Overview

The term "Severwood" is commonly applied to the whole of the country which designates the homeland of the Taiga Folk - both the core of the forested area which would provide the namesake, as well as the peripheral regions that fall within their historical mandate. It is the colloquial name for what is officially describing the "Severe Boreal Forest," that ancient woodland which is bounded on one side by the great expanse of arid steppe and on the other by impassable mountains.

The country comprises three main geographic regions:

• Severwood: A wood of mist and frost. The boreal forest that lies at the heart of the country. Primarily coniferous, with an array of spruce, pine and larch.

• Hearth Steppe: The southern-most region of the country, where rich, fertile, "black earth" loam provides the majority of agriculture and grazing. A grassy thoroughfare which acts as an artery through the greater landscape.

• Tengri Mountains: A harsh band of rising mountain ranges and windswept tundra, where the extreme altitudes create a climate which prohibits most tree growth, and which severs the region from the more settled tramontane communities across the way. Besides the isolated pastoral communities scattered throughout, the range is traversed mostly by traveling merchant caravans.

Taiga Culture

An elder people. Detached and solitary. Most lead cold, stoic lives, eschewing any community larger than their extended family units. Small tribes would represent the larger end of the population spectrum within their comfort.

While "taiga folk" is the most common designation associated with them, other names include "boreal elves" and "northern fey."

Their culture is adapted to life among the three primary ecosystems of the country: the central snow forests; the ranging, windswept steppe; and the inhospitable mountains.

The culture of the Taiga Folk appears stoic and cold and solitary, at least from the outside. Individual family units can be warm and embracing, but wider associations are much more rare. They rarely gather together, whether in communities or for shared events such as festivals. Fierce independence, bred by their chilled environs, tends to separate, one from another, even as they huddle close with their personal families on the coldest of nights.

However, apart from the severe environment, there is perhaps an even stronger centrifugal force keeping the Taiga Folk from gathering together. Memories of a past age that was filled with martial calls, mustering hosts, and imperial marching, when the Fey Folk came together into great conquering armies that swept down from the north. They never again wished to come together in such ways, and here in the north, something of a taboo developed around large gatherings of their people.

Severwood

The heart of the country is the central boreal forests of Severwood. There, families of Taiga Folk tend their home gardens and small plots of forest crops, herd their modest flocks of goats and other wild creature, forage in the woodlands for all manner of local plant and mineral resource, as well as engage in small-scale trapping.

Amber harvesting is a major source of trade good for the Taiga Folk. The ancient, fossilized tree resin naturally washes up on the beaches of their coastal regions, where it is methodically collected and brought back to their workshops to be cut, carved and polished. Amber adornment has proven an enduring part of fashion and ritual, with jewelry and artifacts crafted from both the raw and the polished gemstone. The currency of the people has traditionally been produced from the precious material, with later coinage still featuring embedded amber pieces.

The south of the country abuts the open grassland called the hearthlands, or the Hearth Steppe. While there are many scattered family farms and homesteads dotting this region, the vast majority of its residents are semi-nomadic bands of pastoralists. In the far north, such herds often consist of reindeer and takin - providing the folk with milk and wool - as well as the region's stout horses which are used as mounts and pack animals. The further south you travel, the more you encounter the woolly camel fulfilling these same roles.

Much of the extreme north is windswept coastal tundra. Vegetation consists of hardy grasses, mosses, and lichens, crawling ground willow, and sprawling scrub brush. Muskoxen, reindeer, various mountain goat species, and wild dogs range across the tundra and alpine regions, while the coasts support populations of seals, sea lions, and walrus, as well as a variety of fish.

While some folk do carve out existences here, they most often keep to the mixed forest-tundra of the transition zone, and rarely attempt to make their homes beyond the treeline itself. But those who do tend to have higher tolerances for gathering in larger communities, likely prompted by the natural conditions. They engage in reindeer husbandry for subsistence, and trade with the northern beastfolk and Nisse for other necessities.

