A STUDY OF THE ELVES
To preface this scholarly work, I will begin with the obvious in case the reader is in the glorious future wherein Elves have passed into myth. For those readers, I will relate the story of their wretched origin:
> The Empire marched north, conquering all the lands from their ancient rulers and … [bringing civilization to new lands]. A man, a peasant barely more than a boy, was pressed from his farm into the service of the Empire as a soldier. He went with shield and spear to fight the creatures of the forests. Some say it was an incursion of Goblins, others say it was a Sacred Beast and even the Sacred Wolf itself. Still others said it was a demonic Monster. Whatever he fought, he was wounded, rendered unconscious, and left behind.
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> When he awoke, he was alone. His weapons had been lost, leaving him nothing with which to defend himself with. A great wolf came to him, and its pack surrounded him. He knew it for a Sacred Beast, for it was giant and mighty. The Great Wolf threatened him, and he bowed down in … [abject terror]. Who would not when a god stands before you?
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> Satisfied with his show of deference, he was spared. He was granted a place in the pack. [Author note: There are ribald stories of this time. Songs that jeer what even I must admit must have been a hard time in his life. Below the lowest in the pack, we hear he was frequently awoken by being urinated on by boastful males. That is the least of the humiliations he is believed to have been subjected to, but they are unfit to repeat in this work.]
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> Still, he learned to be like the wolves. He learned to hunt. Though he had no teeth to bite nor claws to rend, he made for himself spears and knives from the materials of the woods. In time, he earned the … [tolerance] of the wolves and was accepted as a pack member. After seeing his ability to make himself a … wolf through cleverness rather than natural means, he was considered a hunter.
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> One day he came once more to … [civilization]. He said goodbye to the pack, for he had learned the joys of nature and wished to share them. Not just the thrill of the hunt, but he saw sights he was sure no Human had before. Despite the harshness of his life, he had come to love nature. So he went among the Humans, and he preached to them about what he had witnessed and done. Many, … heard his [foolish] words, and dreamed of a life … [outside] the Empire. Elfé gathered these people, and they say … [a handful of the] army left for the woods. The rest of the army pursued [to punish the traitors].
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> Vraa, seeing these Humans who loved the nature that was her domain as Lady Nature, and seeing how the Humans were going to … [properly punish] them, chose to intervene. [Author note: it is also widely considered retribution for what Gillas did to what are now called Goblins.] She came down among them one night, and to each of the People of Elfé she gave a little piece of her Divinity. They were … [equal], then, [to] the Humans who came to kill them, and with Elfé's guidance they went into the great woods and the Humans … [decided] not follow.
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> Gillas, in his [righteous] anger, cast a curse so that the People of Elfé would always be known [for what they were] to the [righteous] Humans.
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> — As Told by an Elf Slave
So, should you ever meet an Elf, you will know by the feeling of disgust and revulsion being near them will give you. So mighty is this curse that one can tell at a glance, or even by smell. Why, even the very word will make the stomach roil! [See Hammond's wonderful work Is it an Elf? for a full treatise on the identification of an Elf.]
While perhaps at one time the Elves were a singular tribe, this was now some hundred years ago. After the call for Extermination, when the Elves used vile tactics to launch unprovoked attacks on Human settlements, they were broken as a people. I have used a variety of reports to come up with a list of tribes. While I would like to take credit for the names—some are quite memorable—the names are ones I have selected from a similar list of tribe names that I have come across. I will say it plainly lest I am charged with plagiarism: None of these names are my own.
It should be noted here that what I call tribes is a classification of tendencies displayed by disparate groups of Elves that have been recorded. Thankfully, to the best of my knowledge, no such large organization of Elves is known to exist.
BLOOD ELVES
To begin with, this is a series of small raider bands. The reason such bands exist is not known, but they seem to have no other purpose but killing as many Humans as they can. Most have shown dedication and frightening capability. They almost always include Transcendents among their numbers, and in many cases they include Monsters. Both intelligent ones with Human traits and ones that are perversions of various creatures of the woods have been witnessed.
I believe that these may be random bands who have come together after being displaced by the advancement of civilization. Perhaps, they have elected to attack the Empire out of a misplaced feeling of vengeance for perceived wrongs done against them. They tend to be violent and cruel, and there are many reports of these Elves performing sacrifices in the name of obscene gods that we of the Empire do not acknowledge.
