Tag: elves

Jesus Humperdinck Christ, that caterpillar took ages. Little fucker had a moped. And he didn’t even taste that great!

Now, where were we?

Political movements come and go, governments change hands, and churches worship different gods throughout the years. But when it comes to shaping cultural identity, there’s nothing as powerful as shitty weather. So, the Elvish diaspora settled in the hottest and coldest parts of Aries — Nekelmu and Rosencrace — they were doomed to be interesting forever.

Nekelmu was the home of the Desert Elves. It was a mighty empire on the southwestern coast of Dunngate, hugging the border of the Ashentrough desert. In their heyday, Nekelmu as always at Dunngate’s throat and vice-versa. Territorial disputes along their borders led to Dwarven pharaohs and Nekelman emperors declaring full-blown race wars on one another every given Tuesday.

The territory controlled by Desert Elves was once so expansive that it was once comparable to modern-day Aries in surface area, and they conquered Dunngate multiple times. Their conquests continued until the last king of Nekelmu, Asargirru, made what historians refer to as a liddle fucky-wucky: the Tragedy of Asargirru.

(TL;DR: He discovered magic, then used it to accidentally hit the “delete all the Desert Elves” button.)

Nekelman society and ancient Dwarven society were very similar. They both worshipped the sun-god Rafeth, held drinking and brawling in high spiritual regard, and both smelled just as bad after a long day of desert labor. If anything, the only real differences between them were over theological loopholes, height, ear shape, and whether or not beards were sinful. The Desert Elves’ invention of magic certainly shook things up, but that only lasted a few decades before it led to their disappearance.

Now, you’d think that this would create some kind of lasting racial enmity between modern-day Elves and Dwarves. But the Dunngatians’ enemies were the Desert Elves, not they didn’t even think Rosencrace existed until A.L. 12, when Dwarf-King Fraugrim II asked if anyone was going to tell him there was another Elf country, or if he was supposed to learn this from his jester trying find a rhyme for “Swollen Face.”

And granted, a lot of Dunngatians fell in line with standard Ariesian anti-Elvish prejudice — but none of it was about the Nekelmans. In fact, a great deal of money has been invested in Dunngatian museums and universities to find a latter-day rationale to be angry at the Desert Elves post-extinction. Stubborn bitterness is a Dwarven virtue, after all.

Post on Rosencrace forthcoming this week. (And fear not, I’ve made sure to stick with store-bought caterpillars.)