They call themselves the Children of the Forest. The Gifted and the Blessed of Lady Vriclar. Yet the Elves are not all that they may seem and less then they would wish they are. Talented warriors and mages, they say they fight for the forest, they say that they fight to protect all living things. And yet their Queen knows what they never can. The great Forest of Lathrandar has a voice, a whispering echo of it's will, and yet it will never speak to the Elves. The Elves cannot command the trees or the spirits that dwell in the eaves of the woods and this makes their self-proclaimed protection almost pointless.

Born from the will of the Lady Vriclar the Elves say that their Goddess was responsible for the creation of the Dwarves and the Mermen as well. This, though untrue, is still taught to young Elves as they grow and may go someway towards explaining the arrogance of the Elves in dealing with the other Races. For indeed the Elves are blessed, for they are immortal and beautiful forever, given the very fire that supplies all life.

Their features are delicate, cheekbones higher then in humans and their eyes narrower, but in general are very close to humanity in appearance. They have eternal youth though and their skin does not age, leaving no signs of long life that blemish the flesh and weaken the body. Their eyes and ears are highly sensitive and they are amidst the foremost archers on Tal'Vorn, second only to the Lar'K'Leth ShadowWalkers. One of the things that marks them out however is their delicately pointed ears, similar to those of the Lar'K'Leth. However it is unknown if Vriclar based her Children upon that reclusive Race, though several similarities do point to it.

Vriclar is responsible for some of the more outrageous forms of life upon Tal'Vorn, such as the Griffins, Manticores, Pegasi, Unicorns and Hypocampi and thus these creatures, especially the Pegasi and Unicorns are often associated with the Elves, and rightly so for the two races of winged and horned horse are used as mounts by the Elves, either when going to war or to simply race across the plains and woodlands of the Elven home.

When they were first crafted the Elves were nomadic like most of Tal'Vorns Elder Races, not choosing to stay in anyone place for long simply because of the wonder they held for all living things. They wished to always move onwards to see newer and stranger things. They also removed themselves from the politics of the other Races, avoiding them if possible, fleeing when they could. Yet this did not sit well with all Elves. Some of that Race believed that they were better then the other Races, that their immortality meant that they should rule over all other living things.

This was an anti-thesis of what the Elven Queen taught them and what the Lady Vriclar stood for. This schism spread like wildfire throughout the Elf population until eventually fully half the Elves were on the side of the revolutionists. Lead by an Elf calling himself simply the Hierophant, the separatist forces began attacking the settlements of the other races and the Elves. Finally the Elven Queen could take no more and full blown civil war broke out. At first the more aggressive tendencies of the hierophants forces pushed them on into a series of devastating victories, but finally the Elven Generals succeeded in putting a stop to the rampage. In a battle around the One Tree itself, the separatists were pushed back. However the Elves simply did not have the man power to wipe out the now more numerically superior separatist forces.

Salvation came for the Elves from an unusual quarter. It was at this time that the largest Beast incursion in living memory, led by a Minotaur named Gracnaw, emerged from the depths of Lathrandar and fell upon the rear of the separatists movement. Seeing this, the Elves waited, knowing that they would have to fight one force or the other and that they would need their full strength for such a battle. However, though the Beasts were ferocious, the Hierophant was a tactical genius, fooling the creatures into ambush after ambush, using entire regiments of separatists as bait, only to utterly destroy the attacking packs of Beasts. However the Hierophant’s forces still sustained horrific losses. Driven by blood lust, the Beasts often broke out of the traps through sheer bloody mindedness, killing scores of separatist Elves before being driven back.

Finally the two forces battered each other into a standstill. Each was too weak to destroy the other and when the Elves swept back into the battlefields, the separatists were forced to flee. Though the Beasts scattered into the dark of the forest, it is unknown how many escaped the skills of the Elven scouts. Regardless the strength of the Beasts was, for a time, broken and they were driven back into the depths of the Forest. Meanwhile, the Hierophant had been forced to instigate his backup plan. Fearing that he would be unable to win in the end, he had, with typical forethought, built a number of great ships and outfitted them with enough food for a long voyage. They fled Lathrandar in these ships and traveled to the Grey Lands, though that tale is told elsewhere.

After the war, the Elves spent a long time rebuilding their strength, and decided to create for themselves a city, a bastion of strength. This was crafted in the boughs of the One Tree, the largest and oldest tree on Tal'Vorn's face. Though the forests of Lathrandar have always been huge, some trees reaching more then a mile high, the One Tree was a mile wide and five miles high, it's top leaves swaying in the breeze, visible from anywhere in Lathrandar Forest, a truly huge stretch of land, more then thirty thousand miles wide at it's narrowest.

The Elves have an undying respect for the One Tree, worshipping it as a representative of Lady Vriclar upon the world, and as such they refuse to take any part of it's living wood, building their city upon the boughs themselves, the tree itself forming a natural floor of bark and roof of leaves. The walls were woven from dead wood and fallen leaves, each leaf of the One Tree being the length of a man's forearm.

After many years, the city continuing to grow, Vralic BlackDragonKing approached the Elven Queen. He told her of a great war brewing in the far south east.