Lux Tenebris: A Brief History of Elves in Western Nur

            Elves are not native to the continent of Nur. They arrived roughly a thousand years ago as refugees fleeing the Dissolution of Vorfel.  They arrived with very little outside of their language, their history and what most could carry with them.

            Humans had inhabited Nur for longer than the elves who arrived during the time of the Phoenix Kingdom.  There had been limited contact between the elven nations and the Phoenix Kingdom, but elven disregard for the shorter-lived races meant that most of that contact had been formal, at best, and cold, at worst.

            Despite this, the Phoenix Kingdom welcomed the elven refugees into their lands, even going so far as to integrate elvish nobility into the kingdom's Court.  This caused some friction between the human noble families and the new elvish nobles, but aside from subtle shifting on the social front there were no overt hostilities between the parties.

            Not all the elves who arrived in Nur remained within the Phoenix Kingdom. Many felt that the trappings of civilization had contributed to the loss of their homeland. These elves, viewed as radicals by most of their kith and kin, eschewed civilization and its cities and melted into the wild lands beyond the Phoenix Kingdom's borders.  The elves who remained disdainfully referred to these breakaways as 'wood elves' and the name stuck.  The wood elves, for their part, referred to their city-dwelling cousins as 'High Elves,' claiming that they spent all their time walking around with their noses in the air.  Over time, the disdain between these two offshoots of the elvish race became culturally ingrained, passed on from the older generation to the next.  One of the few things the two cultures retained in common was their contempt for the drow.

            Centuries passed and a new generation of high elves was born within the Phoenix Kingdom. This new generation had inherited their parents disdain for the shorter-lived races and began to wonder why their people were not ruling the kingdom.  Were elves not longer lived? Were they not wiser? Smarter? More sophisticated?

            From this generation arose the Logra Delfa, which roughly translates as 'grasping hand.' The Logra Delfa sought power and began to take subtle steps to acquire it. Realizing that the humans had the advantage in numbers, the Logra Delfa began to position certain families loyal to their cause within the Phoenix Court. It took almost three centuries, but their machinations eventually paid off when a half-elf royal bastard named Athen Blackmantle was born.

            When the Blackmantle's father, King Heron, died, Athen challenged his half-brother, Rochard, for the crown. As a result, the Phoenix Kingdom was thrown into a tumultuous civil war that eventually led to its destruction. Any hope the Logra Delfa had of seizing the throne came to an end at the Battle of Grey Hill, where Athen Blackmantle died in battle with his brother, King Rochard.

            Following the death of King Rochard, the elves were driven out of the South, into the northern wilderness. To this day, those with elvish blood are not welcome in the Southlands.

            The surviving members of the Logra Delfa trekked northward, intent on putting as much distance between themselves and the humans as feasible. However, not all the high elves chose to go into exile with the Logra Delfa. Many left, settling in human cities and towns, deliberately distancing themselves from the ideology and actions of the Logra Delfa. Some sought out their wood elf cousins and joined them in the wilderness, coming to believe that their primal cousins had been right all along.

            The Logra Delfa moved northward, beyond the realms of humans. They skirted the mountain territories of the dwarves, and eventually came to the southern edge of the Lirwood. There, the elves stopped, dispatching scouts to find a route through those dreaded woods. Of all the scouts dispatched, only one returned. His name was Kalo and the path he led the elves along, through the Lirwood, became known as Kalo's Path.

            Kalo led the high elves to the site of what would become the city of Goldsun.  The elves, inspired by omens and prophetic visions, began to build their city. It took them a century to construct the shield wall surrounding Goldsun, but much less time to build the city itself.

            As Goldsun was built, the elves established a formal monarchy with absolute power residing in the hands of the High King. Common elves had very little say in the administration of the city or the crafting of its laws.  This led to feelings of ill-will among some. Eventually, these malcontents would unite and abandon Goldsun, marching even further north, to the Stonespear Mountains where they would establish the city of Moonhome.

            The two elven nations, Goldsun and Moonhome, would come to represent opposite poles of the political and social spectrum. Goldsun remained a highly stratified society of conservative values and views, where power flowed exclusively from the High King. Moonhome evolved into an inclusive, freewheeling, almost bohemian, representational democracy guided by an elected council. As could be expected, the two elven nations have little direct commerce or contact with each other.

            While the high elves were kingdom building, their wood elf cousins were slowly spreading north and west.  By the time the Phoenix Kingdom fell, there were significantly more wood elves than high elves in Western Nur. Many wood elves lived as wandering nomads, traveling north in the summer and south in the winter.  Others established small communes, deep in the wilderness, as far from 'civilization' as possible.

            Unfortunately, wood elf expansion eventually led to conflict with the dwarven nations. The dwarves viewed the elves as trespassers, at best, and invaders, at worst. There were bloody altercations between the two groups that resulted in long-term animosity between the two races.

            Wood elf expansion into the northlands, eventually brought them into contact, and conflict, with the Great Orc Horde.  This would prove to be a calamitous meeting for the wood elves who could not match the orcs in numbers or ferocity. As the horde traveled south, the wood elves fled before them, alerting the other races to the orcish advance. 

            The dwarves were naturally disinclined to believe the wood elves and were caught mostly off-guard when the horde arrived upon their doorsteps.  The other races, however, were more receptive and most human cities and communities were fortified by the time the horde arrived. Because of this, humans tend to look upon wood elves with more favor than high elves and the two races often work together for their mutual benefit.

            By the time the orc horde was broken and decimated, it is estimated that almost 75% of the former wood elf population had perished.  The survivors gathered together in more defensible communes, adopting a kind of siege mentality that persists to this day. However, the communes remain independent and unallied with each other to this day, a fact that has been exploited more than once by elvish enemies.

            Today, the elvish race remains scattered throughout Western Nur, from the Palatine Peninsula to the Stonespear Mountains to the continent's western coast. Outside of Goldsun and Moonhome, there are large elvish communities in Fallen Baramir, Swordhold and Darkwater.

            Some elves have traveled east of the Stonespear Mountains, to the city of Pax and the Draconic Empire, but there are no elvish communities or nations established outside of Western Nur.

            Elves who venture into the north of Western Nur, beyond the Greytooth Mountains and the region around Darkwater are few and far between. The region is mostly untamed and rife with dangers.