Neuth

Introduction
Often called "Elfland" by its human neighbors, Neuth is the home of the forest Elves. The Elves believe themselves to be better endowed with intellect, noble spirit, and pure aspirations than humankind. A couple generations ago, this conceit impelled the Elves to abandon their isolation and follow a fanatic monarch into a ruthless war against their neighbors. After overrunning most of the northwest, the Goblins rose against them and collapsed their short-lived conquests. When the tide of battle turned, Ider Bolis, the Elven capital, was sacked and the priceless ancient library was claimed as booty by the victors. Yet this very act of theft may be responsible for the new enlightenment that is sweeping over the continent.

Rise of the High Prince
The Elven city of Letho was one of the most remarkable jewels in the crown of the Lloroi Empire. Neuth (Elven for “Abiding Place of the Elves”) was a stable bulwark at the northern fringe of civilization. Warm sea currents made the climate mild the year around; gratefully the Elves worshiped Miodmuiri, the sea, and Oenglamh, the sun. This peaceful world was destroyed by the upheavals of the Cataclysm. The vast forests of Neuth were shattered and set aflame by lightning and blazing meteor showers. The sea floor buckled and the coast rolled back hundreds of miles to the south. The alteration of topography placed Letho in a depression that rapidly filled in with muck from the surrounding lakes and newly formed streams. The mud buried the city; only the high, slender towers remained in view.

Somehow, amid the chaos of the Cataclysm, a natural leader, Seolan, gathered the survivors of the Elven civilization around him. He feared that his people stood in danger of losing their hold on the past and plunging into barbarism. This threat he fought with tireless energy, charging every Elf who knew a useful trade or art to make himself known and to do what he knew best. Most important of all, every craftsman, artist and scientist was required to teach what he knew to as many apprentices as possible. Seolan’s authority, informal at first, was legitimized eventually by his acclamation as the High Prince of Neuth.

Seolan installed his incipient government in a semi-intact town named Pherdiad. To help him administer his program of cultural preservation, the prince chose educated Elves as subordinates. By their careful planning, starvation was prevented and marauders were driven out of Elfland. Books and scrolls were gathered from the ruins, and schools were established to prevent the "barbarization" of the rising generation which had never known the Empire.

Seolan laid the groundwork for an autocratic state and his successors extended the power of the High Prince. Only a century after the Cataclysm, the Elves dwelled in orderly villages where scholars still pondered the classics of old, while elsewhere Men lived in caves and fought with stone axes. But the common Elf was not a free creature; his work, his travel, his obligations were dictated by a semi-divine monarch and a growing web of administrators. The Elves’ herculean attempt to extend the life of the past had spawned a stilted culture, tradition-bound, caste-ridden and hostile to novelty and experimentation.

The first five centuries after the Cataclysm saw Neuth grow into a secure land where poets amused a luxuriant court and the more learned Elves debated points of philosophy. Yet, despite the mild climate of the post-Cataclysm, the winds of change turned chillingly upon Elfland. When the Elves journeyed outside Neuth to worship Miodmuiri at the seacoast, they observed some of the scattered barbarian tribes. Comparing them with their own dignified culture reinforced the Elves’ conviction that they were the best and most favored of all races. Yet even while poets composed panegyrics to Elven glory, trouble was looming on the borders.

Sion Hac Occupation
Says the ancient biographer Caladh in his Lives of the Seolians: “In the reign of Dalan, for what cause I know not, a blast from the gods smote us; and unexpectedly from the regions of the west, beyond the Spires of the Eternal, invaders of obscure race marched in confidence of victory against our land. By main force they easily seized it; and having overthrown the prince in Pherdiad, they then burned our towns ruthlessly and treated all our people with a cruel hostility. Finally they appointed one of their number as king, who forced all the county to carry tribute to Pherdiad.”

The invaders—called the Sion Hac (“Foreign Beasts”)— dominated Pherdiad for four generations. Their control of eastern Elfland, however, seems to have been tenuous, for it was there that native leaders began the revolt against them. Perhaps ruling the complex civilization of Neuth had weakened the barbarian Sion Hac, or the Elves belatedly learned better fighting tactics. Regardless, their rising finally freed Elfland from human domination. They razed Pherdiad, which had become a symbol of their humiliation, and built a new capital that they called Ider Bolis (“Eternal Victory”).

