The Anor’suvei - The Snow Elves

Long ago, ere the first man beached his wooden long-boat on the shores of Kaledan, a great happening arose in the North. Suvei Malthorion, youngest prince of the King of the Wood Elves, had fallen in love with a mysterious spirit. This spirit allegedly hailed from the northern icy wastes where none dared pass then, and around her a harsh cold would swirl. But young Suvei could not contain his love for this spirit, and when their love was found out, he was bidden to go out from his father’s presence and never return. Seeing no place to go but his wife’s homeland, Prince Suvei prepared himself for a lifetime in the ice. It is said that the children of the fallen Prince and of the icy spirit are now what we call the anor’suvei - the children of Suvei, the snow elves.

PHYSICAL APPEARANCE

The snow elves are markedly different, both in countenance and bearing, from their wood-elven kin. Their hair and skin are a natural frosty white, a possible result of evolution for camouflage in the wastes of Haithorost. Their eyes are a piercing icy blue, or in some rare cases almost completely gray. The latter are often seen to be blessed by the Goddess. Snow elves also have an inhuman - indeed, almost magical - tolerance for the cold. To put it in perspective, a snow elf would probably feel rather comfortable in a two-piece bathing in the waters of Antarctica. This is why many snow elves tend to dress rather sparingly when in warmer climates. Snow elves are also rather carnivorous in their diet, favoring polar bear, whale, seal, and occasionally, khakoric snake, able to forgo lifetimes of not touching a single vegetable.

CULTURE

The top priority of a snow elf was, is, and will always be sheer survival. Surviving subzero temperatures and carnivorous polar wildlife leaves little time for the niceties of books, poetry, or music their siblings in the south enjoy. Besides delegating the portions of a hunt after a long day and yelling warnings of hungry polar bears behind unsuspecting travelers, snow elves rarely speak - let alone write. A snow elf seldom thinks beyond his next meal, his next place to sleep, and whether he will awake alive the next morning. For some, this way of life may be uncultured,uncivilized, and devoid of any deeper meaning, but for the snow elf, it is merely practical.

Snow elves are divided into tribes that wander Haithorost on caravans of sledges following the migratory patterns of great whales or polar bears. However, these tribes are not always bound by family - in fact, they rarely are. The governing rule of snow elven society is simple - you are a liability unless proven otherwise. For snow elves, whether you can contribute to the continued existence of the tribe or not is far more important than familial blood, gender, or age. This is why snow elves struggle to grasp with the idea of family and the conventional notion of friendship. An ailing old grandfather and a weak young child are both reduced to the same thing in the eyes of a snow elf - a hindrance to be discarded. Because of this, snow elves tend to not be bound by blood, but whether they can keep each other alive. This belief may seem cold and heartless to the outsider, but without it, the anor'suvei would not be around today. There is also a flip side to this dogma - if you happen to save a snow elf's life, the resulting bond will run deeper than any family member. Snow elves are not heartless - they just happen to value tangible safety more than ideals and concepts.

One of the more unique traits of snow elven culture is ‘mavokal’ - literally ‘to cast out’ in Elvish. There are three types of mavokal. The first type - ‘sohleri’ - occurs when a snow elf is deemed incompetent by a tribe. Sohleri snow elves are simply cast out into the icy wastes with a few supplies to fend for themselves and hopefully find another wandering tribe. However, when these exiled elves manage to find another tribe in the frost, they are often given a hero’s welcome for having proven their worth and having earned their second chance. The second type of ritual is ‘dai’haga’ - often administered to youths coming of age. The dai’haga means being separated from the tribe at least a month to survive on their own. After that month, they are also expected to find their own tribe. The dai'haga aims to stress the importance of society and what it is like to be 'useless'. The last mavokal is the most shameful one - the ‘yurai’. One who counts himself among the yurai has probably caused several deaths with his blunder. The unfortunate snow elf in question has a cross carved into his scalp and is given either a bottle of khakoric snake venom or a knife to take his own life in the wastes, before the cold gets him first. A yurai will never be accepted by another tribe or any snow elf worth his salt. Indeed, a yurai will probably never speak again to another living thing out of sheer shame.

The snow elves, for all their practicality, can be very superstitious. For what else could keep you alive in the wastes than divine intervention? The snow elves pray to Haithora - the bride of Suvei Malthorion - for warmth, a good physical sense of direction, and luck, most commonly before and after hunts. However, her priesthood is nigh nonexistent, and the training of youngsters in the arcane arts is seen as a waste of time when a trusty harpoon could do the same job as a fireball.

