First off, I want to state immidiately that this is going to deviate somewhat from established DS canon. That's intended, so please don't flame me for it.
I've been reading the "Spelljammers in DS" thread, and it sparked an idea I came up with a while ago. I'm DM for a group of fairly high level characters who are going to be journeying to the Last Sea. Once they get there, I'll probably run them through the adventure from the boxed set, or something like it.
What caught my interest was the descriptions of the ghost elves. It occurred to me that they seem a lot like conventional moon elves. So I got to thinking about how moon elves would get to DS. SJ jumped into the fray. So here's my idea. This is partly a joke to my players, who once had a long-runnng SJ campaign, and partly because I like to have lots of angles on everything in my worlds.
Anyway: just after the Mind Lords entered the orbs, all of the Last Sea elves (the ones descended from the halflings) died in an inbred-caused diseased. A few years later, an Imperial Fleet armada crashed into what's now Sylvandretta. (As an aside, my theory on DS and SJ mixing is that the DS sphere is in the Known Spheres but is only penetrable at extremely infrequent and brief intervals. This armada was engaged in a battle, and was thrown through the barrier, and barely limped the planet)
Once they determined their ship was totally wrecked, the elves settled down into the forest. They determined how different the planet was from what they were used to (they're both magic and steel-heavy), they established a policy of staying out of the way of everyone. However, over the several thousand years between then and now, it's morphed into outright xenophobia. The elves have forgotten their space-faring past, their magic and steel is hidden away and forgotten, and severe inbreeding (there were less than a hundred survivors of the crash) has reduced their lifespan to less than 200 years.
Because my players like to fix things (they actually held the alliance at the Mauraders of Nibenay together despite my best efforts to break it apart) and are fairly good at it, I like to give them a small chance. I'm thinking the only person who remember who the elves really are would be a passenger on the original armada (a bionoid, maybe?) who'd they'd need to find and convince to help them. And then, of course, they've got to convince the elves themselves to change.
So, what do you think? A little weird, I agree, but that's why I put in the Last Sea. Also has plenty of chances for the players to be stumbling around old SJ ruins (which will be inoperable due to many thousand years of neglect). Another thing to make the Last Sea different and memorable. Any major problems you see with it?
well, for one, the elven armada is likely still alive. It may not be *flyable*, but it could be one big glade of weird, living plant ala Monarch's Fall Glade from (FR) Fall of Myth Drannor. Basically a big maze of living plant, maybe serving as the elves' main camp/fortress.
It might also be a good oppertunity to introduce some of the weirder monsters from D&D that aren't normally in DS, such as various plant critters (mutations of the armada?) and assorted, immortal fey.
Hope that helps
It was in relation to the Cleansing Wars, so if you can somehow track down the old boards and look for that subject, you'll find loads of info from a lot of the people that post on these boards now.
Anyways, one of my theories was that the elves were actually made up of two different classes (that would be the traditionally meaning of class and not the dnd player character class, by the way). The first was the elves as you see them now. These were the lower-caste and basically formed the warriors, workers, bards, and so on.
The upper class was led by more willowy, more "traditional" elves, who were fairly arrogant and made up the aristocracy. My take is that Albeorn (who would one day become Androponis) utilized this caste-system to his advantage and divided the elves. The upper caste decided to stay in the forest and defend their cities, confident that they could easily defeat anything a human could throw at them. The lower caste, led by Coraanu, ran for it and got out just in time (ran all the way to the Outer Planes - yar, I got proof - in my opinion). The upper caste was wiped from the face of Athas with the exception of those who were located in Saragar when the Mind Lords closed the borders.
That's my take.
And that class/caste system is also interesting. I'll need to find that old thread.
Thanks for the imput, if anyone else had ideas, I'd love to hear them.