Mortal Peoples: Elvenkind

 Creation

Jostara begat the first elves of Thindul, singing forth the first dawn trees among the forests of Tumno's seeding. Jostara herself tended the first young, teaching them poetry, music, and herb lore.

Life Cycle

Elves may reach ages near to a thousand years, though this would be considered quite old, with most living only into their ninth century.

Born with greater mental and physical development, an elven infant is comparable to a human child between the ages of one and two. They quickly master the rudiments of speech and locomotion, beginning formal schooling quite young.

Childhood, which usually focuses on rigorous education, ends at approximately age fifteen, leading to a long adolescence, with adulthood beginning around ninety years of age. Elves between childhood and adulthood grow quickly to their full height, usually over six feet tall. Their behavior, however, is characterized by impetuousness and flightiness, while the uncanny strength of a mature elf manifests only in the latest years of adolescence.

Adulthood then lasts until the elf has reached six or seven hundred years. After this point, an elf's body begins to lose its robust physicality, though their minds remain sharp even to the very hour of death.

Preternatural Gifts

In addition to strength belied by their light frames, elves are possessed of extraordinary nimbleness and sensitivity of perception. Of their senses, touch is the most refined, and this fineness is augmented by an unparalleled keenness of muscular memory. These gifts were granted by their creator, Jostara, to enable them in pursuit of artistic and musical beauty. Yet, there are many applications of an elf's natural talents, and powers engendered for the sake of artistry are no less relevant to war. An elven fighter in their prime is a terror on the battlefield.

Reproduction

Elvenkind, like dwarves, were begotten by their creator before gestation in the womb became the common model for multiplication among mortal peoples. Elves are born, rather, from the fruit of Nehlornan Athnaeonhal, the dawn trees.

When a pair of elves is married, they each take the seed of a flower from their parents' athnaeon tree and plant the seeds beside each other. The seeds then meld together and grow over decades into a new tree. As the time comes when a married couple wishes to beget children, they sing to their tree by dusklight and dawn, each day for a week. Often on the final morning, these rituals are consecrated by an act of sexual union, but this is a purely social ritual and does not contribute toward the generation of offspring.

This done, one or more flowers on the tree will develop into a fruit, which ripens within to an infant elf. When the fruit grows full and heavy, it lowers to the mossy ground surrounding the nehlorn athnaeonhal, and the young elf emerges.

This method of reproduction was a substantial cause of elven civilization's collapse in the wake of the Orcwrath. Terrible as the massacres of the Wrath were, it was the burning of the Dawn Groves which made recovery impossible. In places where elves had lived for millennia, they became all but extinct. Only in some cases were elves able to procure new seeds from their parents' dawn trees and flee with them before the descent of the orcish hordes.

Elven Nations: Naihurin Etarl

Naihurin Etarl lies in Thindul's east and was the cradle of elvenkind, as well as the heart of their eventual empire. After the Orcwrath, Naihurin Etarl was able to reconstitute itself as a nation, though the recovery of its further empire remains far out of reach. Rumor has it that this kernel of the elven nation was preserved against the Wrath only through compact with a dark power, which now rules Naihurin Etaral from its capital at Orismaeon Jostariarl.

Elven Nations: The Enclaves

The Lowland Enclaves are a collection of city-states located among the forests, plains, and coasts of the peninsula Olhuiriar. They trade heavily with Periandor, the Harpwringer Union, and Yaeorian Tavertine. Their exports are primarily agricultural, emphasizing wheat and wine, rounded out with a smattering of luxury goods.

The Highland Enclaves are smaller communities in the Olhuirian mountains, usually a short way above the tree line, allowing any approaching party to be spotted early. Heavily fortified, these settlements are accessible primarily by difficult switchbacking trails and stairs. They depend economically on the export of silk and saffron, produced in massive and elaborate greenhouses. These treasures, traded for grain from the Lowland Enclaves, are jealously guarded. Any attempt to smuggle out saffron seeds or silkworms is met with extrajudicial execution by the Karnokir, a fearsome guild of assassins sponsored by the Enclaves.

Elven Nations: The Hlait'thavossar

The Hlait'thavossar dwell in the highest parts of Olhuiriar's mountains, with their greatest cities within the mountains themselves. Isolationist and xenophobic in the extreme, it is commonly understood that the Hlait'thavossar seek the extermination of Orckind and the subjugation of all other peoples to a reasserted elven empire. However, their means of accomplishing this from within the sunless fastness of their mountain strongholds is limited at best.

Elven Nations: Gerash Ro'Vainan

The Gerash is a free state of orcs, aeohtar, and elves. It broke away from Naihurin Etarl as the tattered empire began to reclaim its homeland, fearing enslavement by the dark and unknown power that had shielded Naihurin Etarl from utter destruction.

Elves in Other Nations

The most substantial minority elven populations are in the Empire of Steel, which conquered many of the elvish cities rebuilt after the Orcwrath. Within the empire, elves have a middle place in a strict caste system, responsible for artisanal and clerical work.

In many of Periandor's cities, elves are the most common non-human people, though still few in number. While present in the Confederation of the Rukkar, primarily in the southern Passage, elves are far rarer than dwarves.

Among the Harpwringer Clan, elves are ubiquitous. Not so, however, among the Ironheart or Steelbright dwarves, whose subterranean homes appeal to few other peoples besides gnomes.

Norquiian elves are desert wanderers who leave their very old and young to tend the Dawn Groves in the ruined cities of central Thindul. This region once was irrigated by waterworks of extraordinary scope and intricacy. However, with the destruction of these aqueducts during the Orcwrath, or their subsequent dereliction and disrepair, these lands have reverted to an inhospitable desert.

Religion

Almost all elves worship Jostara, their creator and the muse of their artistic traditions. Though elves do build temples, they venerate Jostara primarily through seasonal festivals of music and drama, with tragic theater understood to be the highest of the arts.

Elves have tended, however, to take a cosmopolitan view of religion, and most of the Benevolent Pantheon receives veneration in some quarter of elvish society. The Cult of Xogoth in particular, before Xogoth's corruption, was central to the culture of the old elven empire. This openness is often attributed to the minimal dogma associated with the teachings of Jostara. Her injunctions to create and to love beauty are at odds with the teachings of few other gods.

In this respect, the mountain-dwelling Hlait'thavossar are unusual, for they have heavily institutionalized the worship of Ultur, even at the expense of Jostaric traditions. This reflects the intersection of their extreme beliefs about elven natural supremacy with their simultaneous rejections of historical elven culture. Their priests teach that the elven empire fell to decadence, which smothered the noble potential of their kind.

The Old Empire

For two-thousands years, Naihurin Etarl ruled Thindul, from its eastern shores to the Skybreaker Mountains in the west. All save for the dragons, and later the cursed draegar, bowed to elvenkind. What had begun as an alliance against Nerophet's minions calcified, through long paranoia and Sephic machinations, into a ruthless empire. Naihurin Etarl understood itself as the shield of the world, and there was no cost too great for the preservation of its strength. In the end, weakened from within and without, it seized upon orcish refugees, conscripting their labor to restore the ailing empire. But the orcs would not be cowed, and they rose up in wrath, burning Naihurin Etarl from east to west.