Maps Of Current Day Elvaria, Made On Inkarnate.

Maps of current day Elvaria, made on Inkarnate.

Whenever I think about advancement of the elves compared to real life human technological advancement, I feel like it's an unfair comparison. Like wifi? Kind of useless when you can just say someone's name and out pops a circle that projects their image like a video call. Same issue with phones too. Cars? They have magic. They'll have hovercars before us even if their technological(not magical) advancement level is behind us.

Arthur C. Clarke may have said “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic” in the context of sci-fi, but I feel like high fantasy should take advantage of thinking more on how naturally occurring magic would impact technological advancement. Maybe technological advancement is not worth it when there's widely useable spells at everyone's fingertips, maybe technological advancement only happens to make lives more convenient and slowly but surely magic usage dies out in favour of tech, maybe people invent things for fun but never use them for practical purposes, maybe magic drives advancement so that it's completely incomparable to human tech.

Too much thinking for me and thinking too much on technology kills the high fantasy for me, but maybe it doesn't to others. Maybe high science fantasy is or will become a thing in the future and future writers are more willing to delve into magical advancement vs nonmagical advancement.

Not Oversimplified Elvaria Lore- Part 2, Classical History(The Age of Shadows)

The Fall happened and now the empires have collapsed, and the continents have been fractured from the explosion's impact No celestial magic because the sky is covered in shit so now the elves are effectively cut out from using the majority of their abilities

So now what for them? 150,000 years of trying to cope and hopefully adapt to the new borderline radioactive-ish world, because as it turns out pure Asurei isn't totally poison and some people can adapt to it within a few generations Some people don't though, so of course more people die as the years go by So what's up with the isolated kingdom surrounded by storms? They still exist but are struggling, with Åsterlis having been split in half into Åsthenar and Fulegria They're lucky to still even exist considering they were right on the border of the blast zone Forgot to mention that one tribe that made it past the Dust Era, because Jukevor is now Jivankova and they're surprisingly doing fine since their magic doesn't draw from celestial energies

And now comes the fun part In those 150k years of darkness, elemental energy starts seeping into the world from a hidden realm, and elementals emerge from being attracted by the massive amounts of Asurei in the atmosphere The elementals have varying effects on the new continents, with their presence slowly but surely altering the biology of the elves to attune to the elements rather than to the distant sky The survivors of The Fall on those other continents slowly die out from the sudden presence of foreign energy that their bodies rejected, but some pockets of them actually did make it

With some elementals fusing with some of the pockets of elves, they resulted in the creation of half elves, or Elthir Fulegrians, Åsthenari, Jivankira, and Ligniar are the main ones that make it, becoming half elves of lightning, storm, air(ish), and coal Fulegria, though, doesn't benefit too much since now their land is becoming heavily electrified to the point of being borderline uninhabitable and forcing the inhabitants into an evolve or die situation

Certain individuals that fused with particularly powerful air elementals became something above an elf or half elf, and would later go under a different term(you'll hear of them in the Age of the New Kingdoms post) So what happens to the ones on the continent that doesn't have much elemental presence? It takes a lot longer to adapt since they have nothing to power them and need to reestablish order, with the final king of Lunaris living just long enough to create the new kingdom of Yūregina, the kingdom of shadows around 5.5k years after The Fall With time, some of the Lunarisians in Yūregina would figure out that Asurei does actually work with other aspects of the world, so now they can use shadow magic They also saw it as them embracing the dark side of the moons of Elvaria, as the light of their old kingdom has always had the potential to cast a shadow Yūregina stays intact and helps rebuild some semblance of civilization once the new Yūregians(the guys that figured shadow magic) got their shit together After 145k years of rebuilding and adapting(plus elemental energies do eventually make its way to the other continent so now people know what's up), the first ray of sunlight appears, heralding a new era In those 5k years after the first rays, the sky begins to clear up more and groups of survivors that didn't adapt to shadow magic would begin to sail out to the other continents And of course, if the dark can become power when fused with Asurei, so can the light, but no second Solaris will ever rise- that era ended long ago.

So instead, a new kingdom is formed on the land opposite to Yūregina's, marking the end of the Age of Shadows- Hikarina, the kingdom of the light, composed primarily of Solarian survivors that adapted to light magic.

