Tuwu People

Biodata

Background / History

Before the Holy Glory Empire unified the lands south of Dragon Spine Pass, the Tuwu tribes traded cattle, sheep, and horses with several southern states. Access to multiple markets allowed them to seek another trading partner whenever one refused to sell. Southern raids also provided supplies when trade was insufficient 33.

Unification left the tribes dependent on a single southern power. Relations deteriorated as Tuwu tribes accused frontier nobles of lowering livestock prices while charging more for manufactured goods. The nobles, in turn, accused the tribes of repeated raids and disregard for treaties. War eventually closed the trade routes, and successive defeats forced the tribes to abandon pastures near the empire 33.

The pressure to survive brought previously divided tribes together. After roughly a century of accommodation, they established the Golden Horde Khanate, although disputes over pasture, water, and plunder continued within the new state 26 33.

Their mobility frustrated imperial attempts to eliminate them. Over the preceding century, the empire launched more than a dozen expeditions, but nomadic tribes offered few fixed targets; campaigns often destroyed only whichever tribes they happened to encounter 6.

Society and Economy

Tribal Organization

• Tribal interests outweigh collective interests. Neighboring tribes compete over pasture and water, and the destruction of a rival can leave more grazing land for the survivors 3 26.
• Pasture limits population. Purely nomadic tribes struggle to exceed one hundred thousand people. Larger tribes rely on cultivated land, although suitable farmland is scarce and agricultural techniques remain relatively undeveloped 40.
• Martial strength carries prestige. A fierce appearance is admired as an outward sign of strength 8.
• Common enemies hold the coalition together. Knightley identifies war against the Holy Glory Empire as a means of redirecting internal rivalries 33.
• Royal authority does not eliminate feuds. The khanate prohibits infighting during wartime, yet tribal disputes still cause deaths, injuries, and disobedience within its armies 33 38 50.

Herding and Trade

Captives and Labor

• Tribes seize craftsmen, farmers, and artisans during southern raids to support agriculture and production on the grasslands 40.
• Captured specialists are treated as slaves without status and face beatings or verbal abuse from Tuwu nobles 40.
• Resentment and fear discourage skilled work and innovation: captives avoid risks rather than develop techniques whose failure could endanger their lives 40.

Religion and Divine Arts

Totem Worship

The Tuwu worship tribal totems rather than the gods followed by other continental nations 22.

• Each tribe has its own totem; tribes sharing a totem originally branched from the same ancestral tribe 22.
• Totems appear on tribal banners. The Goshawk Tribe uses a giant goshawk, while another force encountered near the Dragonbone Mountains carries a golden eagle banner 8.
• Tribes recover warriors’ bodies both to lay their souls to rest and to prevent necromancers from exploiting the dead 45.

Priestly Inheritance

Tuwu priests can use divine arts despite not worshipping gods, contradicting the church’s explanation that such power comes exclusively from deities 43.

• A pure soul qualifies a person to receive the priestly inheritance passed down from their ancestors 43.
• Priests strengthen their abilities through their own cultivation, not prayer 43.
• Priests of different faiths can cooperate to cast forbidden spells 43.
• Divine treatment has limits: during the grassland plague, some patients die because treatment expels the disease while draining their remaining vitality 45.

Totem and Abyssal Summoning

• Totem Summoning Technique: The Goshawk shaman attempts to invoke the Great Goshawk Spirit during Victor’s attack. Fleeing tribespeople knock him down mid-chant, and the backlash kills him; he is not strong enough to complete the technique 12.
• Forbidden abyssal summoning: High Priest Blackwood summons an abyssal creature that breaches Dragon Spine Pass. He dies from the backlash and warns Xavier that stronger forbidden techniques impose greater costs, including a shortened lifespan 22.

