who she can trust.
NOTE: Tam and Linh are also protected by Elidyr, Opher, Timur, and Urre, but these four dwarves remain primarily underground and have not shared anything about themselves with their charges.
HUMANS
CAPITAL CITY:
Too many to list
RULED BY:
Definitely too many to list—and constantly changing!
CULTURE:
Compared to the intelligent species (which the elves do not classify humans as), humans have relatively short life spans—and many elves believe that this gives humans a more “short-term” focus, causing them to overlook significant problems (like their pollution and destruction of the planet). Humans also do not have a single culture, language, or government—a notable difference that gives them an incredible diversity of cuisines, arts, music, fashion, customs, and traditions to enjoy and experience. But these differences also create distinct national and societal divisions. Humans sometimes also discriminate for other reasons (like background, appearance, wealth, and systems of beliefs), which has caused a number of serious problems for their world—at times even leading to further divisions and war. And yet, all of this is a tremendous oversimplification of the “human experience” and does not even begin to capture the depth of their unique challenges and struggles—as well as their contributions, gifts, and talents. Sadly, though, it’s the full extent of what elves (and the other intelligent species) are taught about humanity.
RELATIONSHIP WITH THE ELVES:
Contact with humans is forbidden (which is why elves call the human world “the Forbidden Cities”)—and they’ve gone to great lengths to ensure that humans have no knowledge of their existence (or of any of the intelligent species—as well as many of the protected species). All of the Lost Cities are hidden by numerous illusions and shielded by a variety of security measures—and the elves have also spread myths, legends, and stories to make humans think of them as “silly” and “magical” and “make-believe.” That way, even if humans were to accidentally discover the Lost Cities, they’d discount what they were seeing. But the relationship between humans and elves wasn’t always this way. Long, long ago, humans were classified as an intelligent species. In fact, the elves built Atlantis as a merging point for their two worlds—a city where elves and humans could peacefully exist together, and learn from each other, and inspire each other, and form friendships and connections. The Unity Fountain in Atlantis remains a reminder of this brief time period—before everything went wrong. And while elvin history books tell a tale about the humans’ greed for power and the violent uprising they were planning (which led to the elves’ decision to engineer the tidal wave “catastrophe” and sink Atlantis), recent discoveries have unearthed the reasons why the humans began their rebellion—and the elves were very much to blame. Vespera was fascinated by the humans’ capacity for “ruthlessness” and felt that if elves didn’t learn to be the same way, the humans would eventually overthrow them. So she began conducting evil experiments on humans in a secret facility under Atlantis in an attempt to understand their propensity for violence—and when the humans started noticing that people were going “missing” and tried to get the Council to intervene, the Councillors refused to believe that such monstrosities could be happening. As a result, the humans banded together, planning to overthrow the elves—which then led to the elves’ disappearing to avoid a war. And even though both species have continued to thrive without each other, it’s hard not to wonder how much better things would be if they’d been able to keep working together. That’s one of the reasons why the Human Assistance Program was created (a program where those with the Council’s permission would enter the Forbidden Cities disguised as humans, in order to advance human wisdom and potentially gain knowledge in return). But all too often, the information shared led to troubling human innovations (particularly in the case of weapons—which infuriated the goblins and ogres), and the elves eventually canceled the program, fearing it was causing more harm than good. Since then, the elves have done their best to pretend that humans don’t exist—all while the other intelligent species have grown increasingly concerned about how much land the humans are claiming and how much damage their pollution is causing. At one point, some even proposed moving the humans to a new sort of “Sanctuary” to contain them and protect them—but the Council rejected the idea, knowing the humans would consider it to be imprisonment (and it would be). Despite making the right choice, the Council has taken no other actions to remedy