Nemylanthinor

In the plane called Brayshe by scholars there are two continental landmasses which have recently been joined together by exploration, colonization, and exploitation.

The Old World, centered around a mini-continent called Esorni, is a place of magical and technological advancement and dominion, is run by the Empire of the Jeweled Cities, descendants of a power-hungry cleric from long ago who declared himself Overlord of a coalition of city-states and small island nations he forged together with his adventuring party in his times of need. It is predominantly human, with only a few non-humans being held to varying roles of social exception or derision, typically the latter.

The New World is a place where the only human tribes are of barbarian animists and alpine survivalists in a small region within the vast landmass. Called Nemylanthinor, the New World is made of many non-human species of humanoids which have for the most part resisted the formation of empires or large political entities, and taken a more grass-roots approach toward political organization. Wars are relatively rare and mostly unknown, but raids and border skirmishes do remain very common.

The crown jewel of the Empire is an elvish tree city called 'Tol Vehara' which was won by one of the few conquest members who survived the ocean journey to Nemylanthinor, a human woman of House Opal called Laeka, someone who studied as a Landwarden (druid) and manifested the fey's circle of oneiric power in her specialization choice. She used the powers of the Forest Primeval and her own personal skills as a mediator from the Old World to cobble together a surprisingly effective alliance forged between selected tribes of various folks.

Tol Vehara was ceded less than actually taken in battle, the bio-focused wood elves under tremendous instinctual pressure to end the combat because the Elf Queens, one per Great Tree in each tree city, were entering a mating cycle, and the biological instinct of the elves was to assure the security of the tree city at all costs so the male elves produced by the hundreds of thousands could begin the Great Melee against each other to fight each other to the death for the privilege of mating with the Elf Queen where she is symbiotically linked to the birthing chambers of the Great Trees and using the floral scents and pollen signals to cue the society-wide 13 and 17 year cycles of mating, which is typically when rival Queens also mount challenges and depose their predecessors to ensure the strongest and best elf Queen joins with the Great Tree and produces the strongest and best offspring for the city.

The Accords of Tol Vehara

Laeka and the Sisterhood of Tarna Kithor brokered the Accords of Tol Vehara when the Queens entered heat together on their cycle while Laeka and her Coalition was laying an ineffective but ultimately productive siege from the west where they approached. And a Tree-city of the Elves was ceded into the control of the Sisterhood of Tarna Kithor, with the stipulation that no Fort or Encampment (headquarters) or Full Garrison (500 Knights and 1000 Squires, plus 1000 civilian servants) would ever cross East of the Escarpment ever again, a cliff face from the Westron Mountain range which divided the Western fifth of the continent from the rest of the Nemylanthian continent. Any elves who wished to remain had to be granted full rights of citizenship and Precedence allowed for existing Elvish Customs over Esorni law.
Given that, Tol Vehara was ceded to Human control, fifteen years ago. Laeka died in the conquest from battle wounds from the City Queen, and as a token of union her corpse was fed to the Center Tree of the City. Since then, her bloodline, of House Opal, is recognized by the Great Trees as being guests of great honor and one of the nobles of the city. No other Jeweled City Great House has been so honored. House Opal was in danger of fading into obscurity in the Blooded Council, but Laeka's opportunistic leadership (she just happened to be the ranking member of the expedition to survive to make landfall in Salvation's Landing, so named for the horrors of the trip) turned their fortunes completely around, to the chagrin of Houses Sapphire and Ruby, who were poised like vultures to absorb House Opal's riches and holdings when it looked ready to liquidate all assets against a mountain of bad debts.

Now spared from the horrors of House Liquidation, and recognized masters of the new city through right of conquest and preferential local treatment, House Opal is on the rise and has reformed itself, throwing wide open the family lineages to new blood, accepting all rich and adventurous minor house suitors looking for an alliance and more importantly, a license to trade directly in the City of Tol Vehara. There are more Opals in the New World than assholes in Esorni, high and low born, or so the joke goes.

Salvation's Landing and the Highway of Conquest are all well to the West of the Western Mountains and the Escarpment or Laeka's Lament pass. The Knights of the New Order, for a century the real power of the Empire, are for now content themselves with keeping all of their members to the west and building out a robust colony among the coastal peoples for Salvation's Landing, and some Hostels and fortified Roadhouses and Encampments along Laeka's Highway. The lands to the west of the Western mountains on Nemylanthinor is almost four times as large as the landmass of all of Esorni, for comparison, and the westlands are barely 1/5 of the size of the southern hemisphere massive continent of Nemylanthinor, so even just the strip of lands on the northern edge of the Westlands are a treasure trove of land-based resources in consolidated locations. Land resources in Okanna are challenging to gather at volume, due to the spread of millions of tiny islands and small archipelagos with few larger island masses or mini-continents even including some of the older settlements and colonies among the Okannaian islands. Nemylanthinor seems a miraculous source of

But Tol Vehara is the lone bastion of Jeweled Cities civilization in this strange non-human, "primitive", and "uncivilized" continent. And it is the closest that humanity is allowed to settle, still thousands of miles from what this continent claims is the true cradle of civilization's pinnacle, in the Rim Nations about the Eastern Sea, where Dwarves, Sea Elves, and Mionnim feline-folk call home.

Trade in new products is brisk back home as well. Tol Vehara, for all that the locals in the New World consider Tol Vehara to be a hinterlands outpost in the center of nowhere on Nemylanthinor, is a tremendously and chaotically busy city right in the center of a long and punishing trade route back to the Jeweled Cities. They buy and sell both Old and New World delights and staples, and only 15 years since the Accords, no one is quite sure what to expect in the decades and centuries that lie ahead.