Elves, Gentle Folk (Truedyl)
by Marco Dalmonte English translation by Gary DaviesThe history of the Truedyl began with the expedition of Ilsundal towards Brun. The Truedyl clan decided to stop and colonise the High Lands of Glantri, and here lived in peace with the neighbouring elven clans until the disastrous nuclear explosion that in 1700 BC devastated the area and forced the elves to flee underground in order to survive the radiation. The Truedyl were thus separated from the rest of the elves, and started a long underground journey full of hardships and dangers in the search of a place in which to see again the light of the sun. During these ominous years, the strongest and wisest clan chiefs perished, many of their young were eaten by the beasts of the underground, and the cruel Thanatos led them in their dreams, convinced that they had been punished for the actions committed on the surface and for having created forbidden and dangerous knowledge. When finally many years later they resurfaced in the northern forests of the present Five Shires, at that time completely uninhabited, the Truedyl were a people of a broken and moribund spirit. They saw the beauty of nature around themselves, but are no longer able to enjoy it, burdened by the sense of guilt and desperation for the tragedy caused by their race. Thus becoming ever more apathetic and began to follow a philosophy of extreme pacifism, called the Way of Immobility. According to this philosophy, every elf must do the least possible, limiting itself to only do what is necessary for daily survival remaining in peace with the other living creatures and without making plans for the future. The rest of the time is spent reflecting on what happened in the past and his own errors, on their own life and on the ways for correcting the wrongs made in the past, in this way find the wisdom necessary in order to gain the forgiveness of the Immortals. The Truedyl lived in this mild and modest way for centuries, and also when the hin arrived in the region around 1300 BC and met these peaceful elves (who are nicknamed the Gentle Folk), their philosophy of life didn’t change. In 1000 BC, when the humanoids invaded en mass the Five Shires, the pacifism and the extreme submissiveness of the Truedyl ended with them at risk of extinction, and so it was Ilsundal, knowing of their situation, to transfer them into the Hollow World, in an unexplored forest among the lands of the Neathar. Here the Spell of Preservation has prevented a change in the nature of the Truedyl, which have continued for centuries to not pay heed to life and to dispel sentiments and urges, looking for refuge in meditation and in the state of semi-consciousness given artificially by the consumption of somnastis (a plant with effects of dependency). Among the Truedyl no warriors exist, and those few that have knowledge of magic must be constantly pushed by the Immortals to not forget it and to teach it to their ever less numerous descendents, in order to not lose the ancestral legacy that distinguishes them. The more peaceful Immortals (Alphatia, Koryis, Ilsundal, Lornasen and the Demiurge) have taken under their own protective wing the Gentle Folk, even if the latter don’t show great regard for the religion, limiting themselves to recognise the presence of the Immortals and to constantly plead forgiveness for the wrongs of the past. Thanks to their intervention, the woods of the Gentle Folk is becoming a reserve rarely visited by the Neathar, which, because of the strange runes spread all around the perimeter of the woods of the Truedyl, believe that powerful spirits of the forests dwell in those woods, and prefer to not venture inside, pushing to the limit of the trees only in order to bring gifts and offering of food in order to attract the protection of the “spirits”.