Oversimplified(?) Elvaria Lore- Part 4, Kingdom History(Key Points, Major Kingdoms A-F)

Åskorhal-

N/A shit doesn't really happen there

Avianaen- War of Bloodied Storm

So during the early Minor Wars era they had their own shit The Sky Lords were their leaders, being Aenirel, Lord of Rain, Enthivar, the Dragon Lord, Ilravoin, the Traveling Lord, and Thiroaven, the Lord of High Clouds They were basically viewed as divinity and were powerful enough to be seen as such, having forgotten their roots as elves and were really more like elementals. Thiroaven was the most respected of the bunch since he was basically viewed as the embodiment of the sky But of course, as they were still elves by soul, they still knew greed. Aenirel, Enthivar, and Ilravoin could keep their act together for the good of the new Avianaens, but Thiroaven could never settle for his reach being limited only to the air-lands of Syklari So yeah he betrayed everyone and tried to kill the other Sky Lords so he could hold sole control and scheme from there Whole war broke out and it ended with all the Sky Lords being dead and the Avianaens are still trying to figure out their purpose to this day since they feel lost without the leadership of the Sky Lords Since then they've created the Triumvirate of the Skyborne with three seats to represent the three Sky Lords that remained noble, and these seats are held by the priest families that once stood by their sides

Dalirna- Origins of the Nalgira and the Weathermagi

There was a very minor(?) crisis where when Dalirna was first established, some mages tried to make the deserts more habitable and made whole squadrons for it creating a new type of mage called Weathermagi(pre-Fall they imbibed pillars to deal with weather) That backfired pretty badly, and they're the reason why all the cities have to be covered by an Asurei barrier at all times because of the frequent strong sandstorms created from fucking around with the environment Some of those squadron members had their new magic backfire on themselves because no one was quite used to elemental energies yet, so they became poisoned by their own magic and mutated to become Nalgira which were not very intelligent but had very chaotic magic So that's the story of how Dalirnans figured out that even though they have better Asurei adeptness than the other surface kingdoms, they're also the most susceptible to being poisoned by it(compared to Lustariseans that are basically the masters of it and also immune(as far as they know) to the radiation-like effects of being exposed to too much of it) Any Nalgira that are discovered have their magic sealed off and sent to the desert to eek out a living and it's generally considered a crime against public safety to try to keep a relative that turned into a Nalgira in your house, especially if you live in a city

Weathermagi still exist to control weather and they're better at it, but generally the duties rely on elemental magic more than pure Asurei so it's left to Zodianans and Avianaens

Flaerna- The Ligniar Elthir and Tale of Asharena, The Warrior of Earthen Flame

Shit happened When the Solarian survivors of The Fall were figuring out life in the new fiery hellscape of Emorscal, on top of trying to understand their new fire magic, they had to deal with primordial giants(not the same as elementals) coming out of volcanoes that would terrorize the new towns The most powerful ones were coming from the volcano at the center of the land and it seemed to have some sort of "core" that was triggering the birth of more giants in the other volcanoes In underground caves it was less bad, they found half elves(hey it's the surviving pockets of elves post-Fall) that were like coal, and the half elves were willing to help from a shared sense of kinship They were skilled at making do, but mostly kept to the underground since they were very physically fragile and prone to burning out their lifespans whenever they used magic

The new Flaernans initially tried to fight back against the giants with the help of the coal half elves and had scrounged out a military to cull the giant population, with the charge being lead by a young Flaernan named Asharena Zhirkiyen

This lasted for about two centuries and as people got more desperate, the coal half elves were basically taken out of their caves and enslaved to become conscripted soldiers despite their physical constitutions being naturally terrible The Flaernans were considering leaving and moving to the surface of Cevris Atsal or joining the Dalirnans out of fear that no one could solve the giant problem, but Asharena got sick of the giants' shit and decided to charge into the central volcano alone to break the core, basically burning herself from the inside by letting her fire magic burn up her lifespan in exchange for power to charge through many giants and surviving plunging into pure elemental energy for just long enough to destroy the core surrounded by infused lava

The remaining giants would begin to crumble in the week after and the central volcano would become dormant, then solidify and be nothing more than a big hole in the ground

Asharena would be celebrated as the first warrior of Flaerna and become an example of duty to the kingdom and courage to the people that came after, with the city of Embylviska being established in the former central volcano No remains were ever found, so it's believed by everyone that her bones burned up in the lava and her soul became part of the land to watch over the kingdom

As for the coal half elves, only the Flaernans ever knew they existed, and they don't talk about it as it's considered a shame upon their history. The half elves themselves died out during the war against the giants

