The Bahab come from the far north. At least, that is what their legends claim. It is, in my assessment, a plausible one. They stand taller and broader in build than any other of Shdustu's peoples, and I am told closely resemble the tribal peoples of the great forests that cover that region, though I have only vague sketches to serve as visual support for this commonality. They are pale-skinned, though often tanned, especially in winter when the reflective properties of the snow bake their faces, and are born with black hair. The elderly among their people watch this turn white with age, never gray. It is usually worn short, and they are always clean shaven. Both men and women habitually cover their heads with rounded hats, hooded cloaks, or animal fur caps. They preferentially wear furs or woolens, though felt leggings have become popular in recent generations and much of their trade with the Kharal serves to supply these garments. Dwelling in forest and mountains, they favor deep greens and browns as colors and wear brightly dyed articles only on rare occasions.

When the wizard-kings ruled the Tasgusun Hills, they were occupied by people from the distant east who did not know the revelation. During that period the forerunners of the Bahab were confined to the northernmost portion of the mountains. When the actions of the Falcon Khagan swept away this prior civilization, if it can even be called that, and claimed Shdustu for the steppe warriors his followers threw down the fortresses of the wizards but largely left the hills unclaimed as they offered little grazing. Nor were the founders of the Nikkad interested in stony lands where crops could be grown only in tiny plots painstakingly cleared. Instead, the Bahab expanded to the south, a migration that has continued across centuries since and encompasses many generations. The Tasgusun Hills represent the southernmost edge of their holdings. Not a numerous people, they expand slowly, taking new territory only when one of their tribes grows sufficiently large to split apart into two smaller but still stable tribes. In recent years, faced with significant hunting in the hills by Kharal parties, they have retrenched, moving deeper into the hills to avoid conflict. This is not an act of cowardice, but an acknowledgment that the pastoralists have far greater numbers at their disposal and considerably greater military organization. They do not hesitate to fight when conditions favor such actions.

The Bahab live in small tribes, usually containing roughly five hundred members. These each hold a single village, which is a semi-permanent construction relocated every few years. They consider themselves a hunting people, for the fruits of the hunt enjoy pride of place at their cookfires, but they also forage, grow carefully tended garden plots, and raise small animals. While they raise goats, rabbits, and geese, in areas where standing water is present, for food, fur, and feathers, it is their skill in the breeding of working animals that is most remarkable. Bahab hunting dogs are the most capable I have seen anywhere. These are large, ferocious, and formidable animals that seem little removed from their wolf ancestors but at the same time take commands easily, never strike at their masters, and demonstrate truly dedicated loyalty. They also raise elusive lynx for use in the hunt, though in small numbers as a matter of prestige. Most remarkable of all are the huge bears, which they train in the art of war and charge alongside Bahab warriors into battle. These are huge, short-faced beasts, bigger and faster than any wild bear. They are few in number in the Tasgusun Hills, but are frightfully common in the northern mountains. Being white-furred mystic beasts more than a little touched by wizardry, they struggle to endure the summer heat of more southerly climes.

Bahab tribes endure raids by the Kharal, when warriors dispatched to hunt in the hills happen upon them, but they raid the people of the open steppe in turn. They take livestock, which they butcher for food, but also slaves. Similar practices are imposed upon caravans that do not take care when traversing the edges of their territory. Slaves taken by the Bahab are used almost exclusively for the purpose of labor in mines. Iron and other metals are both abundant and accessible in the hills and mountains the Bahab call home, and these people have much skill in all aspects of iron production: mining, breaking, smelting, and smithing. Despite their cunning capacity for metal work, they make little metal beyond tools and weapons for themselves, preferring to trade the excess for any number of goods including surplus grain and meat, spices, and medicines. Their weapons, made in mountain forges, are unexpectedly varied. Large swords with heavy blades, wielded two-handed, are the prestigious weapons of dedicated fights, but maces, spears, polearms, and bows all find their way into battle. The Bahab know the methods to produce metal armor and their elites go to war clad in precious coats of mail. Such costly protection is rare, and most will fight beneath layered furs with no more than hardened leather scale plates to defend them, and even that tends to be of inferior quality, as good hides are not found on the beasts of the mountains.

