Every millenia has its heroes and every hero has a song or story to go along with their name, be it original or tacked on later as the times change. Take Kromin The Snuuk Puncher. Originally his name was Kromin The Gorthber Strangler Massacre Defeater. His title was changed to The Snuuk Puncher after the war with the Gorthber ended and the gremlin things began to take offense to the whole ‘Gorthber Strangler Massacre Defeater’ thing. Plus no one really knew what ‘Strangler Massacre Defeater’ meant. Did Kromin massacre the Grothber by strangling them or did he defeat strangling massacres? For all we know his title could mean he defeated a massacre on some Gorthber cave system and then strangled the lot of them afterwards just to keep the battle going.

The mythology changed to him punching the Snuuk instead because we have an alliance with the Gorthber and our truce with the Snuuk has always been dicey at best in a glare at you from across the street from an alley kind of way. Kromin the Snuuk Puncher was a true hero to my people. Strong, mighty, gigantic, and other synonyms for having big muscles and throwing your ships at your enemies. Very few stories include him using his brain, let alone having one.

The reason I brought up Kromin is because he is the popular hero of my people, the Startlesnort clan of Osesh.

Osesh is exactly as is sounds. I know there’s more to Osesh than just the places we of the Village live and do our Villager daily chores because sometimes, when the rainy hail tries to kill you just a little bit less and you can lift your head just a little bit more to look around you, you can see distant white capped mountains and different colored forests. Everything on Osesh will make you die some sort of horrible death, but just looking at the golden, green, aquamarine, blue, all the colorful trees someplace other than the Village you can imagine that somewhere there’s a place where you don’t have to be hard to live, a place where softness and warmth exists.

A place other than here.

But that’s likely wishful thinking. No Villager goes beyond the tree line. We only war with one another across the meadows and sometimes build little rafts to reach other Villages on little rock islands.

Never mind, I’m getting off topic. Back to the tour.

When Osesh borders the sea it’s either trying to drown itself or shoots above in sheer cliff faces with a wind that will pull you over the side screaming. The wind, that is. The wind will be the one screaming. You probably won’t be able to since it’s so strong it will steal you breath and pull you over the side of the cliffs to plummet to your death or a very bad headache. We have our yearly Village Dun Dun Dun feast to celebrate stealing stuff from other Villages on the cliffs. Usually most of the Villagers survive, but after a few friendly contests of who can land on their head in the water the Villagers death might be preferable.

We mainly hunt in the Marshlands, a very shallow stretch of ocean that house our Capricorns, but a big chunk of our food supply comes from neighboring Villagers. We usually take their supplies, but sometimes the Village just goes through some crazy months.

A tip for Village living?

Emergency rations.

Emergency rations are easy to keep because Osesh is always more or less ankle deep in water between the thick grasses that grow everywhere but our bridgelike roads and is so cold that the water is almost always frozen so you can keep things edible for a long time, which is extremely helpful on the moon cycle of Baytun Bite for reasons mentioned earlier.

In case I hadn’t made it clear we don’t actually keep- okay well, most of the Villagers don’t keep their food in the mucky water. We store it in cellars or attics, both of which keep the provisions as solid blocks of ice.

We Villagers aspire to live like our heroes. Heroes like Alfar Tide Beater, Edda The Foot Eater, Guarra The Villager Whose Punches Will Give You Nightmares And A New Accent, Aki Thunder Muncher Farter, and shall we never forget Porleikr Grassbreath. Every Villager does their best to live up to the legends. Naturally, because the wind is always trying to flay your skin off and the weather is either raining hail, snowing hail, snowing sleet, or raining snow Villagers have to be as tough as a hero. We have to be strong enough to milk boulders, hard enough to roar away a tempest, have a thirst for battle even the sea cannot quench, and have a dislike for anything we consider weak because everything on Osesh can and will try to kill you, so why would you ever want to get attached to something that will die soon?

Guess where I come in.