Ash Brides | Primer | Cursed Kins

The living world of Ash Brides is a broken ring of hard countries around a deader waste. Where water still gathers, men raise walls and call themselves kings. Where it does not, caravans hurry and raiders wait. The human bloodstocks below are the children of those countries, shaped by cold plateaus, glass deserts, salt flats, mesa wars, and the crowded shade of the oasis cities.

Kin here means body and homeland, not trade or office. A Pale-Ash man may be a raider, a Wellwright, or a servant of the city. A Sun-Bronze woman of the Belt may stand in any station the laws of her city allow. The entries that follow describe where each stock thrives, how its people look, and how the land has taught them to live. Against the Darkmaster statistics close each entry.

The Oasis Belt holds most of the Maned Cities, each grown around an alien Obelisk and a jealously guarded well. North rise the High Ash plateaus. South stretch the Ember Reach and its glass fields. East and west the Bluffs cut the horizon. Between the cities lie the White Flats, white as bone and meaner than honest sand.

Regions of the ash
[HIGH ASH] Pale-Ash stock | [BLUFFS] -----+----- [BLUFFS] Red-Earth | Red-Earth | [WHITE FLATS] [OASIS BELT] [WHITE FLATS] Salt-Pale Sun-Bronze Salt-Pale | Obelisk-cities | (Black Gate, rivals...) | [EMBER REACH] Deep-Ebony stock
Contents

Pale-Ash

Northmen, High-Ash folk, Windbloods

Origin and lifestyle

Pale-Ash hail from the High Ash, the cold plateaus and wind-scoured rock north of the Belt. When the world dried, their forebears climbed rather than fled south. Winter nights and thin air culled the soft, and what remains is a fair-skinned people used to long marches, stone holds, and hard bargains over every drop of meltwater. In the low cities they often take work as guards and caravan hands, and they never stop complaining about the heat. Among their own they keep small fortified villages, trade wool and metal downslope, and measure a person's worth by whether she lasts the climb home.

Appearance

Their skin is fair to ruddy and burns easily under the lowland sun before it freckles under dust. Hair runs from ash-blond to dark brown, and light eyes are common though not required. Builds range from lean-hard to thick-winter stock, and faces weather early in both sexes. Cold wind writes itself into the lines around the eyes long before age does.

Customs and attitude

Pale-Ash prize endurance and plain speech. A long story is tolerated only if it ends in useful news. They feast rarely and hard when the snow breaks, and they bury their dead with faces toward the high ridges so the spirit will know which way is home. Strangers are offered water before questions. Liars are offered neither twice.

Pale-Ash
Pale-Ash
BRNSWIFORWITWSDBEA
+0+0+5+0+0+0
HPMPTSRWSRBPsWL
30+0+0+560
Plateau Blood: +10 on rolls to endure cold, thin air, or forced marches in high terrain. The low desert still cooks them as readily as anyone else.

Sun-Bronze

Beltfolk, Oasis-blood, City-common

Origin and lifestyle

Sun-Bronze are the heartland stock of the Oasis Belt and its farm-rings, including Black Gate and her rival Maned Cities. Most mixed blood in the alleys eventually reads as theirs. They are clerks and kings, overseers and fighters, priests of the Obelisk and keepers of the wells. Neither the hardest nor the softest of human lines, they are simply the people who live where water and law still pretend to matter, and where a rumor can travel farther than a spear.

Appearance

Olive to deep tan skin is the common mark, with dark hair and eyes of brown, hazel, or green. Height is average. City soft or soldier-hard depends on class more than blood. Their faces are the ordinary coin of civilization: familiar in every plaza, every temple stair, every crowded street where the Obelisk throws its long shadow.

Customs and attitude

Sun-Bronze live by neighborhood, guild, and the calendar of water-rights. Festival days are loud. Debt days are louder. They teach children the alleys as other peoples teach the stars, and they believe a person without a city is half unfinished. Pride in one's well and one's pillar is expected. Open war between cities is rare. Quiet sabotage is not.

Sun-Bronze
Sun-Bronze
BRNSWIFORWITWSDBEA
+5+0+0+0+0+0
HPMPTSRWSRBPsWL
30+0+0+060
City-Born: +10 on rolls involving urban navigation, city custom, or reading the mood of a Maned City (fences, water-law rumors, which gangs own which alleys). Also gain a +10 bonus to any one Skill of your choice at character creation, reflecting a life among trades, temples, and crowded work.

