Hmm, I thought I commented on this one. . .
The Bestiary volume 1 makes fairly clear that the Gar are VERY widespread, but that there are not a lot of them and that they occupy the margins of society. The Bestiary is commenting that they live on the plains, in the underdark/lavender way/Endless Dark/etc, we saw that there are some in the Corlathian Mountains (Vault of Larissa's Lament), there are some down in the Western Lands, there were some living in the Blessed Lands before the Ssethrics came, etc.
This likely has much to do with the fact that the Gar appear to be a tribal people, and historically tribal peoples tend to be highly mobile. They follow game, they move from place to place depending on the climate conditions (move south in the winter, leave a stream if it ever dries up, etc), which means that the populations spread out very far and the densities tend to be very low. As civilizations from Yahssremore to Coryan have expanded, the Gar have almost certainly been pushed into the ever-shrinking margins as they are simply out competed by more powerful sedentary populations.
As to them being a much more civilized people, that is entirely POSSIBLE, but not a certainty. In our world there are literally HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of years of societies which exist just like them without having ever had a 'ancient civilization.' Instead of equating them to the Celts or Germans, I think a closer example in our written historical record would be the Steppe nomads: they live as highly mobile tribal people hunting and gathering to survive, and occasionally join together in larger confederacies to challenge sedentary powers, but are often too fractious to really do much beyond temporary alliances. This we see with Rul Marrowdrinker and the Gar Ormal during the 1st War of Extinction, and I see him more as a Modu Chanyu (leader of the Xiongnu Confederacy) than as a settled monarch, or even a Mongol Khan (pre or post Genghis Khan).
Now, this doesn't mean that they WEREN'T a civilized nation before this, however. We see in the Eladru how they have degenerated over the centuries to become the brutish Cyclopses of Saam Ur after their civilization was ravished in the 2nd (?) War of Extinction an their surviving population was shoved to the margins. That said, everything we know of the Gar in written Arcanis history says that they were never more than a tribal society to me.
Based on the description of them physically in the Bestiary, I think it would probably be better to equate them with other human species, like the Neanderthals, the Desnovians, or even earlier species like Homo erectus. The Bestiary states that there is a lot of phenotypic differences between the various tribes (some with bigger tusks, others with more ape-like arms) which seems to me that they appear to be in the phase of Human evolutionary development between the development of Homo hiedelbergensis and that of modern humans were they are starting to speciate. This speciation happens when divergent populations grow more and more isolated from one another and start filling their niches better and becoming more different from one another. Additionally, the Gar example we have has Weak Characteristic (Mental), which suggests that they are less intelligent than your average human (not to say they're dumb, but their brains are less developed and on average less capable). Even after millennia in contact with races like the elorii and humans, only one (mythic) tribe called the Gar Tindal has developed iron technology, which is a bit of an abberation from our world where even the most nomadic peoples could work in metal if introduced to it (the Bantu, the Mongols, etc).
_________________ Cody Bergman Legends of Arcanis Campaign Staff Initial Author Contact/Adventure Vetting
Haakon Marcus val'Virdan, Divine Holy Judge of Nier Ruma val'Vasik, Martial Crusader and Master of the Spear Jorma Osterman, Arcane Coryani Battlemage
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