They soon found they were subject to suspicion in the outside world, made
all the worse for the pilfering habits that they developed in their days
of privation. The main body formed what amounted to a tribe which
held itself exclusive from the human populations it dwelled among.
But having an aloof population of thieves and wizards in their midst sat
poorly with most city-dwellers and riots and official mandate often drove
the Ercii emigrants away. They might have formed one of Minaria's
common rural ethnic groups, but they had little money to buy land, and
they came from a citified population which had long been denied the right
of owning land in Elfland, and now making a virtue of necessity, looked
down on such a life. So, at first by pack train, later by wagon,
they took to an iternerant life, and soon enough became known as the "Wandering
People."
Rapidly evolving into a tribe of its own, the Wandering People break broke
itself up into clan-groups able to fend for themselves and large groups
only met together by accident at first, at least at first. But in
latter years the Wandering People developed a rich culture of their own,
with their own feast-days and rendezvous, in which clans from far and wide
would come together to contract marriages, select tribal elders, and trade
news and intelligence.
The Wanderer, as the individual of the tribe is often called, is generally
a tent dweller, and though it might have once been of necessity, he nows
seems to prefer life in the open and tends to be a town-dweller infrequently,
and then mostly in winter. Says an older Wanderer song, "Sun and
air of wood and fields are necessities of life." Wind, though, is
personified in their folklore as a elemental demon, who had time and again
torn down his tents and upset his caravans.
That part of the Wanderer's life which is not played out in front of his
tent is probably of secondary importance. He sleep in the open air
whenever possible, and if he is blessed, he dies there in his time.
Freedom is the fondest wish of his heart, and his life has been described
as a prolonged summer holiday. Constantly changing scenes invigorates
his body like a healthful tonic -- one week on the margin of a forest,
the next on the top of a hummock or by the bank of a river.
Winter is a full-blooded demon to the Wanderer. Some ensconce themselves
in cities during the cold months, but if they do not return to the road
in springtime, they are no longer considered true Wanderers by their own
people, and are treated as pitiable poor relation who can have no directing
role in the tribe's life. Some clans have infact developed into semi-nomads,
making their way from town to town, staying some months in each, as sieve-,
spoon-, or bowl-makers. A famous glass-blower of Tadafat always called
himself a Wanderer, but his nomad kin would have called him, in the bastard
Eleven speech they use, an ignerna, that is, a mule who cannot keep up,
a cast-off who is left behind to fend for itself.
Many dare the winter almost in the open, not always from desperate need.
Just a shelter from the hated wind will sometimes suffice -- as the bottom
of a quarry or a clay-pit, where their innumerable children, half-clothed
sometimes, huddle close around the smoke of a fitful fire. Corwel
of Attara, a collector of their countless stories, likens them to wasps,
who settle in any convenient cranny for their winter hibernation -- in
the Wanderer's case, a manor house ruin, a cave, a burned village, or even
an abandoned military earthwork.
Corwel says that Wanderers maintain that a ceiling makes four constant
walls like a dungeon to them. In Immer, he relates, a Wanderer family
was given a house and a piece of land by a local magnate whom they had
freed from a minor curse. In but a forthnight the nomads had sold
the land to the magnate's neighbor and had lodged their horses inside the
house, while they lived quite contentedly in their tent pitched along side
of it. After another month, they were away on the road again, never
to be seen in the vicinity again.
Even those Wanderers who winter in towns do not act like conventional inhabitants.
They will rent what is cheapest -- usually in the disreputatble beggars'
and thieves quarters of the borough. The unheated, bare rooms are
packed with traveling gear and only a few guards stay by them in daylight.
The rest of the clan are alway otu in seardch of food or looking for a
chance to do business. Some wealthy Wanderers may own houses, but
pay a lawyer to manage the letting of it, while the owner tents along the
roadways.
But such instances are unusual. When they have gold, Wanderers tend
to spend it profagately. Their wagons are sometimes packed with costly
costumes and baubles, which are gradually bartered as the inevitable bad
times return. A Wanderer has no strong attachment to anything except
family, friends, and the necessities of his life -- his tent, his horse
or donkey, and his cart. While circumstance might deprive him even
of these, he is not discouraged, but takes steps to acquire a new horse
and wagon. His ethic makes even on drawn by a dog acceptable, as
long as there is room for a few belongings and a sheet for nighttime shelter.
Wanderers train their children to beg, but this is policy, not a sign of
dependant abjection. He in fact seldom seeks help from others, not
even tokens from members of his tribe more fortunate than he.
