Elves

A long lived race, connected almost universally to the Ever-Living Empress, reside largely within her mysterious forests. Elves are not known to die of age, though the eldest show signs of feebleness and grey hair. More often, elves tend to grow gradually more detached from the world. After five hundred years of life, those who grow weary of the waking, mortal world, decide to enter a long-trance where they enter the Elven-dreaming, where most intend to remain until the end of days.

Deeply connected to their native forests, the Elves are by and large, a patient and gentle race though they are known to have capricious and fey moods at times with the shorter lived races who trespass on their lands. Their craftspeople are renowned for their care and attention to detail, creating beautiful and lightweight goods, often with natural motifs.

Castes
The Elves have traditionally been divided into three casts, politely known as Golden, Silver and Copper. They are named for the most common hair colour of each caste; Golden Elves being largely fair-haired, Silver Elves wearing white hair and Copper Elves having tawny hair, ranging from coppery red to jet black. Elves hold these castes as sacred and believe the division is divinely ordained, though there is at least some mobility between them.

Golden Elves
Most Golden Elves are fair haired, though many are white haired and a few are tawny haired. These Elves are highly reclusive, residing in hidden cities deep within the forest, built from white stone. Many say that they are favourites of the Empress, excelling in magic and sword play. They dedicate their lives to careful study and craft and are the most likely to look down on other castes, even other High-Elves who have white or dark hair are regarded with suspicion as potential agents of the Dark Elves.

Silver Elves
Silver Elves are also known as Dark Elves or Drow. They are seen as the furthest from the Empress; more fickle and individualistic than the other castes, and more likely to find solace in different deities. They are known to dwell more in labyrinthine cities beneath the earth. Most of their caste has gained an ashen hue to their skin as they adapted to underground life, though there are rare exceptions who are almost universally bone-pale. Much maligned by other Elves, they are seen as a mixed blessing by other races; they are given to unsavory alliances, murdering trespassers and even raiding but are also eager traders of goods unavailable from other Elves and most often quickest to recognize and band together with other folk in times of great crisis.

Copper Elves
Most commonly referred to as Wood Elves, they are also called Wild Elves. These Elves are the most numerous and the most active along the edge of the woods, where they serve as scouts and guardians for the Elvish people. Generally they share the Elves' distrust of outsiders, but they due to their position along the borderlands, they tend to interact with other peoples more than their cousins. As such, when Elves are found living and adventuring outside the Empress's Woods, it is most often Copper Elves. As they are the most widely spread of the Elves, they are also the most varied culturally. Most live in villages, built into the forest around them as a method of camouflage, but some live as nomads in light canvas homes dragged by stags or even amongst small platforms within the tree tops themselves.

Elf-Friend
Although in general a highly reclusive race, Elves have awarded the honour of Elf-Friend to certain rangers, druids and political allies over the centuries who have proven their worth in the eyes of the Elves. Those who receive the title are treated similar to a full-blooded Elf of their stature, with Elves failing to honour the title receiving harsh chastisements.