“Elves who only live for two years mature quickly but are able to put up a facade of longevity to the outside world through roleplaying a single figure per family as they pass down their diary as an heirloom.”

Aim:

It's not easy being green.

Green elves once held an advanced civilisation. This civilisation and its people are now known as The Ancient. It was when the Green elves allowed humans to glimpse into the secrets of magic. Then the Green elves’ civilisation disappeared without a trace, leaving a Void in history before the monumental War occurred.

Illusion of Longevity—The Green elves have an abysmal life span. Maturing within the first year and quickly dying within 4-5 years naturally. The exceptionally oldest have merely lived double that lifespan. Yet, in modern history, the mythological High Elves were believed to be a long-lived race.

The truth is that the Green elves have a culture of maintaining personas. Despite their terrifying prosperity in both technology and magic, Green elves had never outwitted fate and extended their lifespan past their limits. Understanding this and the difficulty of interacting with other races, the Green elve diplomats were the first to kickstart the method that would eventually become a prominent part of their culture. Certain Green elves joining the diplomatic departments are trained from birth to imitate and portray a virtual diplomat. Children selected for this role were educated in the history of the character, their demeanours and behaviour. Thus, it allows the “image” of a long-lived Green Elf to persist through generations of Green Elf diplomats before the planned “retirement” of the virtual diplomat. It was only from then on that the Green elves would be able to establish meaningful diplomatic relations with other races. Thus began their eventual downfall.

Whilst initially controversial, many Green elves eventually adopted the practice of portrayal. Understanding the bleak reality of their mortality, some found meaning in maintaining a long-lasting persona that may establish relationships with other races. The practitioners of this culture found the practice particularly adventurous. These practitioners leave the civilisation to mingle with other races known as “adventurers” who are “role-playing”. Only to revisit their homeland every 4 years to spend the rest of their life retelling their “character’s” life story and documenting it for a successor to take on the mantle of the role. Returning to the outside world after 2 years. The tales of these “Green elves adventurers and their characters” were quite popular and eventually became ingrained in their culture, remaining so until the very end of their civilisation.

“You look different… You’re jacked.”

“Hah… Must be mother’s dinner.”

“Yeah right you glutton! I haven't seen you hog food before. You mellowed out in the past 2 years ain’t ya?”

“Haha… It is shameful alright…”

“I didn’t know your kind could grow beards.”

— A conversation between Imperial Knight Lord Houser, who served the kingdom for hundreds of years and King Drakensberg III.

From the perspectives of outsiders, the Green elves appear as a long-lived race who are advanced in technology and can produce supernatural feats (magic). Their tendency to find humans to drag on adventures is their iconic trait, and the tales about them were well sung throughout history. These were praised as the Lime Elves (from their skin colour), the High Elves (from their technology), or the Elves of the Woods (from how they seem to excuse themselves every 4 years, saying “to retreat to the woods and greet their mother tree”).

Obviously, the Green elves conjured up a whole narrative for their practices as seen by the outsiders:

• They have a thousand-year-old mother/life tree known intimately as ‘Alice’.
• They adventure as it is their mother/life tree’s commandment to venture out, witness and record history. To better do so, they drag other races on adventures to colour their ventures.
• They have to pay tribute to the mother/life tree as a tradition. At the same time, return their studied records.
• When they die, their souls/spirit become a part of the mother/life tree. The shards of precious gems they left behind are their souls, and they would highly appreciate it if they were returned to the life tree in the event of their demise.
• They’re race is stereotypically eccentric and volatile (to explain the minor changes in habits, behaviour, fashion and details between generations).

Who knows which Green elf made it up for the first time? Heck, some might have even gotten the details wrong or fuzzy until the government took the practice seriously and standardised it. Yet that only further solidified the mystique of the Green Elves to outsiders. The organisation within the Green elven civilisation that oversees “adventuring and role-playing” is known as the “Adventuring Guild”. The archives of histories, tales, and legendariums of all characters created by Green elven adventurers are recorded and collected at the archive known as “The Tree of Life”. Therefore, the narrative isn’t entirely false.

Yet it is amusingly coincidental that these establishments emerged in The Modern Kingdoms eons after the Green elve’s demise (The Ancients).

Therefore, the personas, or roles of characters played by Green Elves, have changed from a diopmatic construct to become integral to their social livelihood. The outward personas became a form of social construct and are effectively heirlooms of massive clans/families. A role-played character with a rich history and popular legends may persist in their community. This is also the reason why (named) Elves appear to be few to humanity. Elves known to men are often the countable number of recurring, recognisable and unchanging few faces. Yet occasionally, new faces of Elves show up, accomplish little and then disappear without a trace.

