The History of Man on Tellandor

Avilarn was not their home island, and was the most sparsely populated of the five major islands at the time of the landing. As such, man was not immediately seen as a threat, more of a curiosity. The elves observed the new arrivals, noting their strange ways and customs, and watching as they attempted to build a civilization.

Some scholars believe--though the evidence is admittedly quite scarce--that the men who landed on those first shores possessed advanced technology, whose like would not be seen for millennia, but their nascent civilization collapsed. Whether this was the case, or the initial settlers were more primitive than the elves, it is clear that, within a short time--a few generations of men--the only humans on Avilarn were too primitive and few in number to present any credible threat to the elves, and indeed perhaps to maintain a stable civilization of any kind.

And so, the elves took them in. It is thought that the population of humans at this time was no more than a few hundred families, split into several factions or tribes. Curiously, though their existence was quite precarious, and they depended on the charity of elves to survive, the tribes were apparently too estranged to countenance living anywhere near one another, settling lands far apart from one another, and warring when that was not possible.

It is important to note that the Brelen elves did not "take them in" in the sense of escorting them into their lands, giving them homes, and so on. The early humans would likely have been entirely unaware of the existence of the Brelen elves--their structures would be visible, but not the people, who silently retreated to yield their lands to men.

At first, it was just a handful of small, distant villages, and their surrounding land, that the elves yielded--a pittance of their holdings. But humans are prolific, and within a century, hardly the blink of an eye to elves, they were outstripping the available lands. Their expansion had been held in check by subtle manipulation, and when that began to strain, by harsher (but still covert) methods. Those who ventured too deeply into elven lands simply disappeared.

The elves must have thought the human population could be contained by such measures--much as animals can--but in defiance of all good sense, the humans responded to the threat of "haunted forests" and "forbidden valleys" by banding together into large, armed parties, intent on making the area safe for settlement.

It is important to note that the elven people, though proud warriors with tens of thousands of years of martial accomplishments (particularly against dragons), had yet to develop the seemingly simple technology of mass combat. Elven warriors were largely individualists: a typical "great battle" in classic warfare between elven clans would consist of no more than a few dozen warriors on either side (and rarely even that many); the greatness of such battles was usually due to their length and scale, and most importantly to the skill and power of those involved. Elves, like dragons, titans, and all others but men (and sometimes dwarves), rated their military power as a function of the skill and power of their greatest warriors, not the number of warriors meeting minimum competence.

And so, faced by bands of hundreds or thousands of men with only rudimentary martial ability--and worse armaments--the elves were simply confused into yielding more territory. It was certainly possible for a great elven warrior to take down a hundred men, sniping from the shadows, or for an elven priest to call down disastrous forces, annihilating such armies in single moments of wholesale slaughter. To understand why this did not occur, and how a tiny force of primitive men could conquer land so easily from a vastly superior elven peoples, it is important to understand elven attitudes about warfare.

Elven Philosophies of Death

The traditional attitude of elves toward death--and this has not changed much in modern times, even with all the warfare and suffering since the arrival of Man--is that death is always cause for sorrow. Even the meekest of creatures, dying as part of the natural cycle, is cause for at least a moment's contemplation. It is a rich part of elven hunting tradition that sacred rites be performed before and after a kill is made, and of course before the kill is consumed.

Given the sorrow inherent in a natural, meaningful death that furthers the cause of life, it is not hard to imagine the tragedy of a meaningless or untimely death. For a sentient creature, the tragedy is most grave, for it is impossible not to imagine all an elf--or even a man--could have done, were his life not cut tragically short.

And though the life of a man is a short thing indeed, next to that of an elf, the tragic death of a hundred men, especially given the ignorance of the danger they faced, would be too much to bear. None at the time would have wished to meet the elf who could commit such slaughter without being emotionally compromised by it.

The Retreat from Avilarn

Several centuries of retreat, marred only by a few instances of small-scale slaughter that were utterly ineffective in containing their population, left the elves with the minority of the territory on the island of Avilarn. Though some proposed a variety of "final solutions", ranging from the unthinkable mass genocide of the race of Man, to the preposterous notion of opening diplomatic ties with them and treating them as rational, thinking being, the idea that gained the most traction was to simply abandon the island altogether, and contain Man on the island of Avilarn indefinitely.

Critics argued that Man had proven the ability to ply the seas with his initial arrival, and the distances between islands were far less daunting than the seemingly interminable seas they had crossed initially. True, they had lost the ability to construct seaworthy vessels, but it was entirely possible they might regain it. Few could imagine these primitive beings spontaneously gaining such powers--many assumed they had been given their earlier craft by higher beings, and could never themselves reproduce it. As strange as it may sound today, the idea was not thought preposterous; indeed, the reverse was true--to suggest that man would increase his technological competence unaided sounded as ridiculous as a monkey doing the same.

Still, no amount of caution was beyond at least a sensible debate. It was reasoned that, should they ever learn to build ships that could take them beyond Avilarn, it would be trivial for the elves to destroy said ships. It would not need to be an act of slaughter, as the ships could be destroyed before they were seaworthy, without claiming the lives of sailors.

A tenuous plan, to be sure, but it was persuasive enough for the time. The elves left Avilarn without ever revealing themselves openly to the humans, taking their most treasured possessions, and sealing away their sacred places. A vigil would be maintained on the island, watching the humans from the shadows, checking for signs that they might be developing the ability to sail beyond the island's shores. And they didn't...not for some time. For the men of Avilarn, it was an age, but for the elves, only just long enough to become complacent.

