The Salt Flats

Societies and Peoples

The Settled

These people live in the shadows of dead giants. When a walker falls, its hoarded life bleeds back into the Flats, growing brief green continents of scrub, moss, and shallow soil. The Settled carve terraces into fossil ribs, build houses along old spine ridges, and plant crops in the pockets where salt has finally loosened its grip. Their towns feel stubborn and rooted, even though everyone knows the green will thin again in a few generations.
 

The Travelled

Some communities never stop moving. The Travelled walk, ride, and roll between corpse lands and bare salt, trading water, crystal brine, tools, and news. They harvest what they can from mirage edges and old causeways, then move on before the Flats remember they are not welcome. Their caravans are home, market, and temple all at once, and their true map is a memory shared between elders rather than ink on a page.
 

The Fellers

Not everyone accepts the walkers as a fact of the world. The Fellers are scattered hunter societies that believe the giants must fall so the land can heal. They train to climb, wound, and topple creatures the size of countries, hoarding relic weapons and risky rites. In the distance their work is easy to see; follow the strange bright bands of new greenery on the horizon and eventually you will find a place where a living walker stopped moving.
 

Factions and tensions

The Bone Singers

The Bone Singers are a large Settled community built inside the ribs of an old walker, famous for their bone-work and their refusal to let the land go fallow. They carve instruments from spine and shoulder plates, string them with treated gut, and trade their music and craftsmanship for everything they cannot grow. One of the few well known saltsborn peoples, they have kept their corpse continent alive for generations through ruthless crop rotation, careful animal breeding, and a quiet belief that every bone remembers how it was used.
 

The Driftjackals

The Driftjackals are a loose brotherhood of Travellers who hunt other caravans as much as they hunt resources. Power means everything to them. They will always stay afloat at the cost of letting others sink. They trail causeways and popular routes, offering protection, water, or repairs at prices that feel almost reasonable until it is too late to refuse. Survivors say their wagons look like anyone else's until you get close enough to see the trophies hanging from the axles.
 

The Cistern Wardens

The Cistern Wardens claim guardianship over the old water stores that dot the Flats, from natural sinkholes to gutted walker organs turned into reservoirs. They arrive ahead of droughts and after storms, checking seals, measuring levels, and deciding who is allowed to drink. To some Settled communities they are lifelines. To others they are slow moving tyrants with politely written ration ledgers. Robbing a Warden convoy is a crime most folk only commit once.
 

The Wayglass Compact

The Wayglass Compact is a scattered network of guides, mapmakers, and crystal brine surveyors who try to make the Flats legible. Its members plant markers, rebuild broken causeways, and trade in wayglass, a fragile material that holds imprints of routes and landmarks. They sell safe passage to caravans and charge high fees for new information about shedding zones and fresh corpse lands. Bandits, Driftjackals, and some Feller bands all hate them for different reasons.
 

The Ninth Hook

The Ninth Hook is one of the best known Feller bands, a hunter society that believes they are nine kills away from restoring the world. They paint hooks on their faces and gear, each one marking a walker they claim helped to bring down. Whether the number is true hardly matters. They stalk migration paths, test ever more dangerous weapons on smaller creatures, and preach that no settlement on a living walker is anything but a future grave. When rumors say the Ninth Hook has been seen near a particular route, caravans change course, or double their guards, or both.