HIGH ELVES
These are Elves who, some believe, have come to regret betraying Gillas and his glorious vision for the future. Many seem willing to rejoin civilization if given the chance, and some have even come to beg to be forgiven and accepted as a Human once more. Of course, they are marked by Vraa's favor and Gillas's disfavor, and so they can never be Human again. They are Elves. Still, some of these people are tolerated. However, it is inadvisable to become acquainted with them, for if one lives in your city today they are likely to disappear tomorrow. Their friends have been known to disappear as well. Consider this the gentle voice of caution.
Some High Elves attempt to rejoin civilization by creating their own. Of course, any such settlement that is discovered by the Empire is quickly subjugated, and properly civilized. After such a subjugation, should one be in need of expendable labor for dangerous work, it is the perfect time to find such workers.
SYLVAN ELVES
Similar to the High Elves, they seem to want to keep the trappings of civilization. Unlike their more high-minded cousins, they still live deep in the woods away from true civilization. They are found in hidden places in the world and build defensible cities. They engage in arts and crafts, and are even reputed to have an inferior form of culture.
I think, if I were to meet an Elf, I would choose to meet one of these. They still have an unnatural love of the 'natural world,' and still tend to pledge themselves to Sacred Beasts and live among Monsters, something the High Elves have ceased to do, so this makes them the most intriguing of these tribes.
However, I am well aware that to do so would be to invite a violent death to myself, for the Sylvan Elves, while not hostile to Humans in particular, have all the same erroneous distrust of true Humans as their cousins.
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
WILD ELVES
The most disgusting of the Elven races, this tribe seeks to come closer to nature. As such, they actively seek to form communities with Monsters rather than Humans. Many look more like their Sacred Beast patrons than Humans, indicating their perverse origin. It is said that one day the Wilder Elves will no longer be Elves, but Monsters with near Human intellect. Perhaps that is how the Elves are extinguished, though this might be a worse end than by the sword.
I do feel a need to disabuse a common notion. Elves do not breed with animals. What I have learned is that powerful Sacred Beasts may take a form like that of a Human if they choose. The Monsters that result from such a liaison will be a random fusion of their parents. As repugnant as this is, one must imagine what the Sacred Beast is thinking. After all, they are a creature that thinks almost as well as a Human. Would not mating with their own kind be for them like one of us bedding an invalid, or worse, a child? Still, there are Sacred Beasts enough in the world, and the existence of chimeric Monsters proves beyond all doubt that Sacred Beasts may find mates among other Sacred Beasts.
SHADOW ELVES
These are actually the best documented of the Elves, for the Reglads in the Shadowlands do trade with them. For all intents and purposes, Reglads and Shadow Elves have friendly relations. Reports from our poor cousins tell that they make cities in the mires of the great swamps, marshes, and lakes of the eastern lowlands.
The land is perilous, and the Shadow Elves have fearsome magics to protect their cities from the many dangers below the God Finger Cliffs. They cannot engage in vast agriculture, but it said they have found a swamp grass that can be cultivated in the mud like wheat in the lands above. They reportedly make vast fields of these grasses.
There are some whispers they also engage in necromancy, but the Reglads do not substantiate these claims. It is also a show of how our poor relations are called 'half-made' seeing how they cannot feel the corruption of the Elves. The Reglads do not properly revile Elves in the least.
That said, there have been disputes between the two over land, and while trade flourishes, they keep separate from each other otherwise. They also have a fascinating series of hand gestures that they use with traders in Shadow Gate. Some have begun to use it as a means to talk to those who cannot hear or speak. I understand Hamilton in Shadow Gate is working on a treatise, and I will recommend him to all who wish to know more on this topic, as I am sure his finished work will be illuminating.
SAND ELVES
This group is not substantiated, only rumored. The armies of the north tell stories of Elves seen far off across the grasslands or within the eastern deserts of the north. If they live in these inhospitable lands, we may never know. So far Humans have found no way to live in the heat of the desert, and it is difficult to bring the water Humans need into their depths. Many have written off these reports as illusions or a trick of nature called a mirage. A few have explained it away as a prank by a Wizard.
