Ujik of the Plains of Wind and Stone

The Ujik are a nomadic people who live on expansive, grassy plains sprawling north and west of Rokugan. However, Ujik is an umbrella term encompassing many disparate, largely nomadic tribes. All share a broadly similar ethnicity, but interactions with other cultures bordering the vast ranges of the Ujik have introduced some variety. The tribes also each practice customs and hold beliefs often distinct from those of other tribes. For instance, several revere the Lords of Death, a religion rooted in the cycle of birth-life-death that permeates the natural world. Others hold different beliefs, such as reverence for the earth and sky. Many groups revere multiple sets of deities along with ancestors. Accordingly, the Ujik rarely act as a unified whole. Alliances and rivalries constantly ebb, flow, and shift among the tribes. The Ujik do tell stories of a time when they were united under a great warlord; if this is true, their hardiness, unconventional military tactics, and sheer numbers would have posed a formidable threat to any foe.

One thing that does unite the Ujik is the central role that horses play in their lives. The Ujik claim that a child can be born, raised, and live out their life on horseback, their feet never touching the ground. While this is apocryphal, the Ujik mastery of horses is unsurpassed, allowing the tribes to move great distances while scouting, tracking, hunting, and fighting from horseback as easily as other cultures do on foot.

The Ujik are a proud—even stubborn—people, generally stoic, but fierce in battle and given to boisterous outbursts of humor. Their most basic social unit, the family, can include multiple spouses and span several generations. Families live and roam independently, each led by a family head chosen by criteria unique to that family. At certain times of year, or in response to certain events—for example, at midsummer, or when the last snow has melted off a particular mountain—families join with others from their tribe. These gatherings can eventually include an entire tribe, or even several tribes. Such a massed assembly of Ujik is a raucous event.

Those Rokugani who do happen to meet Ujik tribespeople find that, despite the idiosyncrasies of the particular tribe, many are reminiscent of the Moto family of the Unicorn, at least to most Rokugani. When the Unicorn returned to the Empire in the early ninth century, they brought with them a large cadre of Ujik who had sworn loyalty to the Kami Shinjo. These Ujik became the Moto family. There is still much interaction between the Unicorn and those Ujik tribes whose ranges approach the Empire’s western boundaries.