Since their migration from their ancestral homeland of the Varic plateau to their new homeland of Urapivarta, the Urapi had contended with various mountain people who they viewed as barbarians. These barbarians were both a blessing and a curse to the Urapi's leaders - whilst they would raid and loot vulnerable villages and thus sap tax revenue, they also gave diarchs a mandate to rule through their offers of protection from these same raids.

Now though, the Urapi were the mountain barbarians. When the mudborn came many had fled wherever they could. Yet the tradition of the kharubbal, visiting the holy sites in the mountains, meant that many Urapi were highly familiar with the peaks and valleys of the so-called Spines of Vari, and so many had turned to their slopes for succor. This proved to be the safest places from the mudborn's reach, as they were often reluctant to leave the flatter valleys upon which their horses found easier ground.

The exodus from Urapivarta was not without its mark on the Urapi social order. Among the first changes was the acknowledgement that not all the so-called mountain barbarians were quite such. Although many were mudborn descended from the original inhabitants of Urapivarta, with whom the Urapi quickly entered conflict, others were long-lost sunborn cousins who knew of Baal and Kali even if they did not grant them precedence. Curiously they did not style themselves as descended from a particular son of Vari, but rather offered that they were descended from Taval, whose four grandparents were of Vara, Kar, Ura and Vuaz. Their favoured deity was neither Baal nor Kali but was instead Shar, who they held as a patron of independent living and freedom as well as khan of wisdom, for it was he who granted mankind fire and allowed them to forge the weapons that slew both dragons and shattered The Black Sun.

Politically, both and exodus and its aftermath made its mark. In many cases exoduses were not headed by diarchs, many of whom had died or had chosen to cooperate with the mudborn, but instead by dursarri like Hatti or even ordinary kharubbites. Authority of those few diarchs who had made the journey was roundly rejected - they were seen as having failed their people and, through the influence of the Tevali emphasis on Sharkhan, Baal and Kali themselves were partially discredited, seen as having not done enough for their favoured children.

In most instances, the militarised dursarri picked up the slack and became the highest regional authority. Dursa were ammended so that instead of bearing the names of the diarchs for whom they were crafted, they bore the name of a town or region in Urapivarta. Loyal followers of a given dursarr would tattoo themselves with the mark of a dursa, marks of Urapivarta itself. In this fashion irredentism was hard-baked into the Urapi mindset: though they had fled the mudborn out of necessity, Urapivarta was still theirs, their leaders physically carrying the proof and followers wearing it.

The assumption of dursarri authority was not universal, however. In the low-lying valleys and upon the coasts, where communication and trade were easier, various priests came to power in a mould not altogether dissimilar to that of the diarchs before them. The main difference was that instead of styling themselves after Baal and Kali, they instead appealed to the authority and values of Shar, Topal, Vita, Mari, Jebel and other khans.

Overall, though, Urapi governance was more decentralised. Upon the mountainous slopes, where movement was difficult and roads absent, it was hardly viable to enforce or collect any taxes. The goatherds of the slopes had less to give anyhow, being less productive albeit more free than their agriculturalist forebears, and most were deadly with a sling if not also a bow or spear from hunting and defending their caprine charges. They therefore had both reason and ability to resist taxation. That is not to say they did not answer to anyone. In these regions, dursarri became an elected position whose authority was derived from their status as a great warrior and kharrubite and they were expected to lead raids against the mudborn for profit, to honour the khans and to help reclaim both Urapivarta and Varavarta.

In pursuit of this last goal, Varanite refugees who had partaken in the great exodus were encouraged to settle in the same largely north-eastern stretches of the Spines of Vari. Most Urapi saw the maintenance of Varanite culture as almost as high a priority as the Varanites themselves did, and just as many of the dursarri raids into the lands under the dominion of the mudborn were in Varavarta as in Urapivarta. Many Varanites joined or initiated these raids themselves, and Varanite nobles would become dursarri themselves as they came to appreciate the irredentism the dursa and dursa-inspired tattoos implied and so adopted their own.