Scythian (SITH-ee-uhn)

They arrive in gusts, never walking—always riding the invisible lines that carve the wind into pathways. The Scythians do not arrive from a single direction. They emerge like weather—first as a shimmer on the horizon, then as a rhythm of hooves, then as breath braided with gold and leather. In Tír na nÓg, their presence changes the air itself. It becomes drier, faster, hungrier for horizon. You do not meet the Scythians—you glimpse them, and feel the wake of their motion long after they’ve passed.   They do not live behind walls or settle in stone cities. Their campfires are drawn from stars; their homes are in motion. Their horses know more than most kings. Their jewelry whispers the names of storms. Their shamans speak with the sky through bone and smoke, and when they lay their dead, they do so in kurgans ringed with blade and beast—sending them not downward, but outward, into the wind. Their warriors, male and female alike, are stories set to muscle—epics of balance between instinct and precision.   Among the Aetherkin, they are not known for governance or law, but for embodied freedom. They trust breath over decree, blood over bureaucracy. They are artisans of war and joy both—laughing as easily as they fight, singing through firelight, disappearing before morning. To them, stillness is a kind of forgetting. In Tír na nÓg, they are eternal reminders that the soul must gallop sometimes to be heard.  

Geography & Historical Context

The Scythian people rose from the Eurasian Steppe, a vast sea of grass stretching from the Danube through the Caspian basin to the Altai. They thrived between the 9th century BCE and the 3rd century CE, forming loosely connected tribal confederations. The heartland of their culture lay north of the Black Sea, in what is now Ukraine, southern Russia, and Kazakhstan. There, they cultivated a mobile, pastoralist society structured around equestrian mastery, kinship, and martial honor.   Their emergence coincided with the collapse of the older Indo-European and Assyrian powers, filling the vacuum with swift, mobile sovereignty. Unlike empire-builders, the Scythians built no capitals. Instead, their influence was felt through shock raids, trade routes, and spiritual resonance. They interacted with Greeks, Persians, and later Romans, simultaneously feared and romanticized as noble savages and sky-born warriors.   Archaeologically, they are remembered through their opulent burial mounds (kurgans), filled with gold, weapons, horses, and preserved flesh. In Tír na nÓg, these mounds serve as spiritual gateways, echoing with rites that transcend mortality. Their fall came not from defeat, but dispersal, as they merged into later Sarmatian, Alan, and Turkic peoples. Yet the memory of Scythia persists—not as a nation, but as a movement written in wind.  

Culture & Identity

Scythian society was based on tribal federation, with leadership often held by chieftains elected by consensus or spiritual sign. Both men and women held power—Scythian warrior women, often mythologized as Amazons, were not exceptions, but embodiments of martial and mystical balance. The family unit traveled together in portable felt-covered wagons, guarded by kin and guided by the stars.   They believed in a tripartite spiritual world—sky above, land in the middle, and the underworld below. The gods were elemental: the sun as a flaming wheel, fire as judge and purifier, the sword itself worshipped in some tribes. Shamans, often women or intersex individuals, served as mediators between worlds, employing trance, firewalking, and bone-lore to guide their people.   To be Scythian was to move with meaning. Their ethics emphasized loyalty, agility, and sacred adaptability. Betrayal was despised; hospitality, a law. They wore layered tunics of wool and leather, adorned with intricate gold, depicting griffins, deer, and spiral gods. Every object was animated—every stitch, a memory; every weapon, a prayer.  

Communication & Expression

The Scythians spoke a now-extinct Eastern Iranian dialect, part of the Indo-European family. Though they left no written record, their language was rich in metaphor and preserved through oral epic—battle songs, genealogical chants, and wind-borne myths that echoed across the grasslands. In Tír na nÓg, some say these songs still blow across certain ridges at dawn.   They expressed themselves through iconic goldwork, filled with stylized animal forms—stags mid-leap, griffins clawing skyward, wolves curled around axes. These were not merely decorative, but mnemonic devices—symbolic sequences encoding tribal history and spirit contracts. Body art, including tattoos of spirals and creatures, further mapped spiritual identity onto the flesh.   Performance was integrated into life: fire-dances during full moons, ritual horse-bonding, and storytelling by stormlight. Their symbols were drawn in dust or ash, never stone. What they etched, they knew the wind would carry. Their truths did not require permanence—only transmission.  

Economy & Lifeways

The Scythians were semi-nomadic pastoralists, herding sheep, cattle, and especially horses, which they bred for speed, stamina, and war. Mobility was the core of their economy—they crafted their wealth through swift raiding, long-range trade, and metalwork. Scythian trade reached far beyond their steppes, carrying gold, hides, and honey to the Greeks, Persians, and Chinese.   Their skill in metallurgy was exceptional. They forged bronze, iron, and gold into tools, weapons, and ritual items with astonishing symbolic depth. Blacksmiths were semi-sacred, believed to shape not just metal, but the future. Women wove rich textiles, often dyed in madder reds and indigo blues, patterned with tribal emblems and celestial paths.   Camps were seasonal, following grass and water, always circled for defense and spiritual orientation. Labor was divided but flexible—everyone rode, everyone fought when needed, and even a child could be a messenger between camps or a keeper of song. Their life was not settled, but symmetrical, balancing survival, artistry, and belief with exquisite precision.  

Legacy & Contribution

The Scythians gave the Realm the art of motion as meaning. They taught that culture does not need to be fixed to be true. Their integration of warrior ethos with spiritual duty, and their egalitarian flexibility in gender, leadership, and belief, seeded countless nomadic cultures after them. Their legacy flows like wind: absorbed, unseen, but shaping the lines of every migratory soul.   They offered the concept of sacred impermanence—a life structured by loyalty, presence, and preparation, but never by walls. From them, many Aetherkin learned how to carry sacredness not in temples, but in bone-carved charms, fire-fed kettles, and the hooves of a trusted steed.   Their memory is not in books or maps, but in the instinctive grace of those who refuse to be caged, in the rhythm of songs hummed during long rides, and in the tension between weapon and poem—each always just beneath the other’s breath.  

Scythian Aetherkin

Scythian Aetherkin live in riding bands and wind-swept camps, never fixed, yet always near the edge of Realm regions where openness calls. Their dwellings are yurts hung with story-cloth and ringed with protective braziers. Their presence is marked by spiral-carved iron stakes, horse songs, and cloud-silvered bells that chime only when truth needs speaking.   They serve as traveling protectors, horizon scouts, iron-binders, and ancestral interpreters. Many carry bone relics of those who rode before them, using smoke and whisper to awaken memory in others. They appear when a frontier goes quiet—when movement is needed to stir the soul back into purpose.   They wear wind-dyed cloaks, ash-colored armor, and always ride in pairs—one to see, one to remember. Among the Aetherkin, the Scythians are storm-marked and star-guided, forever galloping the border between freedom and form.

Communities

Most Scythian Aetherkin reside at:

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Some Scythian Gods

See Also: Deities

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Scythian Aetherkin

See Also: Aetherkin