Gurks

A face lost to time.

### Average Height:

males: 1.75 meters (5'9) (average height in Uzbekistan (Uzbekistan is true successor to Gokturks))

## Traits

What a single Gurk traveling ahead of his tribe with a sloth by his side might have looked like.

## Distribution

**The Gurks** were a group of people that lived in and controlled **The Steppes**. with origins in the lowlands of the Asian Alpines, the Gurks would expand outward west, north, and south. They were quite connected to their sloths and camels, being the backbone of their travel and expansion. A nomadic peoples, the Gurks were created by Bishlai, and by Bishlai they were destroyed.

No Gurkic tribes were left in the age of this wiki, and the Gurkic language family has been made history. The most ethnically Gurkic people you will ever find will be 10%-30% Gurkic, being assimilated into Alyankan or Synsi languages. although some successor nations to the Gurks speaking Gurkic Creole languages remain, far-flung across the map

Also, there are still bands of "old Gurks" in the east, keeping the nomadicism of their ancestors and being more Bangyarkan in blood and language than anything.

## **Alpine origins**

The Gurkic peoples were created by Bishlai as his race for the northeast, probably having the original Gurks come from the asain alpines bordering the east of the steppes. The Gurks believed that their nation came from a man who procreated with a wild sloth (Megatherium sursumdenta), this seemed pretty blatantly delusional to most other servants of Bishlai, since a man cannot birth a man with a sloth. Not to mention the whole origin myth implies the concept that there used to be just one race, and then after creation they diverged. Although something that is certain, is that the Gurks were the ones to domesticate the wild sloth. They spent the late ice age and first few centuries of human history being scavengers at the lowlands of the mountains where the forests of the Asian Alpines descend into the steppes. As time went on, the valleys of the alpine mountains and cover of the trees made for the perfect tough yet comfy environment for one tribe to diversify into many. So you had many Gurkic tribes, most with little visible distinctions from each other, still being able to vaguely understand each other (think Kyrgyz and Kazakh). Before tin was even discovered the Gurkic tribes were venturing out into the steppe with their packs of sloths and eating away and shrubberies in the eastern steppe. But before the linites even made their way back to their homeland (only to be enslaved by the igrans) the Gurkic peoples had already gotten their hands on the Babel camels, and with those they traversed the plains openly from east to west with ease.

## early life on the steppes

It took just a few generations for the Gurks to transition from people who had never been more than 20 kilometers deep into the steppe, to people traveling the length between modern day Nizaoyl and Alyanka. The many bands of small Gurkic families followed the migration patterns of birds, to figure out where there was water. Their food becomes the carnivore’s diet out of necessity. Becoming hardy through Hunting megafauna, and drinking mostly the dairy of their camels and sloths. It was of course the Gurks who first invented Yogurk (what yogurt is called in Vraekeapia), storing the white honey of their sloth cousins in animal skin packs. For essential vitamins the Gurks traded for fruits which they would dry. They would stop off at markets in what would today be Sylyania and trade for Gemsl and the occasional Cacti fruits imported from Igras to take with them out on the steppes.

## Gurkic Creoles

A people group, or at least what was a people group where you can find Bishlai worshipers today is across the steppe and asian alpines. The ungoverned descendants of mixed Gurkic blood who wander and attempt to thrive across the northern wastes. The **Gurks** were originally just a side-project, as Bishlai and a lot of the mortal world was focused on the happenings across Igras, so Gurks never truly formed a connection with Bishlai, instead worshiping their sloths. This culture got out of hand as the Gurks conquered the northern hemisphere, So Bishlai struck down their Khanates. Today, most of the creole descendants of Gurks with significant Gurkic heritage (10-20%) Live in the west in The Federation, Illyanka, or Illpabia, heeding Irekiaz's words and finding solace with Ysalchiv.

but still in the east, those of Gurkic heritage who still inhabit the eastern alpines where the gurkic peoples came from, have corrected their mistakes and found Bishlai. The Bishlai worshiping "old Gurks" (named by themselves even though they are about as Gurkic as the western Gurks) do not wield the same cultural power as the the western new Gurks because they never became settled peoples, in towns and farms,. The new Gurks who influence Synsi and Alygrian society as a fluid but thriving minority, have a much higher population than those remaining nomadic in the alpine and steppe regions, but the old Gurks are loyal to Bishlai, and form the god's eyes and ears north of Bangyarka, pleasing him greatly with what he salvaged.