Like maybe the previous age ended in a great Arcane War. And the elves, being the most arcanely attuned race, did most of the fighting and bore the brunt of the casualties. And so those who did survive retreated to their forest realms to rebuild, and shunned outside influence for a long generation, for fear of getting entangled in another such war.
Good point.
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Tayn of Darkwood. Lvl 10 human Life Cleric of Lathander. Retired.
Ikram Sahir ibn Malik al-Sayyid Ra'ad, Second Son of the House of Ra'ad, Defender of the Burning Sands. Lvl 9 Brass Dragonborn Sorcerer + Greater Fire Elemental Devil.
Viktor Gavriil. Lvl 20 White Dragonborn Grave Cleric, of Kurgan the God of Death.
I like the idea of elves losing a lot of their cultural heritage, but I intend to keep the cause of the old era downfall as mysterious as possible (it caused a period known as the Empty Era, from which there are no historical records, not even the dragons remember anything), so I won't use that as the cause of elven downfall (happened thousands of years before the first council anyway), but my timeline includes the Year of the Abyss, an abyssal incursion that swallowed most of the northeastern part of the continent before it was stopped. I'm moving the old elven homelands to the middle of the abyssal incursion area, and saying that most of the old elven kingdoms were swallowed. Also, lowering their lifespans to ≈500 years
Thanks a lot, your advice was very helpful
If anyone are interested, here's the current timeline:
Creation (Io creates the world, and splits into Bahamut (god of peace) and Tiamat (goddess of conquest), who go on to end the Dawn War) - the Age of Empires (Grand empires rule over the Luinaren continent, very few records survive from this era) - the Fall of Empires (in short order, each of the empires fall) - the Empty Era (no records) - the First Council - the Years of the Abyss (Elven homelands swallowed by the Abyss) - 700-ish years pass - Tiamat crisis (Tyranny of Dragons) - 500-ish years - Current day
I ran into the same issue with my homebrew world. Here are some ways I worked around it:
1) Elves rely on an oral tradition more than humans do. Unfortunately, that means that if one particularly important memory-keeper dies unexpectedly, before they can pass on their body of knowledge, a lot of historical details will be lost permanently.
2) Elves have a hard time telling humans apart, especially members of the same family. (Same goes with other short-lived races.) Was it King Wulfherd who fought the Battle of Red Snow, or was it his great-grandson King Frederick? They lived over a century apart, but that's not much for an elf. So, except for a few memory-keepers as mentioned above, elves are very unreliable narrators of history from a human perspective.
3) Because they're so long-lived, elves tend to take a "wait and see" approach to any conflict they encounter. Emperor Elouan XIII has decided to initiate a pogrom against elves? Well, they'll just retreat into their woods for a few centuries until a friendlier ruler takes the throne. So they might disappear (from a human's perspective) for several generations before they come out to test the political waters again. A lot can happen in that time that they simply weren't around to see.
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"We're the perfect combination of expendable and unkillable!"
Elven arrogance and ego is a time honored combination of negative tropes. Their long lives, attractive physical features and innate grace and mastery of magic all lends itself to a race out-of-touch with the other races and completely fine with that state of affairs ... until things go sour and they have to go, hat in hand, to those they've been snubbing all their lives.
I'd have the current ruling council of Elves be heavily set against the First Council because they weren't 'First amongst Equals' and while the original Elven Royal Family was fine with this, the destruction allowed a 'branch' of the family tree to take over instead of the main 'trunk', and the 'new' Royal Family is dead set against sharing power with the 'mortals'. They've censored the history of their people to paint the First Council as the source of the loss of the 'old ways' even as their censoring cripples the Elven nation's attempt to rebuild itself , they've 'inserted' dangerous dogma into the public arena that the other races are all at fault and the Elves were the ones originally ruling the world in peace and harmony, that the Royal Family is the greatest victims of the destruction, etc etc, all to lionize themselves and demonize anyone or anything that could threaten their death-grip of the throats of the Elven people.
Those few Elven enclaves that aren't under the control of the Elven Royal Family might remember the First Council instead as a time of peace and relative harmony between the races, even ones that today are seen as implacable enemies and rivals without a single shred of common ground, but they're hunted by the Elven nation as 'dangerous rebels' and 'terrorist sympathizers' for spouting such dangerous heresy, with many Elves having utterly bought into the lie because A) they've no reason to believe their leaders are lying to them and B) anyone who does openly stand up against the 'common sense' of the Realm quickly gets torn down socially and is set up to be either a criminal or a crazy conspiracy theorist by the Crown's agents.
Outside of the Elven Kingdom, the rest of the world has more or less the same view of history post-First Council, their beef is more who gets blamed for what, rather than it never happened at all. Thus when Elves start coming into the scene, people kind of look at them like "... the hell have you been smoking?" when they open their mouths. Elves from outside their Realm who know the real history tend to avoid Elves from the Realm and try to pretend to be of other races if they can manage it, and generally keep their mouths shut about ancient history and the First Council to avoid being drawn back into the mess back home that means they're stuck slumming it with the other races.
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That's a great idea, Transmorpher.
