Greatest of the Eleven Tribes, the first people of Mennara.
Introduction
The Elves, or Ylwe in the Latari tongue, are a strange and distant people, when viewed through the eyes of the younger races. Even more-so those Elves who are Latari. Beautiful and wise, the Latari Elves remain aloof from the day-to-day concerns of the world, safe in their great forest of the Aymhelin. They seem almost otherworldly, and if Latari legend is to be believed this is entirely true: the Elves are not creatures of the mortal world, but rather a fallen people, exiles from the heavenly realm of the Empyrean.
While their status as Empyreal beings remains a subject of debate among some mortal scholars, the Elves are certainly blessed with long lives and a natural gift for magic. To the Latari, their superiority is an accepted fact: their soldiers are the most skilled, their mages the most powerful, their cities the most grand. When the jealousy of the mortal races drives the Latari Elves to war, Elven retribution is swift and the war short. When a great darkness threatens all of Mennara, it is of course the Latari who must protect their adopted home.Throughout Elven history, only once has the Aymhelin been conquered, by the Dragonlords.
Since the occupation of the Dragonlords was broken, King Aeoneth has ruled the Latari from Caelcira palace in the hidden city of Lithilin. King Aeoneth presides over the mightiest of the Elven nations and is the custodian of those Tears of Latariana left by the nations that were lost. At his side sits the controversial Maegan Cyndewin, a half-elven sorceress and the remaining soul with a rightful claim to the Shadow Tear, the Ynfetaar.
Now, unnamed things stir once more at the borders of the Aymhelin. King Aeoneth has not forgotten the occupation of the Dragonlords and the shame of their exile from the Empyrean drives the Latari to oppose the Ynfernael in all things, and so the armies of the Latari Elves ride forth again. They will oppose the growing darkness, and in so doing expunge some portion of the shame of their fall, and perhaps prove themselves worthy to return to the Empyrean.
The Aymhelin
The Aymhelin - the greatest forest in all of Mennara - stretches from the south of Terrinoth and west of the Ru to the southern ocean. Its great trees reach their ivory trunks up into pure skies, while the spreading canopies cast green-tinged shadows on the forest floor below.
To the lesser races, the glades and paths of this wondrous realm would seem a paradise, inhabited by all manner of fantastical creatures that belong solely in myth and legend. But for all its beauty, the children of the Latari know the beautiful forest realm is no better than a prison.
Except for the rare sylvan glade ensnared by the Fae, or the isolated murky valley infested by the Dimora, the Aymhelin is the Latari Elves' undisputed domain. Tangled undergrowth snares the uninitiated, while deep shadows hide the unnervingly watchful Elven sentinels. Their cities and palaces sweep gracefully among the trunks of the deep wood, the elegant structures and the forest balanced in a magnificent eternal dance. Only on the distant Ailatar, the Plain of Stars, does the Latari capital of Lithilin stand free from the canopies of the blessed trees.
There, among the sparkling white towers and terraces, does the tale of the elves begin.
The Tears of Latariana
"Who knows not the song of Emorial? Of Latariana, our namesake, our foremother? They were the highest among us, and too proud. Condemned by our forebears' anger, their desire, we now live bound to this world, our crown of tears." - Loremaster Erenil, a Verdelam daughter of the Latari
The Elves bear the Tears of their foremother. Their name speaks eternally of she who was first fallen and first forgiven. They are her eleven Tears, and the Latari is one of the ten, for the eleventh now lives in shadow. The Latari remember what others never knew, that before the Humans and Dwarves walked this world, the eleventh Tear brought the first darkness. In Elven it is called the Ynfetaar, the Tear of Shadow.
The Ynfetaar tribe and its lord, Malcorne, was of the unrepentant who believed that as the Empyrean had let the Elven people fall, the Ynfernael would lift them up. However evil a thought, and however unthinkable that ideology may seem to the Latari, Malcorne and those other mistaken souls were their siblings, their kin. When they made war, the blood they spilled was their own. Elf slew Elf, and their battles not only scarred the lands, but tore at the fabric of the Void. One need only look to the Ru to see that not all wounds from that ancient war are healed.
It was the darkness and corruption of that war which sparked the light in the unwanted children.
For the disturbance in the Void caused by the War of the Shadow Tear warped many living things, and it bore fruit in Human and Dwarf, Ventala and Leonx, and so many creatures. The old songs teach that there is always light, even when darkness seems to consume all. The first Humans and Dwarves were strange creatures who initially seemed to the Elves like animals, but they walked and came to talk in their own fashion. The lives of Humans are but a single breath and those of Dwarves but one breath more. But still, these children who the Elves did not seek bring into this world art and artifice, beauty and valor.
When a shaman of the Loth Caara was tempted by the Ynfernael, another great darkness came into the world and the Elves did not escape its ravages. When the Locusts were finally scattered, many Elves had died to repel the swarm.
And the shadows gather once more. A duty of the Yeron Riders, one which they have kept since the War of the Locusts, remains to overfly the Ru and watch, lest the Locusts return. Each year, the riders report, "The Locust is gone, it does not swarm." And so year upon year, century upon century, these have been the good words. But the song of history changes. This year the riders saw signs of the old enemy and they spoke the words: "The Locust has returned, it swarms." A forgotten fear is rekindled in the hearts of the Elves. If the Locusts have indeed returned, it will be war.
