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The Elves are the one of the eldest of the world's races, second only to the primordial Lizardmen in age. Their original homeland is the floating island of Ulthuan, where the Old Ones first shaped them and taught them the rudiments of magic, and where Elven mages wove the great Vortex to drain away excess magic and Chaos from the world. In their day, the Elves forged a great empire that ruled over vast stretches of the world, but their golden age came to an end during the Sundering, a bitter civil war that began when Malekith, son of the Elves' first great ruler, claimed the Phoenix Crown of Ulthuan for himself — and by a second conflict, the terrible War of Vengeance waged against their former Dwarfen allies. In the modern day, the Elves linger as irreconcilably fragmented societies, left clinging to outposts of their ancient glory and brooding on their ancestral feuds:
- The Asur, or High Elves, live on the floating continent of Ulthuan and view themselves as the pinnacle of civilization. They're the primary remnant of the old Elven empire, and view all other Elves as rebellious subjects and non-Elves as savage barbarians. They do however maintain formal contact with the Empire, which they sponsor as a sort of buffer state between themselves and the barbarians of Chaos.
- The Asrai, or Wood Elves, descend from colonists who refused to return to Ulthuan in the wake of the War of Vengeance, and instead retreated into the depths of Athel Loren to seek refuge from the Dwarfs and the growing powers of Chaos and the Orcs. The modern Asrai are a fey, reclusive people, much changed by their bargain with the living forest, and are the most alien and inscrutable of the kindreds. The other Elves think that they're country hicks with pretensions.
- Smaller groups of colonists endured in other forests of the Old World, and are often also labeled as Wood Elves despite not having formal ties with the Asrai; due to living in more normal forests than Athel Loren, these groups tend to be less alien and easier to interact with. The most prominent are the Eonir of Laurelorn Forest within the Empire; smaller settlements are also said to exist in the forests of Kislev.
- The Druchii, or Dark Elves, are the descendants of Malekith's rebels. They sought refuge in the bleak wastes of Naggaroth, where they formed a society based on tyranny, treachery and slavery, and their ships still raid the coasts of the world for fresh slaves and plunder. The Druchii view themselves as the true heirs to the glory of the pre-Sundering elven empire, and consider the Asur to be weak-willed usurpers. They worship the Cytharai, the darkest of the Elves' shared gods, and maintain secret cults to Chaos within their society.
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General Tropes
- Cultural Posturing: Elves are typically very, very proud of their cultures, and will miss few opportunities to remind other kindreds and non-Elves of this — High Elves in particular love to go into detail about how their civilization is ancient, learned, harmonious and sophisticated, but Wood Elves also quite enjoy reminding others of how Asrai society is far more balanced and in tune with nature and itself than anybody else's.
- Dragon Rider: The Elves formed an alliance with the dragons of Caledor long before the Sundering, which remains in place for all scattered elven nations. As a result, High, Wood and Dark Elf generals can all go into battle mounted on flying dragons.
- Dying Race: A common trait shared by all three kindreds is that they're declining, fading, and heading for extinction. The War of Vengeance, the Sundering and endless wars against Chaos killed off most of their numbers, much of their ancient empire lies in ruins beyond retrieval, and they're left with only a few outposts always at risk of destruction.
- Elite Army: One-on-one, Elven soldiers are always better than their human counterparts — they spend centuries practicing their trade, and are stronger and have better reflexes than any human. A regular Elven spearman or archer is better than any human veteran; an elite knight or specialist is superhuman. However, the Elves are few in numbers, reproduce slowly, and take centuries to train new soldiers to their necessary skill levels. As a result, Elven armies tend to consist of small, select cores of highly elite soldiers, facing hordes of less powerful but far more numerous enemies.
- Elves Versus Dwarves: The Dwarfs and High Elves share a mutual contempt left over from the War of Vengeance, while Dwarfs have a much fresher feud with the Wood Elves formed from constant conflict over forest lands — the Dwarfs want to harvest these for lumber, and the Wood Elves happen to live in them.
- Fantastic Race Weapon Affinity: As a whole, the Elves tend to favor the use of spears — ranks of spearmen defended by great tower shields form the backbone of the armies of all three elven races. They are also proficient archers and boast a number of strong ranged units, although the Dark Elves use crossbows instead of the traditional bows favored their High and Wood kin.
- Fantastic Racism: A trait shared by all elven kindreds is a tremendous contempt for everyone who isn't them. Typically, Dwarfs are seen as crude, disgusting and petty, humans as barbaric apes, and everyone else as barely worth the effort to think about. Additionally, Wood Elves are seen as backwards hicks by the other kindreds, and view High Elves as arrogant snobs and Dark Elves as insane and self-destructive, while High and Dark Elves reserve their most vitriolic hatred for each other.
- Fate Worse than Death: After death, elven souls are usually claimed by Slaanesh, and what happens to them afterwards doesn't bear thinking about. Those that escape this fate are instead usually seized by Ereth Kial, who imprisons them in her realm to torture forever. The few that pass this gauntlet reach the realm of the elven gods, but in practice no elf can realistically hope to have this happen. The High Elves attempt to avoid this fate by binding their souls to the Waystones that protect their homelands, while the Wood Elves allow their spirits to be claimed by the forest. The Dark Elves, by contrast, consider "preparing to die" to be planning to fail, and their only hope is to never die.
- Glass Cannon: A lot of elven units, including most cavalry and some specialized Dark Elf infantry, tends to be tremendously quick and very hard-hitting, but also fragile and poorly suited for any kind of prolonged melee.
