The Kheironoi (pronounced KAI-rohn-oi) are a centaur people who live in the Thunderlands of central Hellea. One of the last groups of independent Hellean centaurs who still inhabit their ancestral lands, the Kheironoi have faced great pressure as the ongoing conflicts between Iaramnae and the Halakran League brings war directly to their territory.
History
The history of the Kheironoi goes back millennia, attested to in inscriptions dating as far back as when the cyclops ruled the Hellean peninsula. While long admired as orators and stewards of the land, they have simultaneously faced challenges as settled communities of other peoples have encroached on the forests and plains they once called their own. As they contracted and began to limit their nomadic ways to the Thunderlands, the Kheironoi absorbed other tribes of Hellean centaurs, bringing them into the fold with their old distinctions gradually falling away.
Location
Nearly all Kheironoi live in the Thunderlands, a large and ancient forest of central Hellea. Some occasionally leave to establish new beginnings elsewhere, but most find life with settled peoples to be too challenging and alien to their traditionally itinerant ways.
Culture
Religion
Kheironoi centaurs are broadly animistic, worshiping the nature spirits of their forests, and in particular those of the most ancient groves and of the night sky. They do not place much emphasis on religious authority, as they believe the spirits prefer to speak directly to their faithful rather than through intermediaries who may obscure their meanings, intentionally or otherwise. Some Kheironoi bands pray or give offerings to the gods of the Hellean pantheon as well, though this is considerably less widespread.
Society
The fundamental unit of Kheironoi society is the band. Each band consists of between 20 to 50 individuals, most often sharing familial relations, who together live nomadic lifestyles throughout the Thunderlands. Their travels are dictated equally by material concerns, where they can find food, shelter, and so on, and by their interpretations of the motions of the stars, as move with the constellations. The bands return regularly to particular sites within their forests, which usually possess some form of religious significance as well, where they rest, worship, and tend to their weary and their elders. Kheironoi bands are most often led by an elder, usually female, who has through their travels obtained almost complete knowledge of the landscape.
Kheironoi have great reverence for the natural landscapes of the forests and grasslands in which they live. Even as they have been pushed into more dense concentrations of population than they consider traditional or desirable, they maintain their old ways of preserving the lands for future generations, careful never to overharvest resources or cause unnecessary damage. Shortly after their birth the parents of each young centaur plant a tree for their child, who then returns to that same locations every three years to plant one more and expand their grove. While the Kheironoi are protective of their forests as a whole, each individual will go to especially great lengths to ensure their particular trees can thrive.
Traditions
Upon death, the Kheironoi believe particularly worthy individuals are elevated into the heavens to form new constellations. This is an exceptionally rare occurrence, as only the most exceptional and truly peerless can bring the spirits of the heavens to alter their paths and patterns. Some theologians consider these beliefs to have influenced the Day of Eternal Starlight, a rural Hellean faith with similar notions of heroes ascending to stars.
Well-known for their skills as orators, Kheironoi consider debates to be ways to settle disagreements and as mere entertainment - in truth, they often see very little difference between the true. It is not unusual for rivals, friendly or otherwise, to maintain long, complex, ongoing arguments, setting them aside during their travels then resuming when their bands re-encounter each other as if no time had passed. While the Kheironoi possess writing, they rarely use it, preferring to maintain their stories and knowledge orally instead.
The Kheironoi prefer to resolve all disputes through peaceful methods first, usually through public debates. When these fail, however, their skill as archers can be devastating, as many train constantly from the time they are young and can first draw a bow. The centaurs strongly maintain beliefs regarding miasma, as do many inhabitants of Hellea - that is, that diseases are caused by fetid air - but also take this a step further, holding that the spilling of blood releases miasma that can cause illness to those nearby. As such, they take great pains to ensure any combat takes place at as long range as possible, never using their bows or javelins close to their foes. Even with as much as the Kheironoi are loath to fight their own, they are perhaps even more reticent to engage in any battle against outsiders, for their understand well that the retribution any actions against the people of Iaramnae or the Halakran League could bring.
Languages
Kheironoi centaurs most often speak their own dialect of Hellean, either instead of or in addition to the language of fey.
Food and agriculture
While the Kheironoi live primarily nomadic lives, they are not purely hunter-gatherers, as they also manage landscapes of orchards, grape vines, and other plants throughout the Thunderlands. These are shared communally by all bands, with each tending to the groves and gardens and taking from them as required, but always leaving enough for the next band to arrive.