Composition: Loose network of nomadic cultures
Geopolitical Stature: None
Government: Individual tribe and family structures
Capital: None
Leadership: No centralized leadership
Dominant Religion: Alduir
Dominant Language: Prak
Imports: Finished metal goods, fish, grain, spices, textiles, wine
Exports: Furs, ivory, livestock


Tundra. Endless steppe. Thick, menacing, primeval forest. Foul marshlands. Cool emptiness broken by rivers. The Kolma�sometimes known by outsiders as just "Kolm"�conjures imagery that is sometimes pastoral, sometimes savage, but almost always mistaken. In the native tongue of the Trov nomads, the name of the region means "patience," but that definition is flexible: Sometimes the tranquil feeling of inner peace, sometimes the watchful waiting of the hunter.

Ranging from bands of tundra that slope down from the northern mountains, to the taiga-covered highlands that melt gradually into the cool sward of the steppe, to the swamps surrounding the Ergan and Lake Hovg, the Kolma finally terminates in the more temperate forests and hills that mark the tentative border of the Zahhak. The freezing waters carried south from the permafrost along the feet of the Nom Kordor ("That Which Cripples," in Prak) sometimes freeze well after winter; summer is fleeting, and the local flora blooms aggressively for just a few weeks each year, competing for resources in a desperate bid to survive the swift return of autumn. It is not a land of agriculture, for the soil is too thin and rocky, in most places, to support more than scattered subsistence farming; most who call the Kolma home rely on hunting and lake-fishing for the bulk of their food, and trade with the Serene Empire and the Zahhak, when they are able, for spices and grain. The working season is too short for endeavors in other resources.

It is not a readily welcoming place, and life in the Kolma has made the Trov as tough and cold as the unyielding earth. The lack of arable land contributes heavily to the continuation of their nomadic lifestyle; what few permanent settlements exist are mostly clustered around the northern shores of Lake Hovg, or at the meeting of imperial or Zahhak borders, relying on merchants working the long trade route from south to northwest. Such villages are thinly populated, heavily fortified, and rare, for neither the environment nor the region's indigenous megafauna are particularly conducive to human habitation. Ghost towns and other evidence of failed colonization attempts litter the steppe, testaments to southern and western interests that have since fallen out of fashion. In true Serene fashion, the Empire nominally claims the Kolma for itself, but this is almost a joke to fellow world powers; the territorial assertion goes unchallenged only because nobody else wants the barrens, either�a popular source of shared humor for Regnan and Zahhak emissaries and officials.

The rich oral histories of the Trov are filled with legends of the Kolma as a land of green and plenty, but this was long ago, if indeed it was ever true; their mythology holds that some great disaster struck the land dead, or laid it sleeping, even sinking a large area along the eastern coast. The specifics are misty and often vary according to local dialect or the customs of the storyteller; among the many clans, tribes, and families who tell the tale, only one point remains largely unaltered: That the sea swallowed whatever realm stood in the east well before the ancient nations of the Zahhak had emerged from their hide tents and mastered fire. A few weathered stone ruins discovered near the sheltered bays of the Kolma's ragged eastern coastline have attracted much interest from scholars of various nations, representing definitive proof that some sort of ancient civilization did have a presence in that area, but too little information has been gleaned from the sparse findings to create any sort of coherent picture. The Trov treat the ruins as sacred (or cursed) and refuse to approach them, guide archaeologists to them, or�in some cases�even discuss them, and they have a healthy dislike for treasure-hunting and grave-robbing.

Since most Trov practice some variation upon ancestor worship, family shrines and sacred sites are a common phenomenon, and the Kolma is decorated with the solitary or mass grave sites of those who have either been returning to the same places for generations, or who have fallen to the region's great elk, caribou, moose, giant sloths, mammoths, cave bears, sabercats, and enormous wolves. Such creatures clash often with the nomad folk, who make a business of hunting them not only for survival, but also for profit: Zoos and furriers in both the Serene Empire and the Zahhak pay generous sums for the pelts of Kolman wildlife, and even more for live specimens. Needless to say, such beasts present a challenge for even the most skilled hunters, and tracking and capturing their animal neighbors are arts the Trov have refined for centuries.

Even the Trov still suffer a terrible attrition rate, between the weather and the fauna. For a growing few, abandonment of their traditional lifestyle in favor of citified comforts is becoming a more attractive option, even in spite of relative poverty and the pervasive, primarily institutionalized, racism they experience at the hands of their imperial cousins. While Serene violence toward the Trov has decreased, in recent decades (thanks mostly to the continued supply of rare furs and ivory), discrimination and even segregation remain routine. Yet, as a result of their distant, shared ancestry and common linguistic roots, the imperials are more attractive to the Trov than the unfamiliar heat and strange tongues and gods of the Zahhak.