Dormun

The dormun are giant, slow-moving creatures that roam the arid deserts of Shurima. Their bodies are shielded by large chitinous plates, and they evolved to endure the perpetual drought and harsh conditions of the region. Herbivores by nature, they cross the wastes at a patient, plodding pace, and by senses no one fully understands they can find hidden reservoirs of water buried far beneath the sands. Some Shurimans have chosen to spend their entire nomadic lives atop these beasts, raising whole mobile villages upon their backs. The dwellings of such a village are strung together by a complex series of ropes, and the people who live there, the dormun-riders, move between them using claw grips in a practice known as running the ropes. Between rider and beast lies a relationship of mutual benefit. The riders keep the dormun clean and hunt any airborne pests that venture near it, while the creature carries them steadily across the desert and, through its unseen senses, leads them to water. Where the dormun goes, the village follows the sand roads to the new-flowing waters, settling wherever it can begin again. Life atop a dormun belongs to the agile. Once a rider grows too old or too infirm to run the ropes, they are lowered to the ground to live out the rest of their days as a land-dweller. The way of the dormun-riders is an ancient one, and its memory runs deep in Shurima. When catastrophe drives a settlement from its home, the survivors still flee in long columns across the sand roads, moving as the dormun-riders of old once did.