Surrounded by mountains, in the crater of an ancient, dormant volcano, Siu Forest is a great forest made up of- of course- Siu trees.
Taller than the tallest building, save only for the great Wizard's Tower far out on the coast, Siu trees house the Elvan cities in their canopy, and deadly toxic mushrooms in their roots and at their trunks.
The lower levels of the branches trap in the thick fog that forms below branch level, fed by hundreds of hot pools far below.
That same, warm, fog makes the under-forest the perfect home for the immense mushrooms. Those, in turn, create their own breeze that carries their spores throughout the underforest.
Just below the level of the fog, the air quickly becomes dangerously poisonous. The elves who live and hunt in it cover their faces with clever masks of silk and clear insect wings to protect their lungs from the poisons.
Anyone daring the forest without that protection will succumb to lung-rot, which can kill as quickly as an hour, even with the barest exposures.
Rumor has it that the elves have a way of curing lung-rot, but if they do, they have not shared it outside their cities.
Travel through the forest is perilous even without the poisons in the air. Massive apes called Doun-Douns for the noise they make upon seeing an intruder patrol the floor of the forest in tribes, usually lead by a huge male and his harem of females.
Standing anywhere from ten to fifteen feet tall, Doun-Douns are absolutely deadly in their own right, and are canny beyond measure.
Smaller cousins of the Doun-Douns travel higher in the trees and are sometimes called tree-hares. They are quick and strong, but not large enough to be a true threat to a man unless they are in great numbers. The elves hunt them for food and fur, and sometimes make arrowheads of their teeth.
Silshas are large tree-cats. Often black or grey, their pelts tend to be mottled and they are very difficult to spot in the gloom of the underforest. They are silent and deadly. Even the elves fear them, and avoid them when they can.
The last creature of the forests are the insects. From tiny gnats with venomous bites to immense dragonflies and winged beetles, these creatures make up the majority of life in the forest.
The elves hunt and eat them, and make other items of their shells and wings. Without access to metal, the elves use shell in its' place. As hard as steel, blades of chiton are razor sharp, though sometimes brittle, and as many-colored as the insects themselves. Elvan windows are made not of glass, but of the hard wings of the giant bugs.
Armor and jewelry are often sanded matte and painted so as not to show in the darkness, and frequently are encased in soft cloth to muffle them as well. This in no small part is what makes the elf border guards so incredibly feared. They are as silent as the tree-cats, and just as deadly.
Preferred tactics have always been that of the arrow from far above. Elven marksmen are unmatched, for their arrows are tipped with razor shell or the teeth of the tree-hares.
Often they are also poisoned- not by deliberate act, but simply because the arrows are exposed to the forest, and tend to gather the spores on them. Infections are quick and frequent in elf-bolt wounds.
If it comes to blades, the elves have double-edged spears, and knives, but almost never swords. The few who have spoken of this- always to traders who are met at the border and not allowed any farther- is that a spear is more effective against the dangers of the forest, and elves simply do not have the reach to use one well against a human.
In body, elves tend to be pale, although many darken their skin with dyes to hide what little shows under their armor. Their eyes tend to be green or grey, with the occasional blue. Dark eyes are very unusual. Hair is often blonde or brown, rarely black. It silvers somewhere around their middle years.
No one is entirely sure how long an elf might live. Many have about the lifespan of a human, but there are a few notable exceptions who have lived for several centuries with little to show except the silver hair and a few faint wrinkles. These exceptions are unusual, however.
In face, their features tend to be fine, edging on slightly sharp. Their ears are faintly pointed. They tend to be fair creatures for the most part- desirable as slaves, although difficult to keep, since they escape or die quickly unless carefully watched.
Even then, it is not always possible to keep them alive- especially as bed-slaves. There are rumors that they can be alive by a love-bond, but that is clearly the wildest of rumor. As such, they are very expensive when they do live to be auctioned, and come with no promise of survival.
Interestingly, although they tend to be immune to poisons of nearly every sort, elves have very little magic. They do tend to get along well with animals and plants, but that is by no means magical in nature.
Their few mages stay close to their capital city, not daring to risk capture. Those mages are responsible for one very simple thing- keeping the location of their city carefully hidden from any and all who might try to spot it.
Scrying shows nothing more than trees, no matter how carefully one searches. Sometimes a scout can be spotted, or a hunting party, but they vanish into the deep underforest quickly and are nearly impossible to rediscover. This suggests a certain sensitivity to scrying-magic that may be inherant to their race.
Certainly they are able to sense magic when it is worked near them. Captive elves have sometimes discribed it as a hum against their skin, but are unable to be much clearer about it.
One entering the forest (without a known slaver, for the elves know all of them and attack on sight) will encounter a voice from the trees, warning to turn back. If that warning is ignored, it will be repeated, accompanied by an arrow shot into the ground as a very clear message. Ignoring that warning, leads to a second arrow, this time into the offender.
As mentioned above, survival is unlikely after that, unless one is accompanied by a very skilled healer, and turns back immediately, as more arrows will certainly follow the first, all of them deadly accurate.
the elvan tongue is soft, and very tonal. They have a number of clear dialects, which can be heard in their Common speech. They are enough alike that a speaker of the language can communicate with all the others, but there is a good deal of regonal intonation.
Some elves have demonstrated the ability to put on the accents of their people as easily as a human might throught the Riverlands. The common accent on the borders is notably, for it is sharper and less flowing than the inner dialects.
There is some suggestion that they also have a limited language of whistles and hand gestures, but reports of this are unconfirmed and the elves refuse to admit it.
All of the elves who have been seen wear close-fitting mottled clothing, but they do produce some beautiful flowing fabrics in bright colors, and a good deal of jewelry of carved shell and wood. This suggests that the styles of the cities are less austire than that of the border-guards and the rare traders who almost never leave the forest.
More often, these goods are found in the posession of Dwarves, with whom the elves trade more freely- usually for the rare bit of metal and for gemstones.
