Lotana Elsa, Jungle Elves

I ran as fast as I could. I couldn't hear them, couldn't see them but I knew they hunted me. I had caught a glimpse of them. They were clad in feathers, skins and bone, faced stained with war paints and their fine bows and keen axes were surely weapons of war. They were elves this much I could tell slender and lithe like any Elsa but they clad themselves like Alflar hunters. Their hair was dark dark and I felt their eyes yellow green like a jungle cats upon me. I ran harder until I seen shelter ahead. The ruined vine covered pillars that marked some long forgotten city would afford me some defense. I stopped to catch my breath and marveled at this ruins, there were statues, statues of elves like the ones who hunted me but they wore finery and the style I expected of the Elsa. Were they one in the same? Removed generations and degenerate perhaps? That was when I finally seen them, a hunting party and they had stopped and were now visible, but why?   I slowly stood and took note they refused to set foot in the ruins, they yelled in their strange dialect of old elven and waved at me, almost I thought as if they were pleading? Perhaps a ploy to draw me out? I was unsure and I had no desire to trust some degenerate savage elf. Then I realized my folly, they were trying to warn me, they had were not the danger here. I looked down to see a shadow of a something alien and serpentine reach for me and had I been a moment slower I would be a dead archeologist. That day I learned not to judge a book by its cover and that in the Lotana jungle only a fool treads upon the lost cities of the Elves.   Flower of the Jungle   When the Nytalf Elsa lands prospered in the days of the Second Branching and many were the people who spread far and wide our kin left to colonize the great jungles in the south of our lands. In these deep green places we would go beyond just the arcane magic the Nytalf Elsa Embraced for only by combining it with nature magic could be start to claim the Lotanna as our home. We who would come to name ourselves after the jungle became something between both the Nytalf and Te'ra we built our great city at the jungles heart out of magic and stone but also we shaped the plants, trees and jungle to be one with it. In time we became the jungles master and learned of its magic and the power of the life force that seemed ever present. Even before the empire we were on good terms with our Nytalf cousins who said they were the gem of the north and we the gem of the south. We would trade via magic and Aquessa Alflar and when the Dark Walker war came we eagerly agreed to form a centralized empire and grant our noble cousins the right to organize the matter.   We were of one mind much of the time, we both sought to understand our world and embrace the things we held to be elven ideals. We did not always agree with them but the differances were small things. We fought along side them, agreed in our councils with them and truly felt they did a fine job as our rulers. We prospered in that golden age and our great city grew and spread like never before. We envied no elf and we were the masters of our domain.   Spiders in the dark   We remember the start of the end, we tell of it in our tales to warn our children. The Nytalf became more controlling, more tyrannical and we in our foolishness we who held enough power to check them we continued to stand by them holding out hope things would get better. We are as much to blame for the Te'ra Alflar and Borda Elsa leaving and the fall of the Swart Alflar as the Nytalf Elsa for we did nothing when we had the power to do something.   The tarnishing the end of our golden age started when we agreed to fight the dwarves, to cast aside ages of peace and friendship over pride and spite. That terrible war, the deaths we caused, the sins we committed with our magic perhaps it was karma that would visit the horror of the fallen upon us. The Swart Alflar cut off communications first, it was easy when we had so favored centralization that nearly all of our great works were located in the city at the jungles heart. They came then with their armies rising from dark places with great jungle spiders and terrible monsters and undead at their command. Never had we ever considered elf would be forced to slay elf in war. Our great city stood and battled as long as we were able but the now changed Swart Alflar these Drow as we came to call them were more dark fey then elf. Their armies and nobles had grown so bitter and hateful they relished in our conquest and seen us as betrayers for our favor of the Nytalf Elsa.   We were first to suffer the evils of the Drow, they did not just conquer us they enslaved us, robbed our treasures made us watch as they burned the jungle and defaced our culture and art. They ravaged the Lotana, they captured beasts and wrapped them into living weapons, drove others to extinction hunting them or simply being carless about the web of life. We heard the jungle weep and felt her agony. We who were locked in chains and powerless realized for the first time we were not the masters of the jungle but her childern and we had in our foolishness let them drive a poison dagger in her heart.   Durring that dark war we were an enslaved people, forced to aid the Swart Alflar, experimented on, used in rituals of twisted magic of all manner and kind. They did things to us no elf should ever do to another and they did it in the name of understanding their black magic and the vile creatures they commanded and summoned. We wept as our former cousins rose our dead up as abominations, as they sacrificed our people to fiends and dark fey in exchange for power, none know first hand the evil of the drow so much as we do.   When the war ended we were set free by the Nytalf Elsa but in the aftermath of what was our souls had been broken. Our numbers diminished we turned to the jungle and knew she was dying. Our cities had failed us and we had failed the jungle, we would make amends to mother jungle and become sworn foes of the Drow. We left our cities left them to the cursed things and monsters the drow had made of our home and people. We embraced the way of the Alflar and set aside our ivory towers and glittering spires. We healed our jungle and now we protect her. Karma is a cruel teacher but now we understand we are its agents, we will strike down any who threaten to wound mother jungle, we will protect those who would do the same for us and our home and above all else we will ensure that our once good cousins the Swart Alflar are remembered as they were for they are dead and lost to us, the Drow Killed them and there will be no mercy for our cousins murderers.