#horselords

The Moonfall Steppe is a region of grassland in southern Cynozepal, whose peoples are culturally distinct from the northwestern Singing Steppe. It is home to the Great Shrine of the Earthmother, an unusual and out of place rock carved in the form of the World-Serpent and the egg of the earth. 

The World-Serpent takes on a venerated role in the religion of the Moonfall Steppes, (while she is cast in a more antagonistic role in Crown and Singing Steppe Cynozepali Dualism). Here she is the god of death, decay, rebirth, fertility, the waters, the grass, and the underworld.  She is known by the epithet Earthmother in addition to World-Serpent, as she is honored for laying the egg that is the earth and hatched all living beings.

Most peoples of the Moonfall Steppe bury their dead in great barrows, thus committing their dead to the Earthmother (instead of the Sun-Dragon's distant lunar lands, as is custom to the Crowns and the Singing Shepherds). The spirits of the buried dead rest in the underworld, where they are close to the living world and can continue to interact with their relatives. People here experience a landscape filled with the spirits of ancestors and legendary figures, who may help or hinder the living and must be honored and appeased.

The giant stone that forms the Shrine is highly unusual amid the flat grasslands. Tales of its origin varies, with some stories claiming it was carried there by giants, others claiming it is a piece of the Broken Moon (the smallest of the moons and asymmetrical in shape) having been torn apart in a fight between the deities.

Either way, no one knows for sure who first carved the stone, nor its cousins, the monuments of serpents marking the Five Daughters of the World-Serpent (five great rivers of the steppe). Master stonecarvers are periodically dispatched to retouch details worn away by the erosion of wind and time.