Elves are a well known people within and outside of Eyom. For the citizens of Zo, Eyom's elves are quite supprising as they share their appeances with one another reguardless of their home's environment. In other words, Eyom's Elves lack any phontypes, and can be easily mistaken for one another, just like humans. For Eyom's citizens, the rest of the world's elves are quite shocking due to their posession of Pheonotypes which render each group of elves drasticly diffrent in apperance due to environmental pressures. Concequently, this document will serve as an overview of all kinds of elves, with an emphasis on Eyom's elves (With the exception of Grey Elves, who are not native to Eyom.) and the most common Plānysian Elf group to come to Eyom thus far, Êtha Elves.
Some history on the Elven peoples is required to understand them as a whole. Prior to the breach of the God Wall elves orgins were a mystery to Zo. It was known that a group of elves fled Eyom with the Imperial Human's ancestors, but they seperated almost imeadiantly after making it into the open seas. The Elves had a rough time of the corssing, and were far more concerned with survival uppon making landfall than recording their history. They quickly spread acrtoss most of the world, finding places to live and biologicaly adapting to those locations within a generation, producing countless phenotypes, each unique to a particular region of the world.
After contact with Eyom was established, Elves orgins became clear. Elves are the product of Z̚oman exparimentation, as are most of the world's peoples. They specificly appear to be an attempt by the Z̚oman to egineer immortal bodies for themselves. Elves are a failed batch from this expariment, as they do age and die (albit extreemly slowly) and were stored in suspended animation. Sometime during the later stages of the Irisian War the Elves were releaced by the gods Illia and Irus and told to choose one of the two of them to follow. Thus the first three groups of elves came to be.
The Wood Elves are the elves who chose to follow Irus, Overlord of Nature and Civilization. He granted them true immortality, such that they do not age and should they be killed they grow a new body within a great flower somewhere within Irus's terratory, and emerge whole once more. They are devoutly and perhapse psycoticaly deovted to their god and his will. Many Wood Elves do not even need to consult with their god to carry out his wishes, as they have grown so close to his way of thinking over the last 2000 years that they effectivly act as he would in all things.
The Iron Elves are the decendents of elves who chose to follow Doctor Illia (Ph.D., D.M.Sc, D.Sc., EngD, et all). They are devoted to Illia's cause of understanding the natural world in all of its wonderious splendor with such certain that given any set of conditions, the outcome of events will be prefectly calculatable. And also making realy cool things for the sake of making realy cool things. Like a jetpack with deployable gilder wings that has an itigrated rotory fireball wand canon. You know, for sports! They seem to care for little else than the advancment of science, engineering, and producing usefull material goods for all who want a quality whatever-it-is-they-personaly-make.
Jeeve Elves (named for the Iron Elvish word for "refusal") are the elves who, according to their extensive oral histories, "flipped both gods the double bird" and then "went to find something to eat, a bathroom, and a cyropractor" because "They'd been on ice for centuries." They can be found in small pockets all across Eyom, living in their own small and humble communities (which are usualy too small to be listed on any contenental map). They are much like humans in their general behavior, outlook, and emotional range. Both Wood and Iron Elves believe Jeeve Elves (also called "undiffrenchiated elves") are the main reason their ancestor's batch was concidred to be defective. Specificly that too much of the human genome was included in their batch, and the Jeeve Elves are the ones who express it the most. From the Jeeve Elf prespective, Iron Elves are colossal nerds, and Wood Elves are assholes. Clearly, they are the reason their ancestors were left in the freezer.
Êthan Elves (named for the elven word for peek, or summit) are a group of Elves native to the Silver Peek range in Plānys. Their ancestors chose to live on the very tops of the Silver Peeks and adapted to their environment as all elves do. They are unique amongst Elves for having willingly joined the Gekken Empire as a client state and seeing Imperial Humans as their brothers. A spiritual event occured for all Êthan Elves the moment the first Explorers breached the God Wall. Specificly, they all knew the wall had been breached and felt a strong call to go to Eyom. Unable to ignore such an event, the Empire allowed a large group of Êthan Elves to join the second expidition. Uppon passing through the God Wall, all Êthan Elves felt the call with greater intinsity and understood it to be a cry for aid. The source of this cry has yet to be located, but has become a species wide quest as they are unable and unwilling to ignore their cries.
Personality
Almost all groups of elves are somewhat arrogant. This comes from their greatly elevated physical prowers, grace, and generaly high intelegence. Howeaver, Elves tend to overestimate and overstate their own capabilities. They are stronger, faster, and more intelgent than humans, while being more nieve, less flexable, and less cunning than Humans. The one exception to this rule is Jeeve Elves, who are mentaly indistinguisable from humans.
