Tribal Data

• Life span: 55
• Height: 5’ 10”
• Body Type: muscular, flexible, otherwise similar to the Last
• Eyes: Brown.
• Hair: Long, rough-cut, and brown or black.
• Heart: On the left.
 

Lifestyle

• Food:
Omnivores who eat whatever they can find. Most food is cooked over open fires.
• Drink:
Water and fruit juices; beer, and vodka.
 

Traditional Dress

• Due to climate, they wear furs, even in summer. They have also developed a kind of waterproof hassock to prevent snow damage.
• Thick, waterproof boots made from animal skins.
• Full, animal skin headdress, it is cold where they live.
 

Jewellery

They wear many forms of jewellery, and spend the depths of winter perfecting artisan skills.

They model antlers and bone into finely crafted adornments. To these, they add colourful stones, or unusual rocks, often worn as pendants and bracelets.
 

Weapons

• Spear with sharp tip.
• Long stone dagger.
• Bow and arrows.
• Weighted nets.

Like the Eighth, they use nets and snares, but are proud of their stone weighted nets, which are dropped on unwary animals from above.
 

The Ring of Plenty
 

Language

Neighth, a little Ancestor and Russian.

Neighth is a language spoken by both the Eighth and Ninth, although each has their own dialect.
 

Go to Characters: King Groël 
 

The Ninth are homo sapien antecessor

The Ninth were created by the ninth Ancestor, Volf Groul, and both his names are still commonly used by the Tribe. The current king's name is a corruption of 'Groul'.

The homelands of the Ninth lie in western Siberia, where they roam wild wastes east of the Aral Mountains, and avoid all contact with outsiders. The Great Ogre, who is determined to exterminate them, is their greatest fear.

Accommodation
They have evolved a mainly arboreal lifestyle, and are excellent climbers of both trees and rock. They live in large family groups, but males usually leave the clan home to make their own family group. By spreading themselves around, should one group be killed by the Ogres, many more survive elsewhere.

Because of constant Ogre persecution, their population seldom rises above four thousand; like the Eighth, they live on the edge of extinction.
 

Groël, King of the Ninth

Most live in treetop hamlets, often covering a number of large and old trees. They seldom spend more than a few weeks in one place, always moving on to the next, as both the seasons and fear of the Ogres drives them ever onwards.

Families mark their hamlets, and generally progress from one to the next, southwards in summer, returning north in winter. This allows them to catch prey, and stock up on other resources to see them through the winter months.

King Groël, and a few larger clans, mainly use a succession of caves as their base, but again move south in summer, renovating, extending, and connecting networks of caves. This work has been ongoing for millennia, and their clans, unlike most others, have specialist tunnelers.

Domestic arrangements
The Ninth are technically a patriarchal society, but strong women can become clan leaders, and even Queen of the nation. In this respect, it is the duty of the King to choose his successor, which is often the eldest son, but not always, and sometime a female child. The important thing is, that the best equipped person leads the Tribe.

Otherwise male and female perform similar roles, except for childbirth and breast feeding of course. The age of consent is late puberty, due to their few numbers; many young girls becoming mothers, before they become adults. Regards survival of their species, this is imperative. Later, young and old look after the infants during the growing years, allowing the now fully grown and physically fit mother to work.

They are a highly monogamous society, and have wedding rituals. Males and females are born equally, if over a period of time. Because they marry so young, the numbers of males to females is usually about right.
 

Technology
They lost their Ancestral technology hundreds of thousands of years ago, when the Ogres first invaded their lands. King Groël knows exactly where their first city was located, but it is far to the south, and farther to the west (or east), and impossible for them to reach.

They use fire rarely, because it signals their location to the Ogres. The wheel is known, but has little relevance to their daily lives, except when changing location. They, like the Eighth, live a mainly stone age lifestyle. Their most advanced weapon is an aerial net that has both weights and barbs attached.
 

Relocation
After the defeat of the Great Ogre, King Groël told Jack, about their ancient lands, and together they worked to find them. Both were surprised to discover the cave intact, the Ancestral device untouched, and located near Vancouver.

As with the Eighth, Ælthrelntheine began their instruction of how to use the transporter device, but soon passed the task on to her daughter.
 

Location

The Ninth roam a large area of northern Siberia. Their lands lie southeast of the city of Norlisk, and mainly west of Lake Keta, Russia. Map ref:
68.888068,91.163617.

The Eighth are generally southwest of them, and the Ddwyrth south-southeast.
 

Recent paleontological model: male

Image reproduced courtesy of Wikipedia Commons.

Recent paleontological model: female

Image reproduced courtesy of Wikipedia Commons.

King Keos

The Eighth and Ninth share a common language and live in similar parts of the World.

They often come into contact with one another, and use bird calls, to let the other know of their presence.