Deep-Ebony

Southborn, Ember-folk, Glass-steppers

Origin and lifestyle

Deep-Ebony peoples come from the Ember Reach: black sand, glass fields, and plains scorched when the old matriarch armies burned the south hardest. Those who lived kept the heat and the long stride. Free tribes and city folk both claim this blood. Northern markets exoticize them as raiders and glass-walkers. Southern holds simply call them kin, and teach their children to read the shimmer over the dunes the way a sailor reads a changing wind.

Appearance

Skin runs very dark brown to blue-black, with hair tight-coiled or cropped close. Tall lean frames are common, though not universal, and eyes are usually dark. Glass-storm scars mark many who still walk the open Reach. In motion they look built for distance rather than for the crush of a city street.

Customs and attitude

Deep-Ebony free tribes keep travel songs and night watches as sacred as any well. Hospitality is serious: a guest under the shade-cloth is safe until she leaves of her own will. They distrust soft hands and long speeches, and they respect anyone who can cross glass without complaint. City-born Deep-Ebony often carry both the pride of the Reach and the practical manners of the Belt, and live with that double inheritance as best they can.

Deep-Ebony
Deep-Ebony
BRNSWIFORWITWSDBEA
+0+5+5+0+0+0
HPMPTSRWSRBPsWL
30+0+0+050
Ember Stride: +10 on rolls to endure extreme heat, glass-glare, or long runs across open ash.

Red-Earth

Bluffkin, Mesa-blood, Stonejaws

Origin and lifestyle

Red-Earth stock holds the Bluffs and Canyons: mesa country, dry gorges, and quarry holds that flank the Belt. Shade-caves and vertical stone breed short, bitter wars over water and wall-space. Bodies thicken on rock-work and gorge-fighting. In the cities their people fill work-gangs, pits, and the hard labor of gates and engines. At home they keep cliff villages, rope bridges, and grudges that last longer than the men who started them.

Appearance

Copper to reddish-brown skin is typical, with stocky frames, heavy brows, and strong jaws. Dark hair is the rule, and men often keep short beards dusted red with local clay. They look built to brace a gate or carry a stone, and they move with the careful balance of people who grew up above long drops.

Customs and attitude

Red-Earth clans mark territory with painted rock and with the scars of old sieges. A shared climb seals friendship faster than shared wine. They distrust flatlanders who speak of distance without knowing height, and they teach children to listen for falling gravel the way others listen for footsteps. Humor is dry. Oaths are not.

Red-Earth
Red-Earth
BRNSWIFORWITWSDBEA
+5−5+5+0+0+0
HPMPTSRWSRBPsWL
35+0+5+050
Stone Shoulders: +10 on rolls involving climbing rock, bracing gates, or feats of raw lift and carry. Treat as a slight load-bearing edge (ignore 1 point of encumbrance penalty from carried weight).

Salt-Pale

Flatborn, White-dust, Thirst-blood

Origin and lifestyle

Salt-Pale come from the White Flats: salt pans and dead-sea beds that separate the trade roads between Maned Cities. Water is a rumor there and salt is a poison their bodies have learned to thrift against. They guide caravans, rob them, or both, and they know every white ridge that looks like every other white ridge to outsiders. In the cities they look half-dead until washed, then merely pale and hard.

Appearance

Skin is sallow to salt-bleached, with sun-cracked lips and hair often lightened or crusted white with dust. Light eyes are more common than in the Belt. Builds are wiry; fat is rare and envied. They look like people who have been dried carefully rather than burned, and their hands are all sinew and map-memory.

Customs and attitude

Salt-Pale travel light and speak of direction the way priests speak of fate. A shared waterskin creates obligations. A wasted drop creates enemies. They mark safe crossings with bone stakes and old cloth, and they teach children to taste the wind for weather that will turn the flats into a killing glare. Humor is sparse. Survival is not considered a joke.

Salt-Pale
Salt-Pale
BRNSWIFORWITWSDBEA
+0+0+5+0+0+0
HPMPTSRWSRBPsWL
30+0+5+560
Flat Lungs: +10 to resist thirst, salt-sickness, and many ingested toxins (GM discretion). +10 on rolls to navigate salt flats and dead-sea beds.
Quick reference
KinRegionBRNSWIFORHPTrait
Pale-AshHigh Ash+0+0+530Plateau Blood
Sun-BronzeOasis Belt+5+0+030City-Born
Deep-EbonyEmber Reach+0+5+530Ember Stride
Red-EarthBluffs+5−5+535Stone Shoulders
Salt-PaleWhite Flats+0+0+530Flat Lungs