Polarisi

The Polarisi are an extinct ethnic group closely related to both the Mari and Lo'Oix, native to Eastern Serrona. They lived mostly around the modern day site of cities like Alicuna and Vostroya.

Rise of the Polarisi
Much of Polarisi culture and history is largely unknown but the group is believed to have existed for around two millenia largely living as hunter-gatherers speaking a now extinct dialect of the Lo'Oi language. While related ethnic groups such as the Lo'Oix and Mari began to develop into cities coincidentally shortly before the Rathnirian discovery of Eldham and transition away from a hunting-gathering lifestyle, the Polarisi actually began the transition several centuries prior.

Most of their towns were agrarian in style and architecturally made up of largely flammable or decomposable materials such as wood and thatch. The seemingly sole exception to this was a territory typically known simply as the Polarisi Wall which used to have a town on its grounds that has since withered away. The name of the town is believed to be Buáku Mugágázhák, supposedly translating loosely as 'Trident protecting wall', the town being named after the huge stone wall that laid South of the village protecting the village from the sea, using the natural cliffs of the area to protect from other directions. Today the village and wall's ruins lay just outside of the modern city of Alicuna.

All other territories and villages once inhabited by the Polarisi have since withered away but many of the mounds, flatlands, and plains that exist in the region they once inhabited are believed to have been brilliantly sculpted by the Polarisi and as such remain as natural landmarks of both their agricultural and cultural prowess.

United Lowlands and eventual extinction
Shortly before the Rathnirian discovery of Eldham, the Polarisi people united into a nation called Ásuvu Vuato, translating to 'United Lowlands' in Traveler's Tongue, with a capital base of operations established at the village of the Polarisi Wall. The nation only has known diplomatic relations with the early United Socialist States of Eldham who recorded the nation as being made up of a group closely related to the Lo'Oix and their people being kind. Shortly before the establishment of nations such as Valham and Xeka, a plague struck the region of Northern Lausá, hitting the agrarian society of the Polarisi the worst. It is believed around 70% of their population died within the span of three years.

After this famine, the few Polarisi left had emigrated or found themselves culturally immersed with the Valhamites and the Lo'Oix. With this, the Polarisi language died; albeit having a few believed loanwords in the Mari language. The United Lowlands collapsed as quickly as it emerged, with its territory both being later annexed by the USSE and Valham. The only Polarisi ruins in the USSE today are believed to be mostly destroyed by snow-related erosion or buried underground because of construction in areas such as Vostroya. Polarisi ruins are normally identifiable even from elytra and when submerged in snow due to their high walls and rectangular shapes; creating odd snow formations atop them. In some Polarisi ruins there is evidence to suggest that they utilized arrowheads made from fossils and flint, including fossils of creatures such as Barocoryth. These shells often fossilize into bedrock, creating sharp indestructable arrowheads; these arrowheads bare resemblance to ancient Mari arrowheads used in the region of Southern Kaladinia and Western Xeka - albeit those arrowheads were made from volcanic obsidian in part due to a lack of suitable bedrock material.