When a Wanderer encampment is near, and it is not driven off by the local
constabulatories, it is a source of suspicion to the neighborhood, but
also a focus of mischief and entertainment. Wanderer People permiate
the countryside, working as blacksmiths, locksmiths, or even as harvesters
on some landholder's estate.
But a Wanderer camp often throws open its hospitality and becomes a sort
of carnival, with fortunetellers, tricksters, and acrobats striving to
amuse. The Wandering People tend to a very handsome physical type.
Elves may be too lean, and humans too stocky, but the hybrid attains a
happy medium, who, happy, is also fair of complection and even-featured.
They age somewhat more rapidly than Elves, but less quickly than humans,
and do not tend to overweight in middle years. Wanderer girls are
proverbial for their beauty, and also for their supposed wantonness.
This latter reputation may merely stem from reaction to their wild and
alluring public dances, since Wanderer women faithful to thier people's
ways marry only within the tribe. Corwel's book, Following the Wanderers,
alleges that this restriction does not always apply to outsiders adopted
into the tribe. Nonetheless, laisons with the duin, (a word that
litterally means "dupes," or "fools," but is indiscriminately applied to
any pure-blood humans) will ruin a maid's reputation and she becomes a
donn-dessa, literally a "dead child." Marriage with non-human races
is strictly forbidden under tribal law.
Arcane wisdom is attributed to these mysterious strangers and Wanderer
healers ply their arts upon those physically afflicted, or bothered by
spirits in the mind. Always having been known as magicians, the Wanderer
noidehu, "wise ones," are frequently asked to break spells or curses --
or even to place such curses on the enemies or rivals of their customers.
A story is told that an elder daughter of a good house refused to marry,
which provoked her younger sister, who was refused marriage by their father
until the elder should wed. She asked a Wanderer witch for a spell
to make her older sister fall in love. She received it, alas, but the girl
became enamored of the younger sister's suitor, and there was no peace
brought to the unhappy household.
So it may be seen that although Wandering People are nomads, they are not
frequently found in empty land, such as conventional nomads prefer.
They are dependent upon established society for their livlihood and avoid
open land where every meal has to be wrung from the soil by grueling labor.
Instead, they find ingenious ways of making themesel useful to local populations,
purchasing in this way the right to exist.
So, accepting their postion as a despised and impure race who earn their
livng by singing, dancing, circus acting, fortune-telling, knackering,
leather-working, and tinkering, activities which most civilized people
scorn to perform. In this way, they exist on much the same basis
as their ancestors did in Neuth. Wanderers can be hired to empty
manor house latrine pits, catch mad dogs, and even serve as small town
headsmen, from which latter employment comes one of the most common Shucassamite
names for their people, the Shanto. An unsavory legacy of this aspect
of Wandering People expertise is in the smithing of insidious instruments
of torture, "Shanto tools," used all thorugh the South Plains.
But woe to the host communities who either will not or cannot make use
of the Wandering People's honest services, such as they are. A Wanderer
does not hestiate to make his daily bread by theft. They do not steal
from each other witout the risk of disgrace, of course, but he who takes
what he desires from the duin witout getting caught wins respect.
Pickpocketing, swindle, and bait and switch, are Wandering People specialties.
They produce an inordinate number of professional thieves, who often combine
the traditional arts of the pilferer with that of the montebank magician.
It is a marvel how a Wanderer thief can make a silver spoon or a jeweled
brooch disappear in plain sight. Usually it is hens, ducks, and geeese
which he takes, but the best horsethieves in Minaria are Wandring People.
Yet they eschew burglary, for they fear straying from their protective
fires at night, for evil spirits wander in the dark places. Corwel
believes that this is a degraded belief derived from the fairy lore of
the Elven race.
Wandering People also dread locks and keeps clear from closed doors and
windows, for behind lurk the spirits which protect strange dwellings.
But if a door or window of an empty house is left open in daylight, he
may pilfer from it at will. A coriary to hsi fear of spirits is his
avoidance of unsanctioned homicide, for the unquiet spirit of the victim
will doubtless pursue the slayer to the grave.
But if Wanderers are constrained from doing fatal violence, their ire is
to be feared nontwithstanding. Their many magic-users are apt in
the placing of curses. These may be petty, as the infliction of an
itching ear, or as terrible as the making of werewolves. Powerful
Wanderer sorcerers have earned great rewards by serving rich employers.
But there is a benign side to the magic of the Wandering People.
We have already alluded to their healing skills and herbal wisdom.
