Vanai was a young Kaunian woman who lived in Forthweg at the beginning of the Derlavaian War. Having been orphaned at a young age, she was raised by her grandfather Brivibas - a brilliant scholar, but authoritarian, egocentric and narrow-minded - effectively reciprocating the prejudice to which Kaunians were subjected by the surrounding society, and regarding all non-Kaunians as barbarians and present-day society as degenerate compared to the Golden Age of the Kaunian Empire, which was his field of academic study.