After the liberation, Elfland became a grimmer place. Gone was the spontaneous enjoyment of life that had prevailed before the invasion. The belief in Elven superiority became an active doctrine in which the Elves buried their shame. Most to suffer from it were the descendants of the human Sion Hac and their Elven concubines. These people were called the Ercii (“Mixed Bloods”) and relegated to the status of pariahs. Not permitted into any caste, they survived by doing undignified work that Elves spurned. Laws forbidding their marriage to pureblood Elves perpetuated their kind and kept the problem of their existence alive.

Elven history is now given over to local matters for several generations. They sealed the borders of their kingdom and slew all trespassers who violated their seclusion. What interest Neuth had in foreign places was restricted to the sacred pilgrimages to the sea.

The Miviorian War
When the next invasion came, it was not the work of barbarian peoples. In the latter ninth century, prosperity led the Miviorians to crave expansion of their realm into the lands north of Serpent Bay. They established a base that they called Addat and laid claim to the surrounding area, vanquishing the thin population of barbarians and Trolls. Elfland watched the invasion with horror.

Every Elf hoped to someday make a pilgrimage to the sea. Now, suddenly, foreigners were turning their processions back from the coast or exacting tribute for passage. Vengefully, the Elves rallied for their first war outside their own borders.

Unfortunately, Elven tactics derived from fighting the primitive Sion Hac almost two centuries before. The modern armies of Mivior broke up their outdated formations and took thousands of prisoners. The Elves scrambled back to their borders, frantically studying their options. At last an embassy (made up of drafted Ercii) arrived in Addat to negotiate rights to passage to the sea. The Miviorians condescended to allow pilgrims transit in exchange for a nominal tax. They were looking ahead to the trading possibilities these pilgrims might provide when they arrived hungry and tired from the north.

The reigning High Prince, Ffaraon, could not endure the shame of Elfland’s defeat and abdicated. Elir, an Elf who had been training for the priesthood of Oenglamh, accepted the throne in his place. Elir, true to his background, initiated a program of religious revival to offset the despair of the defeat. His mass meeting drew hundreds of thousands of Elves together in fervent prayer. Elir’s priests invoked the power of heaven against the offending Miviorians. In the ensuing hysteria, the part-human Ercii were subjected to another cycle of persecution. One group of them, hated more than most for their adept use of magic, gave up life in Elfland and fled to foreign parts. Finding scant hospitality wherever they ventured, they and their descendants took up a nomadic way of life and became known as the Wandering People.

Elir’s prayers seemed to be answered when, on his deathbed, his excited couriers brought him word that a miracle had taken place in the lands of Men. Dreadful monsters like none ever seen upon Minaria were slaying humans by the thousands and turning their cities into tombs. It was, of course, a report of the coming of “the abominations of the land and the horrors of the air.”

“It is the avenging hand of the gods!” declared Elir, who died joyful.

But the monsters failed to destroy mankind, and they had all but vanished by the end of the tenth century. Men were again fast becoming a threat to Elfland, but all Elir’s successors could do was pray.

The Opening of Elven Trade
The next prince, Huardar, was a supremely practical Elf. He abandoned Elir’s policy of divine intervention and appraised the situation coldly. A hundred years had passed since the Miviorian War, and the Elves had done little to update their military. Huardar began to recruit human tacticians through the cooperation of Ercii traders. Since the Miviorian War, Ercii had begun to work in the undignified business of trade, sometimes going to human cities to live. At this time, the Muetarians were conquering the cities of Kalruna-Sasir and many defeated officers had gone into exile. Approached by Ercii agents, many of them consented to take service with the prince of Elfland.

The trainers received an adequate, if reserved, welcome and were placed in charge of the Elven training camps. Even the lowest caste Elf chafed at being subject to Men, but they yielded to the wisdom of the high prince and endured the indignity stoically.

