Of all the varied cultures and races in Eberron, few are as misunderstood—and subsequently condemned—as the elves of the continent of Haleth. Solitary, mysterious, and obsessed with death, these elves are the basis of several rumors throughout Khorvaire.
The elves of Haleth pursue many paths to power. Common choices include the path of the arcane archer, archmage, and loremaster. However, Haleth is not a nation entirely devoted to the arcane arts. Some among the elves keep a constant watch for threats to their island nation. Chief among these defenders of the realm are the vigilant sentinels of Haleth.
The elves of Haleth have spent many generations perfecting the rituals that transform their most honored warriors and wisest advisors into the undying. In the course of those studies, they learned much about the nature of positive energy and how to harness it. This knowledge has proved increasingly useful over the years with the insidious incursions of the Blood of Vol and their ilk into Haleth. The church has developed many new spells to combat these and other threats, many of which are also useful to arcane casters.
The elves of Haleth have also begun creating grafts in the few years since the Last War ended. In homage to their deathless leaders, grafts constructed by the elves use donated flesh and tissues of the undying. Only the most noble and worthy Aereni are afforded this honor, although rumors of dark cabals that grow deathless flesh and bone for their own grafting purposes have begun to circulate, especially in areas where the Stillborn hold some amount of power.
Haleth History
The elves of Haleth have a compelling obsession with death, which originated millennia before humans came to the continent of Khorvaire, back in the days of the elves' origins as slaves of the giants of Vrigan.
In the dark days of the Halethi, they served the empires of Vrigan. At that time, the elves hardly resembled the proud, powerful race they have become, but they carried the spark of magic within them. As the decades passed, the elf slaves concealed their magical gifts from their giant masters, nurturing them with each passing generation.
Contemporary Halethi know little of this time. The histories reliably begin tracking the elves' history—magical or otherwise—with their escape from Vrigan. But the legend of the elves’ grand, race-defining escape is still told to all Halethi, forming the foundation of their acceptance of death and reverence for their ancestors in the form of the undying.
The Legend: Escape from Vrigan
As all good legends do, the Halethi story begins with a hero, an elf slave named Hale Kriaddath. Hale served a powerful giant shaman for the greater part of his life. Eventually earning the mighty creature's trust, Hale was allowed to observe and even aid in the giant’s most potent rituals. Through this participation, he learned to cast simple spells.
One day, Hale was ordered by his master to retrieve the day's sacrifices for the ritual. Kept in a small pen near the giant’s house, these sacrifices typically consisted of livestock or captured wild animals. This day, however, Hale opened the door to the large pen and found that it contained only a single small figure: an unconscious female elf. In a numb daze, Hale took the elf slowly back to his master’s abode. His conditioning was too thorough for him to do anything else, and on some level, he doubted his master meant to slaughter his fellow elf simply for his magic.
Hale’s assumption was wrong.
The giant shaman plunged a knife—a weapon the size of a large sword in an elf's hands—into the elf, spilling her blood to power a potent magical ritual. Horror struck Hale just as cruelly.
The magic released by the sacrificial ritual was more potent than any Hale had seen his master perform before. Despite his shock at the death of the sacrifice, the portion of his mind fascinated with magic took note of the power released by the sacrifice of an elf (as opposed to that of a mere beast). But the betrayal of his trust in the giant seeded a new thought into Hale's mind: revolt.
Hale began to carefully and slowly build a secret contingent of like-minded slaves, including a few who were eager pupils of the magic Hale could teach. From these unpromising beginnings, the revolution nurtured the seeds of magical lore, and slowly expanded it with each passing year. Eventually, the elves began magical experiments of their own. The slaves at first recorded their trials and successes on pilfered scraps of parchment and leather, but the thefts were too risky—the giants might find them out. Instead, they found that their own blood was an ideal ink, and the bones of their own dead served as a perfect record of their findings. The giants suspected nothing.
Hale never forgot the power unleashed by the sacrifice of one of their own race, and he conducted his own secret experiments apart from those of his conspirators, always seeking to unleash the power of blood. He had no desire to sacrifice his own people for any reason, but he felt that he was close to recognizing some key element.
Hale's giant master felt the same way. Many more elves passed across the giant shaman’s sacrificial altar, but to no greater effect. Those who were sacrificed wailed in their chains if conscious, asking for release, or fought wildly to avoid the drugs that would render them mutely accepting of the giant shaman’s sacrificial knife.
With a flash of intuition, Hale finally recognized the missing element one day after a particularly vicious sacrifice. Each victim was unwilling. Even when unconscious or drugged, the slaves' souls cried out for life, not death.
Hale's insight fired him with steely determination. In the wake of his hard-won knowledge, it was finally time to initiate the elves’ escape from Vrigan.
Hale shared his theories on the power of sacrifi ce with the trusted core of his secret movement. With this precious knowledge, they hatched a daring plan for the elves to escape the captivity of the giants. But secrecy, even among the elf slaves, was vital, lest betrayal ruin all their years of hidden labor. Of all the thousands of elves held in captivity, Hale selected only one hundred others to share the magical knowledge necessary to free the elves, as well as the exact time of the escape.
When the appointed day of freedom came, Hale walked into his master's chambers. All across Vrigan, his cohort of conspirators did the same. They all spoke the final words of a terrible ritual, prepared in advance over many months. The ritual was powered by the sacrifice of all the collected elf heroes. In that instant, all these participating elves, scattered across the continent in key locations, gave up their lives.
Mighty detonations of power were born flaming into the world. Giant citadels fell, towns were expunged of their giant populations—and elves everywhere saw the signal. Led by agents of Hale and his inner circle, the elf slaves slipped away in the tumult.
During the Flight of the Slaves, as the elves call their exodus, a powerful, mysterious elf cleared the way for the fleeing elves of Vrigan, diverting giant patrols, guiding lost groups of elves, and even obliterating obstacles (giant or otherwise) in displays of blazing power. Upon arriving at the coast, the freed slaves discovered a journal, prepared by Hale and placed within a platinum urn. Carried to the shore by an unwitting messenger, the journal documented the ritual that resulted in the great sacrifice of the elf heroes, as well as Hale’s notes on the rite the elves eventually came to call the Ritual of Undying.
Hale, unlike the other heroes, did not perish. The influx of magical energy sustained his existence even as it ended his biological life. He was transformed into the first of the Undying.
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