Elf

Once great but past their height, a people often seen in fantasy including this one

Elves were a very influential sapient species for most of Kaf's history. While they at first look like humans, their long pointed ears are a subtle indicator of their preternatural fey nature. Their civilization formed one of the first inter-species alliances, began a lot of what we understand about metaphysics today and even made the moon habitable for a time. Then due to the aftermath of Ghulat Wars, elves were once thought to have died out.
However the events of the Artifice Revolution led to environmental protests by many races, eventually bringing the few elven groups out of isolation and into the world stage.

Basic Information

Anatomy

Elves generally possess a graceful, slender humanoid physique. They are recognizable by their long, pointed ears, their high cheekbones, their wide and expressive eyes filled with vibrantly colored eyes, and their colorful, silky or curly hair. Both male and female elves grow very little thick body hair save for head, eyebrows and pubic area.

Biological Traits

Long pointed ears: Elves have the longest variety of pointed ears among fay. The muscles in the ears of elves enable them to swivel their position. Typically this feature is used to move them towards a sound. Elven ears will also typically move in a certain according to their emotions and thus used to communicate their feelings with each other. Common expressions follow that if they're sad or scared, their ears will droop, and when they cast spells in general, their ears wiggle along with the spell activation.
Enhanced Agility and Dexterity: Elves are agile and nimble, they develop excellent manual dexterity, and able to perform tasks requiring a great deal of precision.
Regeneration Factor: Elves can passively regenerate wounds in a short time via biomagical reactions speeding up the process. The extent of this regeneration prevents the development of scar tissue and even regrow entire limbs within a few minutes to hours however these actions do not set any broken bones on its own. In addition, this magical trait is significantly slowed when the subject is increasingly exhausted or when exposed to substances that interfere with the process.
Agelessness: Elves lack measurable symptoms of aging due to their cells' highly regenerative properties. As such elves do not weaken, slow down, or lose fertility with age giving them great longevity, potentially for centuries. Eventually an elf will die due to mortal injury or disease that is too much for their regenerative capability.

Genetics and Reproduction

Elves reproduce sexually in a fashion identical to other humanoids, with a male elf impregnating a female elf who will give live birth roughly within 18 months.
Elves have a slow rate of reproduction due to a combination of their relatively long gestational period and their short periods of libido for both sexes.
Elves are capable of reproducing hybrid offspring with other humanoids like fay, humans, or spirits in physical form. They are called hvita by the elves though other races typically call them simply half elves.

Growth Rate & Stages

The transition from infancy to childhood takes about the same time as human species but the differences lie after that.    Elf childhood lasts about a century with puberty lasting about a decade or two after. This delayed puberty may be part of the reason why are also famously long-lived, capable of living centuries and remain physically youthful. Although they retain adult youth for the rest of their lives, they are not deathless and can be killed by lethal injury, disease, mental illness, or malnutrition.

Ecology and Habitats

Elven communities have traditionally been in deciduous forests and a few in hidden valleys protected by mountain ranges. Since their reveal in modern times, they have expanded to plains and woodlands, as well as diasporic communities in immigrant heavy places like industrial centers and cities.

Dietary Needs and Habits

Omnivorous but they lean much more towards a primarily plant-based diet. They mainly live on fruits, vegetables, herbs, nuts, seeds, beans and grains. Elves will also consume non-poisonous fungi and animal derived products like eggs or honey. A few elf groups even collect the milk of tamed mammals and covert into dairy products with lower lactose levels. Some elves, occasionally hunt for insects and larvae, mollusks like snails, or even small birds, reptiles, and mammals.

Additional Information

Geographic Origin and Distribution

Various elf groups have been discovered in small hidden communities around the world.

Average Intelligence

Sapient

Perception and Sensory Capabilities

Keen hearing: Most elf ears are long and flexible, allowing them to hear sounds from a distance or hear quieter sounds than creatures with smaller ears. Elven ear muscles allow them to be re-positioned to better hear the location of potential threats as well.
Low light vision: Elves like many other fey can see in very dim light conditions such as moonlight, even in color.

Civilization and Culture

Beauty Ideals

It's also interesting to note that long ears are considered a seductive unisex trait, as much so as breasts are for females or shoulders for males. An elf calling another "tiny-ears" can be pretty offensive, and an otherwise perfectly gorgeous elf lady could fall into depression because of the shortness of her ears.

Gender Ideals

Most elven societies are relatively egalitarian in gender roles as the species low birth rate means that many females are unencumbered by childrearing for centuries and thus and take on many a variety of roles, even hunting. During hunting, the genders still have roles as even though males and females are equipped with ranged weaponry, only the males in the group will have on hand melee weaponry and close in on downed prey. Females will stick to long range in almost any circumstance.
Also once an elf becomes pregnant, they are almost immediately considered sacred and the whole community will put them on a cultural pedestal where are protected and defended against. However they also lose a great degree of autonomy, and highly encouraged to stay in the home, rear the children until they become adults, where they can slowly regain independence.

Average Technological Level

Elves use natural materials for everyday things, taking only what they must from their surrounding flora and fauna. Their clothing is made from plant fibers when possible, and if they kill an animal for its hide, they always use all that they can from the creature. The sinew made from animal tendons is often used as sewing thread, or tie feathers to arrows and serve as their bow ting.
They generally stay away from metal and plastic materials with the exception of construction of magical devices. Select elves extract natural materials like plant resins and animal oils later made into plastics while most metal is imports from interspecies trade or mined by those with pacts from earth elementals.

