#elkar

Ps:I ended up clicking on post, whoever sent it to me let me know because I was a bit slow 😅 I saw the profile photo and I believe that the person sending me was @grumpyfr0g ?Let me know if I got the name wrong

If you don't mind, dear author. I would like to share the artwork of the best girls of the academy. (AI, description in story+ artbreeder portrait) 😅

Jasone Osororen Eskularru Beltzak liburu sailaren lehen atalerako azaleko ilustrazioa.

Does your setting include snow?

If yes, are there any snow related traditions or holidays?

If they don't have snow, do they have any sometimes difficult to deal with weather?

Sorry for taking so long but here we go!

Yes, Elkar has a snowy Northern country called Ghostym, it's snowbound for most of the year but most of it melts away in the summer.

The Yetis. (Image Credit: DnD)

The Yetis are one of my favourite races that I've been working on in Elkar.

While they fill in a particular fantasy niche, the Yetis are one of my biggest efforts to move away from the average fantasy race always appearing in some pivotal role. In this case, the Yetis are Dwarf stand-ins with a creative but reclusive culture particularly untrustworthy of outsiders.

The Yetis are one of the oldest races in Elkar, and not just due to the fact that they're one of the relatively few left standing after that big War which fucked everything up for everyone.

Yetis come in four breeds and can range from 7 to 12 feet tall across said breeds.

There are the Forest yetis, smaller, brown fur, horns like tree branches.

The Tundra Yetis, the average breed you'd be used to seeing, like in the above picture.

The Mountain Yetis, largest of the breeds. Darker hair like an ashy gorilla and the most physically powerful, they take on the role of Guardians.

Then the Fire Yetis. Red fur and golden eyes which are said to come with a blessing to "see all that can be made by the viewer's hand." (It's true and it basically grants a Yeti "Master Builder vision" from the Lego Movie.) These Yetis tend to be the most creative which is valued culturally, which is also a good segue for the next segment!

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Yetis value the sacred act of creation above all else, art is considered the highest aspiration a Yeti can achieve, filling the world with whatever their hands can craft. Alcohol, jewellery, sculptures, machinery, the list goes on.

But the Yetis adopted an extremely negative view on destruction after they inadvertently played a role in the aforementioned War which made them unintentionally complicit in alot of really fucking bad war crimes. Now, this isn't just "malicious destruction" either. The Yetis had begun to see all forms of destruction as bad, even simple acts of disassembling old constructions to make way for new ones. For this, Yeti society is rotting from it's very foundation, literally and figuratively.

This policy also extends to all lives, animal or person. No matter how heinous a Yeti criminal may be, they are never killed or imprisoned. Only banished. You see, after the Yetis learned of their accidental involvement in the war, their God created a never-ending blizzard around their homeland to prevent contact with the outside world so her children may never be used in such a way again.

Criminal Yetis are banished into this ferocious blizzard with only an ember from their God's Forge to stave off the cold and light their way. Unfortunately, all too often they become turned around and end up freezing to death. Worse still, even the simple act of disassembling a great number of jewellery or slaughtering livestock for a starving family can be punishable by this banishment.

Before the blizzard was created, there was a great schism between the Yetis. Half wanted to journey south and fight in the War, believing it was now their duty right their wrongs after supplying the growing aggressor empire with materials to build their diabolical weaponry. The other half subscribed to the pacifistic philosophy described above. So, half of the Yetis journeyed south to aid in the War while the other half were left behind, all but forgotten by the world for centuries...

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Yetis are still banished well into the modern day, the only ones left outside of the Silver Veil (blizzard) are either criminals or the descendants of said criminals or even those who fought in the War. (Yetis can also live upwards of 1000 years so it's actually not entirely impossible that there's still a bunch of super old Yetis still kicking about.) These Yetis are generally reclusive. The majority of their number live far North, in the tundra of Ghostym blocked by mountains impassable to all but their own.

