THE LORE · THE NORTHERN RAMPART

The Korl

The big folk of the high passes — a head and shoulders over any settled man, slab-muscled and frost-skinned, older stock than the Imperium that tried to wall them out. Cold doesn't touch them; fine spellwork mostly defeats them.

The Korl come down off the Northern Rampart and the Frostmaw, giants by lowland reckoning, with skin the blue-pale of old ice and frames that crack a doorway. They are older than the Vallen Imperium — which built its northern rampart partly to keep them out, and failed — and they keep to the high country between hiring their backs and their reach to House Vandahl's lances, the Marrow Lances, or no one at all. Frost is home to them and never bites; the fine, fiddly work of spellcasting mostly slides past a Korl mind built for weight and weather. The barrows of the high passes are thick with Korl dead, and the wights up there swing like their living kin. Plain-spoken, literal, and dangerous to crowd.

KIND

race

PLAYABLE

yes

DEFAULT

WORLDVIEW

The lowland walls and paper empires are passing weather; the mountain and the old strength endure. The Korl were here before the Imperium that walled them out and will be here after it — better an honest cold and a clan's given word than any crown's promise.

Connected

The Karth DeepPLACE · The Korl come down off the Northern Rampart above th…The FrostmawPLACE · Frost is home to the Korl; the Frostmaw is theirs an…The Marrow LancesFACTION · The Marrow Lances hire Korl backs and reach — a Korl…The Rime-SkinnersFACTION · The Rime-Skinners are Korl of the high passes who ta…The SunderingCONCEPT · Older than the Imperium that tried to wall them out,…A Korl War-BandCREATURE · The hostile warband splintered from this people — ki…

Appears In

Type Fields

kindrace

playableyes

defaultno

worldviewThe lowland walls and paper empires are passing weather; the mountain and the old strength endure. The Korl were here before the Imperium that walled them out and will be here after it — better an honest cold and a clan's given word than any crown's promise.

temperamentStoic, blunt, proud — slow to move and slower to bow.

homelandplace.karth-deep

also_foundplace.frostmaw-cave, place.caer-vallen, place.vandahl-keep

appearanceTowering and slab-muscled, ice-pale or weathered skin, heavy brows; furs, hide, and oversized iron.

demeanorPlain-spoken, literal, slow to anger and worse once roused.

strengthsImmense strength and endurance, Unbothered by cold and frost

weaknessesLittle aptitude for magic and vulnerable to it, Slower and less subtle

traitsgiantborn, frost-resist, magic-weak, low-magicka

voice{"register":"Blunt and terse. Short sentences, proud of strength, scornful of softness and superstition.","likes":["war","survival","land","strength"],"opener":"Speak, then.","dismiss":"Ghost-talk. The cold's killed more folk than any old song ever did."}

birth_order4

origin_modeemerged

elemental_nature{"primary":"Earth","secondary":"Air (terrestrial — wind and stone-dust, not the divine Air of the Vyr)"}

cycle_transitionEarth→Air boundary — the mountain's surface where the great settled stone meets the constant wind; Earth that learned to move

cosmological_prideThe oldest people of the high passes — they were there before the Imperium that walled them out; the mountain endures when empires do not

cycle_roleEarth-Air compound: partial ascent, but not toward the divine; terrestrial movement without Aetherial thinning; the threshold where stone becomes wind

All Relationships (23)

references

→The Karth Deep — The Korl come down off the Northern Rampart above the Karth Deep, giants by lowland reckoning.
→The Frostmaw — Frost is home to the Korl; the Frostmaw is theirs and never bites them.
←The Marrow Lances — The Marrow Lances hire Korl backs and reach — a Korl swings iron a settler can barely lift.
←The Rime-Skinners — The Rime-Skinners are Korl of the high passes who take the cold country's beasts and barrows.
→The Sundering — Older than the Imperium that tried to wall them out, the Korl fill the high barrows; their wights swing like living kin.
←The Elder Age — The Korl held the high passes in the Elder Age, older stock than the Imperium.
←The High Moot — The Moot is the civil body of the Korl as a people — the holds answering together rather than as scattered backs for hire — and embodies the old-blood worldview that the mountain endures while lowland crowns pass like weather.
←Brunda Pass-Keeper — Brunda is Korl to the bone — grey-braided, slab-shouldered, frost-skinned, blunt of tongue — and carries the people's old-blood pride: the given word over the crown promise.
←The Wightcairn — The Wightcairn is pre-Imperial Korl construction — the high folk buried their dead here before any empire came.
←The Korl Trail-Stones — The Trail-Stones are the Korl's map — their cultural presence written in stone on the snowfield before any road or cairn.
←The Korl Grave-Right — The Korl Grave-Right is a Korl custom — it belongs to the Korl people and is enforced by living Korl kin.
←The Lance-Barrow — The Lance-Barrow is the highest concentration of Korl dead in the Rampart Foothills — a high-passage tomb cut before the Vallen Imperium raised its rampart.

descendant_of

←A Korl War-Band — The hostile warband splintered from this people — kin who went the other way.
→The First Sleeper — The Korl name the colossus at the First Sleeper their first ancestor — the one of the big folk who lay down when the world was young and let the high desert keep him. Their height and frost-skin, they say, are his inheritance.
←Korl Wight-Lord — The wight-lord is Korl dead — a warrior of the old high country, larger than living Korl and correspondingly more dangerous in death.

shaped

←The Rampart Wars — The Rampart Wars broke the Korl's hold on the passes and left them above the snowline — the wound that made the High Moot necessary.

aligned_with

←The Five Elements — The Korl are Air's people — high passes, wind, the impermanent hold. They keep no permanent thing; the mountain endures but the Korl passage is always temporary.

documents

←The Birth of the Races — The Korl emerged at the Earth→Air boundary — the mountain's surface meeting the constant wind. Earth's mass with terrestrial air's passage: enduring but never fixed to one place.

contradicts

→The Cult of the Living Vallen — Korl myth: 'the Fire-Walker went into the stone; the Sky-People held him there.' This is not compatible with voluntary divine immanence. The Korl do not debate it — they simply have their own account.

worships

→The Old Man Under the Mountain — The Korl of the high passes keep the same quiet propitiation of the deep as the Stoneborn below them.
→The Good Neighbor — Even the Korl, who worship little else lowlanders would recognize, keep the milk-on-the-step custom.

rooted_in

←The Korl Ancestor-Keeping — A practice, not a god: the Korl hold their family dead as small, near intercessors rather than swearing to any distant power.

member_of

←Three-Cairns — Three-Cairns is Korl — the speaking wind says nothing to his people, which is why he can cross at dusk.

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