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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Shayuri" data-source="post: 6369115" data-attributes="member: 4936">Here's what I like...Suppose the Eladrin actually are 'star elves.' As in, from another planet. The tower could be what's left of their starship. Doesn't have to be technological. Could just as easily (or even MORE easily) be a magical construct.Even better: The Old Civilization of the Roamers was laid low BY the Starfall. The ship didn't softland...it hit hard. The land was then restored and the forest regrew, with help from the elves, but the devastation undid the old Roamer culture and scattered their people.I'd also propose that humans and orcs are related...distantly, perhaps. Like humans and neanderthals would be related IRL had any of them survived this long. In the past, they competed fiercely for limited resources at the fringes of the Old Civilization, but the Starfall decimated it, and the humans migrated into the vacuum. While the elves dealt with the internal strife that resulted in the schism between 'wood elves' (those who wish to integrate with this world and its people and ways) and 'eladrin' (those who wish to preserve the customs and traditions and magic of the past), and restored the forest around their new home, the humans moved into one of the ruins of the Old Civilization and uncovered enough knowledge to help them learn how to settle and plant farms and establish a stable non-nomadic culture.MOAR - oh gode, what have you done?!Suppose the Old Civilzation was NOT human-centric. Say instead it was hobbit/dwarf-centric. In fact, it kind of HAD to be, since humans were all barbarians out in the hills, squabbling with orcs and stealing cattle back then.When the catacylsm hit, the dwarves fled into the mines and tunnels underground...and didn't come back up. They adapted to life underground. Hobbits are the ones who scattered, became nomadic...though some of them later settled back into shires in sheltered, unobtrusive places. By then, the humans had come in. Or maybe dwarves had always been subterranean, or semi-subterranean, and the halflings were either cooperative or enslaved. The dwarves did the mining and smithing while the halflings did the farming and animal husbandry and OHEven BETTER.Both dwarves AND halflings were slave races! The Old Civilization was ruled by SOMETHING ELSE. They were obliterated, or...their rule was shattered when the elves hit. What was left of them; the remnant of a remnant, retreated to lick their wounds. The dwarves and halflings were also devastated, but became free to choose their own destinies. The dwarves bunkered up in their underground fastnesses, the halflings dispersed into either nomadic caravans or small decentralized settlements that dot the land. Both doing their best to ensure they could not be easily enslaved again.Since then, centuries have passed...maybe even a thousand years or more.Human beings have made contact with the dwarves and halflings...the dwarves are as suspicious of outsiders as ever; their long lives ensuring they have not forgotten the old empire. It's hard to call them the friends of Midland, but they are far from enemies, and trade is profitable for both. The halflings and humans co-exist...they are a friendly and accepting people; perhaps molded to be so by their former masters? It's even possible halflings were once human, altered and changed to be subservient...these are the uneasy musings of sages, rarely spoken of to others.Elves remain largely isolated as a people. The individualistic wood elves roam far and wide during their lives, but their culture is not expansionistic. They simply lack the numbers or rapid reproduction to need to be. The eladrin, by and large, remain in the fortress they made from the hulk of the starship, guarding the old secrets. Sometimes one or two will emerge to chase down some item of lore that attracts their attention. It's known the ship did not hit in one piece...perhaps there are fragments of the old elf science out there in other places in the world...or stolen artifacts or secrets waiting to resurface.There is a radical sect of elves as well who believe that they are squandering this new home, and that they SHOULD expand, conquering where necessary, to secure their future. They are the most innovative of the elves, unsatisfied with protecting and rediscovering old knowledge...obsessed instead with charting new courses, new discoveries. In general, other races view elves with some measure of distrust. No one really knows them, or understands them. The halflings have legends about their arrival that have become highly fantastical oral traditions. The dwarves carved their history of events into stone, and have a clear record...they know the elves' coming freed them, but they also know that many died with that arrival, and still more from the famines and discord that took place deep underground when the dwarves were cut off from any food from the surface. Humans are often fascinated by the strange creatures, at once so like them and so different. There are tensions where the forest and human lands meet...where the local humans keep wanting to push into elf lands, and the elves keep having to protest and rebuff them. The resources of the forest, and the secrets of elf magic, are powerful lures for the ever-ambitious successors to the Old Civilization.And what of the old masters? The now vanquished creatures who dominated the fertile breadbasket of what is now Midland? What were they? Where are they? What do they plan now?Pray we never find out.Edit 2 - Electric boogalooOh yeah, the Dragonborn! Okay, couple options.1) They were just janissary warriors of the Old Civilization. When it crumbled they stuck to what they knew; war. They organized into military regiments, but now were no longer under a centralized command. Might have to work a bit to explain why they didn't just carve out a homeland for themselves. Maybe it was cheaper/easier/more in line with their carefully manipulated disposition not to?2) The Old Civilization was actually dragons! They had a big conclave and ruled from on high, which worked great until the elves SMASHED THEM, and wiped out most of the elder wyrms in the conflagration! The younger ones all fled, as the fires and slave revolts ravaged their empire and everything fell apart. This also has the advantage of explaining why they haven't done anything for so long.They were waiting to grow up. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

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