History As We Would Have It Told
Author Unknown
359th year of the Era of Peace
The elves are a fearful people. They fear their enemies, but more than this they fear their creations. Often, the two become one and the same.
Some would have you believe the Great Peace was a time of harmony. This is not exactly true. The Great Peace was a time of negotiation, of willful ignorance and selective amnesia. For those of us who chose not to forget, those times were rather like these. Truly, there is not much difference between the two.
The elves are a nature-loving people. I know this.
We eventually destroy even those things we love most. Sometimes especially those things. I know this as well.
If it had not been the Steer, it would have been otherwise. It would have been the first creations, the Eternal Guard. If not them, then it would have been Drow. Many among the elves will tell you this. It is the truth.
The elves realized they were vulnerable long before the Fall of the Steer. Though the humans’ lives were brief flickers in comparison to their own, each elven birth is a rare blessing to be celebrated even now. This left the humans to expand, growing in both strength and number, while the elves stagnated and eventually began to weaken. Without aid, they realized, they would eventually be overcome, fallen at the feet of another civilization.
Thus they invented the Eternal Guard, a small group with a strength superior to even their creators. At their height, they perhaps numbered two hundred, but there are far fewer now. If the elves did anything right with the Guard, it was forbid them to procreate. Their number can only grow smaller.
If I were to compare the Guard to anything you know, it would be to the Vampire. Yet if I understand your folklore properly, they are still quite different. Religious paraphernalia has no effect on them, nor do particular foods. They do not burst into flame at sunrise, though they are generally so pale as to redden and burn easily. Beyond slowing one down, a stake to the heart would do little damage; in order to kill a member of the Guard, one must destroy its body.
But there are similarities. The Eternal Guard have the potential to reach immortality to be sure, and they, much like your Vampires, rely on the blood of others to survive. They frequently sleep through the brightest hours of each day as their eyes are extraordinarily sensitive to its light, and their bite can be surprisingly pleasurable when they desire that it be so.
The Guard remained loyal to their creators for a great many years, and provided the first line of defense against the exiled Drow. Soon after the Drow retreated to the underground, however, the High Priestess judged the Eternal Guard to be an abomination and decreed that they be put to death. When killing them with blunt force proved to be difficult [their creators, it seemed, had done their job rather well], the elvish crown ordered the Guard back into their cells. They followed obediently and were abandoned and starved, their bodies slowly consuming themselves over a period of several long weeks.
It was discovered upon a cell count that not all of the Guard had been led back to their cages; a single unit had not returned. As their absence stretched on for months, then years and finally decades, officials claimed that the last Guards had perished elsewhere. Such things did happen occasionally, and it would explain their apparent disobedience. But when a small contingent of scouts were eventually found, dead with the telltale signs of the Eternal Guard’s feeding on their throats, it became clear the Guards were still quite alive and well.
They never attacked the elvish settlements directly, likely because they were too few in number, but any elves who strayed too far from their homes put themselves at great risk. During the War, entire companies would sometimes go missing, their bodies latter found emptied and hanging from the trees like so much rotten fruit. Even now, the papers occasionally feature a grizzly murder, sensationalized on the front pages. No one speaks about it, but we recognize their work when we see it.
The Guard have become an integral part of our life here, especially in The Lows. We understand them, their thirst for vengeance, and envy them the power to obtain the retribution we all feel we deserve. But that is not why I have told you this. I explain it so that you might understand my position.
There have been whispers of elven experiments, attempts to create soldiers to serve in the innermost circles of their armed forces. Such suspicions are often discounted, but if one were to tell me the elves strive to find new ways to protect their establishment, I would not be surprised. To tell me this and expect disbelief? Why, when they have done the same already, so many years before?