But over the years their greatest wonder-workers have made a small number
of magical objects whose fame is spread far and near. These are often
used to purchase the friendship of mighty magnates and even monarchs.
It is customary for the tribe as a whole to make a great tribute to the
monarch who consent to host their great tribal congregation, the Corneiu-Derga.
As long as the monarch keeps a host's faith with his guests, these items
are his to use. But should the contract be broken, the Wandering
People will take back what is loaned and perhaps wreck a terrible vengence
besides.
In the year year 1251, the court magician, Corfu, tired of being a power
behind the throne and murdered the king of Muetar and his entire family,
except, some say, the prince Rustad, who vanished. It is believed
that the young man was either killed in secret by Corfu and his agents,
or was slain by brigands as he fled along the roads. Still others
believe that the unfortunate heir was executed in secret by the incoming
dynasty, the Pirostars when he supposedly took refuge at Pennol seeking
assistance. A few aver that he was one of the several "false-Rustads"
who attempted to unseat Emperor Egalon early in his reign (no important
group agrees which one). Other stories give still stranger accounts
of his fate, but such unwarrented rumor-mongering does not warrent a place
in a serious historical treatis.
But Corfu was dismayed to find that his personal grasp on power made his
position of authority weaker, not stronger, as even a puppet royal family
could command loyaties that a low-born pretender could not. Unsure
of all but a small cadre of warrior followers, the infamous Scarab Legion,
Corfu sought to secure his power by the means he knew best, sorcery.
In sent an invitation to the elders of the Wandering People, offering sanctuary
in exchange for their famous tribute, and the support of their troop of
warriors.
The pact was made and Wandering People clans congregated in the place that
Corfu had set aside for them. They yielded to him the Flying Carpet,
the Guiding Light, and the Spinning Wheel, as well as a thousand able,
even acrobatic, Wandering People warriors. His court blurgeoned with
their expert thieves and magic-users. All who had hoped for an early
overthrow of the tyrant felt despondant over his increased power and very
man wavered in their determination to be rid of him.
But Eagalon, the rebel lord of Pennol, knew that the Wandering People loved
Corfu not, and only their contract with him held them to allegiance.
Foremost in the contract was protection of their property and dependants.
He resolved to martial an attac, upon the Wandering People's gathering
while they were gathered to celebrate one of their Great Days. A
second force would make a diversionary attack beforehand, to draw Corfu's
forces away from the fort which protected their half-blooded allies.
Egalon's quailed at the prospect of invoking the ire of so many magic users
of unsavory reputation. Declaring himself ready to triumph or die,
Egalon took upon himself the leadership of the raid on the Wandering people,
and his vacilating captains were shamed into falling in behind him.
Egalon was a hard leader, all the morse so in peacetime, but no one can
say that his courage was not build out of adamantine.
The raid was made, and as Muetaran knights thundered beween the campfires
and wagons of the enemy, they rode down and sabred everything that moved,
their varlets racing up behind on foot, to torch the wagons, tents, and
storied provender for the Wanderers' animals. The slaughter was dreadful
before the marauders escaped into the darkness before dawn.
The Wandering People could rightfully have taken harsh vengeance against
the ruthless young rebel, but in the dispair of the morning after, their
anger congealed upon the figure of "King" Corfu, who had promised them
safety with bland assuranceds, and had taken their own fighting men away
to use in operations of his own. So the elder sorcerers pronounced
a terrible curse upon the wizard Corfu, inflicting upon him the Curse of
the Full Moon. For months thereafter Corfu became a man-wolf for
three nights of each month, prowling the benighted fields and forests,
feasting on the flesh and blood of man and animals alike.
But the man was a mighty sorcerer in his own right, and obsessively sought
the means to end the curse. As he did so, he was distracted from
the precarious stituaton of his rule, as men shunned him for his affliction,
and whole regions declared for Eagalon.
Corfu eventually found the means to draw the black magic which suffused
his whole into his left hand, which his stalwart, the captain of the Scarab
Legion, sliced off at his master's order. The ordeal achieved its
objective, but forever after the Hand of Corfu was said to have the power
to both make and unmake werewolves.
It was too late for Corfu to turn his attention back to his collapsing
rite, and his Great Conjuration, intended to give Muetar into the power
of the Gods of Chaos in exchange for being their agent upon the earth,
was interrupted by the capture of his city by Eagalon's vorces and the
noble rebel reserved to himself the privilege of empaling his enemy through
his black heart.
But by that time the Wandering People had all but withdrawn from war-torn
Muetar, with a reputation that thereafter not even tghe mightiest of worldly
monarch would fain ignore.