Those characters without sufficient popularity among the Elves will not attract a successor to pick up their mantle, and therefore, the “character” dies. So effectively, the longevity of a given “Elven Character” as viewed by the outside world is a construct of how popular the character is within Green Elf society. Whether they are succeeded, whether their legacy continues to be honoured, and new tales are written. The legend of a character is their very lifeline.

However, on rare occasions, lost characters are revived by the muse of ostracised individuals who require an identity to live under.

The long-lived characters become staple faces to external societies and act as advocates for the race to the outside world.

The importance of maintaining this facade of longevity was integral to the race’s majesty, prestige and appearance of dignity, which remained till The Modern Kingdom. Therefore, among the Green Elf society, portrayers who hold the title of these characters are renowned and respected. However, it was unclear about the status of this facade during the demise of the Elven race since The Ancient Times.

Magically Inclined—The only reason Green elves were the first to discover and effectively develop magic was precisely due to their short lifespan. A short life and rapid evolution quickly allowed them to discover the technique to explain magic, and they found the conditions particularly favourable. Green elve magicians perish in order to explain magic, but at a spectacular rate. This allowed the Green elves to accumulate an enormous collection of explained “methods of magic” that could only be called the treasure of the universe. After all, these are documented EXPLANATIONS on physical laws that are by nature: CANNOT BE EXPLAINED.

These are all lost during The Void. Those documents that resurfaced in The Modern Kingdom are known as The Knowledge of the Ancients.

Green Elf magicians accumulated an immense treasure of documented Methods of Magic, only accessible to their homeland. Their short lifespans are unfavourable to developing and proliferating the martial arts. Therefore, practising the magical arts ultimately became the prioritised norm. To maintain the consistency of a role, portrayers find it more feasible to memorise the “Methods of Magic” associated with their role, rather than matching the bodily capabilities of their role. Thus, creating the image that Elves were magically inclined by nature.

Downfall of the Ancients—Whilst the Green elves were advanced, they relied on their technology for warfare and rarely developed the magic for war. The humans kindly did so for them. Perhaps the Green elves are aware of the dangers of developing magic for warfare, or that they simply did not reach that stage by twist of fate. Either Way, the humans of old are more than welcome to contest over magic like muskets. Driving rapid developments in warfare technology.

Nowadays, the Goblins who evolved to creatures similar to Green elves are labelled as Dark elves. Yet, there are still tales, legends and myths regarding the Green elves as the Ancients who charitably shared the sacred knowledge of magic with humans.

Around every 40 years, the Green Elves will spirit away a child to be raised as their uber deity. The Green Elves Kidnap Human Children to Become Their God.

Kidnapping children to be leaders was a method devised in early Elven history. Elves lived short lives, with power exchanges occurring quickly across generations (approximately every 4 years per generation), causing government directions to become disoriented, confused, and misaligned across individual reigns. Even following the rise in popularity of role-playing, the role of a ruler is often abused by their portrayer. A ruler with foresight, longevity and unbiased conviction is needed. An external race, which may have watched over the Green Elves, was the choice that prevailed and survived.

Children are pure.

One of the child’s legs is removed, so that they may patrol the forest but cannot escape. One of the child’s eyes is gouged out, so that they can only see the Elf race before them, but no further beyond. As they grow, the child will recognise themselves as a different being due to these disabilities, in addition to being an anomaly who sees elves born and die. The child, therefore, must rely on the Green Elves around them, unconditionally accepting their worship and servitude.

Now this “Elf God” must maintain the facade of Godship. The Elven God casts the image of protection over the Elven race and governs their livelihood. God is fabricated by the ones they rule over, and God is a role-player playing God over a foreign race. Now you may believe that this child may easily become a puppet of politics, and you would be correct for the very first instance. However, since the times of the ancients, the first devised systems succeeded in maintaining autocracy and the ruler’s integrity. The following is a tightly coupled system, secret police and a God who biologically outlives any opposition and raises their own successor. In the ancient custom, since the first portrayal of the God Child, the child is then educated by the previous Elf God. Yet, a miracle, not a single child has ever abused their role nor brought ruination or slavery over the Green elves. The Elf God simply maintained the order of “role” and the Green Elf society.

Nowadays, this tradition still persists, but has not stopped the current God Child from reaching beyond the bounds.

The Modern God Child