Heartlands

Right across the Imperial City bridge, a city district in its own right, lies Weye. The city’s name supposedly comes from an old Nedic world for wheat but today, Weye is much more famous for being the main connection between the great City to the east and the ricefields in the floodlands to the west. Many consider it as merely an appendage of Cyrod City, its mainland district and it’s true that its population gravitates more towards the City than the mainland Heartlands. After all, the city formed around but a small fishing village that saw considerable migration. As people came from Colovia, from the Weald and from other parts of the Heartlands, many decided to remain on the mainland and the original inhabitants soon became lost in the crowd.
As any rural Heartlander will tell you, the true Heartlands begin as one leaves Weye. The Heartlands are a vast region surrounding Lake Rumare. It is characterised by being composed mostly of fields and compact villages and bordered on all sides by jungle. Truly, had it not been for man, the land would simply be covered in more trees and thick foliage but through centuries of labour, the Heartlanders fought nature to claim these fertile lands.
Towards the north and the west, the land gradually rises. The people, too, take on more rugged characteristics; in the west they have mingled with the Colovians, in the north with the Cyro-Nordic Brumans. Towards the east and the south, they have been in constant contact with the Nibeneans, who they see as their closest kin. The Heartlanders live as farmers in villages dotted all around the countryside as well as in cities and fishing villages on the coast of Rumare; there, most live the life of fishing as well as perusing various crafts. Because of annual floods and the general lay of the land, many of them build homes on stilts and the most popular means of transportation remains the boat.

Ever since the establishment of the first Cyrodiilic empire, the Heartlanders grew to represent the quintessential Imperials. But to an average inhabitant of the fertile ring around the Imperial Isles, this fact means little as their association with their insular kin has put them in a peculiar situation. The mainland is very much a different world to the hectic microcosm of the City and it does not take much to come to this realisation.
Historically, the tribes of the Heartlands were always well connected to the Nibeneans, engaging in trade and very often population flow. The greatest change to the population occurred during the rule of the Ayleids when ship upon ship brought slaves to the fertile banks of the Rumare but this only really had an impact on some of the coastal settlements under effective Ayleid control. The culture of the Heartlanders was nevertheless shaped by the many new arrivals and naturally by the other people they were in contact with, although some groups remained mostly isolated even after the establishment of the Alessian Empire. Most notable were the Rumarans who remain a distinctly independent group of various tribes. They can only really be considered a single group out of practicality, for to name all of them would fill out many parchments. Inland, uncontacted Heartlander tribes remain beyond the plains - the Great forest acts as a barrier between the Heartlands and Colovia, in the south towards the Weald and to the east towards the Cheydin highlands and Deep Niben. All of them fall outside the Heartlander label for their tongues and traditions are nothing like those of the civilised people of the Imperial Ring.
The distinction between Heartlanders and Nibeneans gets blurry as one travels away from the plains and down towards the Nibenay bay, much like the plains give way to the old jungle landscape. It is often hard to distinguish between Heartlanders and Nibeneans and many villages can be considered one or the other.