Ghans

The Ghans are the fifth tribe of the landsmen, and the children of the Divhi Ghanda. They rule a collection of large nations in the north-east of Allornus. Modern Ghans are split into two distinct groups; the Carroghans who are savages who have turned their back on their Divhi and returned to nature, and the Vicighans who remain in the old Ghanish settlements with their vargör slaves under attack from their Carroghan brothers. With their Divh near death and their people at war with one another the future for the Ghanish people seems bleak.

Names

Ghans, Vicighans (subrace), Carroghans (subrace), Dreamers (Kardesia).

Stereotypes

Sensitive, Insightful, Deliberate, Thoughtful, Reticent, Spiritual, Mercantile, Decadent.

Potency


Visage

The Ghans are a husky, short people with barrel chests and thick limbs, even the women tend to be stout. They are a pale skinned people, often hirsute, with blue-black hair and generally dark brown eyes broken by occasional deep blues. Ghans tend to have very large hands, and the men are hairy-knuckled. However despite this they are not the ugly dwarfs some poems make them out to be, rather the Ghans have a proud bearing and noble features, and their fine mouths and Roman noses are rather more graceful than many other landsmen. Their large, expressive eyes and contrasting skin and hair can even make some quite striking, and their rich accented baritones are prized in song.

More striking and unusual, Ghans have an extra canine tooth where all other races of men have their first upper molar. This tooth is elongated, almost fang-like, though so far back in the mouth is it that one would almost miss the oddity unless a Ghan were to laugh or bellow open-mouthed. Markedly more obvious are their eyebrows. Ghans eyebrows are always a shade or two darker than the hair on their heads and they grow very long indeed, drooping down to frame the outside of the face and hanging at least to the jaw, sometimes as far as the chest!

While they have a reputation for being bookish and scholarly the Ghans are also very much creatures of comfort and leisure, and the Vicighans are always dressed in the finest attire, wearing fur and their native silk gowns, and fine perfumes be they noblemen or merchants. Meanwhile the Carroghans dress themselves in the cured carcasses of fierce animals, file their teeth to points and paint their faces to make themselves appear to be fearsome monsters from myth and legend.

Aetherial

The ancient craft of the Ghanish people is in wood and metal, and until recently the ornate merchant caravans carrying gold to their cities testified that in some form these crafts live on, however now few have the opportunity to see the wonderful brass-cast murals or exquisitely carved furnishings that carelessly litter Ghanish homes, and many of them have been lost forever in the Carroghan rampage. For their part the Carroghans craft huge men from wicker in which they keep, and eventually burn their prisoners in warped acknowledgement of this ancient lore. Ghans are great speakers, and have a gift for memory when it comes to facts, and deeply inquisitive minds that set them apart from other men. Even the Carroghans possess this legacy, though they have turned it from the scholarly arts to bestial cunning, and acts of terror.

Ghanda, Font of Secrets

The sleeping Divhi Ghanda is the patron of the Ghans. Once he was a vital force in the lives of his people, a wise king whose people came from miles around for his council and wisdom which he gave freely and with deep thought and consideration. Then Ghanda was venerated as Divhi of wisdom and knowledge. Ghanda gave his life to imprison the five Baalfr that sought to overthrow his rule and enslave his people. Now Ghanda is Divhi of nightmares, he sleeps eternally in the moment of his death and his feverish dreams reach out into the other world, and into the minds of other sleepers, giving them visions, flashes of a great and divine mind in disarray. Ghanda's priests take sleeping drugs and try to interpret these dreams as the words of their Divhi, but many believe that what they perceive is mere dying chaos.

Craft


Cunning

The Vicighans, and the Ghans of old, love luxury, and to them there are no greater luxuries than wealth and wisdom in equal measure. They are a complex people, given to deep and complicated thought and contemplation, and especially to self examination, and view having the time for this contemplation as a great luxury in and of itself. As a result some of the greatest universities in the world existed in the Ghanish lands until the Carroghans laid waste to them. Great scholars and artists find that their wealthy patrons will pave their path to enlightenment in gold, and many of the great merchants and noblemen of the Ghans are also great intellectuals in their own right. One of the most unusual results of this mindset is that the majority of Vicighans are literate and many are remarkably well-read, though they can only get their hands on bound tomes in the libraries of large settlements.

