Elflands
Founded nearly 4,000 years ago, the Elflands was the largest elven empire in recorded history. At one point nearly one in five people in Pescat lived in the Elflands, but all that fell apart with the Sunken God's Reign of Terror in 897. No longer capable of maintaining their imperial holdings, the Elflands has now become a hermit kingdom shut off from the rest of the world deep within the Golden Forests.
Structure
The emperor of the empire oversees the administration of over half a dozen imperial provinces and territories, each of them overseeing a different minority race. All legal decisions are made by an elite court of high elves who determine policy for the rest of the the empire's subjects. Following the Sunken God's Reign of Terror the Empire transformed into a constitutional monarchy under the leadership of Rosalind Avon.
Assets
- The Imperial Archives in Kassadeia contained one of the largest collections of literature in the world. Vestals have spent years sifting through the ruins of Archives and sending any surviving literature to Henriad for study and restoration
- The Golden Forests are vast and ancient, a sanctuary for incredible fey magic
History
Idyllic Years of Empire
Founded in the wake of the Ostry Apocalypse at the start of the 3rd Cycle, the Elflands was founded by the band of high elves who first stepped foot out of the Golden Forests into the new world created by the deity known as the Ageless One. They founded a powerful trading post on the Aurelian River called Kassædeia, and over the course of two thousand years they managed to take over nearly all of southern Pescat, spanning from the Arrayas Ocean to the Strait of Myltev.
A diverse variety of races lived within the kingdom through a combination of military oppression and economic collaboration: elves, halflings, humans, kuo-toa, bullywugs, tortles, goliaths, half-elves, tabaxis, dwarves, and goblinkin all lived in large populations at some point in the Empire's history. Tieflings, however, were persecuted and banished from the Elflands as the Empire's founders believed them to be responsible for the Ostry Apocalypse and accused them of collaborating with monstrous deities.
Elflands/Rakkan Feud
The Elflands' golden years lasted for nearly a thousand years, but slowly the kingdom fell apart after many costly wars with the exiled tieflings of Rakka. The cataclysmic First Elflands-Rakkan War led to the creation of the Fey Plains, making it impossible for the Elflands to maintain control of its western territories. The kingdom of Despero was founded a few years later.The high elf families of Glace seceded to run their own shipping empire in the east a couple centuries later, furthing diminishing the Empire's vast holdings.
As the two largest militarized nations in Pescat, the Elflands Empire and the tiefling kingdom of Rakka have fought over half a dozen major conflicts with each other over the course of their long histories. Rakka was founded by bands of exiled tieflings from the Elflands, the grounds for a long-seated resentment that would energize the tieflings to train tirelessly to develop one of the most militarized nations in the world.
The wars were long and brutal, but the conflicts rarely upended the balance of power in Southern Pescat with only one or two exceptions. The Sixth Elflands-Rakkan War inadvertently led to the independence of the dragonborn kingdom of Bahamut two decades later in the 760's of the 4th Cycle, creating a neutral buffer state that continues to play all sides in the vacuum of power left behind by the Elfland's collapse.
Defenders of the Faith
As one of the first nations to establish itself following the Ageless One's liberation of Ekal from the Ostry Apocalypse's monstrous deities, the Elflands had long claimed the title of Defenders of the Ageless Faith. Donating more than any other kingdom in Pescaliat to its temples and hosting massive pilgrimages every year, Over 90% of the Ageless One's physical avatars have been from the Elflands due to this longstanding alliance.
This fierce loyalty was renewed at the start of the 4th Cycle when a band of yuan-ti tried to invade the holy city of Dhamma in the Campanel Desert and seize the Ageless One's avatar for the new century. The siege lasted for months, culminating in a decisive battle where Emperor Polonius II of the Elflands died and the yuan-ti were pushed back into their isolated kingdom of Sheyuan. For several millennia every Ageless One avatar has been a high elf, but with the Empire's collapse unorthodox individuals like Mother Oda were chosen as the Ageless One's next avatar.
4th Cycle Troubles
The first millennium of the 4th Cycle would go down as one of the most disastrous periods in recorded history for the elven empires of Ekal. First, elven hegemony in Glace was overthrown by the Gamerian King Constell II's conquests of the 470's. Then in the 870's the human tribes of Oda Clan and Kawa Clan united against the elven Kiri Clan in the Northern Territories to strip it of much of its regional power. But the most demoralizing blow came in the 890's when the Elflands empire fell apart in a matter of months with the Characters Revolution and the rise of the Sunken God.
Only nine elves have ever served as emperor of the Elflands, meaning that the transitional periods between reigns have always been precarious. Empress Ophelia's nine-month reign in 896 proved this truth when a band of freedom fighters from the Elfland's minor races ignited a revolution that plunged most of Southern Pescat into utter chaos. The New Year's Massacre left Empress Ophelia dead and the capital city of Kassadeia in ruins, and with the Sunken God ushering in a reign of terror the future of the empire remained uncertain.
A band of fighters known as the Royal Knights Brigade from the human nation of Gameth defeated the Sunken God at the Battle of Kassadeia in the winter of 897, but the Elflands Empire proved irreparable after such a devastating genocide. Hundreds of thousands of elves were slaughtered in a matter of months, fleeing as refugees to all corners of Pescaliat while the Avon imperial family remained without a clear heir for over a year. With more elven souls in the world than bodies to contain them, the city of Kassadeia became a literal ghost town as thousands of specters haunted the city streets and went about their mundane routines before the Sunken God robbed them of their lives. Weeks before the Treaty of Iverburg in 898, Ophelia's distant niece Rosalind Avon was found adventuring with a tabaxi druid and elven wizard in Despero and crowned the new Empress of the Elflands.
Over many weeks of negotiation, Rosalind oversaw the dismantling the of the Elflands Empire and creation of a modern-day elven nation-state. A reformer who disdained the cruelty and excesses of the old Empire, Rosalind felt that the world no longer needed a continent-spanning empire under the heel of an elven ruling class. She won over elves nostalgic for the imperial years by investing heavily into the ancestral town of Henriad, turning it into a sanctuary for elves from all over Pescaliat. Over the next several decades thousands of elves would travel to the Elflands to find a new community or escape uncertainty in their homelands, distancing themselves from the political feuds of the outside world. While few would say it aloud, every new citizen of Henriad was a tacit admission that the Age of the Elflands had come to an end.
Territories
Emperors of the Elflands
- Laertes Avon I (064, 3rd Cycle - 629, 3rd Cycle)
- Fortinbras I (629, 3rd Cycle - 1186, 3rd Cycle)
- Cordelia (1186, 3rd Cycle - 1633, 3rd Cycle)
- Fortinbras II (1633, 3rd Cycle - 2199, 3rd Cycle)
- Polonius I (2199, 3rd Cycle - 2704, 3rd Cycle)
- Polonius II (2704, 3rd Cycle - 001, 4th Cycle)
- Laertes Avon II (001, 4th Cycle - 435, 4th Cycle)
- Polonius Avon III (435, 4th Cycle - 896, 4th Cycle)
- Ophelia Avon (896, 4th Cycle - 897, 4th Cycle)
- Rosalind Avon (898, 4th Cycle - Present)
My Crown I Am, But Still My Griefs Are Mine
Founding Date
064, 3rd Cycle
Type
Geopolitical, Empire
Capital
Leader
Head of State
Government System
Monarchy, Constitutional
Official State Religion
Subsidiary Organizations
Location
Controlled Territories
Neighboring Nations
Notable Members
Comments