Kirin Fantasy - Lore

Ancient high elves lived alongside primitive humans on the continents of Vamontil and Ysona, building large cities along ley-line intersections, some of which still stand to this day. The arcane energy coursing through the world’s ley-lines allowed the ancient high elves to maintain an advanced magical civilization. This, coupled with elves’ naturally long lives, led to their society dominating the continents they happened to inhabit, though they wouldn’t have much competition for millennia.

The ancient high elves’ society was entirely magic-based. All menial labor was performed using magic. Enchanted golems and arcane machinery moved large loads and built structures while brooms swept floors on their own. This left the ancient high elves plenty of free time to study magic, which many of them did from childhood. The ancient high elves established most of the practices common to arcane magic, and the study of arcane magic taught in academies is modeled after what is known about ancient high elven magical study.

Though still not fully understood, Ancient High Elven remains the language primary language of arcane magic. Attempts to substitute Simplified High Elven have yielded disappointing results in terms of potency, though Simplified High Elven has become one of many languages used in common magic.

The ancient high elves of the First Age mostly kept an arm’s length relationship with the primitive humans they lived alongside, though saw themselves as custodians to the humans’ development. Often, they used powerful illusion magic to conceal their cities from human eyes. Recorded encounters between ancient high elves and ancient humans are few and far between, though records suggest even these were accidental. The ancient high elves were largely not explorers and mostly kept to themselves. Most ancient high elves lived their entire lives in the city in which they were born, or else travelled from one city to another.

The first encounter between ancient high elves and ancient dragons marked the beginning of the end of the First Age. Seeking to expand their territory and attracted by the powerful magic of the region, the ancient dragons invaded the northern reaches of Vamontil, attacking the high elven cities there and sparking a war between the dragons and elves of the First Age.

The dragons pressed a powerful offensive, destroying many cities in the northern reaches of Vamontil, until elven reinforcements from Ysonara arrived. During the war, the ancient high elves took particular interest in protecting the primitive humans they believed to be in their care.
The invading dragons were eventually forced into retreat across the sea to the north. The ancient high elves, however, would never be the same again. The ancient high elves had, for the first time, experienced total war from a people seeking to annihilate them. Though their homelands were safe, their population was more than cut in half at the end of the war, and many were displaced, having lost their homes. Many who lost their homes and families began wandering, having lost the will to rebuild. They no longer studied magic, as their focus became survival. As such, they began to have more children than the city-dwelling ancient high elves.

As the Second Age began, the descendants of the wandering, nomadic ancient high elves adapted to their survivalist lifestyle, becoming the early wild elves. They grew distant from their city-dwelling brethren.

The crumbling ruins of the ancient high elven cities in the north of Vamontil still stand as a monument to the history of the ancient high elves. Their encounter with an equally-powerful outside force fundamentally changed the balance of power in Vamontil and Ysonara. As the remaining city-dwelling ancient high elves remained sequestered in the cities that remained, their wild elven bretheren, along with the humans they would soon encounter, would come to shape the Second Age.

The early wild elves of the Second Age grew into a nomadic lifestyle. They travelled in bands of no more than two hundred and initially eschewed magic study in favor of focusing on hunting for food and protecting their tribes.

They shunned the cities of the ancient high elves. To them, the old cities represented the arrogance of the old ways of life. Many early wild elves attributed their people’s devastation at the end of the First Age to an arrogance and complacency they believed pervaded society within the high elven cities. Wild elven history portrays the invasion of the dragons as a wake-up call to their people, that the world is harsh and they must learn to survive in it or else be ravaged, defeated, and consumed by it.

Encounters between humans and early wild elves became common during the early Second Age. The nature of these encounters largely depended on the region. In areas of plenty, humans and wild elves often cooperated. In areas of scarcity, humans and wild elves often fought over territory.

In was during these encounters that the wild elves first rediscovered magic. The wild elves observed, and in friendly encounters were often taught, early ritual magic by human shamans and druids. Wild elven tribes who had friendly encounters with humans began to emulate humans, who had had much more experience as nomadic tribes.

The elves’ natural aptitude for magic saw them quickly establish their own techniques and rituals, adapted from what they observed and learned from humans. The next things they learned from humans were settlement and agriculture. Soon, the larger tribes of wild elves settled wherever they could feel protected. This usually meant secluded, hidden places. Counterintuitively, the early wild elves chose to settle in deep forests, deserts, mountains, and other places seen as inhospitable to humans. As wild elven tribes settled, encounters between humans and wild elves became less common. Soon enough, within a few human generations, elves were thought to be a fairy tale.

A particular tribe of wild elves sought a secluded place to settle in what they initially believed to be a cave at the base of a mountain. As they ventured inside, they soon found that, inside, the cave did not appear to be a natural formation. They found themselves within a maze of ancient crypts, caverns, and twisting corridors, and were soon completely lost. They had accidentally discovered the Labyrinth.

Meanwhile, the city-dwelling high elves continued their study of magic, picking up the pieces and rebuilding from their war with the dragons. They further sequestered themselves, opting to consolidate their population into only a few cities while using powerful illusion magic to hide the rest. In addition, they erected magical barriers around their populated cities as a line of defense. They raised a standing army and developed weaponry meant to kill dragons.

As the wild elven tribes lived out generations in their secluded homes, they adapted further to their habitats. Those who settled in the deep forest bonded with the trees and animals, and became wood elves. Those who settled in the deserts grew comfortable in the scorching sand and became sand elves. Those who settled in the high mountains acclimated to the cold and the altitude, and became mountain elves.

Even the tribe that wandered into the Labyrinth adapted. They settled in an empty underground city and managed to flourish there, becoming the first dark elves.

