Elves

Historical Background: Elves

The elves once ruled the world with elegance and precision. Their cities shimmered with solar spires, moonlit sanctuaries, and deep-rooted groves—monuments to their obsession with order, legacy, and racial purity. Beneath this beauty, however, lay a brutal truth: their society was built on an unforgiving caste system, one that elevated bloodlines and crushed dissent. Over time, this rigid hierarchy corroded their unity and hollowed their greatness from within.

When the gods died and magic vanished from the world, the lower castes erupted in revolt. The ancient elven empires shattered under the weight of their own divisions. In the aftermath, most elves retreated to the ancestral lands of their respective castes—Verdant Elves to the forests, Skyrend Elves to the mountains, Noctari to the deep caves, and Aurari to the high spires. There, they built new strongholds and cities—not to restore unity, but to continue subjugating the so-called "sub races" from entrenched positions of power.

Even in exile, elven tribes continued to war among themselves over racial zealotry and caste supremacy. Yet despite their internal strife, they maintained dominance for centuries. Their quick wit, strategic placement of cities, and mastery of terrain made their strongholds nearly impenetrable. With lifespans stretching across generations, elven warriors honed their skills over decades, while their leaders wielded centuries of tactical knowledge. These advantages allowed them to suppress and exploit the rising sub races that shared the land—delaying the inevitable collapse of their fractured legacy.

Now, the elves remain scattered and bitter, clinging to ruined traditions in isolated bastions. Their hatred burns as fiercely as ever, directed both outward and inward. Even as their numbers dwindle, they continue to fight among themselves—each caste convinced of its own superiority, each stronghold a monument to a dying empire.

Elven Castes

1. Noctari — Cave Elves (Umbra Elves)

• Highest caste among elves

• Warriors known for their arrogance and unshakable pride

• Pale white or ashen grey skin, often marked with ritual scars

• Fierce, disciplined, and deeply loyal to their bloodlines

• Culturally obsessed with legacy, silence, and subterranean purity

• Common Roles:

  • Shadowborne

  • Deepfangs

  • Vaultblades

  • Legacyborn

  • Deepkin

  • Umbracrowned

2. Aurari — High Elves

• Golden-blooded, luminous, obsessed with legacy

• Culturally dominant caste—political tacticians, diplomats, and arbiters

• Known for their sharp tongues, radiant charm, and mastery of rhetoric

• Often serve as negotiators, propagandists, and caste historians

• Favor elaborate dress, ceremonial speech, and symbolic architecture

• Live in grasslands, valleys, and deserts—building spiraled spire cities that reflect their obsession with legacy and status

• Common Roles:

  • Brightborns

  • Goldbloods

  • Glorybound

  • Sunheirs

3. Verdant Elves — Thorn Elves

• Stealthy, agile, and deeply attuned to the forest

• Live in treeline cities, waterfall enclaves, and hidden groves

• Masters of espionage, poisoncraft, and trap-setting

• Known for their silent movement, ambush tactics, and botanical warfare

• Often serve as scouts, assassins, and information brokers

• Culturally value secrecy, camouflage, and natural communion

• Often referred to negatively as:

  • Mossbloods

  • Brambletrash

  • Thornrats

  • Rootrotters

  • Rotskins

4. Skyrend Elves — Mountain Elves

• Culturally obsessed with altitude as divinity—they believe the higher you live, the closer you are to ancestral perfection

• Live in spiral-cut cliff cities, carved into vertical stone like veins in a body

• Known for their natural architecture, altitude rites, and ritual starvation to “lighten the soul”

• Speak in echo-chants—layered vocal patterns that bounce off stone and confuse outsiders

• Bodies adapted to thin air: elongated limbs, sun-bleached skin, and calcified joints that crack audibly when they move

• Renowned for their unshakable sense of justice and logic—often serve as judges, ritual adjudicators, and teachers

• Culturally value height, hollowness, and echo—they consider silence a lowland disease

• Often referred to negatively as:

  • Sunworms

  • Peakrats

  • Stonebleeders

  • Ashsnobs

  • Craglickers

5. Half-Elves

• Considered a slave class

• Reviled by all elven castes—often enslaved or executed when discovered

• Lack any stronghold or homeland, wandering in exile or hiding

• Rejected by sub races as well, seen as remnants of elven cruelty

• Culturally fractured—many struggle with identity, legacy, and survival

• Often referred to negatively as:

  • Blooderrors

  • Bastardkin

  • Casteless

  • Halfrot

  • Paleplague

6. Lunari — Moon Elves

• Telepathic wanderers with limited psychokinetic ability—traits born of rare neurological evolution, not magic

• Pale blue or Black skin, often marked with constellation tattoos or memory scars

• Nomadic and introspective, often traveling alone or in silent triads

• Known for their emotional depth, dream logic, and symbolic storytelling

• Culturally value silence, memory, and internal communion—often reject caste entirely

• Serve as dream interpreters, memory keepers, and silent observers

• Once ranked as caste #2, but left due to internal division and moral revolt

• Now despised by all elves—considered lower than slave caste, a traitor class

• Often referred to positively as:

  • Starborns

  • Dreamkin

  • Silverheirs

  • Lunarchildren

• Often referred to negatively as:

  • Dreamslugs

  • Whisperskins

  • Driftworms

  • Moonrats

  • Thoughtleaks

  • Mindrotters

Historical Background: The Lunari and the Whispering Woods

Long ago, the Lunari—telepathic wanderers marked by constellation scars and dream-born insight—built their society deep within the Whispering Woods. Their cities shimmered with moonstone towers, memory gardens, and silent sanctuaries, all woven into the forest’s natural rhythms. Rejecting the rigid hierarchies of other elven castes, the Lunari embraced introspection, emotional communion, and symbolic storytelling. They were dream interpreters, memory keepers, and silent observers—guardians of the psychic veil between life and death.

But the forest itself was never passive.

The Whispering Woods was a living entity—a vast, sentient biomass of root, sinew, and spectral memory. The Lunari discovered this presence and, in their pursuit of isolation and protection, weaponized it. Through a ritual known as the Echo Root, they psychically grafted their thoughts and emotions into the forest, binding it to their will. The woods became a barrier, a guardian, a psychic labyrinth that repelled outsiders and preserved Lunari secrets.

For centuries, the forest obeyed.

But the grafts grew unstable. The biomass, once a neutral force of nature, began to mutate under the weight of Lunari emotion and ancestral memory. It absorbed not only intruders, but the Lunari themselves. Sanctuaries collapsed. Graves were desecrated. Minds were consumed.

The Maw Beneath awakened—a grotesque fusion of memory and matter that turned on its creators.

Now, the ruins of Lunari civilization lie buried within the Whispering Woods, haunted by echoes of their own making. The few Lunari who remain have been transformed into Silver-Eyed Watchers—silent slaves bound to the Maw’s will, tending the forest with hollow devotion. Neither living nor dead, they are custodians of a legacy that devoured itself.