Varli - Mni Ethnicity
“I asked a matron of Chiapex what laws her people obey. She laughed, not with cruelty, but with that soft amusement reserved for children who ask what the wind tastes like. ‘We follow the vine,’ she said. ‘It binds until it breaks. We honour the leaf, until the branch demands pruning. We walk beside stories, not behind laws.’ I did not understand her then. I still do not, not truly. But I have seen the Varlimni balance barefoot along rope bridges five hundred feet above the forest floor without fear. I have seen them leap laughing from trees, gliders unfurled like wings. Perhaps this is the point, that there are people who do not measure the world in stone and writ, but in breath and tension.”
“Their settlements vanish into the canopy. Their names change between sunrises. Their rites are painted in mud and ash, their truths whispered into wood, not ink. They do not build monuments; they grow them. Their children run barefoot until one day they do not return, and if they return, they are no longer children. They mark time not by years but by scars, stories, and the bend of the river.”
“Yet for all this wilderness, there is no savagery. For all their fluidity, no chaos. I would call them anarchists if they had ever heard the word, and I would call them primitive if I had not seen a child of ten fold a glider out of leaves and silk, leap into a ravine, and land like a sigh. Perhaps, then, the Varlimni do not refuse civilisation, they have simply remembered another shape for it.”
Introduction
Among the branches of the Mni species, the Varlimni, or simply Varli in their own tongue, represent a profound divergence from their cousins in Valenfar. Where the Alemni pursue grandeur in marble and permanence in law, the Varlimni dwell in forest canopies and living silence, embracing a life of impermanence, adaptation, and ancestral rhythm. Their culture is oral, tactile, and elusive, never inscribed in stone but woven into stories, dances, and scars.
To outsiders, Varlimni society appears loose and insubstantial. Its structures are matriarchal, clan-based, and often informal. There is no centralised state, no Directorate, no singular scripture or civil code. Yet this perceived lawlessness conceals a sophisticated network of obligations, rivalries, rituals, and seasonal accords. Honour is not given, but earned. Status is not imposed, but proved. A Varlimni is not judged by bloodline or office, but by the shape of their deeds and the stories they leave in their wake.
Their physical appearance sets them apart as clearly as their customs. With skin in tones of deep bronze to umber, eyes like stormlight or flame, and hair dark as wet bark, the Varlimni are unmistakably kin to the forest itself. Some, born with green-tinted skin, are viewed with reverence or unease, said to be marked by the forest itself, destined for greatness or ruin. These differences have prompted debate among human scholars: is this merely environmental divergence, or the echo of something older, deeper, perhaps even a shaping by Arora itself? The Varlimni offer no answer. They do not ask the forest for explanations. They ask only that it continue.”
Today, Varlimni territory spans the forested eastern coasts of Erothi: the flooded lowlands of Bashri, the misted heights of Chiapex, and the wetland-throttled groves of Tianjin. Here, they build rope-villages, glider posts, and ritual clearings high above the reach of invaders. Though rarely unified, they are rarely conquered. Where the Directorate marches in columns and the Urmans in warbands, the Varlimni vanish and return, elusive as moonlight through leaves. For all their disunity, they endure. For all their decentralisation, they remember. And for all their refusal to be catalogued, they remain one of Arora’s most distinctive peoples.”
"When the trees send a child born green, the forest is asking a question no one dares answer."
Appearance and Lifestyle
To look upon a Varlimni is to see a being shaped by canopy, current, and silence. Their bodies are not carved for permanence like the marble-borne Alemni, but for motion, swift, lithe, and reactive. They are as much a part of the forest as its birds, vines, and shadows. Every trait speaks to survival in an ever-changing environment: the long limbs for climbing, the whisper-soft gait for evasion, the subtle marks of ritual that tell stories where no paper endures.
Their lives mirror this adaptation. From dawn to dusk, Varlimni move with a rhythm set by birdsong and rainfall. They hunt in silence, gather communally, and dwell in tree-villages whose boundaries flex with the needs of the season. No two settlements are quite alike, and even within a single clan, the pattern of life may alter across years. Change is not feared, it is woven into the pattern of daily existence, as natural and necessary as wind among leaves.