Military

Strengths

• Cavalry and open-field combat: Mounted warfare is the Tuwu’s principal advantage, particularly on open grassland 25 34.
• Mobility: Tribes can relocate rather than defend permanent settlements, making conventional punitive expeditions unreliable 6.
• Tribal mobilization: A regular force can recruit substantial local support. Jeremiah’s Seventh Tumen initially numbers about ten thousand, while nearby tribes can raise the combined force into the tens of thousands 27 29.
• Experienced opposition: Northern Frontier Corps veterans regard battles against Tuwu armies as brutal and costly; the easy defeat of the Goshawk camp surprises them 12.

Weaknesses

Known Tribes

Major Story Events

Defeat of the Northern Frontier Corps

Duke Alvin sends imperial troops to help the Golden Horde Khanate suppress an undead scourge. The Tuwu exploit the opening, inflicting a disastrous defeat on the empire’s northern frontier elites. Alvin blames his own lack of caution for the loss 2 6.

Fall of Dragon Spine Pass

• The khanate initially debates an assault against demanding war reparations. Its leaders recognize that a costly siege could undermine the campaign 10.
• Blackwood’s summoned abyssal creature tears a gap in the defenses, allowing Tuwu troops to enter. Blackwood dies shortly afterward 22.
• Silas orders the pass stripped and demolished, presenting its destruction as the removal of the obstacle blocking future southern campaigns 24.
• Extensive looting slows the invading army in Dragon Spine Province. Many warriors lose interest in further conquest once they have accumulated enough goods to relieve poverty at home 34 46.
• The empire responds with local defensive measures and a proposed bounty system offering money, titles, and fiefs for killing Tuwu 22.

Destruction of the Goshawk and Cors Tribes

• Victor targets rear-area tribes to supply his isolated Third Supplementary Army 3.
• A surprise attack routes the Goshawk camp. Cross dies attempting to organize resistance, and the tribe’s shaman is killed by summoning backlash 12.
• Howard’s mountain guerrilla campaign wears down Moriarty’s Cors force through repeated ambushes and traps. Victor subsequently uses the exhausted survivors as targets for his inexperienced mounted archers 15 19 21.
• The destruction of both tribes yields enormous livestock captures and prompts Silas to send the Seventh Tumen back to secure the grasslands 18 24.

Jeremiah’s Encirclement Campaign

Jeremiah secures tribal support by promising compensation, protection for depleted tribes’ pastures, and seventy percent of the spoils other than armor. Cooperation remains unstable as feuds and supply problems undermine the coalition 27 33.

Victor attacks the canyon camp with wolves and cattle carrying burning, grease-soaked grass. By dawn, casualties exceed thirty percent, most supplies have burned, and much of the livestock has been lost. Jeremiah nevertheless stays to seek a decisive victory 35 37.

A plague further reduces the army’s strength. Jeremiah ultimately escapes through the mountains with the main force, abandoning the sick and wounded. Most of those left behind are killed by cattle and wolves; imperial troops shoot those attempting to surrender at the exit 40 42.

Plague and the “Devil Legion”

• Tribes retrieving bodies from the canyon carry the plague into surrounding communities 45.
• Tribal leaders recognize the disease, but ordinary herders interpret it as a devil’s curse. Victor’s army becomes widely known as the Devil Legion 44 45.
• Imperial intelligence later reports more than two hundred thousand deaths attributed to a curse. Duke Alvin questions the explanation, suggesting disease or an attempt to conceal military defeat 47.
• Fear spreads ahead of Victor’s westward march. Tribes avoid his army, while smaller groups provide livestock rather than risk destruction 46 47.

Recruitment into Victor’s Army

Victor orders the recruitment of Tuwu men for an expendable auxiliary force before crossing the Andorra Peninsula. He offers payment for cooperation but authorizes force against tribes that refuse, while avoiding areas dominated by major tribes 47.

He subsequently allows cooperative tribes to reduce their quotas and supply slaves as substitutes. Tuwu cavalry supporting him defeats the Azure Wave Tribe; Victor disperses its prisoners among his battalions and rewards participating tribes with captured people and supplies 48 50.