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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Edena_of_Neith" data-source="post: 3582648" data-attributes="member: 2020">Thank you.  And thanks again, Fusangite.  Thanks for the compliments.    It's been 100 years since Vecna left, and 80 years into the Long Peace (after the Great Retribution - against Vecna's Legions.)  It's the current time of the setting, and campaign.    Elves retained their agnakok abilities from the old Haldendreevan time.    Elves retained their supernatural will to live, their mental fortitude, and their spiritual strength, from that time.  Elves retained their inability to kill or strike at other elves from that time (they must stay away from other elves not so constrained, an irony if ever there was one.)  Elves retain an innate ability to recognize other elves - Haldendreevan or not so - and innate telepathy with Haldendreevan descendants.  The Elves, grew (perhaps because they were elves) a monumental love of all life, out of their own love of life.  Thus they look back at what happened with horror, thinking their Haldendreevan ancestors horribly warped, and yet conceding they would have been exterminated otherwise, and unable to resolve what their ancestors should have done.  They then, must confront their own conundrum.  For elves of Haldendreevan descent, although inhumanly peaceful, turn inhumanly warlike when provoked.  The Haldendreevan taint is still there.  They are really good people ... except when they are really evil.  They are willing to be reasonable even with their supposed foes, congenial and talkative ... unless the Haldendreevan taint kicks in because they were attacked, and then they enjoy torturing and killing and eating the foe.  They are merry and frivolous, flighty and frolicking, and become merry killers, frivolous murderers, and frolicking torturers once attacked.  They spend most of their time now in peacetime pursuits.  Haldendreeva itself is an architectural wonder, rising out of the waters of the Great Swamp (as it is now called) soaring in graceful arches and tall towers over clear blue waters.    They spend time in pursuits humans would spend time in:  romance, love, child care, homekeeping, working to restore and heal their surroundings, working as healers in general, bringing beneficience to a wracked world.  Except when they are attacked.  Fortunately, nobody has done this in the last 50 years.  The last time they were attacked, they all but obliterated the offending nation.  The elves vary, some more Haldendreevish, some far less so (although they retain the beneficial abilities from that time.)  The elves do a lot of soul searching, practice constant restraint and self discipline to control their tainted nature (such efforts actually work now, against the taint), try very hard to remain true to what they consider their True Selves, their Elvishness, and even restrain their more warlike members (sometimes forcibly.)  But if you still see them munching on leaves and bugs, don't take exception, for it's normal.  If you see one chewing on a branch, pay it no heed.  If you see one munching on a thigh bone, criticize if you would, but attack at your own risk.  Will the elves moderate completely back to the elves of old Delrune?  Unknown.  Will the elves lose their taint?  Possibly.  Will the elves lose their special abilities?  Unlikely.  Those abilities mostly emerged before th madness, when the elves merely sought survival.  What was kindled, cannot easily be put out.  Fusangite, they are having quite a lot of children.  And the raising of large families is making them a very communal society.  They so very much cherish their children, that they make the utmost effort to be there for them.  These elves are open as Player Characters of ECL 1, for any of my players who wish to go with them.  -  As for the Flanaess, it is a land of volcanoes, badlands, new seas, new lands, and no map publicly exists to cover it (maps that have been made were seized and hidden.)  Greyhawk City still stands.  Haldendreeva has relinquished rulership of the Swamp and claims only the small area around itself.  Chauntosbergen remains.  Here and there, isolated, are small countries and city-states, each of a different race and culture, each in renewed exploration of the strange world around them.  In the east, a gaggle of nations warily eye each other, based on suloise-oeridian-flannae rivalries, remembering Aerdi, but all refrain from war.  Even there, vast areas are unmapped and unknown.  One great black cloud hangs over the illithid nation, where the cattle farms number in the millions.  But the illithid keep to themselves, and others leave them alone.  For now.  There are even other - normal - elves again.  Some of those who fled the world during the wars came back, and brought settlers from other worlds.  Varnaith had a sizeable exodus, and those people are back.  As for the climate, it varies depending on where you are.  The Yatils in the north are tropical.  In the Adri, the climate is glacial (someone let the ice elves out.)  It snows in places at the equator, while parts of Hyboria are warm.  Magic, not physics, dictates the climate anymore.   Dwarves survived.  Most became evil, dark dwarves under Vecna's corruptive rule, and live deep underground now.  But surface dwelling dwarves are generally true dwarves, perhaps more so since they have seen the worst and cherish family and home all the more for it.  Gnomes survived.  Their answer was to shapechange into an entirely different race, so that not even Vecna would discover them.  Contingencies set up awakened them after Vecna's departure, and some returned to their gnomish nature.  Some even returned to gnomish form, but never quite back to what they were.  These modified beings are known as quixotes, but the most normal among them are called quixote gnomes.   Halflings and half-elves did not survive as peoples.  But many halflings attempted flight and received aid during the wars, and escaped to other worlds.  Many more were rescued by retreating Faerie (not taken to Faerie, unless permanently ... but most sent on to other worlds.)  Some of the halflings are returning as pioneers.  A few of the latter are helping them, Faerie beings themselves now.  Aasimar intervened and helped individuals of many races escape.  Some, or their descendants, are returning now, often aasimar themselves.  Natural and elemental forces are widespread, and not generally friendly to anyone.  Powers of chaos and raw fury, they are just innately dangerous.  Or very angry, at how mortals have behaved.  (the Unseelie are so outraged, that it is dangerous for anyone at all to approach them.)  The Faerie, however, are helping as they can to bring healing and recovery, and aid any group involved in these efforts.  Mankind is still mankind.  But mankind is no longer the dominant race, his numbers so greatly lessened that he is dominant only here and there, interspersed amongst a gaggle of races and new nations founded by alien peoples.  A lot of tieflings plague mankind, especially in darker realms and places.  But Vecna's legions are gone, destroyed or fled.  Acererak, who became involved to plot to overthrow Vecna, has returned to his secret Tomb.  Iggwily, spurned by Vecna, roams the wild places in fury.  Mordenkainen was killed in the War with Vecna, and his Circle of Eight destroyed.  But it is thought clones survived and may have returned to Oerth.  Nobody can confirm this.  Rary is stronger than ever, in isolation in the deep forests where the Sea of Dust once was.  (A relatively strong nation of humans are the storm riders, who literally ride small tornadoes into battle, and have great command of the elements, in their wind swept hill country where the Burneal once stood.)  Such is the Flanaess today.  How is it elsewhere on Oerth and in Greyspace?  Few know.  Pioneers are trying to find out the state of things now.</blockquote>

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