Girasolan Elves (Hee-rah-sol-an)

The Girasolan Elves, or Terra Cognita as they sometimes call themselves, are some of the oldest sentient peoples of Girasol. It is said that the world was all rock and no root before the ancestors of the Elves landed here, and for a billion years those very ancestors wrapped their mycelial fingers around and around this ball of dirt and sand until at last life was possible. The primordial fungal colony gorged themselves on the dry, drifting globe of dust and with each exhale they built the atmosphere we now breathe. After an eon or two, for the details get quite fuzzy when you’re as old as the world, the first fruiting bodies began to spawn.

Elven Anatomy

The early Elves were roughly humanoid, but far more outlandish than what one would expect to find these days. Some glowed in the dark (well… many did and some still do), some had broad, flat heads and four legs, and others still had a hundred eyes and no hands. Now though, Elves have taken on many familiar characteristics, with two eyes, a nose, a mouth, and long, straight hair. They are bipedal with two arms, ten fingers, and ten toes. A look beneath the surface, however, reveals a different truth. Most mortal species have individual organs, blood, skin, and hair that are made of different cellular materials. Elves have none of this. Instead, the features that masquerade as a common mortal appearance are all made of long hyphae strands that twist and contort into the diverse array of shapes recognizable to a human eye. Their pointed ears are a result of the specific way in which these strands lace together to form the aural structures that give them the ability to hear. Some even believe that the pointed shape allows them to hear better than humans do, but no Elf has ever confirmed this.

Elven Community

Elves lives in communal clusters, often only a few hundred individuals who are all closely related. Since the Horaflurian Revolution, these clusters have become more and more secluded for their own safety. While for many species, proximity with such close relatives does not always bode well for offspring, Elves circumvent this problem by simply emerging from the buried corpses of their parents instead of reproducing sexually. Because of their fungal ancestry, elves reproduce through an asexual process similar to, but distinct from, cloning. They live for centuries, and when they do eventually die they are buried at home where their offspring will emerge to be raised communally. No Elf can be absolutely sure of their direct parentage, so all young Elves of the same age are raised in cohorts until adolescence, at which time they will choose between one and three adult elves to call their parents and to live with. The parent Elves reserve the right to decline the adolescents’ request for parenthood, as it is an intimate and vastly important decision to make.

Elven Compost Tea

Eons have passed since their first emergence from the Mycelia, but Elves never lost their propensity for digesting and decomposing. In many ways, they still function as Girasol’s waste managers and stewards, despite their retreat from the contemporary world. They take in all the dead things around their cluster, be it common leaf litter and discarded food from cities or battlefields of bodies and whole fields left to rot after a Blight, and break it down in massive heaps. These compost heaps are one of the central parts of Elven culture and much energy is spent tending them, checking temperatures, magical residue, and microbial composition. No two clusters compost the same way, and a market has propped up around the trade in this unique commodity. The Elves themselves simply enjoy eating the compost and brewing it into tea. They ensure that enough of it is spread throughout the lands they steward so that other things may grow and life on Girasol may continue as it has. The tea, however, is the focus of much of the compost trade. Every cluster’s unique practice develops complex flavors. The Elves near Coranthia, for example, are prized for their floral and fruity flavors, which they claim is a byproduct of all the coral used in the washing process. Contrast this with the Elves still eking out a living on the outskirts of Microsia, whose compost tea is a bit more dull, but hardier and dark with a robust aroma. For millennia, whole entourages of nobles, kings, wealthy merchants, and would-be priests have traveled across the world in search of their favorite blends of Elven compost. The Elves often advocate for them to use it a a burial good, an effective marketing strategy and one that secrets the compost deep into the earth in places they otherwise could not reach. They have to ensure that the land is life-sustaining, after all.