Though many words used by the Kharal and Nikkad have been adopted into Bahab speech, and a considerable portion of these people speak at least passable Kharal, their own language is very different from either of the main tongues of Shdustu, tracing to faraway northern origins. Though I made an effort to learn this language, I found it exceedingly difficult and was never able to do more than memorize a few dozen useful phrases by rote repetition. Their speech has a warbling, carrying quality that crosses long distances easily, allowing them to communicate effectively through the woods.

A typical Bahab village is surrounded by a palisade of timber, though if the village is to be moved in a given year, this will be gradually dissembled and used as cooking fuel and winter heating instead to prevent excess waste. Their dwellings resemble conical tents, with hide and bark layers laid across a frame of supporting poles with a smoke-hole at the top. In a sense these are similar to yurts, but they do not travel quickly and hold greater heat. The interior of these tents is kept very simple, used almost exclusively for sleeping, as the Bahab perform the overwhelming majority of tasks outdoors, even when it is extremely cold. They also build mud-and-wood barns, which are used to house goats, rabbits, and the occasional horse or ox kept by their chiefs. Large animals are rare and used mostly for work. Bears and dogs are kept in outdoor pens, untroubled by the cold. Forges and kilns are built on platforms cut out of the sides of hills, always of stone. These are usually located near mines to reduce transport labor and may be quite elaborate. They are among the most permanent of Bahab-built structures, since a proper mine site may produce for decades. The exterior of a forge, kiln, or smelter may be elegantly painted. Animal motifs, especially bears and wolves, and swirling designs evocative of the night sky predominate Bahab art. In general, every tribe maintains a single mine, with an attached forge. Most also occupy a clay pit and kiln, though some do without and trade for necessary pottery. Mines are worked until absolutely depleted, for they do not like to waste metal. Still, though the metal veins of the mountains are numerous, most are small, and it is rare for a mine to remain in use much beyond a single generation. Though the Bahab have significantly greater metal resources than the other peoples of Shdustu, this would still not be considered abundant by the standards of the Sanid Empire, and they husband this resource carefully. Coats of mail, notably, will be repaired over and over again, no matter how ugly this makes them appear.

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Unlike the Kharal and Nikkad, the Bahab are monogamous, with each man having only one wife. Even the tribal chieftains abide by this rule, though I suspect it developed as a matter of expedience. None of these people possess great wealth, for their lands are hard and the need to move periodically strips away all they manage to accumulate. Most are instead bitterly poor, wrapped up in furs and left shivering in their tents while starvation waits if the winter hunts fail. That they came and asked for the aid of foreigners is testament to this. The Bahab have no true sorcerers of their own, much less a master of the essence path, nor the means to lure another from the chapter house out to aid them, for the local sorcerers look down upon these hill dwellers. Affiliation to sorcery is supposed to supplant all other allegiances, but few humans are so truly able to cast off their origins. As it was, agreement was supplied primarily due to Lady Indili's endless curiosity. She is truly one of that rare breed that would follow the scent of knowledge to the ends of the world, a profound student of the Enlightened Revelation. The effort was also supported by Erun Nassah's desire to win goodwill among the Bahab in advance, knowing that come spring we must breach their mountain heartland in order to seek out the dragon.

With only two parents, Bahab families are quite close, and multiple generations often pile into the same tent, conserving fuel and warmth. Men rule over their wives in nearly all matters, a common trait of people who live simply, for strength of arm matters immensely to a society reliant upon hunting skill. Even their smiths, among the most prestigious of livelihoods of this people and a role often filled by the brothers of the chieftain, are dependent upon physical prowess all days. There are, as the reader can no doubt anticipate, no female smiths. This is not to say that the women are generally treated poorly. If anything, by being spared the long and dangerous sojourns in the wilderness hunting game they endure the hardships of the land better. Bahab women are far more likely than the men to retain all their fingers and toes, and female elders significantly outnumber male ones. All in these tribes acknowledge the critical importance of women's work, but it is considered subordinate rather than equivalent to that of men's tasks. A decidedly unenlightened position.

