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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Edena_of_Neith" data-source="post: 2625873" data-attributes="member: 2020">Ok, back.  (takes a deep breath and dives into the water again.)  The elves of Haldendrea, now the last elves of their world or Crystal Sphere, had no way of surviving in the Post-Apocolypse world they faced.  That has to be understood.  Extinction should have happened.  In any plausible, believable storyline, they were all dead.  This is where my story stops being plausible, and goes off into the bizarre.  For I'm saying the elves did survive.  Because they had become evil after the first war, and they looked to dark deities, the elves could not cooperate in any sense of the world to survive in their Post-Apocolyptic mess.  Initial attempts failed in bloodbaths, elves turned on each other and committed unspeakable acts in their desperation, and finally all semblance of civilization collapsed.  Within a few weeks of the Apocolypse (that is, the annihilation of Delrune by the Great Enemy) the elves were reduced to an each-elf-for-himself situation (sorta like an each-drow-for-herself in the passages of the Underdark.)  For the next several years, each and every surviving elf spent his or her entire time trying to figure out how to survive for a few more hours, and then a few more hours after that, and then a few more hours after that, and so on.  They became primordial savages bent on just one thing:  surviving to see the next day.  This was a time of purgatory.  Most of the elves did not survive it.  None of the 'evil' ways learned after the first war survived it.  How do I put this?  Elves are ... special.  They are a 'good' people.  What does that mean?  One of the facets of the 'goodness' of Haldendrea elves was that they cherished life, their own and others, and all life around them.  They very greatly enjoyed being alive, just being alive, and derived immense pleasure from seeing others alive and enjoying being alive.  This was not a learned or cultural affair;  this was basic instinct for these people.  It had been supressed during the time of the 'evil fortress empire' but now this instinct - unhindered by civilized notions and learned behavior - broke free and waxed supreme.  Also, the elves were innately magical.  Unlike humans, they could subconsciously call upon that magic to save themselves in extremis.  And this was extremis.  Think of the film Conan the Barbarian, and the Wheel of Pain.  Conan marches around and around, pushing the grist mill.  All around him, people are dying of overwork and disease.  In the end, he alone survives, but instead of being weakened, he is made stronger (a most questionable thought, but there it is.)  Well, the elves had their own Wheel of Pain, and it also went on for years.  And most of the elves perished pushing this 'Wheel of Pain.'  But those who wanted to live the most - those who cherished life the most, actually - and those strongest in innate magic, were the survivors, and they became stronger.  Remember the Agnakok from the Complete Book of Wizards?  An Agnakok was a wizard who came from one of the most extreme environments in the world, such as a torrid or frigid climate, or the inside of an active volcano.  All elves had innate magic.  All the elves were potential wizards.  So, all the elves were potential Agnakoks, and certainly what they existed in qualified as 'one of the world's most extreme environments.'  So, the elves became Agnakoks!  After years of starvation, they physically adapted to eating leaves (their stomach acids became magical), insects, arachnids, roaches, and other unpleasantries of that sort.  They discovered they could obtain additional sustenance from gnawing on wood, and it made their teeth stronger.  The elves discovered that devouring foes alive, or just killed and still hot, gave them great sustenance, magical sustenance, out of all proportion to the effects of eating mere meat.  Considering that leaves and bugs, and foes (plenty of foes came into the swamp to kill whatever remained there, or just to inhabit the place) were all the elves had to eat, period, such an adaptation was necessary for survival.  The elves also acquired immunity to all natural poisons, natural parasites and biting insects, natural diseases, extreme cold and extreme heat, burning sunlight and finally the volcanic fumes stopped asphixiating them.    The elves learned to exist underwater for long periods of 30 minutes to an hour, and to branchalate through any sort of brush and trees.  They learned to walk on quicksand and reedy waters as well as people walk on dry land.  They became physically hardy against storms, wind, hail, and the occasional tornado (the elves of Athas come to mind here ...)  Eventually, the elves became as comfortable with their environment as we would be in our own homes.  Now, remember, most of them perished before this happened, and the remainder suffered extraordinarily to achieve their Agnakok stasis.  Nothing came for free.  But when purgatory was decreed for the elves, some rose to the challenge and triumphed over all the physical obstacles.  Their instinctive love of life, and their innate magic, made it possible.  (Humans, could never have done this, being non-magical, and having a much lesser love of life.  Humans would have tried, and humans would have died.  But perhaps other magical races of inherently 'good' alignment could have achieved, what the elves accomplished.)  So much for the mundane physical adaptation.  Now, for the mental adaptation.  The elves lived in an insane world, where life simply wasn't worth living from any sane perspective.  Even after they conquered the physical challenge of the swamp, endless foes came to drag them into a war eternal, a pointless war without end, without hope of there ever being an end, short of the death of all the elves.  The Great Enemy had endless forces to deploy, and was willing to send them all to extinguish the elves.    In an insane world, the elves psychologically adapted by going insane themselves.  Because of certain things they did, their insanity proved a better insanity, and it enabled them to come to flourish and triumph over their evil (and demented, insane themselves) enemies, and to throughly enjoy themselves in the process.</blockquote>

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