Varlimni stand slightly shorter on average than their Alemni cousins, typically ranging from 1.6 to 1.8 metres in height. Their bodies are lean and long-limbed, built for climbing, gliding, and quick evasive movement. Muscle is corded rather than bulky, built for endurance over force. Their balance is preternatural, their movements almost feline, soft-footed, deliberate, and efficient.
Eyes range from mossy green to amber gold, and in some clans pale violet or ice-blue are not uncommon. Their ears are pointed, like all Mni, but more subtly tapered, soft-curved like oak leaves rather than the sharp peaks of the Alemni. Their voices are often melodic, low in pitch, and rich in inflection, a legacy of oral tradition and woodland acoustics. It is said that an elder Varlimni can command silence not by volume, but by tone alone.
Skin tones among the Varlimni range from warm olive and rich umber to dark bronze, often mottled slightly by exposure or ritual staining. Their hair is typically black, dark brown, or chestnut, worn long and often adorned with woven cords, feathers, or small carved tokens that mark lineage, skill, or memory. During rites or festivals, the hair may be oiled, braided, or dusted with coloured powders specific to clan identity.
Markings play an important cultural role. Rites of passage, acts of merit, or moments of loss may be commemorated by temporary scarification, burning, or dye. Unlike tattoos, these are not intended to last, their fading is part of their meaning. Facial paint and herbal body stains, often derived from clan-specific flora, are worn during ceremonies, conflict, and courtship. These practices vary widely between territories and clans but are universally respected as expressions of identity and impermanence.
Significant variation exists between the Varlimni of Bashri, Chiapex, and Tianjin, not only in appearance but in posture, grooming, and movement. Bashri Varlimni are typically lighter-skinned, wirier in frame, and adapted to floodplain life. They favour loose, breathable attire and are known for their speed and grace across narrow vine-bridges and swamp roots.
In Chiapex, clans are broader-shouldered and hardier, with darker complexions and features shaped by mountain wind and mist. These Varlimni speak more slowly, observe more strictly, and show a preference for strength in climbing and gliding over agility. Tianjin Varlimni, who dwell close to Seishi wetlands, often bear paler eyes and more compact builds. They show a subtle tolerance for humidity, prolonged immersion, and possess superior water navigation skills. Cross-cultural exchange has left its mark, both physically and linguistically, though the Varlimni would never admit to being influenced by outsiders.
A rare and mythic trait among the Varlimni is the appearance of green-hued skin in newborns, a muted tint ranging from mossy undertone to pale bark green. Such children are called the Verdant-born and are viewed with a mixture of awe, caution, and grave expectation. Tradition holds that they are especially marked by the forest, destined for paths of great weight, whether healer, prophet, or ruin-bearer.
In most clans, Verdant-born are removed from the family and placed under the care of Grove Matrons or spirit-keepers, where they receive advanced training in herbalism, spirit rites, and dream-listening. If they thrive, they are honoured as bridge-walkers between the mortal and the unseen. If they falter, they are often shunned, accused of failing a pact they never asked to bear. Whether blessing or curse, the green skin is never ignored. It is the forest asking a question, and not all clans are brave enough to answer.
Daily life for the Varlimni is cyclical, flexible, and intensely rooted in the forest’s rhythms. Days begin early, with each household responsible for its own food, tools, and shelter maintenance. Communal work often takes place at canopy level: bridge repairs, glider stitching, and ritual carving. Hunting is a collective effort, typically undertaken in silence, using bows, traps, and trained birds. Foraging is also a highly skilled task, requiring deep botanical knowledge passed orally through generations.
Children are raised communally, educated through stories, mimicry, and ritual rather than formal instruction. Seasonal festivals mark the calendar far more than arbitrary dates. The wet season is a time of introspection, repair, and storytelling. The dry season brings travel, challenge rites, and trade. There is little concept of "work-life balance", one’s role is simply a lived narrative, as fluid as a riverbed after a storm.
