The Great Contest
Zhuru is a vast, endless plain, too soft for stone, too lean for farming, too open for walls. Here the people live by hoof and fang, by wind and rut, by hunger and pride. It is no land for cities—crops wither, walls topple, towers sink into the grass. Only tribes endure, bound by blood, lust, and vengeance, carried on the breath of the steppe itself.
The horse clans roam as merchants and warriors, herds at their backs, caravans trailing them like veins across the sea of grass. They do not fear the wolves—for they have never hunted them. Instead, they ride together. Wolves serve as muscle, scouts and harriers, lean bodies cutting through the tallgrass, always at the edge of the horsemen’s reach. They ask for little in coin; their true reward is flesh. To rut with horse-maidens is payment enough, and so the pact of hoof and fang endures—lust and blood tangled, inseparable as breath and wind.
With them too journey the ravens, black-eyed and patient. For eons they have bound themselves to the wolves, and through them to the horses. Their croaks echo across the camps, messengers and assassins, priests and prophets. They are carrion-birds and oracles alike, feather and claw threaded through the lifeblood of the steppe. Where wolves howl and horses whinny, the raven’s croak is never far behind.
Zhuru does not nourish with grain or stone, but it breeds vitality in hardship. To live here is to remain in motion, always hungry, always alert. Tribes fight not merely for grazing or water, but for pride—for the honor of riding farther, striking harder, outlasting storm and famine. Alliances form as quickly as they break, marriages and betrayals carrying the rhythm of the wind.
Above all ride Azhana and Tarkhan, the fertility pair—stallion and storm, mare and thunder, their eternal coupling painted across the sky. Each spring their embrace brings the rains, their sweat falling as lifeblood upon the steppe. Each summer their rut fills the grasslands with thunder, each storm a climax that renews the tribes. When they part, famine stalks. When they join, abundance surges. The steppe lives or dies by their passion, and every rider knows the truth: Zhuru itself is the child of that union, born in a storm of hoofbeats and lightning.