High Elves

High Elves hail from a distant forested land to the southeast, at the center of which is a massive city said to be over five thousand years in age. Both are called Eldras, and elven word meaning “New beginnings”. It was from this word that the word “Elf” first originated in old Marcurian. The High Elves are a highly bureaucratic and orderly people, treasuring the law and structure as a society. Those within elven society that find themselves at odds with the ancient ways join the Rangers, a highly-renowned force of scouts and woodsman whose sworn duty it is to protect Elven lands and interests.

The High Elves have set up the settlement of Nua Baile on the southern shores of Duranin. While some elves have trickled into Duranin over the centuries on their own, this recent surge of elves has come claiming right to excavate and research what appear to be ruins of an ancient elven society called the Yvas; a society that existed before modern elves split into the High Elves and Wild Elves.

=Ecology=

Appearance
Unlike their taller cousins, High Elves are noticeable shorter in height than humans, and are disproportionately slender. Their skin tones tend toward pale pink, but sometimes drifts to ashen white. This pale pigmentation makes them rather vulnerable to sunburn, though laborers, soldiers and adventurers are a bit tanned and therefore more resistant.

Hair colors are fairly evenly disturbed on the spectrum from platinum blond to dirty blond, with vaguely reddish tints not all that uncommon. High Elves are incapable of growing facial hair and even their normal hair grows at an extremely slow rate compared to most races.

High elves use the standard PHB tables for elf height and weight.

Psychology
Long elven lifespans often shape the world view of the high elf into a more patient and decadent existence. Older elves tend to love art, music, and politics most of all, spending years or decades on their hobbies at a time, while often looking down on the shorter-lived races as less ‘gifted’ than themselves. Younger elves tend to rebel against these traditions, seeking adventure and traveling to exotic locales with open eyes and keen interest.

As a general rule high elves organize everything. Incidentally, individual high elves have a high rate of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.

Sexuality
During their youth, most elves sexually frolic quite a bit and all sorts of sexual practices are not uncommon as they explore themselves. Once an elf comes of age, however, they are to set aside these things, find a mate and settle down and apply for a child permit. Doing anything else generally results in being considered childish by the elven population at large. Often, spinsters are talked down to even well into their middle age by those who are actually married. Of particular note, though homosexual sex is not necessarily discriminated against per say, exclusive male/male or female/female couples are eternally thought of as children that simply cannot grow up. Only about three percent of marriages end in divorce in elven society

Heterosexual relationships out of marriage are rather unforgivable, akin to our own adultery and more than grounds to dissolve a marriage. However, elven society makes use of a highly state regulated sacred prostitutes in the service of the local temples. Sex within these confines is considered alright and has no bearing on what goes on outside of the temple. Of course, if a husband or wife wastes their entire savings on the services, other problems might result.

Despite this, there is a flourishing underground sex trade, all the same. The main feature of these places tends to be prostitutes of a variety of species, from human to dwarf. Unlike the temple prostitutes, these whores are generally poorly treated and all manner of violence against them is often perpetrated. No laws protect them as few elves feel any sympathy. Most of those that frequent these underground brothels are amongst the rich and aristocratic. The average elf is content with her temple priest.

Culture
High Elven society is extremely bureaucratic. The average citizen receives his birth certificate around his fiftieth birthday. Even before that it takes somewhere around ten years to get a certificate to have a child. The average elf is about the same level as a human of the same corresponding age because of the effects of this. They are constantly held back by the establishment that tends to crush innovation beneath its bureaucratic millstone.

Houses
Aristocratic houses form the crux of elven society and governance. City councils are not allowed to have more than one sitting member of the same house, but often tributary houses are shuffled into places of power. The city councils select their own members via majority vote (in most cities, some require a 2/3rds) and then select their national representative. This national representative is generally selected by the strongest house and joins the national council to make nationwide decisions.

More or less every single citizen of the nation are members of a house of some sort. Commoner families have their own houses, which are generally tributaries of greater houses, leading to a winding system of loyalties all the way to the top. Sometimes tributaries merge with a greater house through marriage and this is a classic means of moving up in elven society. However, sometimes families will refuse to accept the couple into either house and the couple is left as outcasts until they can find a house to accept them. A fair number of former mercenary companies were granted family houses and have integrated into the society at large. Even the base pyre handlers, thought untouchable by most of elven society, are generally members of a tributary house and frankly treated fairly well by their superiors.

In the end, everyone knows who's on top and know with whom they are allied. The actions of the lowest tributary can at times affect the standing of the greater houses in a city, and therefore the chain of discipline can be quite strong. A common tactic by houses that need to accumulate more tributaries is to disgrace a lower house to the point where the great house releases them to avoid further shame, then to wait a bit for the furor to die down and subsequently recruit the house into their own ranks. Particularly profitable but low social standing houses can be heavily influenced by this. In some cases, the same lesser house may be perpetually passed back and forth between two greater houses as they repeat the process.

The primary exception are the Elven mage towers. When one enters into a mage tower, they swear to cut ties with their previous family and become part of the mage tower's house. The tower in any given city essentially functions as its own house and sometimes this means they wield significant political as well as magical power.

Crime
Even crime is organized in high elven society, and these organizations work with the guard to ensure they both stay in business. While this might seem terrible to an outsider, it keeps violent crime down significantly, as operations by individuals or small groups within the society are greatly restricted on both ends. Many people view the organized crime groups as fairly friendly and the majority have open headquarters. Some literature even romanticizes these groups, though generally they find themselves culprits in mysteries as they are the few members of high elven society willing to kill other high elves. It is not uncommon for stray hoodlums to be essentially given the choice of "join us or die" by the organized crime groups. More often than not, they join, but once every century, a bloody reminder of the true nature of the group.

Religion
High elves follow their cultural religion, known as The Great Order.

Warfare
Perhaps one of the most profound differences between Marcuria and the High Elves is the unlike the more orderly Marcurian phalanx, High Elves fight more as a mass of singular individuals. The largest contributing factor to this is the High Elf method of "promotion by merit." Merit has come to be defined by the High Elf military primarily by the number of enemies one has slain. There is a very strict code among soldiers to prevent an elf from striking the killing blow on a foe another has weakened, thus the elves are very rigorous about avoiding contact with enemies a fellow elf has engaged in combat. This is not to say elven soldiers do not work together, but their mentality on the battlefield is very different from that of a human.

Cavalry is the dominant force on the high elven battlefield. However, rather than horses, the high elven wyvern riders are carried by wyvern into battle. Footmen and war casters support these riders in large military conflicts.

High Elven footmen tend to rely heavily on longswords in close combat and bows in long ranged combat, though some few use a rapier over the longsword.

=History= Yvas

In recent history, Eldras forged an alliance with local Wild Elf tribes and waged a terrible war against the southern human kingdoms of Gardia and Marcuria that nearly destroyed all involved, lasting almost 30 years (now only known as The Great War); while Duranin escaped most of the conflict and an uneasy truce was eventually reached, there are still high tensions among many elves and humans.

=Homelands=

=Notable High Elves=