Vik-Yen

The Vik-Yen are a human people and ethnic group living in the mountains of Iìsgaròth. They share a culture and a language (Khaled). They are mostly cut off from the rest of the world and share a limited gene pool.

Settlements
The settlement populated by the largest number of Vik-Yen is the town of Chanch’ka, with about 3000 Vik-Yen people as of January 1499. The other town in the Chanch’ka agglomeration, called Heimr, has the second largest Vik-Yen Population, with somewhere around 100 inhabitants, all Vik-Yen. No other towns possess a significant number of Vik-Yen inabitants, with the remainder of the Vik-Yen spread across Northern Iìsgaròth.

History and culture
The Vik-Yen were originally Nomadic people descended from Stackwickan soldiers who got lost on their way back from a war. They had some brief periods of interbreeding slightly with Khyagete, which gave them their distinctive tall stature and straw-like hair that keeps its shape, along with religious and cultural traits such as the superstition that one’s face is sacred, and the religious maxim ‘It is better to save a friend than to rid oneself of an enemy’. Their close relationship with the Khyagete (up until mid-1499 when the Khyagete attacked Chanch’ka) also gave them the Khaled language, which is distantly related to Karod.

In the late 1450s some Chanch’kans set up a second Vik-yen village, little more than a street, known as Heimr. As of 1499 the mayor of Heimr is the brother of the mayor of Chanch’ka.

Most Vik-yen surnames follow some variation on the Chake radical, with such names as Nimbelchake and Chaker being common.