Elves have the same emotional range as humans, and have just as many unique and verried personalities. Of course, each group of elves has their own mental nitch to go with their physical forms. They are as follows:
Wood Elves are extreemly arrogant, self intrested, dommeneering, and see all life save themselves (individualy, not collectivly) as a disposable resource. If not for the will of their god, they would never work with one another, and would consume all resources arround them at extreem rates.
Iron Elves are aloof, somewhat disintrested in scocial activities, and find the sciences to be intuitive, simple, and relazing. This is due to their close connection to their god, whose personality and will seeps into their own in small ways while they "dream" (Or rather, go into trances, as Iron Elves do not sleep, but meditate on their inventions and innovations and skills).
Jeeve Elves are just humans who are slightly better at math than you.
Êthan Elves are proud of their independence, physicaly tough and hardy, and very spiritualy attuned. This is fitting given their sub-species wide commitment to the magic of the heart and mind (often called psionics by other groups). They are naive, impulsive, self-centered, clueless, volatile, reactive, emotional, explosive, unreasonable, enthusiastic, excitable, and above all entertaining.
Physical Description
Elves are bipeds with two arms two legs and one head. Elves are a hermaphraditic species with each individual possessing a full working set of male and female reproductive organs. Elves lack sexual dimorphism along with males and females as one would expect of a unisexual species. Elves are generally curved in overall build with broad hips and permanent breasts (Scholar's Note: An elf's breasts develop during puberty and continue to exist and function for her entire life. They are composed entirely of glands and fatty-sponge-like tissue which act as fluid storage. Their size changes depending on the current volume of fluid stored. The minimum size is still noticeable though can be entirely hidden with loose clothing. Thus, their classification as permanent. The maximum size is unknown as no known Elf has been willing to go through with the discomfort relating to the nessisary scinetific expariments.).
Elves posses a flat face with a small mouth filled with omiverious teeth. They have an angular nose which is detached from their mouth and bridges to their forehead with a gentle slope. Their ears are long, low on the head, and notably pointed with an overall 'knife' shape to them. The ears are the primary feature visually distinguishing them from Humans.
The above is true of all Elves. What follows is descriptions of Eyomic and Plānysian elves specificly:
Iron Elves
Iron Elves have skin which ranges from white to brown, but also includes olive, black, copper, bronze, blueish shades. Their hair comes in shades of brown, black, red, blond, gray, white, green, and blue. Iron Elves' eyes are limited to the following colors: brown, amber, hazel, green, blue, grey, red, pink, vilot, gold, and silver.
Iron Elves are most easily visualy distinguished by their prefrence for rugged and durable clothing, as well as accesorizing with toolbelts, gadgets, and other such scientific and engineering friendly clothing.
A notable diffrence from all elves (asside from Wood Elves) is that Iron Elves sex organs are all inturnal.
Wood Elves
Wood Elves' skin ranges from white to brown, but also includes tan, olive, gray, blued-copper, bronze, and silver-tinged tones. Their hair comes in shades of brown, black, red, blond, gray, white, orange, and teal. Their eyes are limited to the following colors: gold, amber, hazel, green, blue, grey, red, pink, vilot, gold, and silver.
Wood Elves are most easily idntified by their modest dress, opulently hairstyles, and retunue of slave-attendents.
A notable diffrence from all elves (asside from Iron Elves) is that Wood Elves sex organs are all inturnal.
Jeeve Elves
Jeeve Elves skin ranges from peach to olive, with rare individuals posessing shades of black, copper, bronze, and gold. Their hair colors include browns, blacks, reds, blonds, platnums, whites, cyans, and cobolts. Their eyes are limited to brown, amber, hazel, green, blue, grey, gold, pink, vilot, gold, and silver.
Jeeve Elves are most easily diffrenciated from other elves in that they are usualy mad about being mistaken for other kinds of elf. They are also notably taller than other elves on average, and somewhat more rugged looking, resting between the elven norm and the human average.
Jeeve Elves are the only Eyomic Elf to have exturnal genatilia, and as such are almsot certain to be the ancestors of all other Elven sub-species (asside from Iron and Wood Elves), and thus all elvenoid species (including Goblins).
Êthan Elves
Êthan Elves have pale white skin which reddily blends into snow and white stone, serving as a natural camoflauge. Their eyes range from blue to purple, with rare individuals having shades of yellows, peachs, and greens. They are often hetterochromatic, wieh each eye having its own color. Their hair comes in shades of blue, white, silver, and flame-yellow.
Êthan Elves are quite tall, naturaly posess athletic builds, and have a slight hook to the ends of their ears. Their feet are digitigrade, ending in paws rather than the usual plantigrade elven foot. This is an adaptation to their environment, serving to allow them to move more easily across ice, snow, and rough stone. They are often well toned, or extreemly muscular as they often enjoy recreational exercize. In rare cases, Êthan Elves can have a long siniouious tail and or goat-like horns. Both of these features are common in animals which evolved within the mountains the Êthan Elves call home.
