Wood Elves

Wood elves, also known as copper elves, or Sylvanesti see themselves as guardians of their forest homes and the closest to there true-elf progenitors. They originate from ancient mixing of true elf and human lineage. Less tolerant of humans than other lesser elves, wood elves are reclusive and keep to their wilderness homes. They are considered lesser elves and among the eladrin.    

Description

Like all elves, the Or-tel-quessir are tall, close to humans in height, but more slender and beautiful. Wood elves are easily identifiable by their distinctive coppery eyes and hair. One interesting feature of wood elves is the wide range of skin colors and the fact that skin color is not inherited from parent to child. Children are born with seemingly random skin colors. So, a child with fair, green tinted skin might be born to two parents with dark brown skin.  

Culture

 

Clothing

Wood elves tend to dress in simple clothes, similar to those of the moon elves but with fewer bold colors and a greater number of earth tones that blend into their natural surroundings. Accustomed to a naturalistic lifestyle, wood elves love to wear leather armor, even when they are not under immediate threat.    

Personality

As a people, wood elves are largely seen as calm and level-headed. Arousing strong emotions in wood elves is not something that is easily done, although many do have a strong aversion for large cities. To wood elves, the trappings of civilization, including the mightiest of fortresses or tallest walls, are transient and impermanent things that will eventually be overcome by the long processes of nature. To many, this attitude seems condescending, weakening the bonds between wood elves and other races. Additionally, wood elves can sometimes seem off-putting compared to moon elves, with a gruff manner that makes them less charismatic, despite their avowed compassion and humility.    

Government

Although a proud people, wood elves feel that compassion is a greater virtue than strength and wood elven realms are less concerned with expansion than they are with maintaining amiable relations with their neighbors. Wood elves are organized into scattered, carefully concealed villages united under a gerontocratic hierarchy composed of village councils consisting of the most distinguished families' eldest members. These councils are often advised by local druids, whose influence plays no small part in wood elven politics and who frequently serve as the webbing that binds these villages together.    

Natural Villages

Wood elves commonly feel that they are in harmony with their natural surroundings and an examination of their art helps to justify this belief. Wood elves do their best to have a minimal impact on their natural surroundings, a fact reflected in their architecture. Wood elves construct homes in the trees by a careful practice of shaping and grooming the branches of the the trees. This art of tree weaving gently sculpts the trunks and branches of trees into the facades of there homes and villages. Wood elves pursue this art over the course of decades, growing rather than building, there villages in the tree canopy. So close do wood elven villages resemble their surroundings that humans are occasionally known to wander through one without even noticing.  

Woodworkers

In keeping with their naturalistic inclination, wood elves are not particularly fine metalworkers and have no interest in developing any such skills. However, wood elves are among some of the world's finest carpenters, masters in the crafting of bows and arrows as well as in leather tanning. So carefully guarded are wood elven crafting secrets that even experienced fletchers from other races have difficulty emulating wood elven designs. Wood elven leather armor also often doubles as camouflage, disguising a wood elven hunter from potential enemies.  

Skilled Hunters

While wood elves feel it better to have a minimal impact on their surroundings, the race has no particular aversion to meat-eating and are passionate hunters. Many hours of a typical wood elf's life are spent on the hunt, which is both a practical activity and a pleasurable one. Most of the time that wood elves are not hunting they are enjoying themselves at ease within the highest branches of their forest homes.  

Magic

Compared with other elves, wood elves have a notable disinterest in the arcane arts. To a wood elf, the wizard's spells are little different from the mason's castle walls or the tiller's plow. So, they view wizards and other arcane spellcasters with distrust. However, not all wood elves are completely adverse to arcane magic. Some wood elves are born as sorcerers, same as other races, and others have become warlocks by making pacts with sylvan fey spirits.  

Religion

The most prevalent religion in wood elf cultures are the more primal beliefs of druidism or The Way of the Spirits as they are more in-tune with the natural world. Wood elves are largely at ease with the ways of the primal magic used by druids, priests of The Way of the Spirits, and shamans, which they feel are the truest expression of supernatural power, used to protect the wilderness.   However, most wood elves have open distain for the more organized religions including The Old Gods, The Teachings of Chantrel, and Unity; seeing these beliefs as a useless call to distant and alien gods.  

Relations with Other Races

Although a proud people themselves, wood elves often feel that their Tel-quessir kindred, such as the star elves, too often put on an air of superiority and xenophobia that is ultimately detrimental. Wood elves feel that their aim should be compassion, humility, and harmony with nature, rather than political or military strength.   Of all the humanoid races, the ones most familiar with the wood elves are the humans and and hill dwarves, who often live within the vicinity of them. While relations have been peaceful, tensions have been rising between, these communities. With the end of The Dark Times and the beginning of The Age of Rebirth, human populations have been expanding in number and range. As a result humans have been looking for more lumber and farming land. Wood elves encroached   Halflings are less frequent guests among the wood elves, but they were generally seen favorably. Meetings between wood elves and gnomes are rare and there has never been any violence between the two people, but wood elves regard them with curiosity and caution as the gnomish penchant for magic and mechanisms is completely alien to wood elves.   Wood elves maintain strained relations with the drow, many wood elves view the drow’s existence in the Underdark as analogous to their own naturalistic existence in the forests.  

Homelands

Wood elves can be found in of the forested areas of the known world. However, none are known to live in the Barrier Forest.