The Heavenly Reich Period

A Prophet - He Stands Beside You And Points The Way To The Savior

Prior to the Birth of the Gods, the Elves lived within small, agricultural tribes that constantly warred with one another. Indeed, theirs was a military society. Warrior and Chieftain were indistinguishable from one another, and the highest calling an Elf could aspire to was that of a heroic raider, going out into the lands of other Elven tribes and the lands of the other races to bring glory and honor to their names. They worshipped beings known as Fairies, mercurial spirits that would bring fortune to those who honored them and bring terrible curses onto those who offended them, although the customs and etiquette of these spirits were known to be near incomprehensible.
This, as most things did, changed rapidly after the Birth of the Gods. With the existence of the Fairies soundly disproven, Elven religious life and life, in general, became much more chaotic than it ever had been before. Warlords and the prophets of varying cults all drew blades against one another, determined to have their banner or their idols the only ones left standing, and though this period of time has become heavily mythologized, the mass graves found dating back to this time period show that the bloodshed is hardly exaggerated by modern storytellers. One such prophet was an Elf known as Vallo. Precious little is known about this Elf, and it is not known if he ever truly existed at all, but he has had a massive amount of influence on Elven society.
His first appearance in the historical record was in the year 11, when he entered the court of Orinda, the Chieftainess of the powerful Alarik tribe. The Alariks were found in what is now the region of Aldenwald, and the might of their tribal kingdom was feared throughout Elvendom. Through some great charisma, great manipulation, or both, it was not long until Orinda made two declarations: one, that Vallo was the High Priest of the realm, and two, that the Alarik tribe would unite all of the Elves under their banner. The faith that Vallo preached was a strange one indeed. Though the Pre-Divine Elven religion believed the color of one's eye to be something akin to a Zodiac sign, something that had hints about one's personality within it, Vallo took it further. He preached that the color of an Elf's eye was a sign from the Divine about their purpose in life: those with blue eyes were of the warrior-king caste, those with grey eyes were of the scholar-priest caste, those with green eyes were of the merchant caste, and those with brown eyes were of the peasant caste. Furthermore, Vallo taught Orinda (who, being of blue eyes, was easily swayed by his assurances of her superiority) that the Elven race was the most powerful and mighty in all the world, destined to hold the entirety of Ecumene under their grip.
Under the guidance of Vallo, the Alarik tribe went to war, conquering their disunited and squabbling neighbors who fought not only against each other but against themselves over matters of faith. But, even if they were to unite, the Alariks were stronger. Though cowed into submission by their "betters", the Thralls and Hanseatics of the Alarik tribe were fought with great ferocity and skill. It was said that the Gods would smile upon them in the Afterlife if they served the Ritters as they were meant to, not to mention that if they fight now, their names would ring throughout history as the Elves who launched the first conquests of the greatest Empire the world had ever seen. Indeed, Vallo's faith proved easy to spread. Those with blue eyes and grey eyes would be very easily won over after they were informed that, after the conquests, they would be put at the top of the hierarchy, regardless of where they once stood, and those with green and brown eyes were won over with the knowledge that, if they simply did their divinely mandated job and did as they were told, their liege would care for them in their lifetime and the Gods would care for them in the After. Despite the fact that a more rigid hierarchy than what was ever seen before followed the conquests, during them, it was a time of great social upheaval: peasant was made lord, chieftain was made peasant, and this promise was enough to make populations that knew they would become privileged flock to the banner of the Alariks.
Within five years, the Alariks had conquered the majority of the modern Elven regions of Aldenwald, Oberau, and Sonnehoff. However, at this point in time, Chieftainess Orinda would die of some disease or other. Though some expected that the realm would collapse with the loss of its Warrior-Chieftainess, this was not so. Vallo had made sure to groom Orinda's son, Anno, into the perfect puppet of him and him alone, and as Vallo was the one running the show in actuality, the realm was stable. During the coronation, after Vallo put the crown on the young Anno's head, he declared the birth of the "Heavenly Reich", a state protected by the Gods and meant to bring the truth of hierarchy into all the world.
So the conquests continued, and after eight years in court, Vallo had conquered all of Elvendom, bringing it under his sway. The old systems of society were overturned and replaced with Vallo's Caste System. The peasants were tied to their land, the priests were killed or re-educated into the new faith, and the nobility was given land to rule. All was good, or so Vallo thought. In the year 24, Vallo would disappear without a trace. Sylvan tradition says that Vallo disappeared out of humility, his message having been broadcast to all, so there was no purpose to him being in society anymore. However, what is far more likely is that he was murdered by the others at court, who resented the massive amount of sway he had over the Heavenly Reich, who then went on to murder Anno and dissolve the Reich.
After the very bloody end of the Heavenly Reich, Elvendom was once more fractured, though not nearly as chaotically as before. In the power vacuum, the strongest of the newly minted Ritters would declare themselves Kings of realms that they managed to carve out with steel, but they would not touch the actual Caste System. After all, it was a very useful form of social control that kept them at the top and everyone else at the bottom, so why shouldn't it stay? The only change to the system was the development of even more hierarchical feudalism, with some lords at the very top and some lords at the bottom of the top, bound to one another through oaths of fielty and honor, though all in the realm had to be "loyal" to whoever was strong enough to declare themself a King or Queen.
It is also around this time that the myth of Vallo would begin to cement itself, ironically spread by those who likely murdered him. If the Elf who devised the Caste System became a hero because of it, this would do a great deal to prevent criticism of it, though not even those first Elven nobles would know just how true this was: for centuries and centuries to come, Vallo would be known not as he was in truth, an opportunistic, manipulative shadow leader, but as the hero who did more than anyone else to uplift the Elven race to soaring heights and bring about the existence of a singular Elven Reich.

11-24 E.D.