Common Dress Code

Elves that make their homes in forests often sport clothing that plays off the beauty of the natural world with many vegetal and leafy motifs. Accustomed to a naturalistic lifestyle, these elves often wear clothing woven from plant fibers like flax, ramie, bamboo, hemp, coir. Elves that dwell in arid regions prefer to wear light breathable fabrics like linen and cotton, or in cold areas, wool and cashmere. They can make and wear complicated and intricate beadwork though elves that live in cities tend to bedeck themselves in the latest fashion.

Culture and Cultural Heritage

Socialization
Elf children are closest to their immediate family, where they learn the most by modeling their parents behavior. The ideal elf parent expects their children to accept their word as right without verbal-give and take, though more modern parents are willing to offer reasons for their directive.    
Their children are usually taught the value of patience, making them particularly suited to wizardry spellcraft. Moreover, this patience ensures that they rarely jump to conclusions and take the time get as many details right as possible, which make them excellent judge of characters.
As many elf families produce single children, most kids have their first interaction with their own age group in structured groups of formal learning headed by teachers. Many of these sessions involved teaching natural and social sciences, formal science, and philosophy into their adult life. Elf communities in general have collectivist values and the control of emotional display is highly valued and instilled by these groups.

History

Elves were one of the first significant civilizations to appear on Kaf after that of the Jinni. Before it was thought that they naturally appeared in the world but the recent Out of World theory has textual evidence that elves were originally outworlders that migrated from the dimension of the Norse Deities, Niuheiman in early antiquity.
Much of the records discovered by the Elves suggests that their arrived a three people groups based on light, darkness, and blackness. As the elves settled Kaf, they appeared to further separate themselves based on different philosophies on life. The High Elves focused on exploring their magical heritage and became the ones who are most interested in building cities and civilizations. This lead to them becoming the most common or at least most encountered of elves, in no small part because they tend to be the most adventurous of the elven species. Whilst they are traditionally described as respecting nature heavily, their first true love is magic; this is the race that developed the wizard profession, and they would often exploit their natural talents in arcane magic to make their civilizations work.
Woodland elves prefer the wild to civilization, and are much more reclusive than their High Elf cousins. wood elves still possess an affinity for magic, but place far more importance on living in harmony with nature. Woodland elves decided to detach themselves by settling deep in forested areas where daily contact was only with animals, slyvan fay, and spirits of the forest. While aiming more for harmony with nature rather than trying to control it or themselves, they still found very little to relate to beings outside of the forests. If the high elves defined the archetype of the wizard, than these elves are responsible for the association of their race with bows and arrows, and collaborating with forest fay to create druidic orders.

The Dark elves were made up of outcast elves who didn't fit with the others ideals thus less records have been found about them. It is recorded that they had lighter hair, black to gray skin and focused on rule based on authority through violence and conquest. They also had close associations with Dwarves unlike most theirs of their race.
Once the most widespread of the fey species, Elves (mostly the High) became the defacto non-spirit dominant peoples of Kaf in antiquity. In the young ages of the world, while the other inhabitants struggled to find their place, the elves and their fey kin rapidly grew and expanded as the Faerie Courts, reaching as of then unmatched levels of technology and skill with magic. With each new feat they grew in arrogance and pride, and soon their vast, sprawling capital embodied one of the most powerful empires Kaf had seen, rivaling that of the Jinn....but that was not to last. On what would be later referred to as the Ghulat Wars, the forever-dreaded Shaytan invaded and unleashed their all-consuming wrath upon all life on Kaf. The destruction and death it brought was unspeakable, so much so, that even though a few fey lineages scattered and managed to survive, the elves were not as lucky and the resulting environmental destruction and natural disasters caused the elves on Kaf to drastically reduce in number. With the fall of civilizations it was though that many beings of antiquity died out, including the elves.

Long after some new civilizations such as the Hauflins rediscovered technological devices from the Ghulat Era to reform their society. However some of these advancements had negative effects on the world such as pollution or excessive resource depletion which spurred reactions from other species. With an oil crisis looming and economic recessions and resource depletion becoming an issue, a long isolated group of elves from the Summerlands appeared to voice their concerns 300 years ago. This shift caused other hidden elf settlements gradually revealed themselves and involve themselves with the concerns of the world.

Scientific Name

Sidhe Aes

Origin/Ancestry

Ljósálfar, Dökkálfar, Svartálfar

Lifespan

700 to 1000 years

Conservation Status

Threatened (thought to be extinct until 300 years ago)

Average Height

140 - 182 cm (5' - 6')

Average Weight

50 - 86 kg (110 - 190 lbs)

Body Tint, Colouring and Marking

Modern elves have 3 lineages that differ in appearance. Ljosalfar tend to have fair to light skin with blonde, red, orange, green and rarely brown hair. Dokkalfar tend to have swarthy tan to dark brown skin with silver, blonde, red/orange and rarely green hair colors. Svartalfar have black or dark blue skin, dark enough to shine, and possess light hair colors like silver, white, blonde, and even reddish hair colors.