As the human settlements grew into feudal fiefdoms, they soon found themselves clashing with one another, and with elves into whose territory they encroached. The humans learned that elves were not a myth and that they were extremely adept at fighting in their own territory. Sand elves were known to leap at intruders from under the sand. Mountain elves were rumored to be able to slow their bodies down and hide in snow for a week. Humans traversing forests spoke of hearing the trees speak elven.

Some bands of wild elves continued their nomadic lifestyle, though relations with humans became strained as many humans looked at all elves with suspicion. Though not all humans were hostile, as human settlements grew, many elves of all kinds felt unwelcome in human lands. Elves especially tended to shun the largest human cities, perhaps due to an innate aversion to a lifestyle too similar to what they left behind at the end of the First Age.

The end of the Second Age began with another invasion by dragons from the north. Desperate for living space, the dragons had erupted into war, eventually casting the weaker broods out of their homelands and sending them south, presumably to die against the elves. They were initially met with no resistance, as the high elves had abandoned the ancient high elven cities in the north of Vamontil. The dragons resettled the abandoned cities and built their own societies, distinct from those of the northern dragons.

As the elves largely agreed that the cities in the north of Vamontil were best left shunned and forgotten, it would be decades before anyone knew they were there. Nomadic wild elves who had ventured into the north returned with rumors of dragon sightings. As stories of the dragons’ return spread throughout the elven societies, many began training and preparing for a war against the dragons. The dark elves, as an exception, were none the wiser, as no one dared venture deep enough into the Labyrinth to alert them.

News of the dragons’ return eventually reached the remaining high elven cities. The high elves, however, had become fiercely isolationist, and were hesitant to venture out of their cities to push the dragons back north across the sea. They were determined to defend their holdings, but only if they were attacked directly.

As news of dragons spread across Vamontil and Ysonara, the Second Age drew to a close, punctuated by the founding of the first human empire in Ysonara. Wild elves, though rare, still roamed as nomads. Their brethren, acclimated to their homes, secluded themselves in their settlements. The high elves isolated themselves to the point where their sheer existence was forgotten by many humans.

The dark elves, unbeknownst to the rest of the elves, began exploring and studying the nature of the Labyrinth. It would be many years into the Third Age, however, before a dark elf would be seen again in the daylight.

“The Labyrinth” is a seemingly-endless network of caves, caverns, crypts, catacombs, dungeons, subterranean forests and cities, sewers, and anything else that can be found underground. It’s a realm ruled by disorder, shifting and growing every few years. A family may find themselves unfortunate enough to one day have a door that wasn’t there before appear in their cellar. That door may lead to a deserted mine halfway across the world, a cave system miles away, a sewer in another city, or somewhere much, much worse.

Nobody knows who or what created the Labyrinth. It has seemingly existed since the dawn of time. Recorded history is dotted with incidents of people vanishing after venturing into caves and underground ruins, with bodies seldom ever found. People have been living inside the Labyrinth since at least the early Second Age, when a group of wild elves ventured into what they at first thought to be a cave system. It wasn’t until the middle of the Third Age that they would be found and reintroduced into society as dark elves, having adapted to living in the Labyrinth.

The Labyrinth is permeated throughout with dark magic, which seems to govern its shifting and changing. As one ventures deeper below the surface, the dark magic energy grows thicker and more potent. Those not acclimated to the oppressive nature of dark magical energy can be driven insane simply by spending too much time too deep in the Labyrinth.

Many types of unintelligent and semi-intelligent humanoid creatures call the Labyrinth home. Goblins, gnolls, kobolds, and other various animalistic bipeds infest parts of the labyrinth, and too often make it to the surface through the opening of fresh entrances. Deeper, blind cave trolls prowl the tunnels and caverns. Deeper still, animated slimes and jellies drip from the walls of dungeons. Those who have survived the deepest known reaches of the Labyrinth tell of maddening creatures – hulking masses of flesh, eyes, and teeth that threaten the sanity of any who lay eyes on them.

These creatures seem to originate from the Labyrinth itself. As the Labyrinth shifts, new creatures move in to inhabit its spaces, presumably from newly-adjacent spaces that were never cleared.
In addition, the Labyrinth plays host to many peoples who desire distance from society, for both legitimate and illegitimate reasons. The shallow reaches of the Labyrinth are home to bands of brigands, dark magic cults, and mad wizards, to name a few.

Still, despite the danger, the Labyrinth often serves as a shortcut between different parts of the world. A normal journey of five days could take less than a day if taken through the Labyrinth. As such, adventurers are often hired to clear and mark paths through the Labyrinth’s upper levels, so that they may be used by travelers until the Labyrinth shifts.

It is not understood why the Labyrinth shifts and rearranges itself, nor how it expands to consume new entrances and underground spaces. It is known that it takes years to shift, but the nature of its shifting cannot be predicted.

It is also known that sections of the Labyrinth remain intact when they shift. That is to say, a given crypt may shift in whether its exit connects to a cave, a dungeon, a sewer, or somewhere else, but the crypt remains the same inside, though perhaps containing a fresh troop of kobolds. As a result, individual spaces within the Labyrinth are sometimes named and mapped.

Many theories about the Labyrinth’s true nature exist. Some theorize that it is a true realm of the dead: That it exists to house the souls of the damned and that, indeed, the Underworld lies at the very bottom. Many devotees of holy magic prayer refuse to enter the Labyrinth at all, seeing it as venturing into Hell itself.

Others theorize that the Labyrinth exists as the antithesis to our familiar world: That it must exist as the shadow cast by our world, and that its dark magic energy balances the latent arcane energy flowing through our world.

Still others assert that a chaotic horror slumbers deep beneath our world and the Labyrinth is its dream made manifest.

Whether the Labyrinth is one of these things, all of them, or none of them, is still yet unknown. Indeed, the Labyrinth may have infinite mysteries to solve.