Floernia- The Tale of Lynaea and Cirania, the Speaker of the Forests

Okay they have less problems than Flaerna

So Cirania, a Dysheraln, lead the group of survivors to what would become Floernia out of benevolence, but the other Dysheraln did not respond so kindly Nature does not forget, and the memories of the Dak-Shan never faded. Cirania was willing to set aside the old grievances between the elves and Dysheraln, but the others felt that the elves culling Dak-Shan when the Dust Era ended, the Fall destroying land and rearranging continents, then the fallout poisoning the world with new elemental energies were all slights against them

Some of the Dysheraln, out of respect for Cirania, would move into isolation so they would not have to suck up to elves but also not be able to cause them harm Some of the other Dysheraln held onto the old hatred and would wage war with the new Floernians when they tried to settle in the forests A few were willing to set aside the past and actively ally with or at least advocate for the Floernians to the vengeful Dysheraln, but they'd be socially ostracized by the other Dysheraln

Now is there another war? No actually which is probably shocking

So even though the Dysheraln are technically not elementals(at the same time they kinda are, but are counted as half-elementals), they have their own little realm limited to a little half-plane above the land of Floernia and there's two big trees, The Ebon Cypress and The Cedar of Life The Ebon Cypress is what dictates natural death for the Dysheraln, and each of them that passes grows another branch upon the tree The Cedar of Life is what dictates the birth of Dysheraln and memories of nature Now this realm is supposed to be just pure nature, but the long forgotten past that even nature does not remember comes back to haunt them

So the Ebon Cypress actually doesn't do much load bearing, the Cedar does which means it's also more prone to problems Usually these problems are fixable, but this time it was hidden darkness that spread in the core of the tree and spread this darkness into the cores of the Dysheraln This darkness has always existed but never really spread until now, and it stored the malice from the memories of the past which became contagious and was why many Dysheraln could not move on

The new Floernians were told this by Cirania, who despite her great power was not immune to such corruption either, and all of them would gather to use their newfound control over nature to create a birch seed enchanted with their goodwill, with the nicer Dysheraln joining them to teach them how to keep the magic stable

As the malice continued to bleed into the wills of the Dysheraln, it was found that the process would accelerate if a Dysheraln was in the realm compared to outside of it, so many would remain in Floernia and didn't dare to venture into it Floernians that tried to go in were drained of their very essence by the trees as they were not elementals in any way, so some of the Dysheraln would choose to "reproduce" with some willing Floernians by pouring their essence into a pregnant Floernian, which would lead to the births of the Nynphor, a new variant of half elves that were free from the binds of the Cedar and Cypress and could also withstand their power better than Floernians could

As they grew up, Lynaea would be marked among them as the one with the most potential to bring the birch seed to the trees and plant it between them to purify the corruptive malice, as she was one that gave love and kindness freely even to a bitter darkness

When she was a century old, she took on the birch seed and acknowledged that she would likely not come back, with Cirania following her to guide her to the space between the Cedar and Cypress

Though the draining properties of the trees made her weaker with each step, she powered through and would clutch the seed closely, using her essence to plant the seed and allow it to take root from her own goodwill Cirania would sacrifice herself and become a shell for Lynaea's essence and the seed to protect them from the corruption for as long as it took to reach the roots of the Cedar, and thus would begin the process of the reversal of the corruption

Lynaea would never come back, but the Dysheraln knew her and Cirania's sacrifice as they felt the darkness that clouded their wills dissipate, and the majority of them would gradually return to their realms with the ones remaining choosing to tolerate the Floernians

The Nynphor still exist as the symbol of goodwill between the Dysheraln and Floernians, and the names of Lynaea and Cirania are still celebrated every thousand years as the ones that brought peace and unity

Föllen Alatsa- The Cave of Bloodied Quartz

No long story I swear So during the Ember War, there was a cave that was mined into and it was filled with bright red quartz that glowed and had an ominous feeling to them People that saw the crystals felt sickened on sight and could not be in their presence for very long Some people thought that these crystals had a new source of power and went in, and basically found out that those crystals are like an elaborate system of magical parasites and drove people mad if exposed to them for a long enough time in high amounts The cave was quickly sealed off and guards placed around the tunnels that led into it, and samples brought from the cave were quickly destroyed with the people exposed to them thrown into the cave Everyone exposed would mutate and go mad from the strange power of the crystals, and this actually warranted Lustariseans stepping in to magically seal off all the stone around it to prevent the cave from growing bigger through erosion and prevent people from mining into it by accident

