Elves

The elves live to the west of the central continent and have many different subspecies, or Families, within them. These range from the elemental fire elves to the high altitude mountain elves and the tree-living forest elves. Families may be designed by players with consultation, although all should fit these guidelines. Dark elves are not a subspecies of elves in this sense and do not come under this section.

Elves live for about 500 years as an absolute maximum, although there are distant historical records of some living to over 800, with them devoting different portions of their lives to different things. An elf is considered 25 at age 100, having aged 4 times as slowly as a human, after which they do not appear to age until their last 20 years when they appear to age 4 times as fast. Before an elf is considered an adult, they must study the elven histories, which are very long and complex, and learn the ways of their race.

Each House of elves, has a head, which is a member of that Family's Conclave. If there is only one or two houses, then there is a very small Conclave, but a Family's Conclave can be very large depending on the Family. Each Conclave then sends a representative, either the most important elf or someone good at negotiating, depending on their aims for their Family, to the Elven Conclavia, which is the ruling council of the elven race. This representative may be changed whenever the Conclave feels necessary.

The leader of the Conclavia is a rotating position that rotates every 100 years. It is not unknown for a Conclave to change their representative suddenly when it is their Family's turn to lead the Conclavia. The Conclavia is also hosted in the First Family's main city. Currently the First Family of the Conclavia is the fire elves, with Erilis s'Asharal the representative.

Elven religion is Danism, worship of the Goddess Danu and her lesser consort Dane. Danu is the Goddess of Light, and elves believe that they are born from her light and will return to her light, therefore cremations and destruction of the body by light-class spells are common. She is also the Goddess of destruction as her light can harm as well as heal. Dane is the God of Darkness, although it is the comforting darkness of night and silence and not oblivion. He is the God of contemplation and the patron god of warriors. Elves believe they are the children of Danu and Dane.

Elves are naturally talented at magic, but lack the combat abilities as they rely more on their magic. However their lightfootedness can make them dangerous melee or ranged fighters if they choose to train that way. Magic is a very theoretical subject to elves, and they view it as a tool rather than a mystical power.

There is no dark or shadow elven Conclave, the last records of the shadow elves tail off in the depths of history even in elven terms when the shadow Conclave died.