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The Arends are the most stiff-necked people of the twelve
kingdoms, intensely proud and with a vast sense of honor. While the
common people appear to have normal sense, the nobility (as one
Tolnedran ambassador was wont to say) have minds unviolated by
thought. The culture is the most fundamentally feudal and
conservative in the west. The Arends are shorter and darker than the rangy
blond Alorns to the north and show certain racial similarities to
Tolnedrans and Nyissans. They are a humorless people with strong
tendencies toward melancholy. Their songs are lugubrious accounts
of lost battles and hopeless last stands against overwhelming odds
'complete with lengthy casualty lists which include the genealogy of
,,,each of the slain. If the songs are to be believed, Arendish maidens
'are rampantly suicidal, casting themselves off towers or into rivers
or plunging
a variety of sharp instruments into themselves on the
slightest pretext. Arendish men are savage warriors, but the Knights
consider the most elemental tactics or strategy beneath their dignity.
They are masters of the frontal attack and the last stand. The charge
Of the Mimbrate Knights at the Battle of Vo Mimbre was truly
aweinspiring, although its purpose was largely diversionary.
Cautionary note
: Arends are extremely proud and sensitive. The
tiniest slight, real or imaginary' will evoke anything from a blow to
the side of the head up to and including a formal challenge to single
combat - always fought to the death in Arendia. Only the most
skilled diplomats should ever have dealings with these people.
THE HISTORY OF ARENDIA
Like the other peoples of the western kingdoms, the Arends migrated
out of the east during the early centuries of the first millennium.
By the year 2000, the three major cities, Vo Mimbre, Vo Wacune and
Vo Astur existed in their present locations, and were the seats of
three more or less rival Duchies. The Mimbrate house controlled
the southern reaches, the Asturians the west, the Wacites the north.
(The Wacite holdings were located primarily in what is now
Sendaria.)
The institution of Knighthood among the Arends has always been
a hindrance to the development of the kingdom. By the 23rd century'
Arendia was dotted with castles, keeps, forts and strongholds. The
entire energy of the nation has been devoted to war and the
preparation for war, and Arendish Knights live in an almost perpetual state
of armed conflict. The struggles between the contending Duchies is
duplicated at the local level. A dispute over a pig or a broken fence
can set neighbors at each other's throats, and because of the
interlocking relationships between the various barons, earls, viscounts
etc., these disputes spread rapidly and can, if unchecked, flare into
open civil war.
The third millennium marked the period of Arendish
expansionism. The Asturians solidified their hold on the west and, in a
surprise move, fortified the southern bank of the Astur River against
the Wacites and the southern edge of the great Arendish Forest
against the Mimbrates, effectively cutting Arendia in two by
extending a band of control from the borders of Ulgoland on the east to the
sea on the west. The Mimbrates and Wacites naturally both declared
war at that point, but the hastily-erected wooden blockhouses of the
Asturians proved to be substantial enough to repel them. In point of