Centaurs

My Centaurs are nomadic and suffer heavily from wanderlust.
They have a cultural core in a region of rolling hills with forested ridges and dales.
They share that home region with the Fylíotrákos people, who occupy the city-state best known as 'Mantefidio'.
Mantefidio is a powerful walled state with a pythonic oracle at its center. The oracle is the medium for all civic decisions; it is rumored that the oracle is a means of communication with a monstrous patron, as the oracular dicta are sage and wise and have lead to the prosperity of the surrounding state.
The region doesn't have a distinct name. That name that was is now lost with the race of men that left the land deforested and sterile from war and strife.
The patron came upon the land after it was emptied of all but nomadic horse people with whom it brokered a cultural compact.
In exchange for cooperation and labor, the horse people earned leadership and supernatural protection.
The dried land was patiently gardened into a region of pasture, farmland and forest, an ecosystem that could support at first its custodians but over time abundance grew the city state around the home of the patron.
The patrons otherworldly presence over time caused to mingle generations of horse and person, creating the first Centaurs. Centaurs are heterospecies, and when mating can bear centaur, humans or horse. As such, all 3 are considered the same people and treated with equal dignity.
The centaurs are capable caretakers of the rolling land and easily work a massive acreage to support the metropolis since grown around the oracle. As the city grew in size and prestige, so too did the demesnes of the patron; the hinterlands continued to expand, creating a buffer of carefully ranged land populated by a militia force of cavalry-ranchers.
Instinctual naturalists, the centaurs used the mind and adaptability of humans to learn sustainable husbandry and custodial skills from elves and other naturalist species met during their travels. Equine spirit and instincts give the centaur a gut judgment and reflex for movement and coordination.
The centaur have never spread far beyond their region, even for all of their ramblings. This is because away from the influence of their patron, centaurs then only bear humans or horses. They can only reproduce truly in their cultural boundaries.
It is their remove from the central city that has allowed centaur to remain so for so many generations. They rarely serve the city outside of agriculture, ranging and emissary roles. They seldom enter the city.
Within the city, the influence of the patron is fully felt. Monstrous races and humanoids combine and reproduce in all imaginable shapes and combinations. The splendors of architecture, art, and thought are as varied and unique as the people. The ready combination of person, science and craft has driven the oracle to wide renown for craftsmen, artificers and magi.
Compared to such a cosmopolitan polity, the centaurs seem truly provincial. They never truly stopped being nomads; the rite of passage for young centauri is to spend years abroad traveling the world. For this reason, centaurs encountered in the wild are typically solitary or found only in small bands of young adults. Old and wizened centaurs generally have rejected a return to the home range; they prefer to live wild and free in far flung lands. Every centaur youth on migsprung knows a network of second cousins and distant uncles at far remove to serve as the nexi of their travels. In exchange for housing with relations, these young centaur do tasks and bidding of their relations; it's a small price for familiar refuge in a wider world were monstrous half-humans are the exception and not the norm.
Centaurs in the world are ambitious explorers who believe they are first to set hoof in a new land or to trample a new challenge.
When old, they are hermitic and sage, keeping the the very furthest outskirts of settled lands.
In their homeland they are staunch defenders and tacticians. Every retreat is simultaneously a regrouping and flanking maneuver. Archers at the outskirts turn intruders away or to the ground efficiently; more loam for the thickety fence maintained, a massive border wall of thorn, briar & grisly remains.