The Memory of Elarion
What follows is a reconstruction of memory-fragments gathered from the dreams of the eldest Elves, from songs that have been sung since before Aedelore had a name, and from the few relics that survived the crossing. Elarion cannot be visited, cannot be verified, cannot be truly known. It can only be remembered, and even memory fades.
- Compiled by Lorekeeper Aelindra of House Lorendel, from the Scrolls of Exile, in the hope that what is remembered can never be entirely lost
A World Before This World
Know then that the Elves of Aedelore are not natives to this land. Before the first stone of Lorenzia was laid, before the forests of Rivermount knew the touch of Elven hands, before Aedelore itself was more than a dream in the minds of gods-there was Elarion.
Elarion was a world of twin suns, one of gold and one of silver, whose light mingled in the sky to create colors that have no names in any tongue spoken today. The cities of Elarion rose in spirals toward the heavens, grown rather than built, shaped by magic so refined that stone and crystal flowed like water at the command of the Weavers.
For it is written in the oldest songs: Elarion was not merely a place. It was a promise. A world where the Elves had evolved over countless millennia, where magic and nature existed in perfect harmony, where the Void was nothing but a distant whisper beyond the stars.
The Golden Age
The Elves of Elarion lived for millennia without war, without want, without the shadow that would eventually consume them. They pursued art and knowledge, music and magic, philosophy and the cultivation of the spirit. Their libraries contained the wisdom of ages; their gardens bloomed with flowers that have no equivalent in Aedelore.
They had mastered the Weave in ways that even Tohu''s faithful cannot replicate today. They could reshape reality with a thought, traverse vast distances in a single step, extend their already-long lives to spans that made even immortality seem brief. Some say the greatest of the Elarion Weavers could glimpse the threads of fate itself.
And yet, for all their power, they did not see the darkness coming until it was too late.
The Coming of the Shadow
How the Void found Elarion, no one knows. Perhaps their great magic created ripples that attracted its attention. Perhaps some Weaver delved too deep into mysteries best left unexplored. Perhaps the Void simply reaches all worlds eventually, given sufficient time.
It began with whispers. Strange dreams. A growing sense of unease that the philosophers could not explain and the Weavers could not dispel. Then came the first Void-touched-Elves whose eyes held depths that should not exist, whose shadows moved wrongly, who spoke of "understanding" with smiles that held no warmth.
By the time the true nature of the threat was recognized, the corruption had spread too far to contain. The Void had found purchase in Elarion, and it was hungry.
The Final Days
The war for Elarion lasted three hundred years by the counting of that world-a mere heartbeat in the life of an immortal race, yet long enough to see everything they had built begin to crumble. The twin suns themselves began to dim as the Void spread across the sky, consuming light, consuming hope, consuming all that Elarion had been.
In the end, the greatest Weavers made a terrible choice. They could not save their world, but they could save their people-or some of them. Using magic that burned out their own souls in the casting, they tore open a pathway through the Void itself, a bridge to a world that Zelgor had not yet touched.
They called it the Crossing, and it was the end of Elarion and the beginning of the Elves'' new chapter in Aedelore.
What Was Lost
For it is written: to speak of what was lost is to court despair, yet to forget is to betray those who sacrificed everything.
The libraries of Elarion-a million years of accumulated knowledge-burned or were swallowed by the Void. The gardens, the crystal spires, the great works of art that had no equal-all gone. Most of the population, those who could not reach the portal ships in time, remained behind to face the darkness.
But perhaps the greatest loss was innocence itself. The Elves who fled Elarion left behind the belief that evil could be defeated, that light would always triumph, that their mastery of magic made them safe. They arrived in Aedelore as refugees, humbled, traumatized, carrying within them the knowledge that the Void could find any world, consume any civilization, end any story.
This is why the Elves guard Aedelore so fiercely. This is why they watch the shadows with eyes that never rest. They know, in a way that no other race can know, what happens when the Void is underestimated.
They have seen it. They have survived it. And they will do anything to ensure that Aedelore does not share Elarion''s fate.