I'm thinking somewhere far away from the giant flying things.
The western continent around the lake perhaps.
Lemme drop in the wip;
Name: The Dubeeki/Zubeeki [alt name using in some major languages]
Description: The Dubeeki are 9-12 feet tall bipedal creatures that have a head, but lack any neck instead having their vaguely shaped head fused into the shoulders. They are a mountain folk that have spread around much of the north western mountain frosts, and are highly resistant to the cold due to their pale, blurb proud hides and internal warmth. They have two tiny, circular eyes and a very heavy, lumbering build. However, the Dubeeki have a high requirement of food. They have a long, think lipless mouth normally obscured by fleshy folds beyond a horizontal slit across the lower part of the head. When they talk, they speak in set of muffled noises and hums, and only open their mouths when they eat.
The nose of the Dubeeki consists of two large curved nostrils.
Their legs can be described as trunk-like, but they aren't as stuff as they may seam. Their feet are surprisingly well suited for rugged terrain.
Their arms are bulky, with large hands that could crush a skull that have four digits.
Their genders are not that morphologically different, with the males being potentially bigger than the males and the females having slightly thinner legs.
They reproduce like mammals do, giving live birth after a long 25 month gestation period. And the kid can take decades before being being fully grown. But the Dubeeki can live a hundred years naturally- it's just that their constant infighting outside of places like Novgrad keeps populations low due to the higher amount of time it takes to replace. The strict monogamy practiced by the Dubeeki also arguably contributes to their stable population counts as they have a psychology that demands strict mateship bonds, of which can cause serious trauma if a mate if lost, and it can be decades before they try to seek a new mate if the balance demands it. Though those without mates dying tend to be less traumatic.
Trying to draw a decent pic of them. May take a bit to get a good design out.
Evolution: Evolutionarily as a species they come from the humanoid clade, but due to isolation in the micro habitats have independently developed blubber for a humanoid designs and grew to a thicker build as a result of storing so much fat. In time this fat also translated to strength and a yeti-like feorocity as multiple tribes of their species clashed for dominance of the mountains, some of which even migrating to other parts of the world [where there was mountains and coldness, or forests and coldness, places too warm will cause them to dehydrate fast and burn out from all the heat, some even suffer shock from the lack of cold due to the insulation the cold provides.].
They seem descended from races that historically migrated from the south and very likely have some relation to other humanoids in the area, although the distinct appearance of the Dubeeki makes this possibility unthinkable for anyone on the planet.
In times before the rise of the Ice Kingdoms, much of the mythology of the Zubeeki has the reoccurring theme of increased stability as each age came by, with the final age believed to be the age where the world will freeze once again, and order to the cosmos will be restored as will the balance of the sexes. In the early ages, intertribal warfare was endemic, and the balance was near impossible to maintain, causing mass despair. While the myths like to imagine there being once a age where the Zubeeki lived in absolute harmony- these are often seen as optimistic myths.
There is a obsession in Dubeeki culture with keeping gender ratios as equal as possible in order to assure everyone has a mate, with some tribes even going to the extremes of killing a baby born of a gender that disrupts the balance- although normally the key solution is the typical marrying off the excess of which respective sex there is too many of with another tribe that has too many of the other gender when this is possible. Often a tribe's inequality is caused by death in hunting accidents or disease, and whenever this happens after mourning the dead the first thing a tribe will often do is try to absolve their gender balance before the imbalance gets far too out of hand. These traditions still can be seen in the Kingdom of Novgrad, which has a whole institution devoted towards keeping the balance and in the taiga city-states where killing disruptive spawn is institutionalized through the mate guard.
There is known to be coastal cultures that have no regard for the balance, and live in a very fluid, but violence prone system of clans that follow family lines that make use of shields and hatchets and live off fish they fish on large rafts out in the arctic seas. Their societies are naturally, far more chaotic than the balanced societies because when one does not have a mate, they get violent. And once a mate is found, they do not part. If their mate dies, they do not look for a new one lest they break the balance for others.
