Article 24: Dark Elves
In the centuries before the High Elves of Mythar II came into contact with the Humans of Terra, the Mythar star system's two major planets were subject to considerable turmoil and upheaval. For over a millennium, the various races on the planets invaded and colonized each other to the point where it was unclear which races were native to which planets. However, around the year 1200 BC, an alliance of Elves, Fairies, and Dwarves made a massive push into Mythar II, sending the Orcs, Trolls, Kobolds, and other races they considered the aggressors to Mythar III. In an attempt to establish clear boundaries hoping to prevent war, the set of civilizations on Mythar II named their alliance "The Mythics", hoping to invoke the idea that a new age of legend had begun. To differentiate themselves from the other races, which they referred to as "The Hordes", the alliance of Mythics established a new form of governance which each race was to apply to themselves to make a state of sorts. This series of governments was lead by royalty, with a king or queen leading the people from a fortified castle. The Elven Queen, Kiyanna Dawnmist, was one such ruler, and while her reign was considered one of the more peaceful periods of pre-Golden Alliance history, dealings behind the scenes saw to it that it was cut tragically short.
Raleigh Hightower, the son of a decorated general, was Queen Dawnmist's most prolific suitor. To the rest of Elven society, he seemed the perfect fit, a kind and gentle Elf with noble bearing and an incredible mind for tactics. Even the Queen herself was smitten with him, but Kiyanna's High Priestess and childhood friend, Aria Gentlewind, saw something else in him. Her intense ability to read auras and her own time with him had convinced Aria that Raleigh lusted for power and would stop at nothing to get it. Still, despite her private protestations to the queen, Aria was saddened to see Raleigh and Kiyanna married, with Raleigh being ceded the duty of general of the Elven army. Aria was suspicious when Raleigh ordered a company including her and a hundred of her most loyal priestesses and paladins to Mythar III, but followed her orders dutifully. Charged with hunting down an artifact being crafted that would taint the entire planet of Mythar II, she had until the next planetary alignment to complete her task and return triumphant to her Queen. This, of course, didn't go quite as planned.
After fighting her way through armies of The Hordes, Aria finally found the mad goblin craftsmen she was looking for, along with the artifact itself, which they called the Umbra Heart. Had it been completed, it would have created a perpetual dark cloud over Mythar II which would have choked the planet of sunlight and doomed The Mythics to a slow, starving demise. Thanks to the heroic efforts of Aria and her troops, however, the artifact was shattered, saving their home planet but exposing them to a wash of Umbral energy that tinted their skin a dark gray, turned their eyes red, and desaturated most of their hair. This mattered little to them, however, as they were glad to have successfully completed their campaign, just in time for a portal to open back up to Mythar II.
While Aria and those serving with her were deserving of a heroes' welcome, they had instead arrived to find a much different situation. Queen Dawnmist had died under mysterious circumstances, and Aria knew that Raleigh was the culprit. Rather than return to the Elven kingdom where she knew she and those loyal to the Queen would eventually be framed as traitors, Aria and her followers became a nomadic tribe, keeping away from Elven society until they could find evidence of Raleigh's wrongdoing. They never found it, even as the tribe grew larger over the generations. Aria was surprised at the faster population growth that the Umbra had apparently granted this new breed of "Dark Elf", but soon found that it was also coupled with a shorter lifespan. She took this as a sign that the long reigns of the Mytharian Kings and Queens was never meant to be, and so she and the other priestesses came up with a new ruling system based on what, to them, was common sense.
The first rule was that power would no longer be transferred through marriage, for obvious reasons. Instead, any given tribe's leader would be one of its eldest, and they would select an apprentice to serve under them and learn to lead. Both the Elder and their Apprentice would be female, not only because of the distrust of male leadership that had fostered within the Dark Elves, but also to prevent Elders and Apprentices from creating dynastic family lines. While it was the Matriarch's duty to lead, the Apprentice had an equally important role--not only to learn from the Matriarch, but to kill her were she ever to step over the line. This system kept both Matriarch and Apprentice honest, as if an Apprentice ever killed her Matriarch under false pretenses, she was to be executed and a new Matriarch was to be chosen.
While the Dark Elf tribe initially went to the deserts to find a new way of life, smaller tribes have broken off and taken residence in the caves, the mountains, the swamps, and even back on Mythar III--anywhere the other "Mythics" did not want to live, the Dark Elves found a way to survive. Through all of this, however, they never built a castle, and they never declared a Queen, and it was for this reason that as the new race grew larger, the Mythic alliance eventually considered them one of the Horde races.