These Nisse, sometimes called tundra gnomes, are cousins to the gnomish travelers to the south, and the largest population of these extremities. They fish, hunt some of the larger sea life that live around the shores, and trade with some of the folk to their south. While they live in more fixed communities than their traveling cousins of the steppe, they also practice a type of seasonal migration that is dictated by the climate.

To the east, the foothills of the Tengri Mountains roll into the forest and steppe. These mountains are the primary feature of the landscape, dissecting whole countries and apportioning peoples and ecosystems everywhere their range touches. The Tengri and the Hearthlands together form the natural boundaries of Severwood and the contain the folk of the taiga.

The Law of the Taiga

The Khagan

While most Taiga Folk live in small communities that are more-or-less independent, law does exist in Severwood. A hereditary position termed "khagan" is passed down among the old families of bolyare, those heads of important families who can yet trace their roots through the history of Severwood, down into the mists of the pre-Retreat age, when the Era of Commune witnessed the golden age of the Folk. The transient court of the khagan embodies sylvan law among the country.

The role of the khagan is rather loose and ill-defined. They are their wandering court form something like the trunk of sylvan society, a reliable institution that acts as a comforting presence in the backs of minds, while rarely intruding into the foreground of their attention. Solving stubborn disputes and blood feuds is one important duty. Preventing feuds and disagreements from spilling out into wider clan wars has long been the legacy of the wandering court. Just as important, however, is their monitoring of the frontiers of Severwood. The khagan maintains a system of wardens along the Severe Marches, keeping watch over the nomads of the steppe and the beasts of the hinterlands and the trolls of the mountains.

The Rut

This is a special season within the calendar of the Taiga Folk. Not as regular as the ordinary seasons of the year, the Rut nevertheless arrives in a way that allows for reasonable anticipation. On average, the Rut returns to Severwood every 5 years, or so, following a lunar calendar that doesn't quite align to the solar year.

The most notable effect of the Rut is an increase in fecundity among the land. Unlike the more mundane rutting season which occurs among some forest creatures, and which often attends the equinox, this irregular Rut affects both beast and plant. Indeed, the very earth, itself, seems pregnant with a budding capaciousness, and the air sits heavy about, humid and hot and beating with some pulse that can be felt deep within one's chest.

Fungal activity increases by an order of magnitude, bringing rot and decay in their wake. Yeast and toadstool comes to dominate the wood, and the air is alive with their spores. The homes of the folk become overrun with mildews and molds. And fermentation rules the day. For those less influenced by the Rut, the production of alcohol and cheeses and other fermented foods occupy most of ones time.

Throughout the duration of the Rut, dis-ease holds sway in the taiga. Besides the standard increase in mating activities that ordinary rutting season sees, a kind of wildness and unpredictability sets in among the beasts. Their behavior often mapping to no known patterns, and maybe even following an entirely separate cartography. But the kindred folk, too, fall under its sway, if to a lesser degree than the plant and animal life.

The Hunt

During the Season of Rut, a new law arises in Severwood. The khagan and their wandering court grow still, making room for the new figurehead of the land: the Hunt. Almost always female, the Hunt and her mixed retinue of beast and elf and nymph assume the mantle of itinerant law within Severwood. What law this may be, though, is never quite clear.

Even to the Taiga Folk, the machinations of the Hunt remains somewhat mysterious. For one, memory is hazy throughout the duration of the Rut. To recall its events is akin to trying to remember one's dreams. Time and logic become unmoored and hard to trace, like following the rippling course of a fish through a pond. It is assumed that the Hunt and her retinue travel the Greyroads, being granted special access to their pathways during the season of Rut. Allowing for this would go a long way in explaining the movements and activities of the Hunt.

To the Hunt accrues the immortal Beša, those forest nymphs who are known to the folk as the Murmur of the Forest, the dryads who speak with the trees and draw life from their roots. As though representatives to this council who were sent from the forest itself, the Beša enact the will of the wood upon the folk. And what this means may ever be shifting, for the will of a wood changes like the wind through its branches, and only the Beša may know the mind of a tree.