Within a few years, Huardar was ready to test his new army by making incursions into the barbarian borderlands. The Elves’ training, plus their native forest sense, garnered them numerous victories against tribesmen. Subsequent princes continued the policy of adventure and placed a number of Conodras tribes to the east of Elfland under tribute.

Foreign contacts slowly expanded. The government allowed a limited trade, which was carried out by Ercii. The restrictions on profit within Elfland did not apply to trade with humans, so many cunning Ercii traders grew rich. With their capital issuing from trade, Ercii established the new, unregulated businesses of banking and money-lending. For the first time, Ercii individuals had the power to influence the prince’s officials—albeit by bribing the venal elements among them. Pure Elves, forced by ponderous regulations to hoe a too-small farm or labor over a profitless workbench, resented Ercii prosperity, and violent assaults on the Ercii multiplied.

Political Crisis
In the early twelfth century, Dwarven colonizers arrived from the east with the intention of mining the gold veins their agents had discovered north of the Spires of the Eternal. Elir III, the reigning prince, dispatched an army to drive them out, but the Dwarves’ mountaineering skills made for a prolonged campaign. Over the winter, Ider Bolis mobilized for a full-scale war. Meanwhile, the Dwarves had allied with several northern barbarian tribes. The ensuing conflict became a costly stalemate, finally ended by treaty. The Dwarves were allowed to mine their discoveries and maintain a fortress there for a period of a hundred years. In return, they guaranteed their neutrality in any Elven war and would pay a quarter of what they mined to Elfland. The city that the Dwarves built was called Aws Noir.

But no sooner was one foreign crisis resolved than another raised its head. East of Elfland, the Vidarnan dukes were engaging in military colonization on Conodras territory. Since some of these tribes were tributary to Elfland, aggression there was an affront to the Elves. However, Elir III, aged and tired, did nothing. He saw no good in intervening in a human war; moreover, his time was now taken up by complex intrigues against his royal cousins. Against their approval, he wished to pass his throne on to his daughter, Ideh. Unfortunately, although Ideh did follow him, her time on the throne was wasted in mollifying her jealous relatives. She died suddenly, a suspected victim of poison; her young sons were passed over, and all disappeared while kinsmen quarreled about the succession.

The violence that was rising among the Elves gave evidence that even the diffused influence of the outside world and the halting attempts of Neuth’s princes to modernize were having a demoralizing effect on every level of Elven society.

After a generation of recriminations, assassinations and executions, the impetuous Etirun took the throne. Etirun began by rebuilding the military, which had deteriorated during the dynastic squabbles. What promised to become a successful reign was ruined by Etirun’s maladroit entrance into Immerite internal politics. He provided the catalyst for Immer’s Ducal War, which aligned Elfland with the despised Vidarnan dukes.

As the war dragged on, Etirun lost prestige at home. Why, his subjects wanted to know, was Elven blood and treasure being wasted in a human civil war? Even the troops in the field grumbled as morale fell and war attritioned their numbers. Events finally released Elfland from the hated war; Etirun, pursuing Conodras raiders, was surprised in the night and captured. In exchange for release, Etirun had to cede all disputed borderland to Immer and pay a large ransom. The prince went home in disgrace and his last years were bitter and unproductive.

The new few reigns were ones of gloom and ferment in Elfland. Scandals disgraced the court; a prince was exposed as having taken Dwarven bribes in exchange for extending the old peace treaty for another century; another outraged public opinion by taking Ercii concubines into the royal harem.

Boewenn's War
A formless anger and fear spread through the population. Their leaders were worthless, and foreigners repeatedly bested them in war; Ercii swaggered like princes through the towns, while Elves suffered under crushing taxes. In this feverish climate, a new “chosen race” obsession flourished as an antidote for the spreading insecurity. To escape their imprisoning castes, some Elves fled the border; others joined bandit gangs in the deep woods. Royal administrators were mobbed and beaten to death. and caste members destroyed their places of work. The kingdom tottered on the brink of dissolution.

At last the fury and resentment found itself a leader. His name was Boewenn, of the Bard caste. He told the populace their anger was right and just, and called for the downfall of the corrupt prince. “A people’s prince!” became the cry as mobs gathered behind him.

