History - The races of Elves

Origins of the Elven Nations

Mythological History

Once the gods had completed the gardens and palaces of Heaven, the Emperor of Heaven assigned them to an even greater task: to create the world and fill it with earth, water, air, and all living things.

The god Nythe, Arch-Duke of Starlight, was summoned to the Emperor’s Palace and given the charge of creating a race of sentient beings to dwell in the new world. The Emperor provided specific instructions for this creation—but Nythe, ever curious, lingered after his audience and listened to the commands given to the other gods.

When he departed the Palace, Nythe resolved that his creation would be the most graceful, fair, and skilled of all mortal races. To aid his vision, he visited the gods Caelora, Thalor, and Aralgroth to learn of their own commissions. Aralgroth was tasked with shaping the great hardwood trees, while Caelora and Thalor were to fashion the greater and lesser beasts of the forests. Others soon joined their council—gods charged with crafting ferns, flowers, insects, mushrooms, birds, and countless other wonders. Together they planned a perfect woodland realm with a shining city, E’sahone, at its heart.

Competitive in spirit, these gods poured more beauty and power into their works than Heaven’s plan required. When all was ready, Nythe created the Esari, the first Elves, to dwell in E’sahone. The woodlands nurtured the Esari, and the Esari tended the forests in harmony. They named their realm Serene.

In time, the gods told the Esari that Serene would soon be joined with the realms of other gods, forming a vast new world. Some Esari despaired at this news and fled further from the mortal plane using forbidden wizardry taught by a fiend. Some say these exiles were later captured by the Mind Flayers, and after ages of servitude, became the Gith.

When the gods joined Serene to the new world, it did not fit. Not all had obeyed the Emperor’s instructions. The realm shattered to take its place in creation, and the great city of E’sahone was broken apart. Fragments merged with unused divine realms to form the Feywild and The Shadowfell. The Esari themselves were divided: the Eladrin in the Feywild, the Shadar-Kai in the Shadowfell, and the Mar Esari and Sha Esari in the material plane.

The gods’ work continued, and the Sha Esari split into four tribes: the Sha Serin, the Noldar, the Galldar, and the Sindar. As divine labors waned and many gods departed to rest, impatience grew among the Sha Serin. They took it upon themselves to remake the world without divine counsel, aided by rebellious gods who sought to elevate their own designs beyond the Emperor’s will. Thus began the Sha Serin’s conquest of other races and kingdoms.

The gods were dismayed but bound by Heaven’s laws to let mortal will shape the world’s fate.

First to face the Sha Serin were their cousins, the Mar Esari. Driven from their lands, the Mar Esari fled—some into the ocean, others among the Humans of the kingdom of Tirion. Yet when the Sha Serin waged war upon Tirion, they triumphed again, forcing the survivors to flee across the sea.

As conquest spread, one Sha Serin clan fell into the worship of the spider demon Lloth. Pursued by their kin, they sought refuge deep underground and became the Drow, dwellers of the Underdark.

The Noldar foresaw their own doom and raised an army against the Sha Serin. The war claimed countless lives. Defeated, the Noldar retreated into hidden sanctuaries within the Feywild. The Sha Serin, now dominated by the island clans of Melniboné, claimed supremacy.

The Galldar and Sindar turned away from war, heeding divine whispers to seek hidden realms of their own, linked to the Feywild by secret gates. The Sindar fled to the northern snows, escaping much of Melnibonéan wrath, while the Galldar’s forest strongholds eventually fell to their conquerors.

The Melnibonéans went on to subdue much of the world, the Shadowfell, and parts of the Feywild. Their fleets raided realms adrift in The Astral Sea and ventured to the very edges of reality.

Then, without warning, the Melnibonéans vanished. If the gods know their fate, they have not revealed it. Some believe the islanders opened a gate to a reality so alien it consumed them utterly.

Where the islands of Melniboné once stood, now rages a vast, swirling tempest that moves across the ocean. Even after centuries, the storm has neither faded nor slowed.