The elves' fear--that Man might somehow gain the ability to sail from Avilarn to the other islands of the Ascade on which they made their home--slowly faded, as it seemed beyond the grasp of the primitive folk to do so. Few genuinely subscribed to the belief that it was even possible, but among those who did, the prevailing assumption was that they would do so in order to conquer more land from the elves--a myopic and tragically self-absorbed fallacy. When no such motive arose, even the most ardent watchers grew complacent.

In fact, Man would do just that, but not for the reasons the elves feared. True, there were those who were curious what elven ruins might be found on the other islands--visible, as they were, from the highest peaks--and some, bolstered by unconfirmed sightings of fey folk in the shadowed woods, even wondered if elves lived still in those places. But that was hardly enough to motivate them to dare the churning seas.

It was a inevitable that the scattered human factions would encounter one another. Avilarn is a fairly large island--large enough, perhaps, for a modern duchy, or even a small, sovereign state. But when thousands become tens of thousands, the relatively arid lands of Avilarn were quickly gobbled up by the expanding population. Soon, scouts and outriders began clashing at the edges of each nascent civilization. War came soon after.

The elves watched in horror and wonder as the human tribed clashed in ever-greater conflicts. They could not fathom how a tribe could willingly sacrifice as much as a tenth of their population simply to battle over distant lands and squabbles about exact boundaries. They were revolted by accounts of raids on defenseless villages, of murders committed over such appalling matters as familial pride or differing spiritual beliefs. And finally, they witnessed an unthinkable catastrophe, as a human tribe, after a long series of back-and-forth conflicts, completely annihilated their rival, claiming their lands, raping their women, enslaving the weak, and eradicating their culture and history.

Now, it is not as if elves had never encountered such atrocities, nor even that they had not faced them among their own kind. It was not so much the actual killing or enslavement that so strained their understanding--it was the idea that one people might destroy another so completely, without preserving any of their history, their collective memory. To the elves, this is the very lifeblood of a people, the only true immortality. Various clans have developed different ways of preserving this memory--often by providing a home for the spirits of departed ancestors in great trees, barrows, or stone monuments--but there was always some effort made to preserve the past at all cost...even at the cost of the lives and existence of the living tribe.

It was after this first cultural annihilation that the idea began to germinate among the elves that a true, lasting solution would be necessary, though it would take some time for the idea to gain the support of the majority of minds.

Meanwhile, ever more warfare took place, as the increasingly crowded island of Avilarn grew too constricting for the human settlers. Of the original scattering of factions, warfare produced two major powers, equally matched, each unable to unseat the other from the island.

One faction was known for embracing elven civilization, imitating the folk they imagined building the ruins that studded their home island. They thought of their culture as superior, and in their conquest of other tribes, tended to simply annihilate cultural heritage that did not agree with their own. They tended to enslave, rather than vassalize, and kept enslaved people in a permanent state of subjugation, rather than assimilating them.

Their rival faction, though also built from conquest, tended to eschew more advanced technologies and the influence of elves. Generally, their stock were those who were more likely to heed the warnings and manipulation of elves, and had generally kept to the shores, while their rivals were those who forced their way into sacred and forbidden elven holds further inland. The people of the shores gradually banded together, conquered tribes yielding authority to stronger neighbors, maintaining their own tribal legacy, if not direct command of their lands and people.

Eventually, the people of the shores nearly surrounded the people of the valley. From their ivory cities, claimed from the retreating elves, the men of the valley maintained their cultural superiority, but secretly worried about being encircled by enemies. As the disparate peoples of the shore were gradually unified, word traveled inland, emboldening slaves who were ultimately of those bloodlines, chipping away at the image of superiority cultivated by those in power. Society was nearing a tipping point.

It was at this point that a daring initiative was undertaken, one not a single elf could have dared to imagine was possible. The brightest archaeologists of the valley pushed deeper into the elven ruins, penetrating the ancient defenses, overpowering eternal defenders, and learning to combat the magical wards. The elves could not have imagined the willingness of so many men to die horribly against such defenses, simply for the promise of learning what lay inside.

And eventually, they found it: the sacred treasures of the elven people. Their memory and legacy, their sacrosanct identity itself. It is not known exactly what was to be found therein; undoubtedly, there were tombs, treasure hordes, and monuments of ancestral memory. Virtually no artifacts of the excavation of Avilarn are known to exist, save for a few highly debated pieces that contradict one another. The treasures would have traded hands so many times, and were subject to so many intervening disasters, that they could literally be anywhere, and are most likely destroyed.

Whatever it was, the discovery was enough to give the people of the valley a considerable advantage. They gained knowledge of magic for the first time, and no doubt wielded some sort of ancient power, meant to be reserved for the elves. They carved a path to the sea, and began construction of a seafaring fleet, seemingly out of nowhere.

Ironically, the people of the shores, who had long plied the shoreline with shallow-water vessels, had been watched closely by elven sentinels, and prevented from happening upon any secrets that might allow them to sail beyond their lagoons and rivers. Meanwhile, the people of the valley, with virtually no seafaring ability, were largely ignored--and it was they who, in a single year, would build a fleet capable of carrying a significant settling force to the rest of the Ascadian Isles.

Clearly, the opportunity existed to put a stop to this before it got out of hand, but the elves were simply too stunned and saddened by the violation of their sacred places. It is important to note that elven peoples rarely act as one until they have achieved consensus--indeed, it is a grievous violation of social obligation for any individual or minority group to take any action that might represent their people without said consensus. Thus, in the wake such a shocking and confounding development, while there was no shortage of elves willing and able to sail to Avilarn and deal with the problem once and for all, there was no notable intervention before the fleet set sail.