ELVES


FOUR TYPES OF ELVES

There are four main types of elves:
High Elves (or just Elves, the vast majority of the race, found all over Landen
and dominating the Great Forest, or as some call it, the World Forest)
Gray Elves (regal, remote mountain dwellers in the Catelet and Krykis ranges)
Wild Elves (essentially barbarians, in the forest north of the Breeyark Mountains)
Sylvan Elves (or Wood Elves, the distrustful warriors who dominate the Great
Forest between the Catelet and Krykis ranges).


WHERE AND HOW THE ELVES LIVE

The Great Forest, or World Forest, more than 225,000 square miles of uninterrupted
trees (almost one and a half times the size of California), is the main home of the
elves, and they know it not as one forest but as roughly 200 distinct regions, each
named to convey its history or geography. For example, the section they call
Silpharillon Illim Susalassa (their language really can be a nuisance) means
"Forever's Temple of the Veil of Water"--a beautiful wooded valley surrounded by
dozens of awesome waterfalls. "Silpharillon" for short, it is an ancient meeting
place and a center of the worship of Corellon Larethian among High Elves.

In his long lifetime, an adventurous High Elf might try to visit most every part of
the Great Forest, but it is unlikely he will be entirely welcome among the Sylvan
Elves, or even able to find the reclusive Gray Elves.

All Elves live from day to day as part of a Band. There are perhaps 100 Bands of
High Elves in the Great Forest, and another 20 in the rest of the world. A Band
numbers anywhere from ten to twenty thousand Elves and is partly nomadic. Which is
to say, typically a Band sticks to a few sections of the forest, in which they have
built four or five towns, usually high in the trees. However, they will only inhabit
one town at a time. The others stand empty, waiting, or may be borrowed politely
by a different Band, and every year, or every twenty years, the Band picks up and
moves to its next waiting home, or perhaps builds a new one altogether. The Elves
strive always to move on before degrading the resources of the forest.

All Bands of High Elves are on friendly terms with each other. There has been no
civil war among High Elves since The Strife, which ended 26,000 years ago. Tension
exists, however, between High Elves, Sylvan Elves, and Wild Elves. Rarely does it
boil over into bloodshed, but because of the long Elven memory this is more than
enough. Vague feelings of enmity still linger since the last brutal war between
the Sylvan Elves and the High Elves--and that was 2,000 years ago. Long life can
mean long grudges.

Bands of High Elves stay in frequent contact. Messengers relay important news
swiftly from one section of the forest to another, and even reach those Bands in
distant parts of the world (the large forest of Exley, the woods near the Brightwater
Gulf, and the forest that separates Feyl Donok from Vreconok). In this way most
Bands are aware of the most important goings-on among their kind.

Every Band has a single leader, but each Band chooses their leader differently.
Some are led by an Elder, the oldest member; others by a Mage, the most powerful
wizard or sorcerer among them; many by a Chief, the most skilled warrior; a few
by a King or Queen, a hereditary leader; and still more by a Laureate, the most
acclaimed artist among them--who may be a poet, a builder, or a silversmith.


THE COUNCIL OF THE AGE

Every 1,000 years, all High Bands send representatives to Silpharillon for the
Council of the Age. At the Council, the Bands reaffirm their allegiance to each
other should any trouble arise in the forest, and they confirm which will serve
as Chief Band until the next Council. The leader of the Chief Band is, in effect,
leader of all High Elves, but only functions as such during great crisis--for example,
an orc invasion. In that event, through the swift messengers of the various Bands,
the leader of the Chief Band can quickly raise and direct a forest-wide army. No
enemy of the elves has ever reached the center of the Great Forest.

Because High Elves value freedom and independence, they want no more central
authority than this confederation, and the Gray Elves of the Catelet and Krykis
Mountains value their independence even more highly. Only four times in 27
Councils have the Gray sent representatives, and only at one Council did they
agree to bind their fate to that of the High Elves for an Age.


MORE HISTORY AND CULTURE

There are not many Gray Elves--possibly only thirty or forty thousand in total.
They move from one empty town to another high in the mountain peaks, each an
intimidating and hard-to-find fortress. Few visitors of any kind are admitted--
including High Elves. The High Elves respect this privacy, and send their messengers
only when the news is of crucial import--during peacetime, about twice an Age or less.
Historians, however, have determined that the Gray and High are the most closely
related of the Elf types, so a word on the long story of the race...

Most Elven scholars agree all elves originated in the forest north of the Breeyarks,
and that this forest originally extended eastward and connected to the Great Forest.
Gradually the Elves spread east, but in doing so, they crossed the orcs, about 30,000
years ago. A terrible war ensued, decimating to both sides, in which the midsection
of this forest burned to the ground--the worst crime imaginable to an Elf.

This war was of such devastating impact that Elves and orcs have since both built
their religions around it. True, the faiths in Correllon Larethian and Gruumsh
existed before the first sword was drawn, but the war's horror was so thorough
that neither religion could square its new reality with the truths that their
religion had previously claimed. So, by the end, both sides reached a changed
understanding of their deity, and of their own origin as a race. Correllon Larethian
became a fiercer warrior than he had been, and Gruumsh became his devil. Today it
is a major tenet of both the orc and Elven faith that the other is the eternal enemy.
But such may be the predictable result of 200 years of all-out war...

In the end, the Elves smashed the last orc army in the field and burned their capital
city, slaying the king and his elite guard, winning the war once and for all, but
immediately afterward, drained by the effort, their own society crumbled. The Elves
fell into a dark age of civil war called The Strife, and ragtag orc parties managed
to control the wasteland that now divided the eastern and western forests. For
millennia, communication ceased between the Elves of the east and those of the west.