Cuisine reflects the bounty and constraints of the forest. Staples include root vegetables (particularly yama and korla tubers), foraged fruits, tree nuts, freshwater fish, smoked game, and a wide array of leaf and bark infusions used for both nourishment and medicine. Meals are simple but artfully prepared, often cooked communally over suspended fire pits or stone plates heated by coals.
Scent plays a major role in food presentation. Herbs are selected not only for taste but for memory, a meal seasoned with maru leaves might recall a departed matriarch; a pinch of chyat root could honour a recent victory. Sharing food is a deeply symbolic act, often functioning as both bond and apology. Refusing a meal offered in ritual context is one of the gravest social insults a Varlimni can deliver.
“The tree does not remember its seeds. The leaf does not question the wind. But the hand that climbs must remember every branch, or fall.”
Beliefs and Values
Among the Varlimni, values are not carved into law, but worn into the body, as scars, as stories, as choices made under canopy shadow. Morality is not imposed from above, but arises through consensus, experience, and ancestral example. What binds the clans is not belief in a common dogma, but participation in a shared cycle: of merit, of trial, of growth. Honour, freedom, beauty, and intimacy all take shape within the dense thickets of clan life, ephemeral, variable, and fiercely personal.
Though customs vary between the territories of Bashri, Chiapex, and Tianjin, certain ideals reappear again and again across songs, rites, and memory. A Varlimni is expected to act, to contribute, to shape, to endure. Silence is respected, but passivity is despised. To love is to strive. To live well is to leave a mark worth retelling.
To the Varlimni, beauty is a form of narrative. It is not found in symmetry or ornament, but in the evidence of a life well-lived: in the curve of a scar, the rhythm of a stride, the way someone fits into the forest around them. A beautiful body is not an untouched one, it is one marked by experience, crafted through danger, made expressive by discipline and vitality.
Scars, tattoos, and ritual marks are admired not for decoration but for the deeds they record. Piercings, particularly along the ears and brow, denote maturity and achievement. Hair is often braided, dyed, or adorned with beads from clan totems or ancestral trees. Physical scent is another layer of expression, oils mixed with bark, blossom, or soil are applied not to entice, but to anchor identity in memory.
Beauty is also expressed in action. A well-executed climb, a song that captures a shared grief, or a perfectly timed joke told during a hunt, these acts are beautiful. Stillness, too, has its place, but it must be earned. A Varlimni who sits must have already danced. A quiet one must be known to have once shouted.
Gender among the Varlimni is fluid, situational, and deeply contextual. While many clans are nominally matriarchal, with elder women serving as spiritual leaders, tacticians, and memory-keepers, authority is not strictly tied to sex or biology. Any who earn respect through action may rise to leadership, and many high-ranking warriors, craftspeople, or spirit-guides are neither male nor female in conventional terms.
Roles are not inherited but assumed. A child may be raised with certain expectations based on early temperament, but nothing is fixed. Those who transgress or transform are not corrected, they are watched, tested, and eventually, if consistent, accepted. It is said among the Varlimni that gender is a rope bridge: meant to flex, to bend, and to hold, not to imprison or divide.
Outsiders often mistake this fluidity for primitivism or confusion. Among the clans, however, it is understood as a natural echo of the forest: nothing in the canopy is ever only one thing. Even the roots grow both down and across.
Courtship is often overt, theatrical, and competitive. To court another is to display: not one’s beauty, but one’s capacity. Gifts are common, but always handmade, a bowstring of plaited vine, a poem carved into bone, a perfectly skinned fish. Challenges are even more frequent. One may call for a race, a climb, a craft duel, or even a test of silence, where both suitors must hold a watch together without speaking until one breaks.
The pursued chooses whether to respond with acceptance, rebuke, or their own challenge. In some clans, these rituals are strictly regulated by festival; in others, they may occur at any time. What is constant is the emphasis on initiative. To wait passively for love is considered poor form. Love is a hunt, not a harvest.
