The Elders

"Nothing hides from an Elder's eyes." --Ancient proverb

Basic Information

Anatomy

Elders are a humanoid, arcane-infused race of indeterminate origin. Ancient texts predating even the Architects speak of them with a god-like reverence, detailing the sheer arcane might of their long-lost civilization as being able to shape worlds on a whim. The average Elder possess a tall, thin build, especially in comparison to many other humanoids. Their skin is pale, with pigments ranging from faint pinks, reds, and violets, though always muted. Their hair is fine and soft, likewise regularly remaining on the lighter side of the color spectrum, though with far more variety in tone than skin.
The most striking feature of the Elders are the intricate, dark lines that line their bodies. Every Elder has a unique pattern, with the lines often emerging from the mid-back, crossing up, down, and around the whole of their bodies in various ways. These strange lines are not seen on infant Elders, though they quickly emerge and trace their paths as the child reaches puberty. The lines, upon further inspection with magic, are criss-crossed with arcane symbols, much in the same way of leylines. These 'skin lines' as they're known are one of many visible reminders of an Elder's arcane heritage.
Elder eyes are somewhat similar to more standard eyes, though lacking in pupils. Their facial structure is often tall with large, high cheekbones and large, almond-shaped eyes. The Elder are famous for possessing long, pointed ears, often with two to three deep divots in the helix of the outer shell. They're generally regarded as hauntingly beautiful by other races, though some find their mere appearance to be unnerving. Their bodies are slender and gaunt, with long, lanky limbs, and an overall gangling body plan.
Physically, Elders are quite sturdy, able to withstand a surprising amount of force without suffering serious injury. Despite this, they are weaker than most races, with their bodies being more adapted to quick, precision movements performed with a preternatural grace as opposed to shows of raw strength. As many Elders will focus on their magical abilities to the detriment of their bodies, many will display some form of light atrophy or overall frailty of their muscles, particularly with advanced age.

Genetics and Reproduction

As with most mammals, Elders are sexually dimorphic, though with secondary sexual characteristics being far less pronounced than in other species. This leads to most Elders having a somewhat androgynous build, with a common jab by others being that there are no Elder men, simply women with smaller breasts.
Perhaps owing to their long lives, Elders have notorious difficulties conceiving children. It is estimated that less than ten percent of couplings will result in a pregnancy, and even then miscarriages are not uncommon. Assuming that a pair are able to conceive, the mother will carry the unborn baby for eleven months on average, with the fetus's growth being divided into four 'quadmesters.' Deliveries are short and quick, with a relative lack of pain to the mother.

Growth Rate & Stages

Infants are born blind and deaf for the first month of their lives, with hearing and vision slowly improving over the following two years. The average Elder child is able to stand and walk within a year, though most often do so in short spurts to avoid obstacles, given their lack of focused sight. Children begin speaking within the second year of their life, and on average possess the ability to formulate complex thoughts and sentences by the third. An Elder is considered a 'child' well into adolescence and puberty. Achieving adulthood physically by the age of 30, they are culturally considered adults only after their second century.
An Elder's most defined form of physical aging after puberty is the formation of their skin lines. Infants are born with a small birthmark somewhere atop their spine, growing as they age until puberty, at which point lines begin to radiate out and around their body in various, unique patterns. By adulthood, these skin lines will have formed around the face and the extremities, and will remain largely unchanged for the remainder of their lives, darkening and deepening with age.
The most intriguing aspect of an Elder's growth cycle is their nascent ability to harness magic. Infant and toddlers are able to exert minor, inexact manipulation during emotional outbursts, and as the child ages into an adult, they develop a remarkable natural aptitude not only for magic, but for sensing magical potential in others. An adult Elder with limited arcane schooling is often the better of most third or fourth-year students in the Atheneum.

Ecology and Habitats

The Elder race are sensitive to changes in their environment, and as such often settle in areas with little seasonal variation. Ideal conditions are warm and mild, with extreme cold being particularly dangerous. Elder settlements are often designed to negatively impact their surroundings as little as possible; their magical prowess is often used to great effect in this case.
Elders are diurnal by nature, and despite their pale skin and large eyes are quite content with direct sunlight.

Dietary Needs and Habits

Naturally, Elders are omnivorous in nature, though they often adopt a largely vegetarian lifestyle. Their bodies require a caloric intake of 3,500 per day on average, and maintain a steady metabolic rate for the majority of their lives, though there is a sharp decline as they reach the end of their lives.

