Elves¶
"The future of the Elven race is in your hands." — High Priestess Caolynni, charging a bearer of the Seed of Caerylas (S056)
The Elves are the younger race the gods raised to take the place of the Eldritch, and the people whose blood carried the birthright of the Worldstone. They divide into four living or remembered peoples: the High Elves, who ruled an empire and are now gone; the Dark Elves, their outcast kin of the underdark, likewise extinct; the Wood Elves, the one elven people to thrive into the Fifth Age; and the Boreal Elves, the blue-skinned clans of the northern pine forests. A fifth, the Ashen Elves, is known by a single line.
Origins¶
The newest account of the elven beginning places it in the Age of Demons, when Kalar and the other younger gods formed many new races, "including Elves, Dwarves, Gnomes, Trolls, Orcs, Draconians and others". The same account says the gods "allowed their foremost servants, the Eldritch, to be replaced by the Elves, with their affinity to the more limited, and more controllable Divine and Arcane Magics." The Dwarrow document agrees from the other side: the younger gods "wished to replace the Eldritch ... with the more easily managed Elves," and the war in which this was done is remembered as the Eldritch Succession Wars, "where the Younger Gods and their allies were exterminating the Eldritch and replacing them with Elves". An older god-list credits Orandos as "Creator of Elves" and Necatus as creator of the Dark Elves, and adds that the Elves were "created by Kalar to assist the Einar. However, they were abandoned in the physical sense when the Einar retreated from the Material plane".
In the Age of Dragons the Elves "served as their associates and emissaries" to the dragons who ruled the world and the Worldstone, and the Arcane magic born of the Worldstone "was limited to High Elves, Dark Elves and some breeds of Draconians and Dragons". That inheritance is the thread that runs through every elven history: the Mithis in their blood made them the first masters of magic and, in the Fifth Age, its first victims.
Blood and magic¶
Every being of Lothim descent, Half-Elves included, carries the ability to harness Mithis "in their blood," as "a descendant of the original owners and caretakers of the Worldstone (Anthu'Mithis)". The Wood Elves and Boreal Elves are instead reckoned by their Fae element: the Wood Elves are Fae of Water and Earth, the Ashen Elves of Fire and Earth, and the Boreal Elves of Water and Air. In the Fifth Age the Elves are counted among the users of Fae Magic alongside Gnomes and Stonekin. Elves were also among the few peoples with "consistent casting ability" once Mithis was loosed on the world, and Humans, Halflings, Dwarves and Orcs who could cast were said to owe it to interbreeding with them. After the Nexa-Vinian War "the elves became shunned for their use of magic (they did not purge their casters like the humans)".
The Fifth Age¶
When Kalar died and the Mithis became "a corrupted substance controlled primarily by the Archdemon Asmodeus," the "magical races such as High Elves, Dark Elves and some kinds of Draconians which had high concentrations of Mithis in their blood became pawns of the Devils ... or were destroyed outright". The Sancturi-era summary is blunter: "Dead. Gone. Extinct. Their blood was infused with Mithis". An ascendant of Khardas, debating the Hollowing with her peers, judged that "whatever we do is probably already too late for the Elves". By 704 SM of the Fifth Age the Broken Sea census counted no living High or Dark Elves and 144,000 Wood Elves, 70,000 of them enslaved in the Sancturi Imperium. After the Redemption the Wood Elves sit among the Divine Nations, and "High and Dark Elves never recovered (they are extinct)".
The Hollowing left its mark on even the survivors. A High Elf who woke in a ditch "some 250 years ago" learned "to hide your Elven features due to the intense fear and distrust it invoked in human settlements," and by his later years "there were very few people still alive who even remembered High Elves, let alone what they looked like". The elven fertility that the gods had bound to the Caerylas Trees was failing too: "Without the trees, elven fertility will not be enough to sustain the elvish population, and eventually their entire race would be but a memory". In the north, the elves "would like to form their own kingdom back in the forests," but "have no unifying figure and their homeland is occupied".
