The following thoughts were inspired by the posts on
From the Sorcerer's Skull here and
here.
NOTE: this
information is known by all elves but is never revealed to other races. Other
races, over long centuries, have gained hints and rumors of the elven
life-cycle; whenever the truth is fully discovered, the elves ensure that the
information, and those who know of it, are wiped out.
The basic truth of elves is that elves are not native to the
mortal world. When the ancient elves first arrived in the mortal world from
elsewhere (where has been lost even to elven knowledge) they were spiritual,
non-corporeal entities made of pure energy.
The ancestors of the elves arrived when humanity was still
in its infancy, only recently evolved from the proto-human, near-simian
man-apes that preceded true humans.
The energy beings encountered these creatures and possessed
them, becoming the first elves.
As the world then was covered in primeval forest, and the
elves embraced the life-energy of the forest, they adapted their bodies to
become best adapted to the forest. In all the long millennia since, the elves have
never lost this connection to nature and the living world, not even the aloof gray
elves nor the corrupted dark elves.
Over time, the first elves slowly molded the bodies they had
possessed to what they considered a superior form, what is today known as that
of the “sylvan elf” or “wood elf.” This form is smaller than modern humans, as
humans of that long-passed age were smaller than modern humans (the sylvan
elves were taller and more muscular than the humans of the day).
The elf-spirits did not like the hairy bodies of the humans,
and so rid themselves of all hair save for that on their head and their
eyebrows. Eyes were made larger, the better to enable darkvision and improved
eyesight; similarly, ears were made larger and pointed, to improve hearing. The
elves could also change their hair, skin, and eye color at will, the better to
express their individuality.
Not wishing to limit themselves to either the male or female
form, the elves made themselves capable of remolding the sexual form of their
bodies, and thus they may become male or female, neither (neuter) or both (hermaphroditic)
as they wish (a change that requires several days to go from male to either neither
or both, then to female, and vice-versa). As a result, all elves are physically
androgynous in appearance, even those who prefer the biological male or female sexual
form to any others.
This sexual polymorphism was due to seeking out differing pleasurable
experiences with the physical body; due to religious and cultural reasons, the
idea of childbearing was anathema to the first elves (this is no longer true of
elves in general, see below). The first elves would never use their own bodies for such
distasteful activities (essentially, childbearing was considered equivalent to
hosting a parasitical growth).
For long centuries the superior form and technology of the first
elves (for the first elves quickly developed advanced technology and civilization
from long-buried racial memories of their pre-energy life form) kept the elves
alive and in good health. Then the first elves experienced the first physical death
among their kind.
They sadly discovered that the spirit of the deceased had become
too tied to the body it had long inhabited, and so could not possess another
adult body. However, after some experimentation they discovered that the spirit
could inhabit the newly-conceived fetus of a human child. The child grew to
term, and then after its birth, they retrieved the child by exchanging the newborn
with a wolf cub they had polymorphed into a human child. This was the first
changeling (and also the origin of lycanthropy, as that human child became the first werewolf).
And so, the issue of the rebirth of existing elves was dealt
with when the circumstances first required it. This sparked the issue of the
population growth of the elven race, for the human population was growing even
as human civilization was quickly advancing (by elven standards).
In all too short a time elves would be grossly outnumbered and perhaps brought to
extinction.
However, as the bodies they had taken and improved upon were
still, for all intents and purposes, human, they believed they could reproduce
with humans.
After some experimentation it was discovered that elves
could, indeed, reproduce with humans. And not only physically; in half of all
cases the child bore an elf-spirit, while in the other half of all cases the
child bore a human soul.
Those of elf-spirit could, when taught properly, mold their
bodies as did the original elves, and their spirits lived on to reincarnate as
did the other elven spirits. Those of human-soul, however, could not mold their
bodies, nor live on to reincarnate, for they did not have an elf-spirit, but
instead had a human soul.
And so over long millennia, the first elves grew their
numbers by mating with humans and then taking the elf-spirit children who would
grow into proper elves (usually leaving a changeling in its place in payment).
In most cases, the half-elf children were left to their own devices, though in
some cases there might be some interaction, either with the parent or with the
community, depending on the community of the elves.
Then came two schisms among the elves at the same time.
First, many elves noticed that humans had physically
improved over the long age; they had grown taller and stronger, more
intelligent and capable, and had taken to domesticating animals, growing
gardens and grains, and settling in small hamlets and villages. Some of this
they had learned from the elves, other things (such as primitive metallurgy)
they had learned from the dwarves. And some of the elves were worried that as a
people, they were being left behind.
A great number of elves, though not the majority of elves,
decided that the elven people needed to evolve.
Against the advice of most of the first elves (who at this point
were mostly in their fifth to seventh incarnations), many of the younger, third
and fourth generation of elves morphed their bodies en masse, to something similar
to or even superior to that of humans. These elves, the high elves, were also
the first elves to abandon the strict forest lifestyle of their ancestors.
They then did humans one better and, using their advanced technologies
and ancient ancestral memories, built towns and cities when humans had built
hamlets and villages. They moved out of the forests and into the meadowlands.
There they built vast fields to grow the grains needed to support an advanced
civilization. Some humans they adopted like pets, others they enslaved to do
their bidding. And so, the first great elven civilizations arose. They allied
with the dwarves against the giants and the dragons, and created a time of
peace and plenty, which even in human lore is remembered as a golden age.
