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Elves
This page is under construction and will grow over time. Below is a listing of the well-known enclaves and distinct cultures. This list will never, by any means, be all-inclusive. New sects and clan-groups can be identified by anyone.
The Sown Race
Elves, like all races, are a creation of their gods. The Matron of the Elven Pantheon, Amlarúil, created the elves by shaping the winds of magic themselves, so their creation fables say. This race was once upon a time her greatest creation, mighty and wise, fair and just, soft spoken and sure footed. Being innately arcane, the elves quickly rose in might and power in the newly-formed world. They built large empires to the east, west, and south, settling all over the known world.
For a while the world seemed to be led firmly by the young vibrant Elf race. The dwarfs stayed to their mountain fortresses of stone and metal. The Short Folk kept to their marshes. And the humans were young and savage – neither a threat nor a concern. Art and Magic flourished, and there was general peace.
It would seem that elves would be the dominant race in the world if something had not intervened. Details are sketchy, lost to time and legend now. Some tales, the most reputable, speak of a fissure open in the land, in the world itself, far to the North, spilling forth some deranged chaos and slowly consuming the world. Being attuned to the weave of Magic and blessed with both wisdom and a more complete understanding of the world, the elves bent themselves towards understanding and then repairing the breach that threatened the world. The more they learned, the more they came to know how dire the situation was, and hence they bent themselves fully to the task, focusing the engineering, their military, their wisdom, their priesthood, and their sorceries towards correcting what had gone horribly wrong.
And so the combined might of the Elves ventured North, never to be seen again. The sang their songs, and carried their arms and their gods before them, and carved a path through the winter and into the teeth of Chaos itself. And succeeded. So they believed at first. The breach seemed healed over, the incursion had ended. Not one in 1500 of those who came North would live to begin the trek south, truly did the elves spend all they had to achieve this incredible act of will and determination. A pity it was insufficient.
They did not succeed in sealing the chasm, though their efforts did contain Chaos from engulfing the world. Chaos would, as entropy always does, find a way around the ordered blockades and patches that Elfish might had erected. Although horribly stymied, chaos would contain to exist in the world, and would develop into the waxing and waning patterns-without-patterns we know today. They elves did not fare as well, however.
The grandeur of the elves was broken. The fortunes were spent, the cities were bankrupt, and the race left in shambles. The leaders, the priests, the Elfish lords of daring, culture, art, engineering , the very flower of the race lay dead and unburied in the frozen wastes of the North. The elves cursed the lands of Norska and beyond, and to this day not a single member of the blood will call those lands home.
It was back in the south, that the true price to that very blood was evident. Those that have lived on, and come to the elf since are bitter, knowing that their race has failed. Their civilization, once a shining emblem of culture and advancement is all but a ruin, abandoned, collapsed, and forgotten. Today, the cities and culture are remembered with a biting nostalgia. The elders and even the younger elves who never experienced the glory of the past, curse their ancestors for their follies of pride, or of ignorance, or of hubris that has led their people to being so crude and mean now. The Elfish people are tribal, elitist, and isolationistic now. They cling to the shreds of their yesterdays and have not yet begun to dream the mad, yet bright and shining dreams of their short-lived cousins, Men.
While it is the Forged Race that never forgets, it is the Sown Race, as they call themselves, which needn’t be forced to remember. They are eternal, they have lived through every year throughout history, and will live on through every new year. This is their curse, until they grasp at its blessing, once again.
Those That Remain
The Crimson Sails – A sea-faring enclave, this family owns the isles of Cyprus and its surrounds. The Crimson Sails (as they are known to most outsiders) have long been a plague on the Mediterran Seas. They hold no other allegiance than to their family, and count as the most feared pirate fleet in the known world. Quiet and secretive, these elfish are approachable only in harbor, and the maxim often quoted is that “the only safe crimson sail is the one in port”. They will frequently come ashore all over the Sea’s boundaries, trading their goods for the necessaries of Cyprus. They are proud, haughty, and exemplify all that is alien and otherworldly about the elder race.
Estalian Woodsingers – These folk are the elfish most acclimated and involved in the worlds of men. Privately owning perhaps half of Estalia and a quarter of Espana, the great southern forests of oak, cedar and alder are the domain of this culture. The elves of Yesterwood, as the land is called by natives, have befriended and allied with the peoples of Portugal and Spain for many centuries. Truly, the ruling groups of both nations owe their supremacy to the assistance of this group of indigenous peoples. Treaties and accords have been written, aligned to the lifespans of the eternal elfish, and peace and goodwill reigns between these neighbors.
The woodsingers are the master woodworkers of the Continent. Estalia’s formerly great navy and fleet of impossible gold battle barges must hail from some long-ago treaty with the elfish, as nothing of man’s construction can possiblly match these majestic kings of the seas. The barges themselves can no longer be made, be that a sign of the elfish waning and losing their history or the beginning of a change, no one can say. Archery is pursued here as a passion and art, and there are no finer bowyers and fletchers than those who spend eternal days beneath the bows of the Yesterwood.
The Princes of Araby – Perhaps it is the deserts of the far East that are the ancestral home of the elfish nations. No one truly knows, save perhaps the most senior of loresingers themselves, but this knowledge is too ancient to know for certain. What is known is that the elfish have always been in majority in number and power in Araby.
The elfish of Araby are the finest horsebreeders in the known world. They have threaded stock tracing back thousands of years now, and breed destriers as well as they breed coursers. Arabian horseflesh is prized everywhere and can easily be told apart from other breeds. The elfish normally sterilize any horse they sell abroad for sake of rarity and control of their own breeds.
The arabian elves are nomads, moving regularly throughout their lands. Somewhat fractious, there are always reports of one family warring upon another in minor squabbles. These people are a mite stand-offish as their race always seems to be, and they practiced the stilted and ritualized codes of conduct that they have given to the entire region, hospitality, honor, and honesty being their watchwords.
The Germanian Waldens – Countless are the wheels in the Holy German Empire covered by dense and foreboding drakwalds. While notoriously xenophobic, the Germans have never, ever sought to encroach on the peoples of those drakwalds, the elfish groups that are now referred to as Waldens, or woodwalkers. These deep forest people are not overly numerous, and tend to form the stereotype that most common Europeans have for their race. Quiet and aloof, fleet and whisper-quiet of foot. Arboreal and natural, long-lived and soft-spoken. This naturalist people dwells in peace with their environment and protect it fiercely. The most common appearance of these people would be the namesake Woodwalkers, a peculiarly elfish order of what must be foresters and rangers. These folk venture throughout the woods and to the manling areas around it, to learn and understand all to better protect their people and their wood. Territorial but not possessive, the Waldens have saved countless lost or beset travelers who seek refuge from others of ill intent. And countless are the brigands, outlaws, and even sometimes settlers who are found on the edges of the drakwalds feathered with elfish arrows and left for dead.