Ancestral mound

The ancestor mound was a pivitol socio/religious focus point of the tribes. They date back to the Uther ancestor myth, with each tribe generally regarding at least one mound as their traditional veneration site.

When Uther conquered the beast Gods and assigned their powers and characteristics to the tribes, shamans were gifted with both the histroy of their people and guardianship of the ancestor mounds.

Shaped very similar in design to bronze age worship sites in our world such as Stone Henge, once a year at the time of the annual runemeet the tribes would travel to honour the spirits and reassert their traditional values.

The major runemeet usually occurs at autumn, the month of Eleint (which coincides with the festival of Harvesttide), although smaller meets will occur at the other high points in the seasonal changes, as befits a people tied to nature.

At these meets young warriors of the tribe desiring to be considered adults engage in the ritual called the runehunt. Very similar to the Malarite hunt, this is usually against the tribes ritual enemies which alter from tribe to tribe. For a young barbarian to be considered a warrior he must best the tribes ritual enemy at the time of the runemeet, this is very often Orcs but not always.

Due to the lose of tribes and mounds or in the case that the tribe is not near its mound at the Meet sometimes tribes will share mounds. An example of this is the Treeghost tribe, long lost from Grandfather tree their mound, tend to share whatever mound is closet to their wanderings.

There have been tales of magical lights connecting all of the mounds at runemeets and stories of visitations by the totem beast Gods.

source is FR5 the Savage Frontier