The Urdrevan people are an untamed nation of independent folk who value the strength that comes from remaining partly wild – by the standards of other nations. They are a nomadic and world-spanning people, drawing personal and spiritual inspiration from mighty emblematic beasts.
They live as bands of well travelled warriors and traders who live beside some of the mightiest creatures that walk the earth, proud to share in their journey as equals. To the Urdrevan, reputation is the greatest of wealth, and all try to distinguish themselves with deeds of valour, generosity, and wisdom. Beyond the nation, Urdrevan places value in the other nations in the Commonwealth, with shared values placed on independence and freedom.
Urdrevan live in “Bands” that resemble large families; the folk maintaining the relationships that support them while also seeking to develop alliances outside the band. Gift giving between individuals and between bands is a daily occurrence. Bands within a geographic area are united by bonds of intermarriage and friendship, but also by their shared reverence for a mighty Inspirational Beast that embodies their outlook and approach to their way of life.
The Urdrevan have rejected any attempt to show them other ways to live – they have no intention of building grand castles to exhibit individual wealth and power or create cities to ground their culture in a single location. “Civilisation” as far as other nations define it is simply not something that interests them. The Urdrevan People have existed for as long as records have been kept, and their way of life has changed very little in that time. As pastoral nomads and hunter-gatherers, they move where the herds take them, on massive rangings that are often on an annual loop throughout Elandra, stopping by certain landmarks year after year.
Geography
The bands of Urdrevan wander where they please, but the lands to which they lay claim fall into three rough categories.
The Icy North
The tundra and the mountain slopes, the cold alpine forests, the boreal swamps, the coastlines where the glaciers calve. Here the climate is too cold for farmers to prosper, so the Urdevan follow herds of reindeer or megafauna, take seasonal gluts of food from the clear rivers, hunt marine mammals on the rocky shores, and do not stay anywhere long enough to spoil it. The bands here are guided by the emblems like the Mammoth, the Elk (Megaloceros), and the Sabretooth. Geographical features here include icefields, glaciers calving into the sea, wind-sculpted caves and spires of ice, fjords, dramatic “floating” lakes, camps in icy crevasses, valley floors littered with huge stones left there by the glaciers of past ages, and ancient ruins frozen over by the changing portals to the elemental planes.
The Great Plains
Where the grasses form a sea to the horizon, the only trees are wizened landmarks, and a wanderer may go mad with thirst unless they can navigate by the stars. In some places this land is a rich savanna overflowing with mighty beasts, in others it is windblown scrub desert where only the hardiest of creatures might eke out a living. The Urdrevan here forage fruit and berries as they travel, manage herds of livestock, follow the migrating megafauna, and tend their fires carefully. The bands here are guided by emblems like the Direwolf, the Aurochs, and the Hammer-Tail (Ankylosaurus). Geographical features here include watering holes of uneasy truces, standing stones raised in ages past, ancient baobab trees used as refuges, dry river beds that can flood at a moment’s notice, the remains of roads marking incursion by the settled folk, undulating dunes, dramatic canyons filled with rock art, painted mesas, and fields of nest-mounds built by dinosaurs to hatch their eggs.
The Jungle of Ferns and Cycads
Where even the weeds grow five spears tall. The Urdrevan here know which fruit means life and which means death, they hunt the weak and the sick from the thousands of species that walk the shaded glades, and they don’t pointlessly build what the forest will just reclaim. The beasts here may not travel in vast herds, but among the inhabitants of the rainforests can be found the largest creatures to have ever walked the earth. The jungle Urdrevan live in the shadow of these huge creatures and know how to go safely among the cathedral sized trees. The bands here are guided by emblems like the Sickle-Claw (Utahraptor), the Three-Horn (Triceratops), and the Thunder-Foot (Diplodocus). Geographical features here include trees hundreds of feet tall, trackways trampled clear by huge creatures, long lazy rivers and their mangrove deltas, dramatic mountains soaring above the clouds raised by the forest, and dense whorls of blooming vegetation clustered around portals to the plane of earth.
In all of these places the Urdrevan form vital trade links between the communities that border on the inhospitable lands. They are some of the only people able to reliably move goods across such places, and charge a premium for their services.