The forests of Vyanthnem are a strange and somewhat wondrous place. Er...let's restart. The Vyanth were the "elves" of my world. Eladrin specifically when I pushed everything into the 4th Edition DnD square hole. In that vein, they live in a forest, and they are magical. That is kind of where the similarities end though. They are not wise and nature loving, in fact, they have hunted their forests bare of all life.
Back to what I began with. The forests of Vyanthnem are a strange and somewhat wondrous place. Surrounding the cities of the Vyanth is a very nearly impenetrable wall of trees, each one the exact copy of the others near it, right down to the leaves growing from their branches. The forests are a still place, for there are no birds or beasts, and those strange uniform leaves remain still because there is no wind. The forests of Vyanthnem are a completely manufactured place, created by the Vyanth to act as a barrier to other races attempting to invade Vyanthnem.
They also explode when plied with sufficient amounts of sorcery. Seriously. Vyanthnem is a kingdom surrounded with an impenetrable wall of sorcerous, exploding, trees.
The Vyanth are a vain and hedonistic people, primarily concerned with their next fuck, high, or fight. Originally, their main form of enjoyment was spent bumming around their forests, and those of The Beast Lands and The Wild Lands, killing and tormenting whatever they like while their rivals exploded trees near them to provide a challenge. After they killed everything that walked, they moved to stuff that flew, and moved on down the food chain till all that was left in Vyanthnem was the Vyanth themselves. Then they got bored and started attack the nearby nations. They soon found that they could save themselves the trouble of waging war year round by taking slaves from other countries, so they built gladitorial arenas in all their cities and began taking (and breeding to a lesser extent) slaves from other countries and that's how they while away their lives. They sit in their stands and watch others bleed out on the sand for their amusement.
It wasn't always this way though.
Along time ago, the Vyanth were very human-like, but they've been using sorcery for a long long time and now they look the way they do, who know what they'll look like in another six thousand year. A long time ago they lived in scrublands, like most other races in The Known World. They were ruled by a king then, but I haven't come up with a name for him. Anyway, he ruled the nation that would someday become Vyanthnem and Serethnem.
This king was a fair tempered fellow, and when three refugees from the west wandered into his kingdom, he was inclined to allow them safety within it, because they brought a gift with them. It was a powerful staff that could channel all kinds of fun powers. This king was a powerful sorcerer in his own right, but this staff of power made him beacon of power. Power power power, now the word has no meaning. Heh. To continue: this led to Callifay hacking his head off and the creature that would one day come to be called the Silver King taking his place.
Callifay was looking for an object that had been stolen for his master and the former king of the Vyanth had it, so he went in guns blazing, swords rather, and slew a bunch of the Vyanth and cut off the head of their king. He was actually looking for those three refugees the king had allowed into his kingdom, but they had given the staff they stole to the king and kept their heads low enough that they avoided the bloodshed Callifay brought to Vyanthnem.
What happened over the next couple years isn't well recollected by anyone. Callifay was running around killing folks and that made it hard for them to write things down. The long and short of it was that the nation split into Vyanthnem and Serethnem and those two nations produced two kings from somewhere and became two separate nations.
This invasion made the Vyanth very adverse to strangers wandering into their borders and potentially bringing another Callifay with them, so their new king used the staff and erected a massive wall of sorcerous wood to protect the kingdom. Callifay had been run out of the kingdom because of the simple fact that he was outnumbered and his own magic couldn't fend off that of the Vyanth. With Callifay gone, the Vyanth were free to become arrogant and hedonistic under their new king.
As I said, they put up the wall of trees around their country and kind of locked themselves away from the world, but trapped in their cities they grew more and more bored. Callifay's actions led to their xenophobia, but boredom led to their hedonism, which led in turn to their institution of slavery and the gladitorial arenas.
Vyanthnem is a kingdom of tall, sorcerous, sons of bitches.
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