They were here before the Frost, and they’ve determined to endure it.
The White Maw Clans are a loose confederation of nomadic survivors who live in The Wastes - humans, orcs, beastfolk, and others who refused to retreat to any city when the cold came, because they had nowhere to retreat to and nothing to retreat from. The Wastes have always been theirs.
What Players Know
The Clans are out there. Guild expeditions encounter them. The Watch logs sightings. Travelers who make it back from deep in the Wastes have stories.
What is consistent across those stories:
- They ride Dire Wolves. Bonded mounts, not just animals. The wolves are fast and the riders know how to use that.
- They are not a unified force. There are many clans, many leaders, no single voice. Dealing with one does not mean you have dealt with all of them.
- Some will trade. Some will not. Some will raid. There is no reliable way to know in advance which you are dealing with.
- They have ancient oral traditions about the Frost - prophecies that predate the Age of Frost by generations. Whether those traditions are literally true, metaphorically useful, or simply the product of people who lived close to the cold for a long time is not clear.
Their Relationship with Hearth
Tense, complicated, and inconsistent.
The Clans did not build Hearth and do not owe it anything. Some Clan members trade at the market square. A few have settled inside the walls as permanent residents. Others see the town as a symbol of everything that went wrong - city-dwellers who brought the Frost, or at minimum failed to stop it, now huddling around a machine they did not build and cannot fully explain.
The Frostwatch tracks White Maw movements when it can. The Guild has had both successful trades and hostile encounters with different Clan groups.
What Is Not Known
Most of the Clans’ internal structure, beliefs, and politics are unknown to Hearth’s population. We know they are out there, and continue to survive in the Frost. What else they are, what they want, and what they know about the Wastes - that is something expeditions may discover.
See Also
- The Wastes - the region they call home
- Hearth - the town on their border
- The Guild - the organization expeditions run into them for