Founder: Legends are confused on this point. Most Ilantrans believe that their Kingdom was founded only about seven hundred years ago by refugees coming across the Breathing Lands, despite the rumors of older monarchs and history. The royal family has certainly bred with the ilzánai who lived in the Kingdom before their coming, and thus they may be considered the true, collective founders of Ilantra.

Geography: Ilantra, like its eastern neighbor Orlath, is mostly a prairie Kingdom, with long stretches of grass in the western and southern parts. However, in the north there are deep forests and rolling hills that grow more fertile crops than anywhere else in the country. Such things should not exist in the rainshadow of the Rashar Mountains, but they do. The wise suspect that the forests are kept in existence by the power of the alpha of alphas, god of the wolves, or perhaps by the power of Shadow.

Ilantra is bordered on the west by the uninhabitable Breathing Lands and on the south by the Kingdom of Doralissa. Roads lead mostly south to Doralissa, or south and then east to the major cities and market villages of Orlath, though there is one long and lonely route twining north and east to the city of Corlinth. Otherwise, travel is conducted on the Isiluin River, the major watercourse of the country, which rises in the far western Rashars, almost on the border of the Breathing Lands, and flows south. Just south of the hill country, it makes a wide curve before flowing east to join the Terrana River of Orlath. The royal family lives in a castle on an island in the middle of the River, and has successfully defended this stronghold against many invaders.

Ilantra has only four cities of any size. Danantra is the nearest city to the castle, and does much trading with the royal family. Neina lies south and west of the Isiluin River’s main course, and survives mainly by farming and transporting the food up the River’s tributary stream, the Doriel, that runs close by the city. One far southern city, Agadlos, is committed to trade with Doralissa. Somewhat to the east and north of Agadlos, though still south of the Isiluin River, is Tirantien, the last remaining city of purebred ilzánai. They make their living mostly by healing and hunting.

The People: Most of the people in Ilantra look subtly unlike the people of the other Kingdoms, a product both of their fey blood and their probably long-ago journey to found the Kingdom. Whether they came over the Breathing Lands, as they themselves insist, or from some other place, as histories even further back suggest, they came from a group of humans that settled no other Kingdom. Most Ilantran women are taller than the men, being about 5’9" to the men’s average 5’6", and their features are usually thinner and swarthier than those of the other Kingdoms’ peoples. Their hair is often startlingly pale, or bright red, though that pallor may be a result of mixing their blood with the ilzánai since their first settlement here.

Ilantrans show a great variety of eye colors, notably the gold-flecked eyes of the half-ilzánai. Brown and hazel eyes are uncommon, as in Orlath, though in Ilantra usually treated as a curiosity rather than as a sign of lower-class status.

Religion: The worship of Elle, Goddess of the Light and creation goddess with many other aspects, has taken hold in Ilantra, but never with the fanaticism that has marked its hold in Orlath or Doralissa. This may have to do with the founders having a different religion than did the founding Queens of the other two Kingdoms (both Elle-worshippers). They seem to have worshipped a variety of gods, including some not widely worshipped in Ilantra anymore, like the alpha of alphas and Tiessa, goddess of leeches. Shrines to these gods, as well as to powers like Chaos and Destiny, are scattered in homes, usually hidden when the priestesses of Elle inspect them, and in secret places in the forests and hills and even the Plains. Unique to Ilantra are the worship of Arran, god of the River Isiluin, and of the elemental Cycle on its own, as a power distinct from Destiny, the Light, or Elle, with whom it is usually associated.

The wiser priestesses of Elle recognize the unstable situation they are in, and make the necessary gestures of placation towards worshippers of other powers. Hotheaded younger priestesses tend to either vanish, or become wiser very quickly. Since the convulsion of a few years ago, which brought the new royal family to the throne, both the placating gestures and the disappearances have increased.

Language: Ilantran has picked up many words from Orlathian and Doralissan, but at base it is still a language unrelated to any other in the Kingdoms, and has absorbed the most words from another unrelated language, the tongue of the ilzánai. This makes it seem even more alien than it already is. It often involves flowing strings of vowels, including a few words made entirely of vowels, and a great preference for sibilants, nasals, and liquids. Word order is extremely unusual, with the object coming first, followed by the verb and than the subject, save only when the verb is an imperative. In addition, Ilantran is almost the only Kingdoms language to retain such archaic forms as the subjunctive in a variety of uses.

Outsiders usually find the sounds of Ilantran easy to learn, but the verbal tricks take much longer to master.

The Royal Family: The royal family of Ilantra is large and sprawling, though the direct royal line tends to be much smaller. They regularly interbreed with the ilzánai. Unusually, they still tend to have elemental magic despite the fact that half-fey often do not, though they sicken and wield disease magic as the ilzánai do. They often have names with two vowels in a row, and they have many history-tales woven around the direct royal line, such as the children being raised in the forests and hills by various animals, including wolves and eagles.

The current monarch is King Delian, who is wed to the Queen Aloriadell of Arvenna. In the eyes of the monarch, this combines the Kingdoms as Ilantra-Arvenna, though this idea has proven less than popular with many of his cousins. King Delian is a Darkworker, and thus the domination of the Dark is also a "fact" in Ilantra, but the people of Ilantra have a long tradition of ignoring what they do not like, and thus Elle-worshippers and the Light continue to flourish in sight of the castle, and even inside it. The main effect of King Delian’s ascension to the throne has been that the minor religions have crept out of hiding and begun to grow in the sun.

Major Historical Events: The reign of the Lord of Disasters, possibly apocryphal account of a battle by Dark and Light to subdue a third force usually called Shadow; the founding of the Kingdom; the ill-fated expedition of Queen Assoria into the Breathing Lands; many history-tales of feral royal children coming to the throne and ruling with more grace than their evil Regents.