There is one report, given by a respected Wizard accompanying the northern armies, who reports plainly that he used his magics to see the Elves. He could clearly feel the natural revulsion for them, and thus knows them to have been real Elves. Beyond the fact that there are Elves in the desert, nothing else is known except they live beyond the Empire's current reach. Obviously, if Elves could accomplish this, then it is merely a matter of time that the Empire does as well.
ISLAND ELVES
Island Elves are believed to be of the same mind as Sylvan Elves. As such, I am tempted to put them in the same tribe. However, they have a few distinguishing features.
First, they have the ability to craft water vessels to cross the open waters of the oceans. While the Empire has built a few such vessels, there are few places worth going to. The trip from the south to the north is too long to be taken lightly. Our vessels invariably disappear, or are forced to turn back due to a lack of supplies, storms, or Sacred Beasts or Monsters of strange shape that attack from the hidden depths.
While some intrepid Humans have gone to the Emerald Isles to explore in the past, nothing of value was found. It seems the Elves have chosen to make it a bastion of their own away from Humans.
That they are like the Sylvan Elves is a reasonable conjecture. They make ships, a mark of an attempt at civilization, and the few ships we have that have dared the deeper waters have spied fishing craft and the suggestion of buildings beneath the canopy of verdant forests. They could be High Elves, but they have made no attempt to rejoin the Empire. The Elves are also in hiding beyond the Empire's lands and quite literally hidden within the trees.
Unlike the Isle of Ice under the control of the Kingdom of Stonemason, the Empire has taken an 'it is not valuable to us' approach to the Isles, and so the Island Elves are left alone. However, I am sure they will be subjugated once we have taken the north from the Minotaur, and the west from the Trolls.
SEA ELVES
Another legend, but it is said there is a tribe of Elves who live within the oceans itself. Not upon it, but within the deeps. They have the trait of fish that allows them to breath water, and are said to be descended from a Sacred Beast of the oceans. That there are Sacred Beasts in the ocean is a known fact, as mentioned in the entry on Island Elves.
Given that these Elves all breath water and live beneath the ocean, one can only assume they are Wilder Elves who live in the ocean. There have been stories of beach raids by their people, usually invading fishing or salt producing villages. Many of them have scales to protect their body from spears. These raids are rare, and it often seems like it is their great warriors using Humans to show their mettle, or as a rite of passage of some sort. The taking of trophies has been reported, but the reports are scarce and conflict too much to draw a conclusion.
As they live in the ocean, categorizing them as Wilder Elves would make one tend to forget them in favor of the more typical land-bound form. So one would conclude that the Sea Elves are their own tribe that is like Wilder and Blood Elves combined.
HALF-ELVES
Another commonly reported sighting of Elves are within our own cities. It is said that some Elves are born, when the parent is a Human, without the curse of the Elves upon them. Such creatures may still retain the animal traits of their ancestry, despite apparently being Human to our senses. I have met such a thing, and my own investigations suggests that the curse was either lifted or perhaps bred out.
Having such children should be a crime, and the fact that it is not one is an issue I would wish to raise with our glorious Empire. That there are those depraved enough to engage in such acts is disheartening, and that they come from noble heroic lineages is a blight on our Empire. I would rather have my ears removed than hear of more of it.
IN CONCLUSION
The attitudes and beliefs of the Elves are varied, but here I have summarized their habits into 'tribes' for classification. Again, I would like to emphasize that this is not a formal ordering of the Elves themselves, but rather a categorization of the groups derived from their observed nature.
I hope that future generations will find my work useful, as I am sure that one day Elves will pass beyond knowledge to mere myth, like the legends of the First People who became the Minotaur and Trolls. While no one should weep for the loss of such a stain upon the honor of Humanity, there is at least a lesson in the Elves about forgetting Humanity's duties to our glorious god Gillas.
POSTSCRIPT
This text was almost banned and destroyed due to the crimes of its author. However, scholars have noted the purity of this brief treatise, and it has been decided that while the author of this work, Johann from North Wood—stoned to death and his body dumped into the Shadowlands for coupling with a humanoid Monster—this work repudiates the actions he is known to have committed.
As his trial amounted to being caught with his lover, a humanoid Monster with vole traits, we cannot know how a man who wrote such a superior moral work could fall under the sway of what he himself proclaimed such an act 'depraved' and 'disheartening'. His story is taken as a cautionary tale, and you may have seen a play tragic play called The Pious Man and the Monster written by his former friend Hamilton of Shadow Gate.