Elves

Elves are long-lived, graceful people who resemble humans with a few key differences. The most easily recognizable feature of Elves are their pointy ears. Due to their long lives, Elven culture is quite stagnant compared to human society and as a result of this, only a few large cultural groups have formed over the millennia.

Elven Religion

Despite the best efforts of missionaries from the Order, the elves of Elluin and the Dhaerenuiin Impaerin refuse to adopt the extremist faiths of the humans. Elves worship two godly entities that represent the endlessness and perpetual nature of the universe. These godesses are the Sun and Moon Godesses, even though elves know that these celestial bodies aren't exactly gods.

Solcritoel - The Sun Goddess is the godess of beauty, creativity and art. She represents the beauty of creation and gives life to plants. She is watching over all elves and provide inspiration to artists around the world. The Elvish word for the Sun also comes from her name: Sol.

Volublectyth - The Moon Goddess is the godess of pleasure, joy and happiness. Under her light, elves celebrate at night on special occasions. She gifted elfkind with darkvision and bestows happiness to her followers. She is predominantly worshipped by dark elves as their homeland is less joyful than Elluin. The Elvish word for the Moon also comes from her name: Vol.
Legend says that an elf can only die a natural death when the two Godesses decide which of them gets to meet them in the afterlife. As both Godesses love all elves equally, they can't come to an agreement, thus granting elves extremely long lives.

Elven Recordkeeping

Even though Elves live for a very long time, they don't feel the effects of aging as much as humans, which means that their memory is better even after hundreds of years. As a result, Elves rarely keep written records of customs, events and other, menial things. There are certain people tasked with remembering and teaching these kinds of things to the newer generations.

The most common things that even the elves think are important enough to write down are agreements, major historical events, magical spells and incantations as well as blueprints and schematics.

High Elves

Simply 'Elves', 'High Elves' and 'People of the West' are all names for the tall, graceful people that live to the West of the human kingdoms and empires. They are blessed with long lives far beyond a human lifespan and are thus generally more experienced in their fields than humans are. This is somewhat counteracted by the humans ability to quickly learn and adapt which is quite difficult to the elves.
Among the elves, the High Elves are the best known and understood as they often trade and communicate with the humans. Many of them choose to visit and settle in the human kingdoms and empires where they can make use of their abilities and experience.
People generally know very little about life in the Elf Empire, but it is generally known that the elves have an Empress that rules over them. Rumors and legends state that all elves live like human royalty and they have no illnesses or hardships there. Stereotypes (by humans):

• High Elves are always believed to be old, even if they aren't.
• Most people think that all High Elves are rich and successful.
• High Elves are generally regarded as honorable.
• High Elves are often seen as 'beautiful' or 'handsome' by humans.
• If a High Elf is dressed and behaves like a noble, they are most often believed to be ambassadors from the '(Western) Elf Empire'

Dark Elves (Drow)

Simply 'Elves', 'Dark Elves (of the South)' or 'Slaver Elves' are all names for the dark skinned cousins of the High Elves. While they are often referred to as 'Elves' by ignorant people, the 'Dark Elves' are quite different from their High Elf relatives. The most obvious difference is their skin colour, which is much darker and their hair which is often white or other bright colours which contrasts well with their skin. Another visible difference is their form. They are shorter and a little bit stockier than their High Elf cousins, although they are both slimmer than humans.
While most people know that drow exist, few people actually know much about them. They are very rarely seen among humans and they aren't respected as much as their High Elf relatives.
The vast majority of people have heard about the 'Slaver Elves' and thus believe that all drow are slavers and whatever empire they have is also heavily structured around slavery.
Stereotypes (by humans):

• Drow are believed to be evil slavers most of the time.
• Drow are often seen as 'sexy' by humans, especially drow women.
• They are generally regarded as excellent fighters who prefer agility over protection.
• If a drow is dresses and behaves like a noble, they are often regarded as 'good drow' that abandoned their slaver ways.

Wood Elves

Simply 'Elves', 'Wood Elves' or 'Green Elves' are all names for the reclusive people of magical forests and jungles. As people rarely see elves of any kind, they tend to call all elves just elves. Wood elves are the most unique type of elves however as they didn't make a large empire that unites them. They chose to live in small, separate groups in the depth of forests as guardians and caretakers of their magical properties.
Wood Elves are extremely secretive and thus their lifestyle is a mystery to all but a select few outside their realms. They are regarded as excellent fighters who prefer ambush tactics and who protect their forests by any means necessary.
Stereotypes (by humans):

• Wood Elves are seen as dishonourable and witty.
• When seen outside of a forest, they are often mistaken as a very short High Elf.
• Wood Elves are often seen as 'pretty' and 'cute' by humans.
• They are believed to be borderline barbaric and are often found to be intimidating.

Tieflings

Similarly to humans, elves can also be corrupted by chaos and become tieflings. Due to their inherent magical affinity and proximity to chaos however, this influence manifests differently to humans. Elf tieflings, referred to as Shadar'kai by the elves have a pale grey skin with black vine-like patterns constantly moving across its surface. They are also known to be able to magically shift their state to become ghost-like and teleport short distances in this form. Elluin is known to prosecute these elves and banish them, but the Dhaerenuiin Impaerin doesn't.

Aasimar

Significantly rarer than their chaos touched counterparts, order-touched elves also exist. The most commonly known example is Aeron Cadogan, the fabled diviner. They are also gifted the same boons as human Aasimars are and their skin is similarly metallic.

High Elf Mercenary

Dark Elf Slaver

Wood Elf Hunter

Genetic Ancestor(s)

• Forebears

Geographic Distribution

• Elf Lands
• The Darklands

Related Organizations

• Elven Duotheism

Related Ethnicities

• Dhaerenuii
• Yi'Rillan

Related Historical Events

• 1246 AU
  Fifth Holy War in the name of the Order
• 1095 - 1098
  First Holy War in the Name of the Order

Languages

Unlike their human neighbours, Elves have kept their language mostly unchanged and uniform throughout the millennia. According to human scholars, this is because elves are 'too stubborn to learn anything new that didn't come from their own mind', but this is often debated as elves are known to learn quite a few languages throughout their lifetime. Despite this, a few variations of their language have developed.

Elven

Spoken by High Elves and Dark Elves alike, elven is the standard language of their kind. All known elven records have been written in this language, even those that were written thousands of year ago.

Wood Elven

Fundamentally the same as Elven, the Wood Elves have developed a few changes to the language to warrant its own category. The main difference is the introduction of animal sounds into their speech, such as howling to signify that they are hungry.

Undercommon

This language has developed since the Order captured Yi'riila. Dark elves and humans often trade and live in the same settlements there, which gave rise to this, mixed language.