Pilgrims

The Pilgrims, as the Yentish usually call them, are a people from far to the southwest of Yent who founded and inhabit the city of Alcora.

They follow a faith they call the Enlightement, shunning the gods and following a simple, universal code of laws.

It’s customary for those who can afford it to make a pilgrimage to the tomb of the lawgiver on the eastern continent; because Yent was about halfway between the two continents, they founded Alcora as a way-station for ships making the long voyage. It’s since grown into Yent’s biggest city by far.

The lawgiver’s teachings were never very popular in their homeland, but they’ve become the dominant religion and the law of the land in the southwest. Since the route of the pilgrimage happens to also be a very lucrative one for trade, the southwesterners have become the ocean’s dominant merchants.

The Pilgrims generally welcome any other enlightened beings as equals; it’s said that goblins serve on Alcora’s city council.

The unenlightened, provided they follow their laws, are tolerated but condescended to. There’s often friction between the Pilgrims and the Yentish. The Yentish resent the Pilgrims’ wealth and outsized influence, while the Pilgrims think the Yentish are stupid, self-defeating brutes, forever inadvertently proving the superiority of Enlightened ways.

They have a reputation as shrew traders. They're far better at negotiating deals than the Yentish are; Yentish leaders are always negotiating treaties with Alcora that they think will enrich them and getting ripped off. A favourite trick is to make a deal with where they’ll offer a lucrative-seeming cut of revenue to a Yentish leader in exchange for X number of soldiers and their upkeep for the city’s security; of course, the long-term cost of the soldiers cancels out any profit, while Alcora gets extremely cheap mercenaries. This happens every few years, but the Yentish just keep falling for it – the current partner always brags and tries to make his jealous enemies think he’s getting a great deal, so the pilgrims can just rotate treaty partners ad infinitum.

The Pilgrims speak Common, the language of the eastern continent that the lawgiver wrote in. Their trade has spread it further still, and they’re a big part of why it’s the common tongue across the region.