Elf

Lithe, long-lived humanoids, elves are easily recognized by their pointed ears and pupils so large that their eyes seem to be all one color. Possessed of an inherent bond with the natural world, they tend to subtly take on the coloration of their surroundings over the course of many years and have a deep spiritual regard for nature.

Of all the races common to the solar system, elves were perhaps the hardest-hit by the Gap, and the slowest to adapt and recover. Where shorter-lived races quickly gave birth to children who had never known any other way of life, and thus were personally unaffected by the loss of history, the elven generation whose lives extended back into the Gap continued on, broken and confused by the blank centuries in their own lives and memories. What’s more, those leaders charged with trying to piece together their social history from scraps soon came to a grim conclusion: during the Gap, their race had been betrayed by another—yet exactly which race was involved remains unclear, all suggestions of the answer scrubbed by malicious intent or the Gap itself.

Reeling and angry, elves from across the system retreated to their ancestral homeland of Sovyrian on Castrovel and dug in, determined to never again be caught unprepared by disaster. Even this was a fraught endeavor, however, as many of the established elven families already on Castrovel resented the chaos and upheaval caused by the sudden flood of refugees.

Today, the elves are a reclusive, xenophobic race, little understood by their neighbors and uninclined to remedy that situation. Though their starships still travel the void, trading with other worlds, they largely carry allelven crews, and most elves choose to live among their own kind either in Sovyrian or in predominantly elven enclaves on other worlds. Those adventurous or rebellious individuals who choose to live among other races are called the Forlorn, due both to their loss of elven companionship and to their tendency to outlive friends of other races. Most are viewed with pity and suspicion by their kindred.

Within their borders, elves tend to be whimsical and passionate, yet when dealing with outsiders their laughter disappears quickly, replaced by a cold, unyielding wall. Elven warriors and diplomats operating outside of Sovyrian on government business sometimes even choose to go masked, hiding their identities around other races in order to better represent a united elven state.

While elves have embraced technology and the security it brings, they also maintain a deep affinity for magic, seeing in its practice a continuity with their ancestors. Elves are most often mystics, operatives, and technomancers, and when they go adventuring, it’s often to recover bits of magical lore lost to history, or else to find ways to ensure Sovyrian’s strength in the centuries to come. The primary exception to all of these tendencies are the drow—purple-skinned elves who reject the company of their brethren to live on Apostae and mine alien tech from that world’s interior, making them some of the most feared and respected arms dealers in the system. Ordinary elves and drow despise one another, and while Sovyrian’s leadership generally tries to distance itself from political entanglements, supposedly rogue elven fleets have launched several surprise assaults on Apostae in an effort to “cleanse the corruption.” The fact that these attacks have resulted in sanctions from the Pact Council has somehow done little to deter the elves.