Thanat-am-Suel, home of refugees
Dust / the Tumbling Rocks
Okies are poverty-stricken bands of refugees driven from their homelands. The Plane of Dust has an inordinate amount of Okies, mainly from the Plane of Earth, in regions caught too near the Tumbling Rocks region that fell in. Occasionally whole elemental kingdoms have crumbled to Dust, leaving their inhabitants stranded. Okie Suel are the descendants of refugees from the Rain of Colourless Fire on the world of Oerth, over a thousand years ago. The majority of witnesses to this world-shattering calamity were lucky and died as the vast Suloise Imperium crumbled to dust and ash. A few unfortunates were caught in desperate countermagicks or mythal-like magic fluctuations and transformed into okie genasi in the quasielemental planes. To this day, travellers in the Wasting Place are accosted and normally executed by the xenophobic Suel descendants, paranoid peoples certain that their ancient Baklunish foes are still plotting to finish them off. These Okies prove their man- or womanhood by long solo walkabouts through the planes of Dust or Ash, coming back with the still-pulsing hearts of powerful quasielemental creatures, preserved in specially treated skins. The two genders are treated fairly equally, and anyone of the appropriate bloodlines can become a shaman.
The Okies live in communities on the edges of the Tumbling Rocks, typically in elaborate reinforced tent-like structures to protect from wandering debris.
The Dark of Thanat-am-Suel: The Okie Suel worship an amoebic entity they call the Dust Mother. The Dust Mother could be related to the Dhour, the Cold Woman of Nehwon, or even quasielementals. It feeds on hate and sacrifice, and seems to remind its “children” of something their ancestors used long ago, at home.
Source: Rip van Wormer
