Elves

The Elves, known to Men as Lightwalkers or Centhariens, were the original inhabitants of Adovias and one of the eldest races of the Known World. A lithe, quick and mysterious race, the origin of the Elves was known only to a select few among them, a secret kept by the scholars of Cenother and Ostrivon. What was known for certain was that Elves already inhabited Adovias in the First Age of the Calendar of Aerodran, and as such had a culture extending far into prehistory. By the end of the First Age, magical cataclysms of unknown nature and Daemonic invasions from the Nether Plane had wracked the world, tearing entire continents asunder and mutating many Elves into twisted Drow in a series of events known to the Centhariens as the Time of Sorrow. In this ancient conflict, the Elves were led by their personified Gods, many of whom were killed or banished to the Nether in the destructive wars for the survival of life on Adovias. By the time of Edos' first appearance, the dawn of the Second Age, and the creation of Mankind, Elvendom had suffered enormous losses of life and land, reduced to a mere fraction of their former glory. Nevertheless, the Elves fought alongside Edos and his burgeoning subject race to push back the forces of chaos and destruction, an effort for which they paid in blood many times over. Even in victory, the Elves found little respite, however. Their numbers decimated repeatedly and their lands reduced to several small enclaves across the Continent, the ancient race fell into seclusion and paranoid isolationism as the Thousand-Year-Empire reached its zenith. For the long-lived Elves, the decline of Edos' dominion and the Three Great Empires' descent into the War of Holy Succession seemed a quick and natural process. The Fourth Age Collapse only intensified the Western Elves' mistrust of humanity and instinct toward solitude; the Centharii of the Eastern Dominions, on the other hand, were spurred by the Collapse to instigate the bloody Centhariite Wars in an effort to halt humanity's destructive influence on the world. By the dawn of the Sixth Age, Elves were a rare sight in the Western Nations, living at peace with humanity yet sharing a mutual aversion to one another. The primary Elven enclaves in the West were found in Cenother and Ostrivon in Iadria, Ayanlen and Maenudell in Palus, and Icleor in Ilduvar. The greatest remnant of First Age Elven civilization remained in the realm of Centharion in the distant East, far beyond even the lands of Ibbathis and Sidissa.