Accordingly, it should not surprise the reader to learn that the Bahab are considerably more heretical than either the Kharal or the Nikkad. Those peoples have generally fully accepted the revelation, with their theological deviance centered around a stubborn legacy of prior beliefs that elevates certain favored animals to positions of unnecessary importance. The Bahab, by contrast, represent a reversal of this trend. While many aspects of the Enlightened Revelation have penetrated their society, their overall faith is a foreign one born of some ancient unknown origin. They have accepted the Kharal labels of Nakiet and Ukit for the Lord of the Sky and the Lord of Death respectively, but their practice acknowledges only two divine beings, leaving the Lady of Earth out entirely. To the Bahab the Sky brings light and heat and Death brings darkness and cold. The dead lie frozen below until the light comes to thaw them out and live again. In their view the dominion over the land was given to humans, expressed through their dominance over beasts and their capacity to wield metal. Wearing beast pelts with the fur of the head crafted into a hood is a common practice among their hunters and considered an expression of this dominance. It is a callous practice, and I often struggled to meet the gaze of hunters clad in wolfskin mask. To leave out the Lady of Earth and to twist the cleansing role of the Lord of Death in this way is greatly disturbing. To hear them speak of their faith was greatly troubling, for it used familiar terms in deeply wrong ways. It was almost worse than hearing of the true pagans who worship animal spirits in the northern forests, a distortion of the truth rather than merely its absence.

I cannot help but believe that certain savageries I witnessed among the Bahab, notably the cruel treatment of slaves who are routinely worked to death in the mines while starving, the beating of wives by cruel husbands for failure to properly cook or clean, and their bitterly harsh lashing of horses and oxen despite their great love for their dogs and bears, trace to this bent and partial conception of the revelation. Like the Kharal, these people have no proper priests, but shamans instead, who combine multiple mystic arts together accordingly to limited knowledge and local tradition. They were particularly fond of crafting mounded circles of stone, called ovoo, that resemble overly flattened cairns upon which trophies and decorated skins were mounted in order to channel their blessings. These individuals, thankfully, avoided us, considering themselves superior to outsiders.

Truthfully, an examination drained of emotion and granted the full consideration of the scholar's view suggests greater hesitation is due before condemning these people. The Bahab have no writing at all, with their shamans producing at best tally marks, heritage charts, and simple maps. All the knowledge and truth of the Enlightened Revelation must be conveyed to them orally, through translation into their strange language that very few outsiders have ever learned properly. Further, because they lack unity, any such educational effort penetrates only as far as each tribe addressed, while the shamans circulate their beliefs throughout during seasonal festivals. Given that the neighboring Kharal are enemies more often than not and even the merchant caravans are more likely to be raided than to meet peacefully, such attempts at discourse are rare. Therefore, expectation of proper faith is unreasonable, and in truth it may be considered rather impressive that as much truth had reached the Bahab as I discovered. Certainly, the tribes of the distant northern forests have no learning of the revelation at all and worship birds, beasts, and trees, scandalous as it is to note. Pity their long time spent below, confined in ignorance to a slow recycling.

Something to be remedied in the future, I hope, if the Empire is willing.

Such ignorance extends to funerary practices. Though the Bahab regard burial as a cruel practice born of wizardry, their lack of a place for the Lady of Earth means that rather than return bodies to the natural cycle through exposure and consumption, they choose to return them to the sky via burning. Such an artificial assumption of the Lord of Death's prerogatives is troubling, but I can say that the intent is at least properly aligned. Of all the peoples of Shdustu, only the Bahab could possibly adopt such a practice, timber being far too dear otherwise. Cremation is conducted privately, beyond the boundaries of their villages, with only the close family and the shaman allowed to witness.

Ill-loved as the Bahab are by their neighbors, and few in number, they survive through cunning mastery of woodland warfare. Their warriors are potent combatants wielding sword, spear, and bow, but they avoid open battle unless it is brought to their palisades, choosing instead to always raid swiftly, often attacking by moonlight, and then fade back into the forests when pressed, where pursuit is extremely difficult. They exercise no solidarity between tribes, and Bahab fight other Bahab as often as they fight everyone else, leading to the majority of the piteous slaves in the mines being their own people. The mines, horrible as they are, also serve as protection, for the iron produced there is essential in trade to the Kharal and keeps the khagans from attempting to simply try and burn the forests off the hills entirely, though they are known to grumble such schemes when deep in their cups.

Despite such a justly earned reputation for violence, the Bahab are remarkably welcoming towards acknowledged guests and displayed an almost unbelievable respect for scholarship, mystically trained or otherwise. Though the villagers I encountered repeatedly, and loudly, claimed they had no need of writing and often made vigorous efforts to prove this by reciting extraordinarily lengthy songs used to teach the various skills needed for forest life, I nevertheless detected a continual avarice and shame in their eyes among those who watched me compile my nightly notes.