When troops arrived to arrest Boewenn, his oratory seduced them and they also acclaimed him as high prince. A spontaneous march on the capital began; the government collapsed and fled for the borders before the mobs reached the gates of Ider Bolis. The feeble flight of a prince sanctioned by thirteen centuries of tradition proved how far the decay of the monarchy had gone.

Boewenn liberalized the oppressive caste system. Officials of the former regime underwent public trials; the condemned became members of convict labor gangs. Boewenn broke all contact with foreign peoples and drove their traders out of Elfland. Worse, he ordered the expulsion of the Ercii minority. Most Ercii left to establish a precarious life in alien lands, although a large colony of them settled in the wilderness north of Hothior.

Boewenn commenced a rapid expansion of the army, admitting even females if they showed strength and fierceness. He set convict gangs to excavating the site of Letho in search of ancient magic weapons. Then, to test his power, he attacked and sacked Aws Noir, taking the stored treasure and rich mines for Elfland. But all this was only preparation for his dream—a war to destroy his human neighbors everywhere.

Fought in the early fourteenth century, Boewenn’s War would take a large manuscript to describe in detail. The Elves themselves commemorate it with this “Ballad of Boewenn”: "Boewenn, Boewenn, the prince of the Elves, He gave us the right to be proud of ourselves. His courage was huge and his honor was great, Lead us, our lord, to a glorious fate.""As we marched into Mivior, We met their men upon the moor. We took their best and we threw them down, And razed the walls of Addat town.""Hothior, Hothior, where is your boast, That you would ruin the Elven host? Is it in the flames of Tadafat’s mound, Or in the corpses on the ground?""We followed the rout of Immer’s famed king, Then leveled his county and rose up to sing: ‘Down with inglory and up with Boewenn; ‘O give us the power to slaughter all Men!’"After his initial victories, Boewenn was defeated. His corpse was identified among the slain in Ider Bolis after its sacking by an alliance of Boewenn’s victims. A greater loss was the ancient library of Neuth. Fortunately, Elfland’s conquerors were advanced and educated civilizations; many more books were carried off as booty than were destroyed. But the action symbolized to the Elves, more than anything else could, that unless they could come to terms with the present, the past they loved would be lost as well.

Post-War Elfland
The human victors selected a new high prince, Gwawl, a cousin of the old royal family before Boewenn. While the humans robbed the kingdom, Gwawl attempted to undo all of Boewenn’s reforms. As the Elven population recovered from the stupor of defeat, Gwawl became the focus of national outrage. Dissent and riots spread; Gwawl, losing control of everything beyond the gates of Ider Bolis, turned to his human allies for support. But the kings were no longer interested in the impoverished country; the Elves were considered a foolish, primitive race beneath the consideration of civilized Men. The Miviorians supported him longest, but when the Elven mobs were beating on the palace door, they too abandoned Gwawl. Dragged from his palace, the pathetic prince was torn to pieces in the street.

Maenor, a popular hero of the late war, assumed Gwawl’s throne. Now the myriad problems of reconstruction beset Maenor. The Dwarves had returned to Aws Noir and cut off the Elves’ tribute rights. The economy suffered from the loss of the Ercii, whose industry and expertise was sadly missed.

Maenor took steps to open normal relations with all neighboring powers. Next, he saw that recovery meant the creation of an economy no longer strangled by high taxes, unreasonable regulation and the mismanagement of the workforce. He kept government expenses small by organizing a government with very few functionaries. Instead, he depended on the municipalities to manage more of their own affairs. The law code was rewritten to be short and efficient; the ancient tomes of outworn regulations were symbolically destroyed in a public fire.

Under Maenor, the Elves began to show an outgoing enterprise that few would have expected. A lumbering industry sprang up, floating good shipbuilding timbers down the River Sullen to Addat. Fur garments, art and metal work found favor in other countries. Textile-making, fishing, mining, farming, alchemy and other industries sped Elfland back to strength and health.

Not the least, Maenor’s leadership put an end to the violence that had plagued Elfland’s succession for so long. By the time of the great prince’s death, his son Adillh was the single choice of all the people; they acclaimed him High Prince among universal celebration.