- Long-Lived: Generally, Elves live for upwards of a millennium in the natural course of things.
- Mage Species: Alongside the Slann, Elves are the only beings who can attune themselves to more than one Wind of magic at a time without dying a horrible death. Consequently, they're also the only ones who can channel all eight Winds at once and weave them together to cast High Magic.
- Our Elves Are Different: Elves are an ancient humanoid race and some of the first people to build civilizations and harness magic. They largely resemble better-looking humans with pointed ears, live fantastically long but aren't naturally immortal, can safely harness all Winds of Magic at once (a human who tries that will die or worse), and are fantastically arrogant.
- Pointy Ears: Physically, the primary inherent difference between humans and elves is that the latter have elongated, pointed ears.
- Superior Species: Elves are, in almost all respects, humans but better — they live much longer, are more magically adept, have a far better understanding of the world and its nature, and their societies are usually a lot better-structured, more harmonious, and largely free of internal prejudice (external prejudice is, of course, another matter).
Elven Gods
The deities of the fractured elven race are divided into two groups; the generally benevolent Cadai, the gods of the heavens and civilization, and the more dangerous Cytharai, gods associated with death, war and the wilderness. The High Elves revere the Cadai above the Cytharai, the Dark Elves worship the major members of the Cytharai and the Wood Elves draw their patron gods from both groups, but the majority of these deities are revered or at the very least acknowledged among all three kindreds.
- Cernunnos: Kurnous is the elven god of animals, hunting, and the wilderness. He is typically depicted as a ten-foot-tall elf with the head and tail of a stag, and is worshipped primarily by Wood Elves and by the High Elves of the kingdoms of Avelorn and Ellyrion, which are some of the wildest and most heavily forested areas of the High Elven homeland of Ulthuan. His worshippers honor him by hunting challenging quarries, but never killing more than they must. He is believed to the husband of Isha, the goddess of life, birth and growth, and together with her to be the ancestor of all elves.
- Destroyer Deity: Kaela Mensha Khaine is venerated by the High Elves and the Dark Elves, but for differing reasons. The High Elves worship him as a God of War, but are also aware about how destruction can be indiscriminate, tempering their reverence. The Dark Elves, on the other hand, openly worship him as a God of Murder, a living representation of their Social Darwinism.
- Disabled Deity:
- Morai-heg cut off her hand in exchange for knowledge of the future.
- Vaul was blinded and crippled by Khaine in an ancient Divine Conflict, yet still forges weapons for Khaine to fight the forces of Chaos. His priests ritually blind themselves to gain Vaul's skill and insight.
- Fantasy Pantheon: They form a far more formalized and centralized pantheon than the human gods do, with clear allegiances, rulers and roles that they fill.
- God of Evil: Ereth Khial, the leader of the Cytharai, is deeply feared by the elves due to the hatred she bears for them and the torments she inflicts on every elven soul she can catch.
- God of Good: Asuryan and Isha fill these roles for the High and Wood Elves. Asuryan is revered as the ruler of the gods and the protector of the elven race, while Isha serves as elvenkind's loving and protective mother.
- God of Knowledge: Hoeth is the elven god of learning and magic. In addition to being the patron deity of all elven mages, he is also worshipped by an order of ascetic warriors who focus on mastering their bodies and minds through rigorous meditation and exercise.
- God of the Dead: Ereth Kial, the Pale Queen, is the ruler of the elven underworld. Unlike the other death gods of the setting, who typically benevolent if grim, she's an evil being who despises the Elves, and her realm is a place of endless torment for every elven soul that she can catch. The knowledge that Ereth Kial waits for them beyond the veil is one of the reasons the Elves go to great lengths to tether their souls to the material world.
- God of the Moon: Lileath governs the moon Mannslieb, dreams, fortune, and prophecy. (The Chaos Moon Morrslieb is outside her jurisdiction.)
- The Hecate Sisters: The three central Cadai goddesses — Lileath the Maiden, Isha the Mother and Morai-Heg the Crone — each represent one of these three roles.
- Lord of the Ocean: Mathlann, the god of the sea, is a fickle deity associated with storms and the dangers of sea travel and worshipped primarily among seafarers among both the High and Dark Elves.
- Mother Nature: Isha the Mother is the goddess of life and growing things, and revered as the mother of the elven race.
- Sacred Flames: The Flames of Asuryan are an eternal fire that burns within the temple of the chief elven god. The prospective Phoenix Kings of the High Elves have to step into this fire after being elected by the council of Ulthuan's princes, and if seen as worthy by the god are blessed with great power and extended lifespan. When the ambitious prince Malekith tried to forcefully usurp the throne and stepped into the flames himself, he was instead horribly burned.
- Stock Gods: The major deities fall fairly neatly into the pattern of deities recognized by the formalized religions of polytheistic civilizations. Asuryan is the creator and ruler of the gods, Khaine is the god of war, Hoeth is the god of wisdom, knowledge and magic, Loec is the trickster and god of revelry, Kurnous is the god of the hunt, Isha serves as the central mother goddess, Lileath is the goddess of dreams, Vaul is the god of smiths, Mathlann the god of storms and sea travel, and Ereth Khial is the ruler of the underworld.
- Top God: Asuryan is the formal king of the elven gods, and consequently the ruler of the Cadai. Following her exile after a failed coup, Ereth Khial took a dark mirror of this role as the queen of the Cytharai.
- Trickster God: Loec, the god of trickery, music and revelry.
