A city-state on Petrona Septia Island in the Seacleft Coast region. Located north/northeast of Ios and southeast of Moigos, Rilyn sits within the forest of Puma Wood on the northeastern side of the Screech Peaks (Ios lies on the southwestern side of the range).
Home to the Splinkreen — woodland people whose souls were transplanted from mighty trees into humanoid forms. Their bark-like skin ranges from smooth birch white to rough oak brown, and the forested environment of Puma Wood suits them perfectly.
The City
Rilyn is built vertically rather than horizontally. Platforms and walkways connect the great trees, with structures built into the trunks and branches rather than on cleared ground. The forest floor is left largely undisturbed — the Splinkreen prefer to live above, in the canopy where the light is better and the connection to living wood more immediate.
The city has no walls, no gates, no clear boundary between settlement and forest. It simply becomes denser as you approach the center — more platforms, more walkways, more Splinkreen moving through the branches. Visitors who expect a conventional city find Rilyn disorienting; those who accept it on its own terms find it beautiful.
The population is small by human standards — perhaps a few thousand Splinkreen. Their long lives (three centuries or more) and slow reproduction keep numbers stable but low. The city could hold more if it needed to. It doesn't.
Culture
The Splinkreen are a strange people by human reckoning. Their souls were once trees — ancient, patient, unconcerned with the urgencies that drive shorter-lived beings. Transplanted into humanoid forms, they retain something of that perspective. They move slowly. They speak deliberately. They view death without fear, seeing it as a return to the earth rather than an ending.
This makes them difficult trading partners, poor allies in urgent situations, and confusing neighbors. The Splinkreen don't refuse to engage with outsiders — they simply engage on their own timeline, which rarely matches anyone else's. A negotiation that would take humans a day might take Splinkreen a month. They don't see the problem.
What the Splinkreen value: the forest, their community, the accumulated wisdom of their long lives. What they don't value: urgency, acquisition, the constant striving that characterizes human societies. Rilyn is a place of contemplation, not ambition.
Relations
The Splinkreen maintain correct relations with their neighbors without being deeply involved with any of them. They trade what they must, share information when asked politely, and otherwise keep to their forest.
With Ios: Curiosity more than commerce. The Splinkreen find the stone doll crisis philosophically interesting — a culture that created servants to avoid work, now forced to rediscover how to work. Some Splinkreen scholars have visited Todakres to study the dolls. Their conclusions, if any, they keep to themselves.
With Moigos: Minimal contact. The Kappa have nothing the Splinkreen want, and the Splinkreen have nothing worth the Kappa's manipulation. The two peoples ignore each other with mutual satisfaction.
With outsiders: Rilyn receives occasional visitors — scholars studying the Splinkreen, merchants hoping to find unique goods, travelers seeking the Eastern Traverse through the Screech Peaks. The Splinkreen are hospitable in their fashion, offering shelter and guidance. They just take their time about it.