Like maybe the previous age ended in a great Arcane War. And the elves, being the most arcanely attuned race, did most of the fighting and bore the brunt of the casualties. And so those who did survive retreated to their forest realms to rebuild, and shunned outside influence for a long generation, for fear of getting entangled in another such war.
Good point.
Tayn of Darkwood. Lvl 10 human Life Cleric of Lathander. Retired.
Ikram Sahir ibn Malik al-Sayyid Ra'ad, Second Son of the House of Ra'ad, Defender of the Burning Sands. Lvl 9 Brass Dragonborn Sorcerer + Greater Fire Elemental Devil.
Viktor Gavriil. Lvl 20 White Dragonborn Grave Cleric, of Kurgan the God of Death.
Anzio Faro. Lvl 5 Prot. Aasimar Light Cleric.
I like the idea of elves losing a lot of their cultural heritage, but I intend to keep the cause of the old era downfall as mysterious as possible (it caused a period known as the Empty Era, from which there are no historical records, not even the dragons remember anything), so I won't use that as the cause of elven downfall (happened thousands of years before the first council anyway), but my timeline includes the Year of the Abyss, an abyssal incursion that swallowed most of the northeastern part of the continent before it was stopped. I'm moving the old elven homelands to the middle of the abyssal incursion area, and saying that most of the old elven kingdoms were swallowed. Also, lowering their lifespans to ≈500 years
Thanks a lot, your advice was very helpful
If anyone are interested, here's the current timeline:
Creation (Io creates the world, and splits into Bahamut (god of peace) and Tiamat (goddess of conquest), who go on to end the Dawn War) - the Age of Empires (Grand empires rule over the Luinaren continent, very few records survive from this era) - the Fall of Empires (in short order, each of the empires fall) - the Empty Era (no records) - the First Council - the Years of the Abyss (Elven homelands swallowed by the Abyss) - 700-ish years pass - Tiamat crisis (Tyranny of Dragons) - 500-ish years - Current day
I ran into the same issue with my homebrew world. Here are some ways I worked around it:
1) Elves rely on an oral tradition more than humans do. Unfortunately, that means that if one particularly important memory-keeper dies unexpectedly, before they can pass on their body of knowledge, a lot of historical details will be lost permanently.
2) Elves have a hard time telling humans apart, especially members of the same family. (Same goes with other short-lived races.) Was it King Wulfherd who fought the Battle of Red Snow, or was it his great-grandson King Frederick? They lived over a century apart, but that's not much for an elf. So, except for a few memory-keepers as mentioned above, elves are very unreliable narrators of history from a human perspective.
3) Because they're so long-lived, elves tend to take a "wait and see" approach to any conflict they encounter. Emperor Elouan XIII has decided to initiate a pogrom against elves? Well, they'll just retreat into their woods for a few centuries until a friendlier ruler takes the throne. So they might disappear (from a human's perspective) for several generations before they come out to test the political waters again. A lot can happen in that time that they simply weren't around to see.
"We're the perfect combination of expendable and unkillable!"
Elven arrogance and ego is a time honored combination of negative tropes. Their long lives, attractive physical features and innate grace and mastery of magic all lends itself to a race out-of-touch with the other races and completely fine with that state of affairs ... until things go sour and they have to go, hat in hand, to those they've been snubbing all their lives.
I'd have the current ruling council of Elves be heavily set against the First Council because they weren't 'First amongst Equals' and while the original Elven Royal Family was fine with this, the destruction allowed a 'branch' of the family tree to take over instead of the main 'trunk', and the 'new' Royal Family is dead set against sharing power with the 'mortals'. They've censored the history of their people to paint the First Council as the source of the loss of the 'old ways' even as their censoring cripples the Elven nation's attempt to rebuild itself , they've 'inserted' dangerous dogma into the public arena that the other races are all at fault and the Elves were the ones originally ruling the world in peace and harmony, that the Royal Family is the greatest victims of the destruction, etc etc, all to lionize themselves and demonize anyone or anything that could threaten their death-grip of the throats of the Elven people.
Those few Elven enclaves that aren't under the control of the Elven Royal Family might remember the First Council instead as a time of peace and relative harmony between the races, even ones that today are seen as implacable enemies and rivals without a single shred of common ground, but they're hunted by the Elven nation as 'dangerous rebels' and 'terrorist sympathizers' for spouting such dangerous heresy, with many Elves having utterly bought into the lie because A) they've no reason to believe their leaders are lying to them and B) anyone who does openly stand up against the 'common sense' of the Realm quickly gets torn down socially and is set up to be either a criminal or a crazy conspiracy theorist by the Crown's agents.
Outside of the Elven Kingdom, the rest of the world has more or less the same view of history post-First Council, their beef is more who gets blamed for what, rather than it never happened at all. Thus when Elves start coming into the scene, people kind of look at them like "... the hell have you been smoking?" when they open their mouths. Elves from outside their Realm who know the real history tend to avoid Elves from the Realm and try to pretend to be of other races if they can manage it, and generally keep their mouths shut about ancient history and the First Council to avoid being drawn back into the mess back home that means they're stuck slumming it with the other races.