Elf

vibe: elves are about extreme skill and technique. the stuff only generations of learning and muscle memory could give you.


City: Ost Almiral or "ost-al" for short

"The skin of a killer"

instead of sweating, elves shine. a defense against the heat/harsh-sunlight? drives the fashion of wrapped clothing, etc.

elven reproduction:

two parents join to create two children. The two parents, touching, shine like phosphorous and are turned to stone. children before them like Terminators (kneeling toward the parents).
So if having children is suicide why is it done? is the ancestral form desirable? are parents at that point sick of living?

Ancestral Memory

Elves carry the minds of their entire ancestral line, with a strength proportional to how recent that ancestor. so the parents are heard clearly at any time. the grandparents half as clearly. and on and on. During trance/meditation and elf can access further ancestors. Elves of a shared bloodline can meditate together to reach clearer pictures of shared ancestors.
The elven afterlife is literally within the mind of offspring.
older elves can remember the time before conjunction. (ooh, did they kill their tree a LONG LONG Time ago? more than 700 years? that may only be 7 generations.
i like the idea of the conjunction being recent compared to their ancestry. so that after a couple generations, you're having ancestors try to advise you in a world and environment that they didn't have to live in. Tension when an elder elf tries to literally live on in a group of his collected descendents. BUT the problem is that the desert is what their god-blighted land became. and somewhat rapidly, right? or over time?

History

Elves were immortal and not designed for reproduction. created directly by The Godtree. The elves conspired and set it aflame. Each of these elves carry a bit of the flame (a soul). Which means a fixed number of elves - reproduction will never grow the number. Steady decline as elves are killed through other causes or defect to drowdom (maybe drows exist).

Culture

Some try to experiment with nature to create new flora (and occasionally fauna) suited to the environment. to beautify the land or undo their original sin.

Environment

The desert is beat down by the heat of their pre-conjunction sun maybe? The desert is the blighted land after killing their tree god. creatures from the underdark moved into the area. (cacti and shrubs like that were the limited work of their druids/rangers). they run on top of the sands and don't get slogged by the dunes.
Maybe elves age in the sun. and this is what causes them to get old and need to reproduce. ('dark elves' live in the underdark so they can live forever, because they won't reproduce).

Meta

Architecture: ?
food and culture:?
names: arabic + tolkein expectations
general inspiration:40k eldar
themes:original sin (desert punishment). the weight of legacy and being punished for things your ancestors have done
Happenings: maybe a refugee crisis as humans and orcs are being pushed in from ossiarch activity.
tropes leaned on:doomed, their-time-has-passed,
tropes inverted:natural - they've doomed their environment, live in desert now. eternal-they age in the sun and can only experience immortality carried by their children