Those to the west continued to struggle against the shattered but still-vicious
orcs, as well as other wild creatures stirred up in the area. These western bands
evolved into the rugged, tribal, even barbaric Wild Elves, while those to the east,
in the Great Forest, gradually emerged from The Strife to build the more refined,
united and learned society of the High Elves.

Today there is still little contact between Wild and High Elves, and the Wild Elf
tribes still spend most of their energy battling evil and each other. The Wild
Elves have attended the last three Councils, but are unversed in the political
subtleties, and regard their High brethren as high-falutin. They come only to
press for allies in war against the orcs--but truth be told, the High Elves have
little interest in risking their lives to reunite with the painfully crude Wild Elves.
The official High-Elf position is that they will consider an alliance once
the Wild tribes cease their warring on each other. But this is a point not likely
to be reached even in an Elvish lifetime. And truth be told, the High Elves have
their hands full enough with the Sylvans…

The hardy and combative Sylvan Elves, it seems, descend from a Band that headed
east long before the first war with the orcs, and fell out of touch with the rest
of elvenkind. They settled between the mountain ranges, and fell into never-ending
conflict with the human Barbarians at the north edge of the forest. Today they
regard other Elves as different from them, and they trust no one completely; unlike
the Wild Elves, they have never even sought an ally. They regularly attend the Council
of the Age but not once have they agreed to abide by its decisions. In fact, they
have fought four wars against the High Elves, and though officially the two groups
communicate respectfully today, the High Elves remain very cautious about what
information their messengers bring to the Sylvans.

Gray Elves are more closely related to the High Elves than Sylvan or Wild Elves are,
because they branched off most recently. Though records from the era are rare and
contradictory, it seems that in the first disorganized millennium after the
orc war, two or three Bands of Elves took to the mountains, intending to clean
them of orc hideouts and occupy them against future evil development. They never
came down, adapting to the peaks and there quickly evolving a unique culture
and physical appearance. They have also come to regard themselves as the most
sophisticated of Elves and the most dedicated to the preservation of elf culture--
ironic, since their own culture is a minority among the Elves, and they rarely
have (or desire) contact with those in the trees below.


A TIMELINE

Among High Elves, the current year is 26572. A timeline of significant events
in Elven Reckoning (ER):

26572 = Today (a.k.a. CY 937)
26485 = Participation in the Common Convocation in human city Ving Raute.
25557-25559 = The Third Elf-Orc War
24578-24581 = The Fourth High-Sylvan Crisis.
18105-19005 = The Endtime Alliance with Dwarves
18089-18114 = The Universal War
17202-17206 = The Third High-Sylvan Crisis
16991-16999 = The Second Elf-Orc War
9215-9216 = The Second High-Sylvan Crisis
5211-5216 = The First High-Sylvan Crisis (Elves refer to internecine war as "crises")
0 ER = The first Council of the Age, official end of The Strife.
-3500-2500 = Spread of High Elves to forests in Exley, Arcalla, etc.
-3700 = Approximate Ascent of the Gray Elves into the mountains
-3950 = Start of The Strife (a medieval era of civil war and superstition).
-4151-3950 = The First Elf-Orc War (including The Conflagration in -3909, burning
of the midsection of the Great Forest)
-6000 = Possible migration of the Sylvan Elves across the Unbroken Great Forest.
-12270 = First surviving written document in Elvin script, "Dalanna's Praise of the Green."


Note: there have been scores of minor conflicts with the poorly organized armies
of the orcs, but since ER Year Zero, only three have registered with the Elves as
full-on wars. Ask an orc, though, and he'll tell you there've been major wars without
number. This difference is partly due to the Elven mind, which draws fine distinctions
between skirmishes, battles, wars, patrol actions--et cetera--and is partly due to
the different lifespans of the races. For example, a ten-month series of harassing
raids on the edge of the Great Forest will loom larger in your racial history if
everyone only lives to be sixty anyway.


PRESENT DAY

The current Age's Chief Band is the Amastacia, of the south-central section of the
Great Forest. Renowned for both archery and jewelry-making, this is the first
time the Amastacia have served as Chief Band in the 27 Ages. They were chosen in
ER 26000 (CY 365) in response to the arrival of the Vree and Arcallans--some Elves
feared these new human cultures might be as much a blight as the Barbarians, and
wanted a martial Chief Band, but others saw the civilized potential in the newcomers,
and argued for a diplomatic Chief Band, perhaps one celebrated for its arts. After
weeks of discussion, the Council deemed the Amastacia a satisfactory blend, capable
of appearing to the humans simultaneously as potential threat and possible partner.

There has been no war with Men, but some remain unsure of the value of humanity,
and though humans have spread remarkably far and wide very quickly, many Elves
prefer to disregard them as temporary visitors to the domain of Landen. Amastacia,
however, sends regular emissaries to certain human courts to retrieve news updates,
and they maintain permanent diplomats in the following states: Feyl Donok, Zymyria,
Exley, and very recently Memrah'Assar.

Taking the long view that the arrival of humans has launched an era of tremendous
upheaval whose outcome is unknowable, Amastacia also has renewed official contact
with the Dwarves of the Syaxat Mountains for the first time since the Endtime
Alliance expired in ER 18027. Many Elves are annoyed by this pro-active diplomacy.
Fierce guardians of their independence, they charge the Amastacia with needlessly
entangling Elves in foreigners' most minor problems. But the 27th Age has been
an era of relative peace for the woodland dwellers, and many believe the Amastacia
are to be commended for helping to foster it.


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