Dubeeki society is not that hierarchal, with the distribution of wealth even in the long lasting, cyclic and centralized kingdom of Novgrad being simply that the lord gets to retain twice the material items like ivory tusks or massive bones from the hunt that are etched in runes for good blessings and killing the hateful thoughts that plague much of Dubeeki consciousness where they do not belong.
Despite the outward stability, Dubeeki internally are violent still, as their long history of inter-tribal warfare has shown. They are great at maintaining internal stability, but are very xenophobic except when it comes to issues that transcend mortal worries such as maintaining the balance. In spite of their maintenance of the balance and distribution of resources, from time to time there is epic explosions of war that can last decades usually caused by conflicts over the leader's choices being deemed counter to the interests of the whole by the families within a society- or at least that's the case in the forest city-states and the kingdom of Novgrad.
The Dubeeki generally aren't agricultural beyond herding animals into pits in the taiga cultures. They store food using the ice, and use fire solely to defrost the food seeing no other application of it currently. After all, they can etch runes in a stone with a sharper rock.
In terms of cultural philosophy, they believe that ice is the greatest material to ever exist. For them it's multi-functional, for it can stab beasts, make fortresses and houses, make statues and sculptures and as well preserve their past through runes in tombs of ice blocks stored within the caves where the temperature never will melt them. A well, making snow people is a common practice of adult and juvenile Zubeeki alike, with large armies of snow men silently guarding the palaces in Novgrad, armed with ice spears atop a stone fortress that is frozen over in you guessed it, ice.
While they lack metallurgy, they make up for it by using ivory tools taken from the walruses that beach up on the frozen shores- of which is made regular use by the coastal and mountain cultures. This has resulted in the most advanced societies being concentrated in the far western mountains, with the nomadic primitives distributed throughout the vast peaks beyond. Novgrad is most notable in its tradition of hunting Walruses and mammoths, a tradition that had made Novgrad a natural enemy of the coastal clans, the Novgrad having to often engage in disputes with some clan. Such disputes have become ritualistic, and anticipated by both sides.
The culture of Novgrad Dubeeki is very based in the concept of balance and cohesion, and the maintenance of both in order to keep the violent spew from breaking out. There is many long-winded fables that give antecedents on these concepts.
Whereas the coastal clans believe the internal violence must be expressed, and that the violence and war is the truly natural state of life. In doing so they developed a culture of ritual warfare and ongoing mate-based conflict. The coastal clans are notable for their use of wood technologies, and even inventing copper tools which had given them a edge in fighting the other cultures. But due to the constant infighting never has the clans ever united against Novgrad or go on a conquering spree- meanwhile the council of chiefs in Novgrad is slowly taking interest in these strange tools the coastal cultures use.
Clothing wise they don't wear much, as they don't have any concerns about temperature and clothing just makes them warmer. Clothing is usually ceremonial in nature.
Despite the lack of metallurgy, the cunning of the Zubeeki is not to be trifled with- they managed to make a civilization out of nothing but ice and stone, without agriculture, and barely with any fire. To assume the Dubeeki brutes is to throw one's self off the cliff.
Strengths: Very strong and resistant to the cold, they can take a serious beating before being cut down and are for all it is worth, surprisingly high endurance for their bulky build being capable keeping up with those running away from them- making them very dangerous to quadrupeds of which are known to tire easy. They have big hands great for gripping and pounding as well, even if they're not that precise.
Weaknesses: They don't make much use of fire, don't reproduce much and have serious pent up anger issues despite the outward purity that is typically kept by needing to make sure the gender ratio does not break 50/50 as much as possible. Oh, and they really despise temperature conditions that they see as too warm, preferring their snowy lands and peaks over the alien forests south any day.
Location:
Hope it isn't too much territory- my guys like migrating a lot and will go anywhere there's snow and mountains they can reach. So I figured after long enough they'd have a large spread, though much less intra-species cultural contact than aaron's persians do. They also aren't that densely populated to begin with outside of places like the Great Ice Kingdom of Novgrad and lesser Ice Kingdoms dotted around the western mountains who are known to have contact with the coastal clans. Most of the region I outlined consists mostly of nomadic packs of Dubeeki who have yet to master the power of ice in ways that the Ice Kingdoms have.
