The Shah Hadiz

Striking orange or white fur barred in black, and the most self-consciously principled tribe of a race not otherwise known for principle. The Shah Hadiz hold the Taiga, the boreal northern crossing, where the big game is and where the whole manufacture of the Rimeward comes south.

The Code

They hunt big game and prefer dangerous prey to easy pickings, with as little weaponry as the animal will permit. The code is sincere, elaborate, and explained to visitors at the slightest opening: what may be taken, in what season, with what warning given, and what is owed to an animal that nearly won.

They are also witheringly rude about their cousins. The Shah Gaz's ambushing is thuggery; the Shah Mira's city work does not merit a word; the Shah Numan's prides are a confession of individual weakness. The Shah Hadiz are aware they are the only tribe who talk this way, and take it as evidence.

Mousehold

The complication in Shah Hadiz life is that the second-largest city in the world sits in their forest.

Mousehold — sixty thousand people, governing nothing, everything simply passing through — grew up where the north road crosses the ring, and it is mixed, loud, commercial, and run by Old Tibbault rather than by anyone the Shah Hadiz would recognise as legitimate. Every tribe of the race is represented in it. So is every other race.

The Shah Hadiz take the tolls, use the market, and maintain in public that the city is a regrettable growth on an otherwise sound forest. In private, a substantial minority of young Shah Hadiz live there year-round.

Ways

Fiercely independent and genuinely hospitable, in that order and with the order mattering. A guest who observes the forms is treated superbly. A guest who dismisses them is not harmed, merely handled with a courtesy so exact that it functions as expulsion.