Nerek

The Nerek are a clan-based people of the continent of Lether whose homeland is a vast plateau on the eastern edge of the mountains dividing them from the lands of the Tiste Edur. They hold that they descend from a single mother, whom they call Eres'al, and a serpent that lies in their bodies still as the spine, and that the mountains want the serpent back in its slithering form, so a Nerek bends further toward the ground with age. Their neighbours in the Kingdom of Lether took their civilization apart: merchants drew them into chains of debt and into dependence on Letherii durhang, white nectar, and drink, and their holy sites were destroyed to loosen their hold on their goddess, whom Letherii scholars called false. Once they buried their dead beneath flat stones. Forced to the faith of the Holds, they now leave the dead where they fall, and their villages stand as deserted cemeteries.