Varduun is a land cursed twice. Once by fire, when Drael fell and the earth split, vomiting up new coasts and subvolcanic plains. Again by its inhabitants, for the hyenas infested the land and made it their own. It is hellishly hot and dry, its grass scorched by fumes, its rivers bitter with ash. Coastal vents still spit lava and poisonous gas, staining the air with smoke.
This is the Hyenalands. Their cities crawl across the plains like sores, mud-brick huts clustered around black-walled fortresses. Hyenas live quick and short—dying of hunger, violence, lust, or sickness—and laugh while they do.
Rape gangs roam alleys, criminals are fed to anthills for spectacle, and blood spills daily in arenas. Conflict defines them. Anything not hyena is prey. They harass the drowned folk of Drael, raid caravans of Izhura, slaughter lions in their beds, enslave jackals, and turn even upon one another when boredom strikes.