Wilderness of Zin

The Wilderness of Zin is really an extension of Turan, set apart less by politics than by slightly different land and climate. It supports more people than the rest of Turan and has several fairly fertile areas where villages have grown up, along with many small nomadic herding tribes and many strange, magical beasts and monsters. The tribes are all related but few are friendly to anyone; each claims to be the ancestor of all Zin's peoples, some say of the whole world, and treats disagreement as heresy, so feuds never end, and few visitors come. The fifteen nomadic tribes are Tubal, Togarmah, Tiras, Shagar, Riphath, Meshech, Magog, Madai, Kittim, Japheth, Javan, Danan, Elishah, Ashkenaz and Anshar, each of 200-800 people growing slowly because of constant fighting; the settled tribes and their villages are Enoch, Joppa, Shadad, Shanidar and Ubaid. All are swarthy, dark-haired and of average build, the men nearly always bearded and armed with fine long curved daggers, dressed in turbans, cloaks and other desert clothing.

They are primitive, knowing little or nothing of metalworking: they use metal tools from Tharshesh and Sheba but cannot mend or make them. They are good stoneworkers, and the settled tribes make fine pottery, build small sun-dried brick houses and farm, though not yet well. The nomads, above all herders of cattle and goats who also hunt, gather, raid or trade with the villages, excel at weaving, animal husbandry and basketry, and Sheban and Tharshi traders brave the land for their baskets and cloth. Each tribe has its own religion and patron god and scorns all others; the Old Gods mostly dominate, though other faiths have tribal followings. The Zin see magic as divine power, so tribal wizards act as priests and sages, and a mighty enough wizard might live among them as a god; warrior-heroes are idolized too, but only by the tribe they were born into or adopted by. As the saying goes, the tribes of Zin and Turan agree only that they never agree.

Most tribes are nearly identical, but a few stand out. Elishah, led by a mystic preaching peace, is the most peaceable, never starts feuds and deals more openly with foreigners, yet never forgets a wrong and strikes back quickly, to its leader's dismay. Shagar (also called Shagan) worships Ash, reveres every form of magic, religious or learned, has a cult that became shamanistic only in time, and trades on a small scale with friendly Sheban merchants. Tubal is warlike and expansionist, craving metal weapons and above all the secrets of metalworking, for which it is said it would sell its own chief into slavery; poor, it gets little from its trade with Tharshesh. Magog is a fanatical shamanistic cult of Og practicing blood sacrifice and ritual cannibalism, as warlike as Danan but for religious reasons. The Dananites, led by a warrior-hero who dreams of conquering Yalak, fight anyone in their path and sometimes trade opium and slaves to Tharshi merchants for iron broadswords, spears, helmets and reinforced shields.