Elves are a race that have no definitive or widely agreed upon origin, what we do know however is that Elves unlike both humans, dwarves, and the animal peoples don’t adapt to their environment so much as they are born into it. When an elf is born into the world what they look like is not dependent upon their parents but the location and environment they were born into, for example a high elf and a dark elf could have a child that in the right environment would be a wood elf.
Another notable trait of the elves is their apparent immortality, though there is no proof that elves simply have extremely long lifespans as there is no record of an elf living past the age of 1,500 many still believe that elves will live forever unless they are slain. This long life span allows most elves to take their lives in a more casual way than most humans and dwarves, allowing for elven cities to host many masters of various crafts. But this possible immortality has made some of the other races jealous and led to many seeking the dark magics of necromancy to become immortal themselves.
The most unknown thing about the elves however is that they are not creatures of flesh like we humans, dwarves, or animal peoples. Elves are more akin to sentient plants as shown by the different diseases that are exclusive to them and the ways they are affected by them. One notable disease is the Withering which causes the affected elf to wither like a plant that has gone days without water.
As of the writing of this there are four different species of elves that are know, they are -
High elves - Elves that are born in and mostly live in plains or somewhat mountainous regions.
High elves are also responsible for the first known instance of racism which was directed towards a tribe of animal people they disliked.
High elves have fair skin not unlike the human northmen with either blond or grey hair. Unlike humans, dwarves, and most other elves, high elves are not capable of growing beards.
High elf culture revolves around keeping oneself as attractive and wise as possible to prevent the so called ‘lesser races’ from surpassing them. This belief that they are superior to all others has caused several wars which they for the most part did not win leading to small patches in history where they were extinct on certain continents.
High elves were also the first known geomancers but mostly chose to be druids over mages as that is considered to be a superior form of magic to them because it does not rely on humans.
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Wood elves - Elves with skin that are dependent upon the trees that make up the forests they were born into. A wood elf that is born into a first of mixed tree types will be randomised with the probability dependent upon the percent of each type of tree.
Wood elves have tree-like skin and can have hair on their head and in the case of men have beards, both of which will be the color of the leaves of the tree they resemble most.
Wood elf culture mostly revolves around protecting the forests they were born into and keeping the biodiversity of it, they sometimes become druids to do this.
Hydromancy is the magic type that wood elves have the greatest affinity for due to the large amounts of water in the lakes and ground within the forests they reside in.
Dark elves - Elves with a dark almost black skin tone. The cause of this is due to being born deep underground where the sun cannot reach and the only source of light being bioluminescent mushrooms typically found in the deep underground caverns where most dark elves are born. The first dark elves came about from the end of a war where several large groups of unspecified elves were forced to flee from their enemies and find refuge underground, some joined with dwarves who already live underground while others found old tunnels now abandoned by their former dwarven occupants.
Dark elves have very dark skin that is almost black and grey hair.
There are two categories of dark elven culture, the first is those who joined the dwarves who put a lot into preserving the underground ecosystems and allowing the world to experience the beauties of them as they do. The second category are those that went out on their own, these dark elves are far more isolationist and worship a strange and unknown god, all that is known of this god is that it resembles an elf in the statues that have been seen in the past. While these dark elves are not hostile they aren’t exactly friendly either.
By being born into a place without many sources of natural light, dark elves have a bit of talent for pyromancy for the generation of their own light sources.
Stone elves - Elves that are born in human settlements that have large amounts of stone used in its construction and architecture. This strange origin has led this type of elf to resemble stature created from stone as opposed to plants like the previous three and instead of withering like they do stone elves will do something quite similar to eroding. The type of stone they will appear to be made from is a lot like wood elves in which it is dependent upon the types of stone and the amount of each.
Stone elf culture is very similar to that of the human society they were born into due to almost always being surrounded by them. This has allowed stone elves to very easily integrate into human civilisations and thrive where most other elves do not.
For whatever reason that is still unknown to us stone elves have their greatest affinity for aeromancy over the other three evocations.