The snow elves rarely have dealings with outsiders or foreigners. A snow elf outside the wastes is most probably a yurai, or adopted. Most races regard them with wariness, but for all the hospitality and understanding of the wood elves, they are one of the only races in Kaledan who truly hate the anor’suvei. It is not uncommon to see the kindest of wood elves physically and verbally lashing out at snow elves in social interactions. In the eyes of the anor’mulia, the children of Suvei were, are, and will always be traitors to the elven race. This is why snow elves rarely venture south, for fear of dying of the heat, or being lynched by their wood-elven brothers.

The Seers

“We perceive the Will.”

Known as among the last few to truly sense the will of the gods in Kaledan, the Seers (or the Order of the Seers) are a magic order who are committed to maintaining a stable means of communing with those Beyond. They have hunted down fell beasts and men alike, discovered things of unspeakable power, and have spoken with the gods themselves. They usually only accept young children as initiates, but besides that, their ranks are by no means exclusive - any sentient race capable of wielding magic has a place within the Seers. Though they are enigmatic, they are most certainly respected.

The Seers began as a secret order of elven mages in the Age of Mist, who decided to pool their forces in order to keep the presence of the Gods alive in Kaledan. The founder of the Seers was an elderly wood elf called Thonnen Lavarion ’the Great’, one of the most powerful mages to ever exist, and who had reputedly seen the face of the Great Tree. As of that time, the dwarves warred with the orcs in the mountains to the south, and humans had yet to land on Kaledanic shores - so it was natural that this secret order was exclusive to the elven race. At first, they served none but the Prince of Anor, the ruler of the wood elves, and helped him consolidate his power over the Anorian Wood. However, when the first man to land on Kaledan felled the first tree of Anor, heralding the end of the Age of Mist and the beginning of the Age of Blood, the Prince ordered his Seers to carry out unspeakable acts of war on whomever dared cross the Secret Wood. Many humans, dwarves, and orcs fell at the hands of the ancient Seers. It is for this reason that at the end of the Age of Blood, the Seers were able to break away from the Princedom of Anor and went into hiding into what is now known as the Silver Tower, concealed by magic so that no mortal can reach it save with the guidance of a Seer himself. The subsequent dominion of the Khaveri Empire cemented the Seers’ oath to swear fealty to no one but those who lie Beyond. It is for this reason that Seers refuse to advise any mortal rulers nor command any army.

The Seers, of course, spearheaded the Golden Rebellion in opposition to the Khaveri Empire. Though they communicated seldom with other rebel leaders and refused to hold territory, the Seers certainly were of enormous help to the greater revolution. The devastating fireball attacks that razed entire city blocks earned the Seers the nickname of ‘Dragon-men’ amongst the ruling and working class alike. The man who killed the Emperor of Khaver, the humble peasant knight Moren Dolevolt, was said to be assisted by an elderly Seer in his quest.

After the war, the Seers yet again retreated back into their secret bases and towers, and now spend the majority of their time in deep meditation, attempting to call back the gods. The world of Kaledan is large, and her people in danger - but the Seers will not let the gods abandon the realm, no matter the cost.

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The Seers only accept children as initiates, preferably below the age of five. They spend their entire adolescent lives within their Cloister, learning the basics of the arcane. When they have come of age, they are given a choice - either to stay within the walls as a Mystic, communicating with the gods, or to venture outside as a Magus, safeguarding the realm in the absence of the divine. At first the Seers only held elves within their ranks, but with their secession from the Princedom of Anor, all manner of race can be found here.

It is to be noted that the Seers do not have an official ranking system - Seers do not believe in such petty political affairs, and a Seer can already magically sense the seniority of another. The Seers do not have a supreme leader - they do have a Grand Council composed of nine appointed members who deliberate on actions and decisions taken by the Order as a whole.

The Seers are unique from most other groups within Kaledan in that they do not punish gross misconduct or incompetence with death or exile. A Seer’s spirit can never truly rest, due to his strong connection with the gods, and neither can one let a misbehaving Seer wander Kaledan unrestrained. So what the Order usually resorts to is magical imprisonment: this usually involves the offending Seer being condemned to live in a pocket dimension for a certain amount of time - in the gravest cases, eternity. Within these pocket dimensions, the Seer is practically immune to death, making it a living hell for gross offenders.These dimensions often take the form of earthly prisons like towers, mazes, or even dungeons.

Given their massive role in shaping the history of Kaledan, the Seers are often granted the unoffical status of ‘local problem-solvers’ by ordinary mortals, much like the Istari of Middle-Earth. Many magic groups from dwarven runemasters to orcish shamans respect the Order, or at the very least fear it. The Seers, however, refuse to claim authority over any of the aforementioned groups.

