Elf

Elves are long-eared, long-lived folk with old origins in the Feysea - once the Feywild. They are always changing, adapting to their surroundings over the course of their lives: there might be as many sub-categories of Elves as there are Elves in the world. The aribtrary categories of High Elves, Wood Elves and Grey Elves are considered the most common, however.

Elves inherit the strange, warped nature of time from their original realm, since they grow up quickly and cease ageing for centuries. Elves know that they're meant to live for at least 700 years, but at some point before the Cascade, this was somehow sacrificed. Nowadays, an Elf would be lucky to life for half as long.

Adapatation
Elves are known to acclimatise themselves to fit their surroundings in a limited way - a holdover, perhaps, from their origins as more changeable Eladrin.

The following are the most common 'sub-categories' of Elves.

High Elves
Primarily citizens of the floating city of High Celsus, these Elves are adapted to high altitude. Typical high Elves might have white or golden hair, tan to dark skin, and golden eyes.

Wood Elves
Those Elves who were left behind when High Celsus rose into the sky live on Sylvestris - the flooded islands that were once the Elven heartland of Lucevion. Their precarious existence following the Cascade lead to many of them becoming swifter than the average person. Typical Wood Elves might have black hair, dark skin, and dark eyes.

Grey Elves
Found most often in Underdeep and ruling from their citadels in Deorsa, these Elves acclimatised to the dark, away from the sun's light. As the name implies, their skin has become pale, often approaching transluscent in quality, but also varies into shades of pink and purple. Many Grey Elves have completely blank eyes.

Eladrin
Eladrin are distinct from Elves in that Elves are thought to have migrated from the Feysea centuries ago, likely before the founding of the Empire, while Eladrin did not. In some way, most Elves are more 'ordered' that Eladrin, while Eladrin in the Feysea retain far more changeability, embodying the aspects of different seasons - Spring, Summer, Mirth, Harvest and Winter.

Eladrin that do travel travel to the Waking World usually stabilise into embodying a single season, lacking the shapeshifting potential that the Feysea provides.

Typically, Spring Eladrin have pink skin and hair, or otherwise embody the colours of flowers and new blossom. Summer Eladrin incorporate more shades of green. Mirth Eladrin take on shades of blue for the Blue Season. Harvest Eladrin go red, orange and brown with autumnal colour. Winter Eladrin have white, light blue, and the brown of bare trees in their bodies.

Elfin-Time
Elves are renowned for their long lives, at least in their reputation. The flow of time in the Feysea is convoluted - in many ways, it's a place that's suspended in time, and Fey creatures embody this in their bodies, if not their minds.

Scholarship suspects that Elves' long lifespans aren't simply a reduced rate of ageing, they're the halting of ageing altogether, a temporary suspension in the experience of time.

Lives Cut Short
Though Elves are aware that their lifespan was once close to 7 centuries, they only live to about half that length. Once Elves approach the age 350 or so, they begin to age and die incredibly quickly.

Common consensus between High Celsus and Sylvestris states that the Grey Elves of Deorsa somehow sacrificed the Elven lifespan to work some powerful magic - likely that which put their citadels miles underwater, protected. The Grey Elves say the exact opposite - that the High Elves used it to raise High Celsus into the sky. This feud continues, as both believe the other to be murderers on a colossal scale.

Memory
While Elves' bodies might sustain themselves for centuries, no mind is infinite, and new experiences will gradually replace the old in memory. Elves often lose their memories over hundreds of years, their knowledge, occupation and personality even changing as this happens.

Keeping memories of such long lives is incredibly important to most Elves, as is self-documentation. Elves are renowned for keeping journals, diaries and autobiographies, which they keep lest they lost their own lives' histories.

While other cultures typically only create Mementos to remember the dead, Elves will often have Mementos of their own past selves - of the people they used to be.

Elfin-Names
Since Elves embrace change over the full length of their lives, they take on names to both hold onto the person they once were, and to reflect on the person they might become.

An Elf is typically given a single name for their first 100 years, before choosing their own once they cross the threshold of a century in a coming-of-age ceremony. Often Elves will measure time in 'names', the term 'elfin-name' meaning a span of 100 years.

Elf Traits
Elf traits are identical to those found in the Player's Handbook and elsewhere, safe for the following addition to High Elves:

Altitude Adaptated.​​​​ You’re acclimated to high altitude, including elevations above 20,000 feet.