The northern edge of Camorren rises in abrupt stone and weather, a harsh flank where ridges run steep into cloud. Known to outsiders as the Camorren Steeps, this band of upland marks the line between fertile fells below and the impassable granite above. Locals sometimes call them the Shoulders of Camorren. Few have reason to venture so far. Yet scattered along its scarps and valleys live the people others call Mountain Folk — to themselves, the High Morna.
The Steeps give way gradually to the softer Camorren Fells further south, where peat is cut and sheep are grazed. But up here, the ground is too thin for fields and too sharp for ploughs. It is a place of turf-roofed winter halls sunk into slopes, of caves used in spring rains, of high summer camps where stars seem close enough to hear.
The People of the Steeps
The High Morna are one of the scattered remnants of an older tribe. Once widespread across Gildraen, the Morna were broken by persecution, their ways of seeing feared and distrusted. Some vanished, some bent into other peoples. A few fled east across the sea, becoming the Imbrùans of the Outer Winds. The rest withdrew north, higher and higher, until only the mountainsides were left to them. They made their home on Karn, Huthra, and Bratha — three of the great ridges out-topped only by the impassable peaks further north.
They do not explain themselves. They do not seek allies. To outsiders they seem harsh, closed, and curiously detached — neither kind nor cruel, but unshaken in their own justification. Their culture is not a cause; it simply is. Fierce in defence, neutral in judgment, they live as the sky and weather live: sometimes still, sometimes violent, never pleading their right to be.
Practice: During long nights, they gather atop peaks, singing low chants that mimic wind patterns and star movements, weaving themselves into the vast hum of the cosmos.
Magic and the Nithal
Tellings
The Morna speak of Nithal — their word for sky, which they use to refer to mountains. To them the ridges are not stone but threshold, the place where earth meets the shifting above. Prophecy — or Telling — comes from that edge: stars sliding behind peaks, winds crossing in strange patterns, shadows cast out of season.
Attunement
Some Morna show some gift of weather-sense or sky-marking, though it does not pass cleanly in blood. A child of outsiders may stir to magic if born or conceived under the right constellation, or named into it by ritual. For the Morna, it is not inheritance that matters so much as the culture of listening — to cloud, to wind, to silence.
Reels
When a new Telling appears, it is Reeled: spoken first in clusters of eight or so, which then break into pairs and fold into other clusters, until every voice has touched it and it has been turned from all sides. The Reel is not to force agreement, but to let the meaning show itself, if it will.
Beasts of the Steeps
The uplands are far from barren. Marmots whistle warnings from their burrows; hares dart white and brown with the seasons; lynx shadow the treeline and are taken as omens. Foxes roam the slopes, and wolves skirt the lower ridges where the fells begin. Ravens mark all.
But most closely tied to the Morna are the Rupa, a mountain antelope, whose shaggy coats underpin much of their livelihood.
Craft and Trade
Unlike their sea-bound kin, the High Morna no longer centre their weaving on linen. Flax grows in the fells below and they will trade for it, but hauling the harvest up the Steeps is long and arduous. Over time their craft bent instead to what their mountains gave them, materials both practical at altitude and close to hand. They now primarily make two specialised cloths:
- Rupa wool — light, insulating, knitted or woven into vests, boot liners, or under-tunics. Whispered about far beyond Camorren, it is a quiet luxury, traded only hand to hand. This is their mainstay and the reason the Morna live in comfort rather than scarcity.
- Weather-cloth — dense, oiled, heavy, made from the fibres of birch, willow, and juniper bark, nettles, and coarse Rupa hairs. Waterproof, windproof, survival cloth. Outsiders find it uncanny; villagers say to wear too much is to carry the Mountain Folk’s shadow with you.
The Morna trade rarely, but enough to live well. They do not haggle. They nod once, or turn away. As with their island kin, they are known to leave with their packs still full if the offer does not feel true.
They maintain a quiet pact with two or three nearby villages: no claim of land, no show of numbers. In exchange for food staples and base materials, the Morna give exquisite, unlabelled goods — but only to those in the know. The trade is always face-to-face, at designated stones, or through middlefolk trusted by both sides. Beyond those valleys, buyers speak only of the cloth and the Camorren Steeps; the makers themselves are never named.
Among the granite seams of the Steeps, the Morna also find amber topaz — their most distinctive stone, warm and honey-coloured, often set into tokens and weather-weights, for their own use or to trade. Once in a great while, a shard of clear blue topaz is uncovered, so scarce it is spoken of more than seen, like a sliver of sky fallen into the rock.