Yetis were suspicious of the Outworlders who first came to colonise their homeland but they were generally unprepared for Ghostym's climate so the Yetis took pity on them and showed them the great city of Layra-Ruu, a tower of a city originally built for the refugees of the War, now vacant save for it's Yeti caretakers. Because of this, the Yetis had a great say in the politics of Layra-Ruu for the longest time. After all, they were the ones maintaining the gigantic heat generating tower that the City was built upon and you don't wanna argue with the woman in charge of your AC in midwinter.

This leads into a Yeti of note.

Farsaang, Chief Engineer of Layra-Ruu.

A Mountain Yeti who was believed to be banished due to heavily heretical ideals on engineering going against the pacifism of her people.

Whatever the circumstances, Farsaang was a well respected individual in Layra-Ruu with a significant say in local politics due to her position.

However, things changed after Ghostym's failed rebellion. Farsaang and her Yetis were orded by the 11th King of Ghostym to produce gear for the uprising but Farsaang refused, knowing full well that they were outmatched in every possible way. In a bold move to ensure that the Volsakai would not try them for complicity, the Yetis fled under Farsaang's lead and narrowly avoided the Volsakai's counter-invasion of Layra-Ruu.

While this certainly saved the Yetis, many citizens of Ghostym felt beyrayed by this act and began to hold Yetis in contempt. This boiled into an outright lynch mob making an attempt on Farsaang's life. Word of advice though, if you're taking on an 11 foot tall primate with enough strength to cave in your rib cage with a single punch and claws like knives then you better be packing a fucking anti-tank rifle. This mob did not and Farsaang walked away with her life, the same could not be said for the mob.

This radicalised Farsaang into an Outworlder hating Bandit Queen who united several of the southern Yeti clans under her rule, regardless if they were bandits or not. They already had deep respect for her and now they felt as if she was a hero for rightfully standing up to the Outworlders.

However, a younger Yeti would eventually find himself banished and be taken under Farsaang's wing briefly before he continued south, against her protests.

Lohur, Founder of The Frostflame Order.

Lohur's past is even more mysterious than Farsaang's which has led to many myths about the cause of his banishment to swirl around him.

Lohur was content to start over with an elf he married after finding a small village in the pine forests further north of Layra-Ruu's countryside. But tragedy struck when his village was attacked by an ice monster, a Loshak. "Bringers of Grief" the Yetis call them. Creatures spawned from the same blizzard that surrounds their homeland, filled with an otherworldly grief and a need to inflict it upon all they encounter.

Lohur managed to kill the Loshak but not before it took the life of his spouse. Lohur fell into a deep depression and took it upon himself to become a hunter of these creatures, a vigilante protecting other relatively undefended settlements. Others sharing similar sentiments or stories would join Lohur and become a band of honourable mercenaries. Though they became noteworthy, they weren't given much thought by those who lived further South.

It was only after the 15th King foolishly tried to capture and display a Loshak for some grand event did Lohur enter the spotlight. Predictably, the creature escaped, wreaked havoc, tore an arm from the Crown Prince and had to be put down by a rightfully paranoid Lohur who had snuck into the event to make sure nothing would happen.

Lohur's heroic actions made the King extremely thankful and offered official support to Lohur and his mercenaries, thus giving them the boost they needed to properly conduct their operations. With a diminished policing force and a non-existent military, Ghostym had no way to defend itself from Bandit Yetis, Loshak or any other threat against it's people but the new Frostflame Order would become Ghostym's de-facto peacekeeping force.

Officially, they were not an army so the Volsakai couldn't charge Ghostym with a breach of their treaty but unofficially they were being funnelled a significant amount of supplies as "payment" despite their relative self-sufficiency.

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Lohur is part of the main cast of Elkar. He's deeply concerned with Ghostym's safety but he has to wrestle with his mental health and the fact that he can only do so much before the Volsakai start getting twitchy. And ultimately, he will have to cross that line to save his home.