Lyrengorn
Demographics
93% elves, 3% dwarves, 2% humans, 2% other races
Every year, dozens of travelers from across Tal'Dorei travel past the far northern reaches of the Cliffkeep Mountains to see the Moonweaver's Ribbons twist around the Elvenpeaks, pulled through the sky by those mysterious figures on wyvernback. The Elvenpeaks are a single mountain split perfectly in the center, with ice-sheeted forests topping both peaks. While the exterior of these forest canopies appear frozen and without life, the interior is instead a warm and humid wood, blooming with flowers of all colors and roamed by living plants and wild game. In the boughs of these thick tropical trees also lives a society of wood elves, some of those wild folk who broke away from Yenlara's pact and the city of Syngorn. Their city of Lyrengorn—lyren'gorn literally meaning "mountain city" in Elvish—is the last building of safety before the endless ice of the Neverfields to the north.
These lyren’alfen—“high elves”—call themselves friends of none and enemies of fewer; they welcome all who manage to make it to their home, provided they come in peace, and take no sides in any conflict. In ages past, they were highly sought-after as mercenaries because their warriors had learned the rare art of wyvern riding. When Warren Drassig’s legions marched to conquer Tal’Dorei, the elves of Lyrengorn refused to die for anyone else’s war, retreating instead to their mountaintops and lush forests.
Today, few of the lyren’alfen are actually warriors, though many among them are hunters. In the intervening centuries, wyvern riding has transformed from a martial art into a ceremonial one; great athletes called skyswimmers train year-round for the annual coming of the Moonweaver’s Ribbons, great streaks of mutlicolored light that illuminate the northern sky on the winter solstice. The skyswimmers and their wyvern mounts seize the strands of light on their spears and paint radiant, esoteric portraits in the wintry sky, drawing intrepid outsiders from across Tal’Dorei to camp on remote mountains and marvel at their visual poetry.
Beyond the ceremony’s artistic merit, it’s also a ritual to the goddess known as the Moonweaver, chief deity of these elves. The high priestess of the moon claims that the annual rite purifies Lyrengorn and gives the wild elves long life.
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