![[khuzait banner.png]] # Karakhergit ## Last Free Clan of the Western Steppe ### Tier 4, Nomadic Outlaw Tribe The Karakhergit are one of the last nomadic clans in the western steppe. The Urkhunid khans ([[Urkhunait]]) have tried to coax them into settling down, offering them farmlands and serfs in exchange for a commitment to pay taxes and supply military levies, but they have resisted. They are treated by the other clans with a combination of envy and contempt. They trade and sometimes even intermarry with their settled brethren, but they also do a limited amount of kidnapping for ransom and raiding of flocks, and scoff at those who would blame them for carrying on with the heroic old ways. This minor clan is from the steppe of the [[Khuzait-Khanate]] Khanate. Clan of [[Atun]] from Bannerlord's Digital Companion story. [[Asaios]] on the [[Karakhergit]] and trading in the [[Khuzait-Khanate]] lands. (See page [[12]]) > [...] > They spend the warm months in the north ([[Baltakhand]]), on the higher mountain slopes, where the grass is thick and lush. Fortuitously, their migration route south to their winter grazing grounds took me to my next destination, [[Odokh]]. > > Like many young [[Karakhergit]] women, she carried a bow, sabre and lasso and took her turn riding patrol around the herds of sheep and horses. She told me that it takes a half-dozen riders to safely move a herd, and that her people were constantly short of manpower. In the old days, when the [[Karakhergit]] were only one of many tribes living the nomadic life, it was easy for her people to find wives and husbands. But today, few other clans are willing to send their children to live the hard life out on the grasslands. To make matters worse, she said, it is next to impossible to prevent the herds from straying onto ever-expanding farmland, which means that the [[Karakhergit]] were constantly engaged in small battles with one village or another. [[Atun]] said that, in the old days, a [[Karakhergit]] maiden would not marry a man until he had slain his first enemy. > [...] > The [[Karakhergit]] often stopped alongside the road to trade with passing farmers and other travelers. The further south we went, I noticed, the nomads had more and more difficulty speaking with travelers in their own language, and the more they were forced to rely upon an ***'argot'*, the trade language of the steppes, a mixture of simple [[Khuzait-Khanate]], [[Imperial]] and [[Darshia-Cnty.]] words mixed with expansive hand gestures.** > [...] > [[Atun]] was good company. I asked her why the [[Karakhergit]] did not abandon the steppe life and pledge fealty to Khan [[Monchug]], who was always in need of warriors and would honor them and grant them lands of their own, so they didn't need to fight their way across the Devseg every year to use their traditional pastures. She gestured up at the blue sky above us, where an eagle was circling. "Should he burrow like a rabbit?" she asked. This was what they thought about farming. The [[Karakhergit]]'s pride makes them insufferable to the other [[Khuzait-Khanate]] clans. Many a proud noyan has returned from [[Monchug]]'s wars, on a great [[Imperial]] warhorse with gilded barding and wagons laden high with loot, only to see a skin-clad [[Karakhergit]] on a scruffy pony looking at him with pity and disappointment. # Game Files / Developer Diaries [[the-Ragged-(Khuzic)]] tried to join the Karakhergit once. (Minor faction:) The Hawlan ([[Karakhergit]]) are unsubjugated nomads, living on the fringes of the [[Khuzait-Khanate]]'s kingdom. Other [[Khuzait-Khanate]] mock them for living only in yurts and smelling like the sheep dung they use for their fuel. They are what the [[Khuzait-Khanate]] used to be, but despite this - or perhaps because of this - the newly rich, newly settled tribes treat them with scorn. Sons of Noyans have even been known to lead expeditions into the deep steppe to hunt them like animals. The [[Khergit-clan]] however turned to them in their recent moment of crisis, using them as mercenaries. [— spclans.XML]  string id="str_comment_special_clan_intro_karakhergit.default" text="{=DLV6F3ob}Maybe you have not heard of the Karakhergit. We do venture much into the sewn lands, the corrupt lands. We bow to no Khan. We sew no grain. We keep to the old ways, out amid the great grasses."> [— comment_strings.XML]