Gendered roles in courtship vary. In Bashri, it is customary for women to initiate. In Tianjin, the seeker is whomever holds fewer tattoos. In Chiapex, all must court the one who sings best during the Feast of Return. There are rules, but they change, and to know when to break them is its own kind of seduction.
Varlimni partnerships are consensual, temporary, and deeply respected, but rarely eternal. Monogamy exists but is not prescribed, and many Varlimni pass through multiple partnerships over a lifetime, often with former partners remaining close allies or co-parents. Emotional maturity is prized over possessiveness. The idea of a "soulmate" is considered dangerously naive, better to find someone who complements your path for now than to chain yourself to an old map.
Parenthood is a shared responsibility. While biological parents are honoured, the raising of children falls to the clan: elders, cousins, friends. Children are taught early that love is not always romantic, that care is not always hierarchical, and that bonds of choice matter as much as bonds of blood.
Public displays of affection are uncommon, not because they are forbidden, but because they are seen as unnecessary. Affection is shown through gesture, through shared labour, through remembered scent. To mend a partner’s belt is a declaration. To sing their name into a clan’s memory pole is a vow. What is spoken fades. What is done remains.
Birth is not a celebration, but a responsibility. The newborn is not greeted with noise, but with breath, placed skin to bark, welcomed with silence, then lifted to receive the first light of dawn through the leaves. Naming does not occur immediately. Some clans wait three, five, even ten days before naming a child, allowing time for omens, temperament, or ancestral dreams to shape the choice.
Mothers are venerated not only for endurance, but for sacrifice. Those who birth alone, those who birth in silence, those who bleed and do not break, their names are remembered long after their children’s fade. Fathers may assist, but the rite belongs to the mother, the matron, and the trees.
Coming of age is not a date, but a deed. The moment a youth declares readiness, they may seek the Trial: a solitary venture into the deep forest, or a complex task set by the clan. Some must craft a glider and use it. Others must track and heal a wounded beast. Others still must retrieve a forgotten tale from an estranged clan. Success marks adulthood. Failure invites mentorship, but not shame.
Those who succeed are granted a marking, a carving, a scar, a woven braid, and may choose a new name, a new path, or a new bond. They are no longer called child, but kin. From this point, they may speak in council, seek partners, and begin to carry memory.
Death is quiet. There is no burning, no tomb. The body is returned to the forest, buried beneath an ancestral tree, lifted into the canopy on a woven platform, or wrapped and cast into a sacred river. The choice belongs to the departed, if declared, or to the matriarchs, if not. Green-born are always given to the Grove: their return is seen as a closing of a pact.
Public mourning is brief. The dead are remembered through storytelling, memory poles, or carved knots placed within ritual halls. Their name may be sung once each season until it fades. It is said that if a name is sung too long, it chains the soul. Grief, then, is not to hold, it is to witness, honour, and release.
The Varlimni do not write taboos into law, but some acts are universally reviled. To waste food, to lie to an elder, to refuse a fair challenge, or to strike another outside of contest, these deeds stain a name for years. To harm a tree without ritual permission is considered sacrilege, punishable by exile in most clans. To speak falsely before a memory pole is to invite ancestral silence, a punishment more feared than any scar.
“To live well is to be spoken of, not by all, not forever, but by someone who loved your name enough to remember its shape.”
Culture and Expression
For the Varlimni, culture is not something displayed in galleries or etched into monuments. It is worn, sung, shared, and remembered, a living pattern sustained by voice, gesture, and wood. Their way of life is not static, but cyclical: shaped by season and shadow, by storm and silence. Where other peoples inscribe their laws in stone, the Varlimni carve them into memory and trust their children to remember the grain.
This reverence for the impermanent is no rejection of beauty. It is beauty in another form. The elegance of a story retold a hundred ways; the grace of a rope-bridge rebuilt each season; the wisdom of a dance that shifts with every generation. To the Varlimni, nothing must last forever, only long enough to serve, to speak, to be sung one more time.
