Elfmarked (Half-Elf, Half-Elves)
The most prominent of the races of mixed heritage, half-elves can be found throughout Faerûn, but have few lands to call their own. They feel at home both in the sprawling human empires and the secretive elven retreats, standing between elf and human culture but truly belonging to neither. They are a handsome and even-tempered race who handle the challenges of their mixed heritage with grace and reserve.
There are three major subraces of half-elves in Faerûn: common half-elves, half-drow, and half-aquatic elves. The common half-elves are those whose elven parents hail from the moon elf, sun elf, wild elf, and wood elf peoples. When someone refers to a half-elf, they are almost certainly referring to a half-elf of this descent. The half-drow have drow blood in their veins, and are extremely rare except in the most southerly lands of Faerûn. Finally, the half-aquatic elves can be found in small numbers along any of Faerûn’s coastlines, caught between their human and their sea-elf heritages.
No true half-elven realms exist in Faerûn, but half-elves are far more prevalent in some lands than in others. In the Unapproachable East, in the Yuirwood of distant Aglarond, a culture of common half-elves descended from wild elves, moon elves, and Damaran human settlers thrives beneath the Yuirwood’s green boughs. In isolated Dambrath in the south, half-drow rule over their human neighbors. Half-elves are also common in places where humans and elves have lived alongside each other peacefully, such as the domain of Silverymoon in the North or some of the southerly Dales.
Half-elves have at least one elven parent or grandparent, or two half-elven parents. To put it another way, the child of a half-elf and a human will be human, unless the half-elf parent was the child of a full-blooded elf. Unless a half-elven line marries into other elven or half-elven families, their elf characteristics fade in a generation or two. On occasion elven traits can reappear in otherwise human children born several generations later, but half-elves of such remote descent are very rare.
Racial History
Half-elves have little racial history. Scarce in number and widely dispersed across the face of Faerûn, half-elves have left little to mark their presence. True half-elven cultures have arisen in only a handful of times and places. Humans and elves have shared Faerûn for many thousands of years, and rare individuals of both elven and human descent have been around since the time of the Elven Crown Wars or before. However, it is only within the last dozen centuries that the decline of the great old elven kingdoms and the rise of human civilization have allowed the two races to blend in any numbers. The ancient elven kingdoms of Illefarn and Cormanthyr sheltered large numbers of half-elves in their final days, as both incorporated rising human lands beneath elven crowns in the centuries following the raising of the Standing Stone. The fall of Myth Drannor in 714 DR brought an end to the first of these blended realms, but by that time Silverymoon was already rising as a second Myth Drannor in the North. In Aglarond, the settlement of the Yuirwood by humans in the 8th and 9th centuries led to the rise of a half-elven folk who still thrive today. Although the mercantile humans of Aglarond’s coastal cities and the forest-wise rangers of the kingdom’s hidden depths do not always get along, Aglarond stands as the best example of a half-elven realm in Faerûn today. Dambrath, on the other hand, presents an entirely different example. Seven hundred years ago, the barbaric human kingdom of Dambrath was conquered by drow from a powerful city. Those who can trace their descent to the great drow families who ruled as suzerains over their human subjects govern their homeland as proud overlords. Where half-elven blood is a sign of racial harmony (or commerce, at least) in other lands, in Dambrath it is the legacy of conquest and oppression. Three distinct types of Half-Elves are detailed in the links below- Half-Elves (Sun, Moon, Green, Wood)
- Half-Aquatic Elves
- Half-Drow
Related Ethnicities
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