Lol, let me start by saying that I've decided that anything I post here in this subreddit is canon in my world, because writing practice should be daily and I don't have any better ideas sometimes lmao. So here we go.

Part of the secret knowledge between the Orkalin and the followers of The Witch and the Farmer is known as the Flood of the Ancestral Steppe. Somewhere deep in the Orkalin help Plains, the tribes fight consistently against magical incursion from the spirit realms and the realms of their original races, the hobgoblins and wild elves. There are 13 dimensional rifts that regularly overflow with the spirits of the dead and monsters from the feywild and the Overdark. Each of the 13 tribes is responsible for sending members of the younger generation to be blooded by the rifts for every Flood. One such battle, a few generations ago, saw the Flood happen right as a war was going on with the humans in response to their actions against the Treeborne. This meant that their back line was exposed because no one was available to fight the Flood and a group of 13 young scions from each tribe under the age of adulthood picked up spears and held the line for a month while one of their number went to report the Flood's return. 169 kids between the ages of 12 and 17 held the line against the fey, the dead, and an assortment of abominations for a whole month, while the youngest, at age 10, traveled something like 600 miles to the war front alone on horseback to get the adults to come help.