The highest shared value among the Varlimni is merit: the belief that one's worth must be demonstrated through action, not assumed by station or name. A Varlimni earns respect by what they do, by their craft, their courage, their cunning, or their care. Intent matters little. Outcome, and the memory it leaves, is all.
Loyalty is cherished, but it is transactional. One owes fealty to those who have earned it, to kin, to matron, to friend, and not to title or tradition. Betrayal, when undeserved, stains the speaker’s line; loyalty, when untested, means little. Above all, the Varlimni esteem resilience. Weakness is not a shame, but a state to be outgrown. Suffering is not hidden, but transformed, into story, into song, into scar.
Conformity is quietly despised. The forest does not grow in rows; neither should the soul. But neither is chaos praised. The wild has its rhythm, and a Varlimni learns to move in time, or is lost.
The primary language family of the Varlimni is Varla, a musical tongue shaped by wind, water, and wood. It favours compound words, extended vowels, and soft plosives, lending it a rhythmic, almost sung cadence. Each territory speaks its own dialect: Bashic is clipped and swift, Chiapex syllabic and poetic, Tianjin smooth and lilting like river flow. Mutual understanding is possible, but mistakes are common, often solved through gesture rather than correction.
Varla is primarily oral. A written form exists, developed from carved glyphs etched into wood or bark, but it is used sparingly, for ritual, memory poles, and sacred records. In daily life, meaning lives in the breath, the pause, the eye. To speak in Varla is to speak with the whole body. To write, too often, is to forget how to listen.
Etiquette among the Varlimni is highly ritualised, yet never codified. The first rule: acknowledge your host, not with words, but with gesture. A hand over the heart, a bowed head, the offering of a gift or food. Business is never discussed before a welcome. To speak without this ritual is to speak dishonestly.
Brevity is a virtue. Boasting is permitted only when earned; explanation is suspect unless requested. Interrupting a tale, even by accident, is a serious breach of conduct. But storytelling, when invited, is the one time when excess is allowed. The fire is stoked. The drinks are passed. Then, and only then, may a Varlimni speak without restraint.
Gestures carry great weight. A raised hand may signal dissent. A slow blink can mean apology. A silence, if deliberate, may carry more judgment than any word. To learn etiquette among the Varlimni is to learn to see before one speaks.
Varlimni dress is shaped by forest, function, and flair. Clothing is light, breathable, and adaptable: sleeveless tunics, woven belts, bark-fibre sashes, and trousers designed for tree navigation and sudden shifts in temperature. Colours follow the season, ochres and greens in wet months, deeper reds and browns in dry.
Adornment is not optional, it is identity. A carved brooch, a beaded anklet, a knotted braid: each tells a story of clan, achievement, grief, or desire. Hair is usually long, often braided or twisted around clan tokens or seeds from sacred groves. Even the youngest wear symbols; even the oldest add new ones. A life well-lived is a garment always growing.
Cuisine among the Varlimni is communal, symbolic, and always fresh. Meals are built around wild roots, fruits, and leaves, supplemented by smoked fish, river shellfish, and lean forest game. Preserved foods are rare outside of the wet season, and spice is used sparingly, typically for ritual or medicinal purposes.
Food is offered as greeting, apology, pact, or tribute. Refusing a dish offered during ritual is a direct insult. Even in private, to eat without intention is frowned upon. Every meal is an opportunity to honour the forest, or to disgrace oneself. Dishes are plated with leaves, polished wood, or shaped clay. There is no wealth in excess, only in taste and trust.
Art, to the Varlimni, is not separate from life. Every act is an expression: carving, weaving, singing, climbing. Their preferred forms are ephemeral, bark-scored stories that fade with rain, pigment patterns on skin that last only a season, dances shaped by wind and tree-root. Permanence is not a goal. Memory is a more trustworthy canvas.
Architecture mirrors this ethos. Settlements are suspended within the canopy, houses of woven rope, platforms that sway with the breeze, walkways strung like harp-strings between great branches. Nothing is built to last a century, but everything is built to last a storm. In dry months, more solid structures may rise: communal pavilions, memory halls, or trade hubs. Even these are often made of living wood, coaxed into shape by pruning, whisper, and care.