Biological Cycle

After reaching maturity, Elder bodies remain stagnant for the vast majority of their lives. By the time they reach middle age (6,000~7,500 years), most will begin to experience mild physical degradation, with the vast majority developing arthritis before 8,000 years of age. While they are less likely on average to develop crippling physical disabilities, their bond to magic often deepens with age, with can lead to extreme mood swings, and a wearing down of their mental acuity. Dementia and bouts of severe depression are common in the elderly, and most will die as a result of some form of degenerative mental condition as their entire body becomes more and more susceptible to even the slightest of changes in the ether of their environment.

Additional Information

Social Structure

The Elders construct tightly knit family units, often centered around a veneration for ancestors. Day-to-day affairs are the purview of the eldest or most sound-minded patriarch of the family, though matriarchs are not uncommon.

Facial characteristics

Other than the obvious skin lines that all Elders share (and which often line their face in some way), Elders are an aesthetically pleasing people in terms of facial structure. Their heads are often thin and tall, with high, large cheekbones. Their jawline is usually soft, with smaller, shorter chins. Full lips rest beneath long, pointed noses, and their eyes are large, almond-shaped, and often bear a tilt when compared to other races.

Geographic Origin and Distribution

Unlike many races, the Elders do not have a central region or realm of their own, and are spread in small clusters and communities throughout the Realmscape. Due to their alliance with the Eternal Empire, the greater majority of the race live within its borders, though large communities and cities of them exist well past the boundaries of the Empire as well.

Average Intelligence

On average, Elders are voraciously curious, and partly owing to their lifespan, brutally cunning and intelligent. Most would land in the upper seventy percentile of intelligence for other, more common-minded peoples. Their intelligence is often focused on history and arcane studies, though they are often compared to walking encyclopedias due to the wealth of eclectic information they're able to gather over their lives. More impressive than their intelligence, though, is their memory, with Elders being able to vividly recall events millennia passed, and often able to give accounts that are perfectly accurate to how the events transpired as well.

Perception and Sensory Capabilities

The Elder are incapable of traditional sight. Where most creatures--sentient or otherwise--view the world through the visible light spectrum, the Elder are able to perceive currents of ether. In layman's terms, they are able to "see" magic, allowing them a sharp, though wholly alien outlook on the world. As such, Elder homes and domiciles are often decorated with lavish colors and various trinkets of varying material, allowing the Elder in question a kaleidoscope of various arcane shapes and hues. This arcane vision also affords Elders the ability to 'read' auras of magic, or perceive even minute, obfuscated spellcasting.
Despite popular belief given their large, prominent ears, Elders are not super-sensitive to auditory stimuli. Their senses are rather unremarkable and plain, minus their otherworldly sight.

Civilization and Culture

Naming Traditions

Elder names are often steeped in long lines of tradition and familial symbolism. As a people, their names are often gender neutral, with very little distinction between a masculine or feminine name at face value. In fact, it is not uncommon for male members of a family to be named after a prominent woman in the family line, or vice versa. As a whole, their names are flowing and poetic, with a heavy usage of vowel clusters and silent consonants.
Their names are always multi-syllabic, with the final syllable of the given name denoting their family. For example, Laedrial and Demerial would be of the same family, regardless of the second name. Second names are known to them as "Christen names" earned at the coming of age, often a self-chosen name based on personality traits, ambitions, or simply for the way it sounds.

Major Organizations

The Elders are a fractious race, with very few institutes remaining of their once proud, unified civilization. Generally, though, they are drawn to pursuits that afford them access to deeper understanding of magic, history, and other scholarly pursuits. Many Elders serve clerical or political roles within the vast bureaucracy of the Eternal Empire, as their eidetic memories and wealth of knowledge affords them special skills in these roles.

Average Technological Level

As a whole, the Elders are not known for technological savvy. While some magitechnicians and engineers of note throughout the ages have been Elders, their race tends to avoid menial tasks, and their inability to see as other races do robs them of the necessary attention to detail necessary for technological pursuits. Their mastery of magic, contrarily, has led to them developing some of the most powerful artifacts and enchantments in all the Realmscape.