Social

The Ghans have a land that is very rich in some ways and very poor in others, and a neighbour in the Ralstaans who are in a similar position, and Ghan customs reflects this. As a result they were the first of the landsmen to adopt a mercantile way of life, even before the wandering Iri, and even today their heavy trade caravans ply the mountain passes into Haedrasia and Ralstaa, and their swift coasters ply the seas of the knives down to the Shattered Empire. Ghans live in a largely un-stratified social structure, thanks to the presence of a slave race the Ghans are either of the ruling class or just below it, and to them there is no poverty. Nor is wealth a sign of status, merely a means to an end. Even the Carroghans have little concept of castes or classes, with a group gathering around a powerful individual and being all of roughly the same status.

Civilization

Ghans prefer to live close together, with major cities surrounded by densely populated countryside, giving way to empty wilderness within a day or so's ride. Ghanish settlements mix brick and stone ground floors with wooden upper levels, high gables and featureless façades. Ghans prefer the austere and simple, being a pious and modest people, but they value craftsmanship and skill, and so while their homes may not be decorated or colourful they are often of exacting construction, and an unusual level of cleanliness. Of course, since the division of the Ghans the towns have fallen into disrepair, made up of abandoned and fire-gutted ruins, often with the remains of their former inhabitants within, and the great cities are mazes of streets blocked by buildings intentionally collapsed into impromptu fortifications or guarded by Vargör militia. The vicighans live in fading grandeur in their half-abandoned cities, while carroghans live in towns hidden in wooded clearings, where bodies are impaled on the wooden palisade walls and log cabins are decorated with the skulls of Vargör and the defiled relics of Ghanda.

The Ghans are almost unique amongst the races of Allornus in that they accept magicians alongside mystics as men of wisdom and prestige, though the carroghans see them more as weapons to be wielded against their foes in the name of chaos and murder than learned sages. In many ways those who practice the various mystic arts, from alchemists and seers to those few who can wield true magic, have replaced the priesthood, as the faith of Ghanda is no longer organized, and relies on drug-addled mystics whose minds are often warped by their visits to the dreams of a Divhi trapped on the threshold of death.

Language


Place Names

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Names

Male: Andrei, Berislav, Berivoj, Damir, Darko, Enkudi, Godemir, Hrvatin, Iwan, Kazimir, Malo, Milan, Ognjen, Prvan, Pyotor, Radomir, Rato, Radovan, Slaven, Srebrenko, Tihomil, Tomo, Tugomir, Vedran, Velimir, Vlado, Vuk, Zoran.
Female: Blagica, Borka, Chessa, Dragana, Dunja, Gorzyslava, Hrvoja, Jasna, Kirsta, Ljuba, Mariska, Mila, Miroslava, Morana, Nada, Ognjenka, Pola, Radoslava, Sanja, Srebrenka, Tatanya, Vera, Vlatka, Zora, Zvonimira.

Statistics


Talents
Clever +2 | Insightful +1 | Fast -1 | Graceful -1 | Strong -1
Unique Abilities
none
Ageing
Infant 0-3 years -5 to all Talents except Lucky
Child 4-11 years -3 to all Talents except Lucky
Adolescent 12-16 years -1 to Tough, Clever and Knowledgeable
Adult 17-39 years none
Middle-aged 40-59 years -1 to Fast, Hale and Strong
Old 60-69 years -2 to all Physical Talents, -1 to Knowledgeable
Venerable 70+ years -3 to all Physical Talents, -2 to all Mental Talents
Basics Variables
Morphology Bipedal Height 5'5" + Size" + 1d3" - 1d3"
Diet Omnivorous Weight 165lbs + (Sizelbs x5) + (Brawnlbs x3) + 1d10lbs - 1d10lbs
Cycle Diurnal Gender standard
Prime Sense Vision