The first elves who still led the sylvan elves watched all
this in horror. Some of them even went mad when they discovered that the high
elves had taken to procreating among themselves! Most of the first elves met in
conclave and decided that they had to come up with a way to
strengthen the sylvan elves against their erstwhile cousins. Of two minds – sane
and mad – one group decide that they needed to outdo the high elves and transform
themselves into the most potent elven form possible; the other group decided
that it were best to call upon the life-force of the forest and to meld with
it, to protect the sylvan elves and the forests from the expected depredations
of the high elves, who they felt had become too human.
Then from the first elves (all but a few) were born the fairies – the gray elves, the ultimate form of elf (at least, in their own minds)
known as faerie elves, and the fairy races, such as pixies, sprites, nixies,
and others, born of the merger of the first elves and the life force of the
forests. Which faction was sane, and which was mad, none today knows, not even amongst
themselves.
In the case of the gray elves, they decided to remain aloof
from both high and sylvan elves, seeking to live their lives as an example to
their cousins. They moved to hidden mountain valleys and other isolated
locales, there to further develop the ancient magic that was inherent in the
elven form and to study the very nature of the cosmos and existence.
Eventually, over time, these became their obsessions, and they mostly lost
their way, though some gray elf peoples continue their self-imposed
guardianship of all elven peoples.
The fairy folk, whatever their original ideals and plans,
quickly fell into the eternal reverie and merrymaking that is the fairy way.
They remain staunch allies of sylvan elves and guard the forests, though now
more for their own purposes rather than for all of elf kind. Though they were
born from the first elves, the process of unifying with the life force of the
forest shattered the spirits of the first elves, and their memories, such that
there are few among them today who recall their origins, and even fewer who
retain any complete memories of one of the first elves, so jumbled have the
spirits of the first elves become.
Over time, without the direct influence of the first elves,
the sylvan elves and fairy folk turned to procreation within their own kind.
However, many sylvan elves and fairy folk, and even some high elves, continue the
ancient tradition of the changeling, the better to bring in new blood to improve
the ancient bloodlines. But today, most reincarnation of elven spirits occurs
with an elven mother, rather than a human host.
The gray elves have developed an intermediate form of
procreation, having developed a form of parthenogenesis. Whenever one of their
number dies, a friend, with whom arrangements were made previously, takes on
the female sex (most grey elves prefer to remain biologically neither male nor
female) and becomes host to the reincarnated spirit of the deceased, the host
for the spirit forming via parthenogenesis.
The origin of the dark elves is intertwined with the arrival
of the forces of Law and Chaos in the mortal world at the end of the golden age
of the elves and dwarves. When Chaos was brought into the world through the
civil war between the hosts of the gods of men, it sought power among all the
peoples, not merely humans. Some high elves found the whispered promises of
Chaos much to their liking, and so began a war of elf versus elf for the first
time in all of elven history. In the end the elves aligned with Chaos lost the
war and fled underground, where the survivors became the ancestors of the dark
elves, held in thrall by the dark lords of Chaos.
ELVEN
REINCARNATION
Elves self-reincarnate; that is, when an elf dies, its spirit
separates from the body and seeks a new host body. Most elves have made previous
arrangements with friends to host their spirit prior to death. Unfortunately, elven
spirits can travel no faster in incorporeal form than they did in physical form
(though they fly, and terrain is not an issue), and until they find a host,
their cohesion and memory slowly degrade over time.
Some elf spirits never make it back to a host, and they
either fade away or end up being pulled into some other direction. Some are
found by demons, devils, ghosts, and other spirits, and are lost. So not all
elves reincarnate, and even those that do have usually lost a significant
amount of memory.
Some elf spirits, weak and fearing being lost forever,
reincarnate in beings other than elves. If an elf spirit reincarnates in a child
born to a human, it will be reborn as an elf, though will seem to be a fey
human until it attains puberty, upon which most of its remaining memories will
return to it (unless it is found by elves and raised among them, in which case its
memories start manifesting shortly after infancy).
If an elf spirit reincarnates in a child born to a dwarf or
gnome, the child is a gnome, and always remains a gnome; memories manifest at
puberty, but the gnome remains a gnome. If an elf spirit reincarnates in a
child born to a halfling, the child is a tallfellow halfling; memories manifest
at puberty, but the halfling remains a halfling. In these cases, the gnome or
halfling cannot be raised from the dead, and when it dies the elf-spirit is
free again to seek an elven host.
Considering that most elves have been reincarnated many
times, and each time memory degrades somewhat to nearly entirely, an elf has
only glimpses of its past lives available. Only the first elves had near total
recall from previous lives; these are now very few, most of them being gray
elves, a few remain among the high elves and sylvan elves, and sadly, the
memories of even the first elves among the fairy folk have been highly dis-articulated,
disbursed into the life force of the forest and reintegrated in bits and pieces
among the various fairies.
There are also odd cases where elves are reincarnated into
non-human and non-demi-human forms. Some elf spirits, lost and weakened beyond consciousness,
take shelter in the bodies of animals, and are born into animal form. In most
cases these creatures manifest as highly intelligent animals that can speak Elvish
(and perhaps other languages the elf-spirit knew).
In more exotic cases an animal born with an elf spirit morphs
into a semi-humanoid form, becoming a most unique creature indeed! As this kind
of thing has happened no few times over long, long millennia, there are forested
regions where elves once live, but were wiped out, where strange animals reside
in numbers. These creatures are usually allied with the fairy folk of the
region. Some sages say this is the origin of dryads, treants, satyrs,
bear-folk, harpies, and other sylvan creatures of semi-humanoid and/or
high-intelligence. The elves themselves, of course, do not speak of such things…