Races - The Elves

High Elves: The most common sort of Elves, High Elves are those who retain an ancestral connection with their ancient heritage. Their small settlements can be found here and there throughout the known world, mostly in temperate areas. It is traditional in most civilizations that Elven territory remains unclaimed by humans, and usually untrespassed upon. Despite this isolation, High Elves do interact with human nations around them. It is not unheard of to have a solitary Elven visitor as a long-term guest and advisor at a royal or Imperial court. Elven scholars are welcome, indeed sought-after as historians, mages, and lecturers at universities in most major civilizations. In fact, it is through such interactions that most Half-Elves are made. Moon Shoals and Verdil Isle, both magically powerful island nations, are home to the largest populations of High Elves in the Known World. Similar concentrations exist in the Pershamon Lands, including a number of Elven towns along the Sirsa River. Little is known about High Elves beyond the Known World.

Wood Elves: Modern Wood Elves (not their term for themselves) claim to have descended from a group of Elves who long ago rejected the arcane magics of the Elven golden age, and instead followed a more rustic path. In modern times, Wood Elves are much less commonly encountered than High Elves, but little is known of their true numbers. Wood Elves can be found in small isolated communities far away from humanity, deep in wooded wilderness. They can be found in both the cold north and the humid jungles of the tropics. Wood elves are thought of as clannish, fierce, and somewhat xenophobic. Their culture and religion can be best thought of as "Druidic". Indeed human Druids are some of the few humans that regularly interact with them as equals. 

Drow Elves: Drow Elves are the third major group of Elves to survive to the present day. Little is known about their modern society, though it is usually considered to be baneful and sinister, perhaps oriented around demon worship in the manner of the Yanoshi. Modern scholars theorize that the ancestors of the Drow sought to escape the ancient cataclysm that ended Elven civilization by shifting whole cities somehow into the twilight dimension known as the "Shadowfell". They were irreparably altered by the experience, so that millennia later they are now unable to thrive in the light. The Drow are usually only encountered below ground. While stories tell of vast subterranean cities filled with the Drow and their slaves, there is little evidence to support such a thing. High Elves have said it is more likely that there are underground outposts with gates that link to the Shadowfell, where the Drow may indeed be the dominant civilization. 

Half-Elves: A product of a union of an Elf and a human, Half-Elves are rare in most parts of the Known World. Unions like this might occur for a variety of reasons. Most races find elves compelling and attractive, while elves may find themselves drawn to the comparatively impulsive and energetic lifestyles of the younger mortal races, especially humans. The elven parent is usually a younger elf, less than a couple of centuries old; older elves are usually so detached from the mortal world that such a union would never cross their mind. Offspring resulting from these unions are nearly always left in the care of the mortal member of the tryst, to be raised in human society. Half-elves are regarded with mild apprehension just like Elves, but rarely are reactions extreme...mild curiosity, or mild disapproval at most.