Elfkind

The Elfkind are a category of races that are descended from a progenitor Godsborn race referred to in academic fields as the Ela'fin which can be roughly translated to the Final People in ancient Elven.

The History of Elfkind

The Age of Magic

The Scriptures of the Holy Tome speak of the Elves as one of the first and most favored of the Gods' creations. They were charged with the creation of life both large and small across the face of the Great Disc. It was the Elves that were trusted above all the other Gods' creations to carry out their designs on the Material Plane. It is hypothesized that this blessing gave way to the pride that would eventually bring the First Punishment, the Great Sundering of Magic, that would see the Gods deprive the Elves of not only their immortal nature but also take their magic from them and seal it away - giving only a trickle of flowing magic in the world at any time.

The Age of the Star

It is said that the pride of the elves was their downfall. Robbed of their power to alter reality and their immortality, they sought new power and mastery over this new magic. They forged the great Elven empires, ruled mercilessly by the Elven Magisters. They enslaved the halflings, the gnomes and the humans. They built vast crystal cities and found ways to draw forth the magic from beyond the barrier of the Primal planes. As they accumulated more power, the more they craved, and the more they abused what they claimed. In the end, the Elves aimed to replace the Gods themselves and brought forth the Second Punishment, the Starfall and the coming of the dragons. A falling star pierced the sky and created cracks across the heavens, calling forth the great dragons to put an end to the Elven Empires and to punish the world for their hubris. In the wake of the Starfall, the once powerful Ela'fin were cursed and their forms mangled and distorted into the various subraces seen today.

The Age of Fire

During the Tyranny of Dragons, the various Elven factions went into hiding. Most sought new homes in the various environments that suited them best and they interacted very little with the rest of the world. The chance that their treachery would be forgotten was destroyed when the Holy Church was formed and transcribed the Holy Tome under the guiding hand of the Word herself.

The Age of Heroes

The Fourth Age is when the world finally had a chance to interact with the various kinds of elves that had appeared. While they were generally viewed as unwelcome by most of the Lower Realms, some found a place in the Kingdom of Aldamere. The most notable of course would be Tomas Illinshire, a wood elf that served under King Aldamere Goldenbraid's Twelve Legendary Heroes and who would then go on to found the Rangers, the prototype of the Fifth Age's Adventurer's Guild and an order that still exist to the modern day that operates across the Borderlands.

The Fifth Age

The modern age has changed the social landscape for the Elves immensely. Why bastions of 'outdated thinking' like Triswell are still fervently anti-elf, other regions of the world have opened up more. Brighthurst is very welcoming of Elves that demonstrate magical potential and Yhuson doesn't care about anything except your accumulated wealth. The vast breadth of the Borderlands provides ample room to travel giving room for Wood Elf nomads a chance to roam without issue or find a solid patch of woods to build a village in. A number of other disparate subraces have begun to reappear in the world as well, reports of Drow, Shadar-kai and Eladrin individuals have appeared from time to time. As the world heals from fresher wounds, it seems to be ready to start forgiving the older ones.

Types of Elves

Following the Starfall, a historic event where a star fell from the heavens and shattered the sky and sundered the magical bonds of the Ela'fin, the elves scattered to the winds and began to change in both form and function. Drawing on their new environments, these new elves became a myriad of various subraces in a cornucopia of genetic traits.

Ela'Fin - The Final People

The original elves, created by the Gods and stewards of the Disc, whose abuse of the divinely gifted magics brought about not one but two separate punishments from the heavens. They no longer exist in their original form except in artwork excavated from their long destroyed ruins, and even then such pieces are usually acquired and locked away by the Holy Church. This practice has led Adventurers to seek out ancient elven ruins in hopes of discovering relics that the Church would pay handsomely for.

Ela'Tschi - The People of the Fey

The elves who fled the Starfall into the Fey Wild have absorbed the wild magics of the Fey and attempted to order them into the natural cycle of the seasons. The Ela'Tschi, whose name comes from the elven saying "Sharti Tel'Tschi Shol" [trans: Where the Faerie Flies] (a fanciful way of saying you don't know. "Where is he going?"/"Where is it?" "Sharti Tel'Tschi Shol."), live primarily in the Fey Wilds where they have found themselves a place in the Courts of the Archfey and often act as vassals and retainers to the powerful beings in exchange for a sampling of their wild magic.

Ela'Dro - The People of the Chaos

When the Starfall happened, some elves wanted to flee as far away from the world as possible. For some that meant traversing into other planes, but for the Ela'Dro it was seeking refuge on the other side of the Great Disc - The Underworld. There the Ela'Dro, or simply Dark Elves as they became known, forged a new empire beneath the sky of chaos. That was until Empress Helvis took the throne. Not content with her peoples torturous mortality, she found a way to transcend the shackles that the Gods had placed on her people. She sought a way to ascend into becoming a Primordial - a god like being of the Chaos - then she would rule as a God-Queen over the Ela'Dro for all time. This decision already made many of the Dark Elves nervous but when it came to light that the Empress' ritual required an insane amount of blood sacrifice, it shattered the empire.

