[u]An excerpt from Hadrian Valthor's [i]Rivers of Time: The Folklore of Southern Wessos, Fifth Edition, Volume I[/i][/u]

	All within Carnelia’s borders are taught of their republic’s origins, a tale of feuding, petty nobles squabbling over miniscule spits of land.  These squabbling fools arose from of the ashes of something grander.  Before the Cataclysm, much of southern Wessos was held by the Cewri, a race of people twice the height of humans, with skin spanning the many shades of water.  They were known to build their settlements around places of aquatic significance, such as mountain lakes, confluences of rivers, and the large delta on which Corialus was built.

	Corialus itself contains many structures that date back to the time of Cewri, and the city is one of the few places where whole structures from that ancient past remain standing.  Surprisingly, the murals there do not depict the hills now associated with Carnelia, but a vast, fertile river valley, flush with now long-dead species of plant-life.

	It is said that the hills of Carnelia are the corpses of the Cewri who died in the Cataclysm.  Any reputable scholar will tell you that this is utterly ridiculous.  While some murals have survived that depict the Cewri using strange and powerful magic—shifting rivers and calling down storms—the earth of the Serene Republic is just soil.  This belief does have a reasonable source, however.  The word for hill in the precursor to modern Carnelian is [i]Cewrholl[/i], or “Cewri Hall.”  This most likely came either from a reference to the Feasting Halls of the Cewri, which were said to have been raised from the earth by the giants’ magic, or to those few Cewri tombs that have survived, which are all but indistinguishable from ordinary hills.

	The Cewri of the Highlands were a slightly different breed, by necessity.  They were the only branch of their kind to survive the Cataclysm.  By the time Bendak Carnelius was unifying southern Wessos under his flag, however, they had entered into decline.  A half-breed, part Cewri and part human, opened the gates to their massive citadel for Bendak’s army when the giants refused to surrender.  He was awarded with governance over the entirety of the Highlands.  His name was Yeeran Verkun, and was the founder of His Serene Magesty’s own House.  Though the Cewri blood has long faded to but a trace, the old Citadel of Mae’r Mynydd Ia—while in no place where a city could grow—is still the traditional seat of House Verkun.

	The pure-blooded Cewri have long since faded away, but interbreeding has given the humans native to the Highlands the right to claim ancestry amongst the mighty rulers of southern Wessos.  Still, it is said that in the deepest parts of the Highlands, when a storm has risen, they can be heard beneath the tumultuous weather, their massive drums keeping time with the thunder, and their rough voices singing to the rain.