Elves

The People of the Mask
"Elf" is the name given to those who suffered under the rule of the Demon Princess Lolth. Lolth's chosen virtues were deception, betrayal, and murder, and she shaped her servants to have natural affinity for these tasks.

Elves are lithe and dexterous, typically more agile and acrobatic than pure bloods. They move with almost supernatural grace, and they show more natural ability with blood metal than any other race. They are not naturally resilient, however. They have also lost the ability (along with the need for) sleep, instead requiring only a short period of rest each day.

Few outside the Elven people know of Lolth's most devious work on her slaves - in her desire to create the perfect infiltrators, she made each elf face indistinguishable from every other. Male and female, young and old, their features are flawless, eerily symmetrical, and utterly identical.

This created significant challenges for the elves once they found themselves free of Lolth. Obvious problems, such as difficulty telling complete strangers from close family members, surfaced immediately. Other, more subtle issues crept in as well - many elves struggled with crippling identity crisis'.

Lolth had done her work well, ensuring that scarring or tattooing of the face is nearly impossible. The skin of elves' faces is tough, and even if one manages to pierce it, facial wounds and markings heal and vanish within minutes.

In desperation, elves began wearing masks made unique to each individual. The practice quickly spread, and is now ubiquitous, and it is nearly unheard of for an elf to go maskless in all but the most private circumstances. To be stripped of one's mask represents the severest form of punishment in elf culture.

Under Lolth, these attributes served to make elves skilled assassins, spies, and thieves. Freed from her domination, the elves have found ways to turn her dark gifts to beneficial ends. Elves value community and individual freedom, and believe strongly making distinction between body and soul - the face and the heart.

Most elves maintain a grim fatalism about life, accepting hardship and good fortune with world weary cynicism. Though one may occasionally meet an optimistic elf, they are the exception. Most elves walk through life with a shrug and an acerbic quip, never allowing any challenge to slow their progress, nor any good fortune lure them into naïve hope for the future.

In spite of this, most elves strive for excellence, or at least for recognition. To be identified by their accomplishments or skill more readily than by their own names is seen as the highest level of achievement, a final victory over the demon queen who sought create a race of interchangeable, unknowable slaves.

Appearance
Due to Lolth's meddling, most elves share similar physical traits. They are typically short, averaging six inches shorter than humans. An overweight elf is a rare sight, as their bodies are resistant to weight gain. They lack any kind of hair, on head or body.

Their skin is dark brown, and their ears angle to points at the top.

Not many who are not themselves elven can claim to have seen an elf's face, but if the rumors are true then the face that all elves share is unremarkable. A nose, two eyes, a mouth - a face that wouldn't look out of place on a pure blood human. Those that have seen an unmasked elf (usually after that elf is dead) say that despite the face being ordinary, it is unsettling in its lifeless perfection.

Female elves are almost indistinguishable from males (though most elf masks are gender specific). They are slightly shorter on average, and their build is somewhat more feminine. If clothed similarly, even other elves have trouble telling unmasked men from women (if they remain silent; elf voices are gender distinct, similar to pure bloods).

Society and Relations
After being freed from Lolth's domination, a few elves wandered away into the wastes. Most, however, clung together and moved west as a group. Those that survived the journey made a home for themselves in the area the history books call Kansas. They founded Picari in A.B. 24, and later Diethyl, founded in A.B. 78 in northern New Mexico, and finally Pyrethrin, founded in A.B. 79 in northwestern Colorado.

Elven settlements are marked by their seemingly haphazard layout. If viewed from a height, Picari looks as though the planner had carefully laid out each street and building with specific purpose, then tore the blueprints to shreds and stitched them back together at random. It is comically easy to lose one's bearings in the disjointed roads and alleyways - and even easier to lose a pursuer when on the run.

Elves regard other touched races and the timmen with caution, but not hostility. Relations with pure bloods are nearly always hostile - in the frontier, some elves and pure bloods learn to work together, but as societies there is open war.

They regard pure bloods with a mixture of contempt and bitterness - though their altered bodies give them some significant natural advantages over pure bloods, some deep part of them remembers and longs for their ancestral form. As to the timmen, Elves as a whole are indifferent, having little trouble accepting the metal men as being more than simple machines.

Masks
The use of masks became prevalent shortly after the founding of Picari as a pragmatic solution to the social problem of all elves looking nearly identical. In the years since, they have become central to elf culture, with an intricate set of laws and customs developing around them.

Masks can be made of a variety of materials, but are typically made of thin metal or animal hide. It is not uncommon for an elf to have several masks - some to serve as a quick replacement if the mask is damaged, others designed for special ceremonies or tasks - but they always maintain the same visual design, unique to each elf.

Elven children are given simple masks by their parents, which are replaced several times as the child grows. These masks typically bear distinguishing marks to aid parents in telling each child apart from others, but are otherwise unadorned.

Elves nearly always design their own mask upon reaching adulthood. The mask creation process has become a coming of age ceremony for elves. The specifics of the custom vary between elf communities, but usually involve the young elf leaving the settlement to gather materials for his mask, returning only when construction is complete. The decoration ceremony then takes place: the young elf's father accompanies him or her into a special chamber, where the older assists the younger in applying markings to the mask. Upon completion, a celebration is held, and the young elf is formally recognized as an adult by the community.

Elf masks vary widely in design, but nearly always bear an identifying mark that associates an elf with her family, and often another mark associated with their home town.

Elves are permitted to alter the design of their mask only under the strictest of circumstances. The most common reasons for mask alterations are marriage and the death of an immediate family member. In each case, the visual design of the mask is added to, but never remade.

Wearing a mask other than the one that belongs to him is known as impersonation, and is a serious offense in any elf community. For a child, the punishment varies by age. Those that are near adulthood are often whipped, stoned, or imprisoned in isolation for several weeks. For an adult, there is rarely a second chance. The elf is exiled - stripped of their mask, branded in several places, and sent into the frontier. Exiled elves are shunned by most communities of any race, and rarely survive long.

Desperados
Elves generally eschew melee because of their relative frailty, preferring instead to engage enemies at range or from the shadows. This preference for making war at a distance, coupled with their natural accuracy and grasp of outsider metals, encourages elves to pursue classes such as sorcerers, rangers, and rogues.