Scholar's Note: All non-Eyomic Elves physicaly adapt to their environment. If an Elf of any kind lives in a particualr environment for three years, they attune to the natural state of said environment. Once attuned, any children they have will be physicaly adapted to that specific environment. This adaptation is rapid, but never diverges much from the basic elven form. The many Elvenoid Species are created through a simmilar process involving a rare mutation which pushes the adaptation further than it would normaly go.
Relations
Iron Elves are beloved across Eyom as some of the most skilled crasftmen, engineers, archatects, and scientists in the world. Even when expanded to the whole of Zo, this statment is quite true. There are no nations with any cultural anamosity against Iron Elves, asside from Wood Elves. Conflicts to happen of course, especialy when the Iron Elves wepon tests go arry and cause untold damage to bystanders, but all is forgiven soon enough. It's difficult to stay mad at the people who ensure your groceries stay fresh for months at a time.
Wood Elves are reviled by all of Eyom as slavers, warmongers, toorturers, mutilators, and corruptors. Unfortuantly, they are also a source of cheep labor and thus cheep goods. Wood Elves are thus able to price their way into international politics, undercutting anyone they can to ensure their nation cannot be isolated as other nations industries depend on its raw materials. They are well known for making regions overly dependent on them, then invading to secure total power.
Jeeve Elves are often mistaken for pritty Sylvins as they are so unlike the other two Eymoic Elves in behavior. They don't correct this misconsception very often as they do not like being assosiated with their cousions. In places where there are significent communities of Jeeve Elves, they are seen as "a group of rambunxious tomboys with apenchent for getting shit done."
Settlments
Elven homes and settlments verry greatly. The best way to understnad their residential prefrences is to inspect the commonalities of their individuals homes directly.
Wood Elves live in large, lavish manors, typicaly located within the center of a plantation, but always within the center of some form of resource extraction operation. The manor serves as a lookout by which the Wood Elf can observe their domain and its workings. All nessisary support structures and logistics hubs are located in a ring arround their home for this purpose. The manor itself is often made using exotic materials like bone, sacrad trees, and other limited, rare, and important resources. The interiors are decorated in a layered style which ensures there is always something newer and more opulant to see anywhere you look in any room. Yet these rooms and overall structures posess themes and are arranged by astetic principals to look refined rather than tacky or gaudy.
Iron Elves have confused the concepts of homes with the concept of workshops. They live with their tools, machines, and inventions, meditating amonghst their work rather than sleeping. They feel uncomfortable if not surroounded by places they can work, projects they can work on, and friends to work on things with. So much so that they almost esclusivly make use of open floorplan concept structures.
Jeeve Elves are big fans of solitude, and prefer to live in remote locations with large yards within highly refined log homes. When they live within urban areas, they will live on the outskirts in order to have large yards with privacy fences (or hedges). Their ideas of the prefect home are very human in nature. Large homes filled with small cozy rooms, each with a purpose and function. The primary diffrence between human and Jeeve Elven homes is simply quality. As elves live many times longer than a human, they ensure their homes are built to last their lifetime, and dislike moving. Hence, their homes are extreemly well planed, designed, and built.
Êthan Elves are well known for creating their homes in surfice caves, or querring a home into the side of a mountain if they cannot find a natural cave to modify. They enjoy making cabin-like structures to safeguard the entrences to these caves, which are quite spartain in nature. Th einsides of their homes are less spartan, but still most utilitarian. This is due to them spending most of their time away from their homes, using them almsot exclusivly for sleeping and protecting their belongings.
Alignment
Much like humans, Elves are very much invested in the existence of reasons. Elves need things to happen for a reason, and that reason had better have some logic behind it or they will throw a fit. Elves, as a whole, seek to impose their idea of order on their surroundings. Elves are big believers in systems, logic, and fate. They tend to believe random events occured for many reasons, and thus what was, was, and what will be, will be.
Wood elves are self centered, often short sighted, and seek to maximize their power at any cost just shy of offending their god. They care nothing for others, genuinly seeing them as any other species would see vegtables, minerals, and ore. This extends to their own species, whom they tollerate and work with exclusivly due to Irus' will.
Iron Elves are self absorbed, often narrowly focused, and seek to seperate themselves form the world save for the parts of it they enjoy. When made to interact with the world as a whole, they delight in using their resources to assist others, feeling distress and shame if their resources prove insufishent.
All other elves are generaly speaking, closer in general behavior to humans, though they tend to be more individualistic and less collectivist.
Adventurers
Elves rarly feel the urge to live a life as an adventurer. Those who do see it as their spiritual calling, and will continue to roam the land as an andenturer untill they are too old and infirm to continue. At which point, the Elf will find a way to die in glory.