The Asheni

The grey-skinned, ember-eyed old blood of the Vale and the ash — kin to the fallen Vallen Imperium and to the wandering Bonesung clans. The Sundering is written into them: ash in the skin, the wound in the marrow.

The Asheni were in the Vale before House Vandahl put names to the holds, and they carry their ancestors as readily as they bury them. Their skin is the grey of cooled ash and their eyes hold an ember-red light; fire and ash that would blister a settler only warm them. Settled Asheni keep the temples, the forges, and the long family grudges of the great Houses; the wandering clans — the Bonesung — keep the older ancestor-rites out on the open ash and call the settled ones soft. Both trace their blood to the Imperium that broke at Caer Vallen, and both feel the Sundering's weight more plainly than any settler ever will. Proud, ceremonious, and slow to trust outland faces.