Cultural heritage among the Varlimni is preserved through rhythm, not rule. Stories are passed through song, through carved memory poles, through dance and silence. To become an elder is not to inherit knowledge, but to be chosen to carry it. Education is not formal; it is participatory. A child learns not by recitation, but by repetition, imitation, and immersion.
Rituals of seasonal passage mark the year. The Viraya, held at each equinox, is a time for clan gatherings, disputes, challenge rites, and union declarations. At these times, songs are retold, grievances aired, and matriarchs reaffirmed. No matter the season, the Varlimni live by this principle: to forget is to betray; to speak what should be forgotten is worse still.
Customs vary widely by clan, but certain traditions persist across territories. Children are introduced to the forest at the naming ceremony, walking barefoot through a sacred trail marked with ancestral symbols. Adolescent rites of solitude, often in the wilds or during a moonless night, signify the beginning of selfhood. Returning successfully earns a braid, a totem, or a scar, and sometimes a new name.
The dead are not mourned for long. Grief must give way to story. Memorial songs are sung not only by kin, but by rivals and friends. To be remembered well is the true immortality. To be forgotten is the only death the Varlimni fear.
The mythologies of the Varlimni are decentralised, oral, and perpetually shifting. Their origin tales speak of clans born from the breath of trees, rivers that sang their first names, and trials set by the forest spirit not to punish, but to refine. Every clan has its own spirit totems, seasonal gods, or trickster ancestors, and these figures shift shape across generations. A god of mischief may become a patron of artists; a spirit of fire may fade into myth and rise again as war-song.
The most consistent tale shared across regions is the Tale of the Verdant Pact, which recounts the First Awakening, when the clans swore not to rule the forest, but to survive it. In this tale, the forest is not a gift, but a trial, a force that tests, nourishes, and forgets. The pact, unspoken but unbroken, defines the Varlimni still: We belong to nothing. Nothing belongs to us. We endure. We change. We are remembered.
A few names echo across Varlimni territory, transcending clan and time. Some may have been real; others are stories made flesh:
- Tala of the Green Canopy, Negotiator with the Seishi after the Long Floods; remembered for forging the enduring shoreline accords.
- Varen Cloudstrider, Explorer, glider-master, and river-singer; credited with mapping the great tributary trails between Tianjin and Chiapex.
- Halya Shardweaver, Artisan of spirit-binding carvings during the Dying Summer; her grove still echoes with protective chants.
- Rolen the Boundless, Mystic who established the Circles of Shelter: neutral territories sacred to peace, exile, and solitude.
These names are not saints, not rulers, they are patterns. Each is remembered not as an idol, but as an example. To walk in their steps is not to copy, but to echo wisely.
The Varlimni do not hunger for empire or invention, yet their technology, when needed, is elegant, precise, and remarkably effective. Their greatest advancements lie in gliding craft, rope engineering, and botanical medicine. Their ability to shape living wood into bridges, homes, and even defensive barriers surpasses most outsiders’ understanding. This is not magic, but memory, passed down through green-thumbed lineage and trial.
Trade with Seishi and certain human settlements has introduced ceramics, improved fire-starting tools, and rare metal blades. Still, the Varlimni resist large-scale metallurgy, believing it warps the rhythm of the land. What they lack in scale, they replace in sustainability. A single rope, knotted by a Chai glider, may hold generations’ worth of memory and weight.
“They do not build empires. They build echoes. Walk the canopy long enough, and you will step on someone’s story. You won’t know whose. They will.”
Geography and Demographics
The Varlimni inhabit the forested eastern coast of Erothi, clustered within three primary realms: Bashri, Chiapex, and Tianjin. These territories, while lacking formal borders, are widely recognised by clan alliances and migratory patterns. Each holds its own cultural tendencies, dialects, and preferred architecture, shaped as much by rainfall and canopy depth as by history or bloodline.
