Oh, the Wenelians...
The Wenelians are the conglomerate rubble of several dozen pre-Dawn and First Age cultures which have remained fragmented. When writing, I kept the thought of the Balkans firmly in mind where every valley has the survivors of some once more successful culture.
There is some material on the Western Barbarians in Trade Talk along with a fairly large writeup of the Harrandings. They are by far the largest and most cohesive groups in the area. Most of the rest are only lightly sketched out. Ttrotsky has done a lot of work on the Mraloti and other hsunchen cultures which are found in the area. The Aeteli are the largest group of Helerings remaining in the world as far as I know but even they are mingled with the other folk of the area. One reason for this lack of unity is that the Wenelians never had a Heort or Imarj or any one of a number of Dawn Age saviors. They dwelt in darkness until the Lightbringers came.
After the Second Age, the Wenelian tribes got rid of many of the Lightbringer teachings in their effort to jettison any God Learner corruption. This has had an impact on their ability to interact beyond the clan level - no Issaries, no Lankor Mhy, very few Chalana Arroy, and few (if any) Orlanth Tribe-King adherrents. With their mishmash of cults and peoples, there's really no unifying factor inherrent in their cultural makeup. Until the Trader Princes came and provided these factors...
I really didn't want to expand the cultures in too much detail for two reasons. Firstly, that would really limit narrator flexibility. Secondly, there are just too many of them to do any justice. I concentrated on the Trader Princes and provided an overview of Wenelia's people. Wenelia is a big place and relatively sparsely populated - some of these remnant peoples in their entirity are less numerous than a Sartarite Tribe (<5,000 people). Some are down to their last clan.
Jeff
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