Magic of the Latari
Elves are the people of light trapped in the darkness of their sin. Despite their fall, they ever seek to rejoin the First and the Empyrean. Latariana accepted her fate, and in so doing left the Latari a way by which to atone. Her Path of the Stars leads to Latariana's Door, and both are found in each Elf, waiting to be uncovered. Advancing upon her Path, and by the power of the Tears, the Ylwe may feel a touch of the Empyrean as if touching a stone heated by a sun which cannot be seen. Still, such warmth heals and protects. But there is another power, one not of the Empyrean or the Ynfernael, an energy which comes from the very Turning of the Void itself. Some Elven mages and sorceresses are scholars of this difficult-to-distill force, focusing the natural power it creates: fire, lightning, wind, hail.
Study and devotion make not the sum of Elven magic. The Latari's namesake left a great power to them: Latariana's Tears, eleven powerful magical gemstones as ancient as the fall itself. The magic of the Empyrean is in them more than it is in anything else in the world, and the leaders of the original Elven tribes were each entrusted with one such Tear. Three of the ten tribes have been lost; their Tears now guarded by King Aeoneth who sits in the Caelcira palace in the midst of the Aymhelin. At his side sits the half-elven Maegan Cyndewin, who has the remaining claim to the Ynfetaar, that Tear which came under shadow causing the true First Darkness and which disappeared after Malcorne's ultimate defeat.
Ballads of Heroes
The wild armies of the Latari are the deadly beauty that defends their realm. It will be they who shall rise to the challenge of the foul winds. It has been long since the captivating lethal dance of the Darnati has been used in battle. Eleven by eleven their square of shield and spear; eleven for the Tears, with one empty place in each line, in memory of the kin who lost their way. How swiftly they shift their steps, facing any foe with a forest of razor tips. No words of sorrow describe their swordmasters in their constant practice. In full armor, with great blades made heavy to carve through mounted foes, they match their movements in the practice glades to battlefield needs. No heart could fail to swell upon hearing the thunderous roar when practice culminates in their massed charge. Such a charge has not been called for on the battlefield since the Dragonlords burned half the world. Yet they are ready nonetheless.
Keen-eyed archers strike true and keep the forces of darkness at bay. They let fly woodsung shaft, on gift-feather wings. Ten thousand times ten thousand arrows have they loosed in peace, until the bow's kiss is as the touch of their own fingers, their bodies reaching across one thousand yards. They let fly now in war, and bring death beneath the shadowed eaves. Elves will hold the green gate and bring peace for the next age.
Elven scholars of magic stay not idle when the Latari bear emerald banners to battle. The light and air are their allies, protecting the great forest through the healers and mystics, and driving out foes through the sorcerers. A handful of mystics may protect hundreds of soldiers from wounds, while a like number of sorceresses may defeat equal hundreds of foes through upheavals of nature's force. The tales and victories of the mages and mystics are without number; hardly a battle has been fought for the Aymhelin in which our magic did not win the day.
The forest guardians and the lesser Aymhelin Wood Scions have ever been at the Latari Elves' side in their times of need. They are of the Aymhelin itself, the very sinew and muscle of the Elven home. Even now they creak and groan, tasting in the wind and sun and water that war is upon the Elves. The ancients of the wood may march when their anger is roused by the evil of the Elves' foes or the strength of their songs. The strength and toughness of the forest guardians is unmatched short of that of the dragons. Just one great tree is enough to tip any battle in their favor, and a handful can dispatch armies. The Latari remember the Twelve Oaks, a grand grove of tall old trees. When the monster they called Reason's End destroyed so many lives just a few decades ago, its rampage ended when it stepped into the grove of the Twelve.
In Summersong, brave Leonx Riders defended the Latari lands against the forces of conniving barons. Though the riders are of low status, and shunned by some for their passions and roughness, those Elves who forge a bond with the Leonx gain a share of their strength and ferocity. These riders operate alone or in small family groups, like their beast-friends. Their attacks are unlike those their foes expect from Elves, savage and brutal. A few of these beast-attuned warriors can turn the tide of a day with the surprising onslaught they bring to the field. The Leonx Riders have proven themselves before, not only recently, but many times. Though they become so like the great cats they ride, they are still of the Latari people.
The rare and sacred Yeron have dwelled within the Aymhelin for as long as the Elves, but unlike the Latari, they are not stained by sin. Blessed by light and air, they may freely travel between the world below and the heavens above. Their pure white coats and feathers shimmer even in the softest starlight, and their mighty wings can hold them aloft for hours at a time. All who are blessed to ride one of these winged steeds know their wisdom and grace; they are always good friends and staunch allies.
Among the denizens of the Aymhelin, the hooved nomadic hunters known as the Ventala are unyielding warriors in battle, using their short-range javelins and razor-sharp knives to strike down the enemies of the Aymhelin and defend their land. While the Loremasters of the Latari have their theories and songs on the matter, the exact origins of the Ventala horsemen are for other races to wonder. For themselves, they simply assume that they have always been a part of the Aymhelin. When the two races first encountered one another, tensions between the Ventala and the Latari simmered for generations. But when their beloved Aymhelin became a battlefield for the Fae and Dimora, the two joined forces to push back the common threat. Since then, the two have fought side by side to defend the Aymhelin.
References
- Rune Age: Rules Of Play
- Runewars Miniatures Game