Oversimplified-ish Elvaria Lore- Part 2, Classical History(Age of the Cycelian Empires)

We cut back to Elvaria lore where we ended off last time, being there's now whole ass kingdoms that are quickly becoming empires Big 3 are Solaris, kingdom of the sun, Lunaris, kingdom of the moon, and Urthalis, kingdom of the sunrise and sunset There's a 4th smaller kingdom that is on the same continent as Lunaris called Estellis, which is the kingdom of the stars There's also a massive storm in the center point of where all the continents would meet Remember the Åkthora? Yeah they're the ones that are living on a small floating set of islands surrounded by extreme storms, and now they're known as Åsterlis but still isolated Miners quickly discover veins of Asurei which are the energies that course through the world Golden Age incoming with breakthroughs in magic and practical application of Asurei into inventions, turns the big 3 kingdoms into empires Golden Age would become known as The Prosperous Gold or Golden Age of the Prosperity Technologically, the world would hit something similar to the 1990s Estellis was particularly advanced but hid their hyperadvanced shit underground after they found out about something they weren't supposed to

Estellans hit a technological point equivalent to the not so distant human future Asurei experiments start early on in the Prosperous Gold and continue for thousands of years Estellis is absorbed into Lunaris via treaty somewhere at the 50,000 year mark An organization called the Accord of Oracles rises into prominence as trusted aides of royalty, and the people in it are blessed(or cursed?) by otherworldly beings with control over time to give them foresight -Roughly 490,000 years of experiments and prosperity pass by until the oracles warn the empires of the end of their glory through an event that will come to be known as The Fall They warned them of the folly of careless experimentation and complacency with the world with no cautions, but at the meeting of the empires, they were written off as madmen The Empress of Urthalis completely disregarded the warnings as she believed that Urthalisan technology was flawless, and the suggest otherwise was a slight on her kingdom's intelligence The King of Solaris believed that the oracles had begun speaking nonsense and had lost their gifts, only becoming doomsayers to sow chaos among the rulership of the empires The King of Lunaris briefly considered the possibility that the warnings were true, but decided to write off his worries and trust in the judgement of his fellow monarchs The representatives with Lunaris that represented the old kingdom of Estellis would side with the oracles, not doubting the truth of their warnings

These representatives held no true power though, and ended up being removed from their positions by the judgement of the 3 monarchs under the reason of doubting the prowess of the empire and conspiracy. The Accord of Oracles was then forcefully dissolved and the Asurei experiments continued as those 10,000 years slowly ran their course, until that fateful day where an oversight in Urthalisan storage chamber systems caused pure Asurei energy to leak and then explode. These chambers were each roughly the size of a lake and were spread across and around the capital city of Urthalis, and the detonation of one set off all the others, creating a massive blast that would decimate roughly 6,300 km of land from the force alone The rings of destruction around it brought debris that rained down on many more people and choked the sky with dust and rubble, but what would kill the most people would be the Asurei contamination itself There was a good reason why the most potent Asurei ran deep within the group in veins and the commonly used Asurei was impure and in less concentrated amounts in the air, and that was because pure Asurei was pure poison and acted similar to radiation This would mark the end of the Prosperous Gold, and thus the empires fell in under a week, them now realizing too late that their mistake to not heed the words of the oracles was fatal This event would become known as The Fall from then on- the fall of the Cycelian empires and all they had worked for, and the fall of the people as the world descended into darkness and chaos- But this is not the end of Elvaria's story.

If you want names for the Proto-Elf magic tribes

This is completely irrelevant information tbh and I never made names for the non-magic tribes, only for the big 5 Åkthora- storm magic, they're one of the tribes that came out for the war against the Dak-Shan but went back into isolation when the war ended. Their descendant races still exist in the modern day Elvaria, still somewhat isolated and one is about to go extinct Nelthari- celestial magic(sun moon stars), one of the tribes that fought in the war and did not return to isolation so they could help build a civilization. Their descendant races are everywhere, like basically all of the non-Jukevor and Åkthora descendant races came from the Nelthari Invaêlka- never decided the type of magic but probably land(earth and plants) or element invocation, they fought in the war but went back into isolation and went extinct Salkaitha- never decided the type of magic, but probably very rudimentary animal speak and something related to telepathy/sound. They fought in the war but their shit sucked so they went extinct during it Jukevor- air/illusion magic, one of the tribes that did not fight in the war and stayed in isolation. Their descendant race still exists in the modern day Elvaria, still somewhat isolated