oaths, and Dream-Rider Shadows when spirits fail to fully return.
Ancestry
The Ohlai Steppe is dominated by Orc riding clans and intertwined Human lineages, supported by Simiah scouts, Katari moon-guides, and Faun musicians. Clanks and Infernis walk the plains rarely and uneasily, treated as omens more than neighbors.
To journey across the Ohlai Steppe is to walk a path carved by wind, memory, and song. Treat the land with honest voice, heed the sky's shifting hymns, and the Spirit-Wagons will welcome you into the circle. Lie, linger, or mute your heart, and the Breath itself may rise to carry you away.
Major Conflict
The World Wants the Steppe to Stand Still
Neighboring states demand borders, census, roads, and taxation. The Ohlai cannot comply without abandoning migration and migration is how they survive famine, storms, and spiritual decay. No single clan can resist alone, but unity risks creating exactly the permanence they fear.
This conflict can never be “solved.” Only navigated.
Potential Campaign Hooks
- A Singing Path falls silent, and three clans blame each other
- An Ember Herd changes course, threatening famine elsewhere
- A foreign power builds a “temporary” fort on a migration route
- A cairn spirit refuses to leave, demanding unfinished business
- The Hearthbound gain traction, fracturing long-standing alliances
