Nîdhraun

Hail, wanderer! How are you bearing up, so far from hearth and home? Other Vale-folk are abroad as well- you need not travel alone. Seek the honey-sign of the Nîdhraun! 

Learning of the Nîdhraun

Those who dwell among the Vales of the Anduin rarely have call to travel far beyond its bounds.
Yet now and again, one or another of these folk needs depart upon a journey. 

Many of them will be given a message- perhaps by a hasty whisper from an elder, or maybe a crumpled note slipped into their purse. They are told of a loose association of their kin that roam the lands beyond the Vale. "Watch for the sign", they are told: the sign of the honeycomb, sometimes simple, sometimes complex, that marks these other travelers and their places. "Our kin abroad are few, but you may have the good fortune to find one another in times of need."

Elf-friends

"Frodo learned that Grimbeorn the Old, son of Beorn, was now the lord of many sturdy men, and to their land between the Mountains and Mirkwood neither orc nor wolf dared to go." (The Fellowship of the Rings, Chapter 1)

The Elves of Rivendell dwell in a hidden valley west of the High Pass that our folk protect - we occasionally meet them in the mountains and the lands beyond. 

The Ents of Fangorn recall how the elves in the elder days went about 'talking to everything' and waking up the trees - many Beornings can speak with animals and that gives us a relationship with the natural world different from most Men of the third age.

A number of Rivendell's elves have come to value much about our people: our continued protection of the lands, our interest in speaking with the animal folk, and our peaceful stewardship of the Anduin Vale. It is through this new-found friendship that Elrond's people have gifted our wanderers with a name, "Nîdhraun," the errant honeycomb. Errant is a word little-used by some, but it suits these Beornings well; it means roving, especially in search of adventure, straying from the expected course or standards, and wandering outside the established limits.

Like many other wanderers, we find a welcome haven in Imladris, and value the wisdom and companionship of those who dwell there. 

OOC

What's this for?

The main purpose for this group is to help people playing Beornings to learn of each other. You're free to enter and leave the kinship as it suits you, and you're free to create whatever you like of it, saving that you respect the other players and their own roleplay. There's no in-character 'leader' and no scheduled events created by the officers.

Too many Beornings?

Playing a Beorning on Laurelin, sometimes I get the impression that people consider Beornings to be too rare to be a feasible or believable play choice. I think some of this perspective is perhaps in error, and may come from the in-game origin story's elements, which suggests that the Beornings are few in number, and fewer still ever travel beyond the Anduin Vale. Yet as we see in the book quote above, the Beornings are numbered by Tolkien's tale as "many", rather than few, and they frequent the High Pass often enough to keep the goblins and wargs from laying claim to it entirely.

So it would appear that there are in canon many Beorning families, and additionally many of their members are familiar with the hardships of traveling in the Misty Mountains. It seems entirely plausible to me that a few dozen wanderers might be wandering the lands far beyond the Vale on any given day, especially in a time of unrest such as the region is experiencing at the time of the War of the Ring. I hope that our paths may soon cross!

Update: September 2016

Regardless of your kinship status, you can now chat with other people who are interested in Beorning RP!

Join us in-game via /joinchannel BearWithUs 

Or on the web via http://discord.gg/VhpdJga

This latter ought to be a great resource for us as it's less dependent on people being logged in at the same moment.