Cimmeria

Cimmeria runs from Hyperborea's western coast inland to the Rhiphaen Mountains, a hilly, mostly forested region whose lowlands usually flood into marsh each spring. Its human tribes, the Cimmerians, are a hardy, dark-haired people thought to descend from northern Mediterraneans. They know little farming but are skilled hunters and trappers and have tamed the wild dog and the goat.

They live together in little bands of 10 to 40 people, in simple villages where each family has one wooden hut roofed with green hides or thatch, usually inside a stockade of heavy posts, sometimes with goat pens and sheds for drying and curing hides. Though fairly primitive, they work iron for tools, axe-heads, arrowheads and swords, a skill some say they learned from the Rhiphaen dwarves, with whom they trade; their generally good to excellent swords lend weight to the claim.

The Cimmerians are peaceable and seldom fight among themselves, but they detest the proud Vanir and unite to fend off their raids, and a particularly brutal attack may provoke a large counterstrike on a Vanir settlement. Poorly equipped, usually with just furs or leather, a shield, and a bow, axe or sword, they fight by ambush, night raids and similar stealth, at which these forest folk excel. They are not very religious: they honor Atta but think him too busy to heed mortals, and though a tribe will often have a druidic Healer or shaman, such people hold little sway, since most Cimmerians distrust or fear anything magical. Fiercely independent, they have no formal chiefs; a skilled warrior leads in times of danger, and otherwise each band rules itself by council.