Anur-tek

The pre-Cataclysm Empire of Gond was utterly destroyed when the seismic upheaval of the Cataclysm triggered catastrophic failures in the Empire's reartificed Titanic reactors. The rulers of the Empire - believed by most historians to have been a mixture of eladrin and featherfolk - were lost, along with most of the urban population, which left the rural underclass - mostly composed of smoothfolk - to inherit the territory. After generations spent in subjugation, treated like inferiors, the Anurin rose up and created one of the greatest civilisations of the mortal age. The empire of Anur-tek (place of the people) spread across central-southern Suto.
Sadly, Anur-tek did not escape the mistakes of Gond entirely, and the Anurin noble families rose in part by keeping the Bofyrn and Aneft in bondage. The Bofyrn were denied advanced education and largely kept to physical labour and military service, while the Aneft were allowed some academic and technical pursuits, but pushed to the delta marshland where complex architecture and industrial development was impossible, and forced to travel to Anurin cities to study in libraries, workshops or observatories. The empire's technology rivaled that of the Legion or the Regime, with a focus on pharmacology and arcane research, but only the upper echelons of its populace enjoyed the fruits of that technology.
The greatest of these cities was Anur-ket (city of the people), on the slopes of the central highlands of Suto. Anur-ket was a great sprawl of basalt masonry and wooden platforms high in the canopy of the cloud forest. This was the jewel in the Anurin crown, a centre of industry, fuelled by the volcanic fires which slumbered beneath the mountains, of art and of learning, as well as the seat of the government of Anur-ket.
Roka-ket (city of the clouds) was the second city, perched high in the cloud forests of the central highlands, while in the vast and sprawling delta of the River Rania, the platform villages of the Aneft spread into the expansive dykes known as the batteries, trapping fertile land behind them and allowing the Aneft to develop on their own terms.
The end of the Empire came not from the Aneft, nor even from any uprising of the Bofyrn soldiery or labourers. Rather, it was a group of the most privileged scholars and nobles of Anur-ket who sought personal power and arcane knowledge in dealings with a volcano spirit. This spirit proved not to be one of the natural genii such as the early smoothfolk had worshipped, but the Elemental Prince, Apyris. The conspirators got what they sought, but more besides.
The members of the cult were transformed into the first Pyranoi, sometimes rather disparagingly known as 'fire newts.' At the same time, magma boiled up beneath the forges and spilled free, scorching the foundations of the city and setting the trees and platforms ablaze. The loss of many of the leading figures of the Empire and almost all of their material wealth upended the order of the land. Anut-tek collapsed, the Bofyrn and the Aneft cut lose and the surviving Anurin nobility regrouped in Roka-ket.
The remnants of the Anurin empire were reconstituted as Anur-teka (new place of the people). In the delta, the sprawling city-state of Rania-ket arose.