They split into three smaller factions: the Oladro, the Avadro, and the Lokadro. The Oladro is the fanatical sect of Helvis' worshippers, they stay loyal to their God-Queen and many have received blessings for it. The Avadro or 'Twilight Chaos' fled back into the Deep in hopes of finding a way back to the surface of the Disc, and some have, but many of the Avadro dwell in the ruins of the ancient dwarves. Finally, the Lokadro or 'Green Chaos' turned their back not only on Helvis but all primordials, seeking a new way of life by embracing the raw elemental powers of the Chaos. The Lokadro traveled to the far ends of the Underworld where they found themselves allying with the Titans, the ancient ancestors of the Giants, and have begun something of a symbiotic way of life by building their homes on the sides of the gargantuan creates while protecting them from lesser threats and healing their wounds with elemental magic.

Ela'Hol - The People of the Forest

The most commonly found variation of elf found in the Lower Realms, the Ela'Hol or Wood Elves were the elves that fled into the deep forests of the Great Disc to hide from the dragon threat. They have become attuned to the natural surroundings and often make their villages in dense forests or in roaming nomadic tribes across the Borderlands. While some of the Ela'Hol have chosen to live among non-elven communities, they tend to prefer those out in the Borderlands over the city-states.

Ela'Hadaan - The People of the Shadows

The disciples and followers of the less prominent Magistrix Nera Gyrah'var were an empire built around controlling death itself. When the Starfall happened, the Magistrix led her people into the Shadowfell where they embrace the very concepts that they sought to control. Twisting their forms into gaunt and pale elves, they called themselves Ela'Hadaan but became better known to the rest of the world as the Hadaani. The Hadaani are one of the few groups who not only can survive the merciless landscape of the Shadowfell but thrive there. It is even rumored that their former Magistrix shed her mortal flesh completely to embrace the ways of death and decay as the Hadaani's patron demi-god, The Lady of Graves.

Ela'Mel - The People of the Heavens

Legends say that in the wake of the Starfall, a number of elves departed the Disc not to the planes but to the stars themselves. Constructing strange vessels capable of traversing beyond the Veil and into the Astral Skies. These "Star Elves" as the fables call them are largely an unknown factor. They've not been seen since the end of the Second Age and who knows what to say their exposure to the Astral Sky and whatever is beyond may have done to them.

Ela'Zura - The People of the Ley

Referred to as the 'High Elves' by the people of the Great Disc, the Ela'Zura attempted to survive the Starfall by drawing on the Arcane Flow and drawing the raw magical power directly into their bodies. While this worked, it functionally tethered them to the magic like the an addiction and forced them to congregate and rebuild in hidden convergences of magic flows which earned them the title of the People of the Ley or Leylines. While it could be argued that the Ela'Zura are the closest variations to the original Ela'Fin, the High Elves would be the first to tell you how far they've fallen from their ancestors.

Ela'Meer - The People of the Sea

Fleeing the coming of the Dragons was an equally important goal as finding a new sustainable source of power to replace what was broken. For the Ela'Meer, the solution came in fleeing beneath the waves. Tales of "Sea Elves" are common in the bars and taverns of a coastal village or the docks of Yhuson. Speculation runs from them being half-fish creatures that can breathe the water, to the Sea Elves constructing massive underwater civilizations in bubble domes on the seabed. No one really knows for sure because no one has had the means to go find out. It's not even confirmed whether the Ela'Meer even exist out there beyond the sea.

The Faeniqua

Only a handful of these strange elves have been rumored to even exist. A relic of a bygone era, the Faeniqua - meaning "Life Makers" in the ancient Ela'fin tongue - were genetic artisans of the Age of the Star. Masters of manipulating, altering and creating life from its most basic elements and raw magic. While the secrets of how to create a Faeniqua has been lost to the ages, a few that survived the Starfall and the Age of Fire are still wandering the Disc, kept alive by their advanced knowledge of arcane organic manipulation.

Age: Although elves reach physical maturity at about the same age as humans, the elven understanding of adulthood goes beyond physical growth to encompass worldly experience. An elf typically claims adulthood and an adult name around the age of 100 and can live to be 750 years old.
Size: Elves range from under 5 to over 6 feet tall and have slender builds. Your size is Medium.
Speed: Your base walking speed is 30 feet.
Available Types:

• Ela'Dro (Drow)
• Ela'Tschi (Eladrin)
• Ela'Zura (High Elf)
• Ela'Meer (Sea Elf)
• Ela'Hadaar (Shadar-kai)
• Ela'Hol (Wood Elf)
• Half-Elf