Okay this is how _I_ interprit everything using GURPS, ingame stuff and my own logic:
The Cath Bruig Empire was much like ancient rome. There are so many parallels that it's not even funny. "All roads lead to Muirthenme," a quasi-divine Emporer, a structure heavily based on it's central city as the base of all commerce and culture, etc....
The Free cities of the West were just that, free cities. They existed as a sort of not-very-connected city-states that trade and help eachother. The Province was a Kingdom which interacted with the seperate city-states, but held no claim to them. The Dwarves had their homeland, dominated by it's twin capitols and the fir'Bolg were fiercly stopping expansion into their forest. The Berzerks held a clan-based society in the North that paid lip-service to the Bruig empire and came to it's aid in times of need in exchange for autonomity.
The Bruig themselves were not a "seperate race." I also doubt that they were very different appearace-wise. There's just to much traffic and interaction between the Empire, the Free Cities and the Province for there to be many "seperate races." I imagine that each native would look vaugely different, sort of like how English, Spanish and French all have different racial charicteristics and can be told apart by appearance, but aren't _that_ different. Thus the Bruig Empire could be recolonized with relatively no major change in ethnic stock...
Hmmm.... I wonder if there's female Herons?
-Discordia