Rather than cities, the Varlimni live in settlements grown into the trees themselves, rope-villages, glider outposts, and canopy markets suspended above the forest floor. These communities may migrate across generations, and even those that remain stationary are periodically rebuilt or shifted to accommodate ecological cycles. No walls are raised. No streets are paved. The forest is never conquered, only negotiated with.
Though not isolationist by nature, the Varlimni are fiercely territorial. Their lands are shared uneasily with Seishi river-kin, particularly in Tianjin, where coastal overlap is frequent. Conflict is rare but persistent, not war, but skirmish and silence, each side testing the other’s patience like two branches twisting in the same wind. Further west, human expansion presses against Varlimni borders through logging camps and trade colonies, though the dense canopy continues to shield most inner settlements from full encroachment.
Scattered Varlimni enclaves exist elsewhere in Erothi and along coastal port cities, though these communities rarely thrive for long. Diaspora Varlimni often face cultural friction, linguistic marginalisation, or romanticisation. Yet even in exile, they send tribute and memory to the homelands. The forest forgets no kin, not while even one voice sings their name.
Bashri spans the broad floodplain forests of eastern Erothi. Here the trees grow tall but wide, their roots half-submerged in winding rivers and seasonal marsh. Varlimni settlements in Bashri favour elevation: treetop villages woven into the upper canopy, linked by rope bridges that sway above mirrored water. Movement is seasonal, clans shift according to fishing grounds, game migrations, or the fruiting of favoured groves.
Trade with Seishi is common here, usually through semi-neutral platforms strung between river forks. These canopy markets are famous for their bark-brewers, story-weavers, and medicinal oils, often visited by emissaries from Carthia, Flybatia, or even distant Firdan. Bashri is the most open of the Varlimni territories, and, some say, the most diluted. Others call it the living heart of forest diplomacy.
Chiapex is a realm of towering stone ridges, dense shadowed valleys, and mist-draped groves. The forest here is darker, quieter, and harder. Settlements cling to cliff-faces and knife-thin branches, with glider platforms often the only reliable way to travel between them. Clans are insular and wary, with disputes between lineages still resolved by seasonal contests of wit, hunt, or endurance.
Chiapex is known as the home of the Grove Matrons and the Bonecarvers, the spirit-keepers and memory-bearers who preserve the deeper traditions of the Varlimni people. Outsiders rarely enter this territory without escort, and those who do are often turned around, or, if persistent, simply vanish. Even the Seishi tread carefully near the high rivers of the Chai.
Tianjin, the easternmost territory of the Varlimni, straddles a delicate balance of forest and estuary. The proximity to major Seishi settlements is most pronounced here, and treaties govern fishing zones, migratory access, and sacred spaces. Unlike Bashri or Chiapex, Tianjin clans maintain seasonal councils where representatives of multiple lineages negotiate shared concerns, a practice often mistaken by outsiders for a proto-government.
The terrain here favours agile, amphibious life. Varlimni born in Tianjin often train in water gliding, reed-craft, and canoe-mount herding, skills rare elsewhere. Their stories tell of river spirits and shadow-traders, and their rituals blend Seishi motifs with ancient forest rites. It is a place of tension, yes, but also of resilience and hybrid memory.
While most Varlimni remain in the eastern forests of Erothi, a few have taken root in other lands. Some settle in the southern jungles, carving temporary homes into new canopies and planting memory tokens beneath foreign boughs. Others live in human cities, often as healers, guides, or glider-messengers, though few find true belonging there. The rhythms of coin and concrete grate against Varlimni patience.
In coastal Medusian cities, Varlimni are often exoticized, seen as quiet savants or forest mystics, valued for craft and intuition but never truly integrated. Many form hidden enclaves within these cities, echoing their native structures: communal shelters, memory totems, and trade rings kept just outside the census. Others serve the Directorate of Valenfar as hired trackers, scouts, or cultural intermediaries, though rarely with full trust on either side.
Those who remain abroad often send offerings home, carvings, preserved oils, messages sung onto bark. These are woven into clan poles during the equinox gatherings, reminding all that a Varlimni who wanders is still a Varlimni remembered.
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