Elves in Auryl
Elves were a mysterious people said to originate from another time and place entirely. Unlike most of the other races, some elves were seemingly immortal and did not age. Elves rarely, if ever, let other races visit their marvelous and enchanted cities. Such sights were reserved for extraordinary people who had championed a cause that the elves deemed worthy, and the gesture tended to extend to their family. Briskwater was an example of such a place, built to honor the collaboration between elves and humans in particular.
The reclusiveness of elves was largely due to the great difference in culture between the elves and the other races, with the elves focusing on the very long-term goals of their culture and holdings. Few other races could truly understand the journey that elves went on, and the timeless feeling of their emotions, settlements and decision-making.
This did not mean that the elves did not actively seek out other races and formed alliances. Just like all the other races, the elves suffered in the climate changes brought by the calamity, but they coped with it through means of magic rather than adapting their society. Elven forests and other lands were largely unaffected by the blistering cold, with mythals maintaining a pleasant temperature all year round. Some of their settlements were kept in an eternal state of Spring or Fall.
Elven religion
Elven religion were mostly split between the pantheon of the dark Seldarine, worshipped by the drow, and the animalistic teachings of Augnvid, followed by many of the surface-dwelling elves. Augnvid was a peculiar religion, centered around the veneration of powerful nature spirits, of which the most powerful shape was a couatl by the same name that watched over the town of Briskwater.
Religion was a difficult subject for elves that lived in the Age of Blossoming, the current age of Auryl. Older elves remember a time before the Calamity, where the surface-dwelling elves were blessed by their own Seldarine deities, which included legendary divine figures like Corellon and Sehanine. However, after the Calamity struck, the elves lost their connection to their pantheon due to an unknown and undocumented reason.
In addition to this, elves born after the great tragedy no longer experienced the memories of a past elven soul during their childhood, indicating not only a sever of their divine connection to the Seldarine, but also to the elven cycle of rebirth and reincarnation. To some elves, these changes are seen as treachery of their gods, punishing innocent elves and children, while others see it as a test of elven dedication and morality in a world where elves have done much harm to their environment.
While no one truly knows, it is a touchy subject that can bring any elf over the edge in a display of emotions and rage.
The elven diversity
Elves were notorious for their great diversity in their heritages and bloodlines. However, due to the greatly prolonged lifespan of some elves, they were slow to adapt to sudden changes, and tended to alter their environment to better suit them, rather than trying to fit in.
Eladrin originated from the Feywild, maintaining a strong connection to that mysterious realm, even as they ventured into the material plane. Mythal crafting was a practice that mirrored the raw magic of the Feywild in the material plane, changing the potency of magic in a confined area, and it was the primary reason eladrin were introduced to the world of Auryl at all. It was fairly rare for an eladrin to permanently settle in the material plane, but it was not unheard of.
Eladrin had such a different mindset from most other races, and even to other elves, that they rarely truly bonded with folks outside their own heritage. Eladrin encountered in the region had left their home in the Feywild behind - either willingly or unwillingly.
High elves were masters of arcane magic, seemingly descended from the connection of divine spirits of the land and the mortal people of the ancestral elves themselves. More than any other type of elf, even the eladrins, the high elves would maintain complex magical installments to permanently enchant their surroundings and maintain a strong connection to arcane magic as well as divine.
In addition to this, high elves went to great length to perfect their appearance, their craft and their knowledge. They were notorious for their tendency to withdraw from the world and live in an eternal state of transcendence and peace where they could pursue their goals without outside interference.
Wood elves were the most adaptable of the elven people. They were hardy, hard-working and nature-loving, but also ambitious. After the calamity, most wood elves sought to form alliances with other races, and abandoned some of their more obscure older traditions to better maintain good relations.
However, some of these traditions remain in some of the outer hidden settlements, and they still serve to terrify the uninitiated. Among some of the more brutal techniques were the teachings of necromancy - something the wood elves traditionally mastered as a way to honor their ancestors, and to give their ancestral leaders a chance of guiding their current leaders with their wisdom.
Though time had healed many past scars between the wood and high elves, they remained different in their perspectives, the wood elves more inclined to remain true to their natural origins and refrain from arcane and volatile magic in favor of natural and spiritual magic.
In some cases, wood elves were also called snow elves, as they could sometimes be found exploring the open fields on the tundra, traveling to distant frigid locations. These were rare enough to spawn a myriad of myths, including how they lived in enchanted ice castles far to the north and lived off the snow of the land.
Dark elves or drow were the most devout of all the elves, believing that their bloodline should remain untainted by other bloodlines of elves and outsiders. They served a dark pantheon of gods that taught them how to prevail in times of hardship, and how to live pure and holy lives. These teachings collided with the wood elves in particular, resulting in many wars of ages past - even before the time of the calamity.
Driven underground by the powerful necromantic magic of the wood elves and the arcane mastery of the high elves, the drow thrived when other races succumbed to the changing climate. Luckily, their love for the underground world, the enchanted crystals of their homelands and the wildlife that prevails in these deep pockets of the earth, the drow have had little interest to claim the frozen, barren surface lands.
The drow were greatly weakened by nefarious magical experiments of high and wood elves, causing disease to eat away at many of their soldiers and civilians several centuries ago - a terrible blow that the drow never truly recovered from.
Recent upheavals in drow society have greatly weakened the former matriarchs of Shivass, bringing new powerful factions into play that wish to free the oppressed from the malicious rule of Lolth, the spider goddess, and bring the drow into a new age of enlightenment.