on elves...

elves are strange creatures. immensely flexible in mind and body due to their perpetual dynamic equilibrium of existence - if humans are a solid, elves are a gas. upon reaching maturity, the elf maintains a conservation of consciousness, ability, capacity, attention, energy... everything. an elf could be singing a song or butchering foes, yet a remarkable consistency pervades all actions. this is difficult for the human mind to grasp because it is fundamentally different from the way we function.

imagine the human whole as a fragile cloth. a fabric easily torn, patched, stretched - yet it stubbornly resists washing or dying. and frequent washings do not reveal some natural color - rather, the cloth is destroyed.

elves are cut from a different cloth. and once cut, it is virtually indestructible - no change in shape or size is possible. but it is the easiest thing on earth to wash and dye. in fact, it changes color quite naturally. and when washed only once or twice, it reveals its original color - usually related to the elf's place of birth.

imagine two beings without faces - shadows - creating masks. the first creates masks effortlessly, almost instantaneously, and maintains the number of masks at a particular number - never more, never less. the second takes much longer to make masks, and does not stop at any number. a thief roams nearby. when the thief steals masks from the first, whatever is stolen is immediately replaced by the shadow. but when the thief steals from the second, that shadow labors hard to slowly replace what was taken. such is the nature of elves and men.


elves lack gender, but most humans consider them female. all humans find all elves to be beautiful - this may seem strange until you realize that, it is men that are aberrations with a longing for their original form.

lanéra dholdo is an elf. her home is a forest which she guards alone. it is also her spirit home. wherever she may roam, her heart will naturally gravitate to this home. if the forest were ever threatened, she would know. if the forest were destroyed, she would either die defending it, or if she were not present, become a malevolent beast. it is said amongst the wise that such is the origin of the race of humans.

lanéra's home is a small enough forest that, within its bounds, she can be omnipresent. because she can become incorporeal at will, she is virtually invincible. in her spirit form she can commune directly with the forest - she is the general of an army of trees.

she wears a large cloak of leather covered in pieces of iron bark and leaves. her only armor are iron bark greaves, bracers, and helmet. her weapons are a magic greatsword of wood and bone, crossbows, blowguns, and javelins with launchers. she keeps them stashed in hundreds of locations throughout the forest - javelins in the highest branches, blowdarts in the lowest, and crossbows with bolts hidden under spare cloaks everywhere. everything is poisoned. if all of this seems excessive, consider that her vigilance has prevented trespassing for thousands of years (she wouldn't be able to say exactly how long - elves rarely not the passing of time). whole armies have fled her forest, many succumbing to madness, her joyful laughter echoing forever in their heads as their friends were slaughtered.

(her sword is truly unusual - it is certainly magical. a lich gave it to her as a present. it has the power to rapidly corrode any metal it touches. it is quite possible that the sword itself is a mad lich.)

those wishing to seek refuge in her woods must properly request her permission. only the sky does not have to ask... and the gods of the forest's denizens of course.

the elf sees all things as games. no media is left unplayed, and through play, all media become respondents. to the elf, the world is not made of "things", it is made of games - possibilities. the world is itself - a game.

in a significant way, liches and elves are the endpoints of human possibility. they are the beginning and end of the human epic.

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