Major Language Groups and Dialects

Language and linguistics as a whole are an area where most Elders excel. All members are capable of learning languages to a point of near-fluency at a rapid rate, and as such, are almost wholly fluent in both Standard and their ancestral languge, Old Tongue, as a result. It is not uncommon for even the more laymen of the race to be able to speak four or five vastly different languages.
Their dialect and accents are noted for being slow and methodical. They are masters of obfuscation in terms of word choice, often opting for flowery, inexact terms when talking to those of another race. This has earned them the reputation for being pedantic, coy, and untrustworthy with those who have suffered such verbal trickery.

History

Long before the rise of the Architects, the Elders ruled. Theirs was the first major political entity to achieve any sort of lasting foothold within the history of the Realmscape, and because of this, much of current understanding of the period is shrouded in propaganda and an inward bias by these ancient Elders. What is known factually, though, is that their people achieved knowledge on the activation of Realmgates approximately 400,000 years ago. Much like their modern day culture, theirs was an oligarchical society based around magical study and general intellectual pursuits. Supported by their mastery of magic, they were able to sweep aside other burgeoning nations and peoples, and expanded quickly, often on the backs of forced labor.
Records from this time are scarce, and it is uncertain when or why the Elders faced decline. As the Architects began to emerge from a relatively untouched area of the Realmscape, the Elders were slow to respond, seeing them as upstarts and little else. By the time the Architects challenged the Elders for dominance, their empire had become so massive, so corrupt, and so internally divided that they had little hope of staving off the Architects and their advanced machines of war. In a series of wars remembered by the Architects as 'The Progression,' the Elders lost large swaths of their territory before their society ultimately collapsed due to the pressure.
Perhaps it is due to this torrid history that the Elders have held other races at an arm's length. Whatever the case, there is little mention of their people until the arrival of The Empress circa 3,000 years ago, during which she attempted to garner support from a secluded cabal of powerful Elder sorcerers for her growing slave rebellion against the Ogres. The Elders were at first vehemently against aiding the rebels, though the inspiring words of Ser Jeryial of the Seven Companions were enough to convince the cabal to observe the rebellion temporarily. If they should provide an assurance that their cause was not as hopeless as it appeared, then they would be willing to take the great risk of aiding them against the Weird King and his throngs. After the stunning and unexpected victory at Blade's Stand, the Elders officially joined The Empress, and have ever since been trusted--if not aloof--allies of the Eternal Empire.
Modern times have found the Elders as fractious as in their twilight days as a universal power. Though the greater majority of the race reside within and support the Eternal Empire, communities exist beyond its borders, and many pledge their allegiances to other powers both great and small, or choose to lead simpler lives in remote villages and settlements beyond the wide-spanning arms of greater politics.

Interspecies Relations and Assumptions

The Elders are as a people suspicious and wary of the younger races, who they see as slow-minded and inefficacious as a whole. Often they are seen as smug, haughty, or aloof by others, though this is due in part to the strange worldview many of them hold, or their inability--or unwillingness--to hold deep, meaningful relations with the more short-lived, ephemeral races of the Realmscape.
These are of course generalizations, and those who are able to befriend an Elder after penetrating the various social barriers they erect will find one of the most steadfast companions anyone could ask for.

Scientific Name

Scholari Antiquis

Lifespan

15,000 years

Conservation Status

The Elders are notable for their propensity for avoiding childbirth. Between an abnormally low natural birthrate and their own exceedingly long lifespans, most find it an unnecessary burden to attempt to rear a child that will not come of age for centuries, let alone ease them into a rigid culture with as many nuances and rigors as their own.

Average Height

2.25 - 2.4 meters

Average Weight

55 - 89 kilograms

Average Physique

Elders are on average tall and slender in build. With long, thin arms and legs, they are proportionally different than the standard humanoid model, which adds to both their otherworldly grace, as well as the air of alien disquiet that seems to hang about them. Despite the average Elder being rather lanky and possessing underdeveloped musculature, Elder warriors and those who pursue a more martial focus are not unheard of. When properly exercised, their bodies can develop toned, sturdy muscles, more akin to a graceful dancer or a quick runner in shape.

Body Tint, Colouring and Marking

Most Elders are pale in skin tone, with their overall body coloring ranging from pale reds, pinks, violets, and blues to the occasional dark maroon or faded mauve. Their skin lines are always the darkest of their body features, with some approaching black in color.