Long ago when wanderers still pressed far to the north that would later become the Northern Reaches, there arose a kingdom on the borderlands, one ruled by men known further south as "barbarian kings". Brutes some would say, but such dishonorable and disparaging terms never left their lips in person, rather only behind closed, barred doors in fits of frustration. The true story of Altgarde is far more telling than such utterings, in that the initial kings of this cold forest land were the first line of defense against the actual outsiders and men beyond. They settled it not for their own gain, but for the benefit of those they once served; a reward and honor to fight on behalf of their reigning monarch.

It grew not because of any attraction for many who found themselves there arrived out of some unpleasant necessity. No, rather it remained and endured still despite deep winters and long falls as the men of the land came to embrace its ruggedness. They were free to rule and take from it what they saw fit, paying their debts to the crown not in gold, but in safety. The riches they reaped were their own and many warrior-lords arose through contests of strength. Man and woman alike proved their grit, be it the customs of traveling the wilderness unarmed upon a challenge to a mountain top, or in fair contest of strength and skill; a blunted sword or axe wielded in the lame hand, the other bound to their belt behind their back.

To outsiders the people of Altgarde were quite queer in their strangeness, never a people for many words and with a propensity for challenging dissenters with unusual and strange contests of individual prowess. However, the realm's Shield of the North did not last forever. The promise of personal riches at the cost of work drew in more and more eager hands and mouths while the threat ever dwindled away in the face of swelling numbers. Age old cultures of the Kingdom of Altgarde began to wither and die upon their fruitful vine, most notably with a tax levied upon them from beyond; tradition had been broken and the land splintered into fierce conflict. Now too broken to face the threats of the land, it was not more than a generation or two of meddlesome folk later that it fell away entirely.

The "Wvalgentar a'Wuden" or the "Winter War" approached, just as its name implied, with the fall of the countryside's most remorseless of seasons. A tremendous chill unlike anything known to man since he first began his history in the realm enchanted the very earth and seeped deep into the soil. This age of ice brought with it the great glaciers and storms of the Northern Reaches, but worse yet the most mighty of beings that had only been seen in rare myth. Powerful, grand beasts both men and animal descended on Altgarde not as knowing invaders, but seekers of opportunity; the great watery divide had once again been frozen over.

Broken by their own infighting and consumed by the complacency of the southern states, the factions of the shattered kingdom only realized too late what their oncoming fate was. Thorps, villages, towns and soon cities fell as nature began to reclaim them before their eyes. Winters grew longer and more unbearable, with the beasts and men becoming more aggressive in pursuit of their quarry. True barbarians, long thought chased out, began their marauding attacks against the last fringes of Altgarde, mercilessly laying claim to whatever scraps they could scrounge. Nightfall became one of the greatest enemies of all lesser folk, for the very wolves at their door had become real and the safety of flame had become an increasingly valuable commodity.

For nearly two decades the failed rebellions fought a losing battle against the north, that was until the south paid them dear mind. Scholars, now mesmerized and awed by this turn of events unlike anything they knew prior, had but stories of ages past to work with; legends and rumors of a terrible power of nature, something forgotten until now. Wisely an entourage was sent into the heart of Velkhan, the last remaining kingdom on the borderlands. Through their studies, pressing deep into the stretches of the wild in all corners of the region, they uncovered the barrows of the past; tombs of long dead druids. It was clear now what was to come, for the cycle was evident upon the very walls they explored, sheet after sheet of parchment scrawled in record.

The magical winter descended upon the realm to give it new life later as a spring.

The corruption and fall of the realm was both a metaphorical and practical thing, a time where Altgarde itself needed to wane in importance of its summer. These lost people knew this truth well and had prepared for it for quite a time, long beyond their physical life and long before their history could be known. But there was more to it than this. Something more sinister awaited the region, which now prowled with dangerous beasts and roving packs of men. Before the scholars could make it known, they vanished without a trace; consumed by the savage powers at work within the forested mountains, rolling cold plains and infinite white face that stared down upon the world.

It has become a subject of interest to the resisting crowns of Altgarde such as the Kingdom of Altgarde itself, the entire "Winter War", some going so far as to discover their old roots to survive within it. However, most fear its presence above anything else. There exists no church now in the region that does not preach its arrival as anything less than punishment for their crimes of cowardice and greed and no temple that dares speak of the magic thought to be involved. Those who do know, the ones who have joined with the land of old as their long dead ancestors did, are not sharing; they have rediscovered that primal power. Magic has again sprung to life from the very earth in that sense, beckoning those who would dare do the unfeeling bidding of the land.

Though such "traitors" are vilified and perhaps rightfully so. Perhaps it was them, those who tapped into these tombs before the scholars themselves, who rediscovered the ancient powers and called upon them for their own benefit, but none can be certain. The war among the people and against the environment itself rages, barely held off for now and drawing ever greater attention with each passing year...