Names¶
Elves carry four names. The first name is given by the parents at birth. The given name is granted after adolescence and the rite of passage, between the ages of 35 and 70; it is "a 'functional' name with a connection to their purpose, duty or spiritual gifts," and is how the elf is known in the community. The family name is matrilineal, inherited from the mother and usually drawn from a family sigil, profession or place. The dynastic name is assumed only after allegiance to a major or minor house has been pledged and accepted, which cannot happen before coming of age; marriage across houses often changes it. A child is therefore born with two names only. The example given is Etharil Othadar ("Dream Bound") Daereven Vael'dorais: Othadar to outsiders, Etharil Othadar to friends and family, "Othadar of Vael'Dorais" when political weight is wanted, and the full four names in formal settings. The wider custom of naming is treated on Names.
Languages¶
Elves speak Elvish; Sylvan is "a wood elf dialect of Elvish", and the Boreal Elves keep their tribal records in "a variant of Elvish". Three arcane languages are elven: Lathanos of the Avi'Lothim, Salonas of the Maridan'Lothim, and Sylvir of the Wood Elves; see Arcane Languages.
Ashen Elves¶
The Ashen Elves appear only as a line in two lists of the Fifth Age's peoples, as a branch beside the Boreal Elves under the Wood Elves and reckoned "Fae: Fire & Earth".
Gap
Nothing else is recorded of the Ashen Elves: no homeland, appearance, history or relations.
Half-Elves¶
Half-Elves inherit the Blood of the Lothim and with it the ability to gather Mithis. Human and Half-Elven druids are "very uncommon but not unheard of," and in some places "a lack of Wood Elves to recruit has forced the recruitment of Human or Half-Elven acolytes" into the druidic orders. In Proturas a legend of the Viridian Order holds that the dilution of elven ancestry with human lineages was deliberate, and that "modern Wood Elves are essentially Half Elves," which is "a common explanation for the dramatically increased birth-rates and shorter lifespan of the present Wood Elves". The newest lore puts the same point as fact: most Wood Elf blood "is by historical standards actually nearly 30% Human".
Gap
The sources do not describe Half-Elves as a people of their own, with a society, numbers or a homeland.
The elven peoples¶
| People | Also called | Standing in the Fifth Age |
|---|---|---|
| High Elves | Lothim | Extinct; original caretakers of the Worldstone |
| Dark Elves | Moradrim, Drow | Extinct; high elven outcasts of the underdark |
| Wood Elves | Sylvim | Thriving; the Elves of Luiria and of Oth'Baelin, the elven faction of Proturas |
| Boreal Elves | Snowborn | Tribal clans of the White Towers, Cloudspire and Etterwood; at war with Proturas |
Earlier accounts¶
The 2014 phylogeny makes the Elves not a creation of the younger gods but of the Ventari: the Lothim "were an artificial creation of the Ventari," made when the Ventari sages "realized that their race was headed for extinction due to their immortality and extremely low birth rates." All Ventari women soon bore Lothim children. The Sylvim were "impure elves (those with non-high elf blood)" exiled from the Lothim cities during "a period when the Lothim were obsessed with pure bloodlines," and the Moradrim are marked only "??". The 2015 regional notes instead derive "Elves, Humans and Orcs" alike from the Innus, the children of Izhtari. The 2014 Compendium knows only "two very distinct races, High elves and Wood elves," the High Elves "extraordinarily fair skinned, tall and nearly immortal," the Wood Elves with "earth toned skin hues, ... short and live only about twice as long as humans," and the Dark Elves "simply high elven outcasts that have adapted themselves to underground living." In that account Elves were among the races that "seemed better able to manage the transitions" after the Shattering and "embraced and easily put [Mithis magic] to use". The Boreal Elves and Ashen Elves are unknown before the Fifth Age documents.