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The Witch-Elves

Location

The Witch-Elves have their traditional home in the Forest Woods of the South (not to be confused with Wood Forest in the far North East, which is often mistakenly burned down when racial animosity against the Witch-Elves is sufficiently piqued). In recent centurities they have begun to spread out across the rest of Battal.

Lifestyle

Witch-Elves tend to favour arboreal accommodation. Their tree houses are built as high as their engineering skills will allow and linked together by a series of tightropes and platforms. A Witch-Elf’s sense of balance is a matter of great personal pride, and few have any trouble navigating the villages in this fashion. Falls are rare but not unheard of, and those who lose their balance usually suicide out of shame.

Government

The Witch-Elves elect a Prime Minister which has supreme executive authority for their 13 yearicle rule. One well known trait of Witch-Elves is their unique sense of civic infallability. They have a complete inability to admit when they are wrong in political circles. Once committed to a decision they will do whatever it takes to stand behind that decision, despite any evidence presented to the contrary. As a result any leader that they elect once, no matter how well or poorly they perform, they will without fail vote for again if that individual chooses to run for re-election. As a result, elections are not held during election years with an encumbant running and there is merely a purely cerimonial election help in which the politician "accepts unanimous re-election."

At times this works out well, such as during the rule of Homar the Magnificent, other times it does not work out so well, such as during the reign of the inept Magus of the W’Teelf who was hopelessly out of his depth during the Unlight War, when the race was all but wiped out.

Biology

Witch-Elves are superficially similar to humans, though when viewed collectively have a certain pointed, reptilian aspect to their appearance. The Witch-Elves themselves claim descent from the Albatross Elemanifestation Camdoo W’Teelf who (various legends have it) created the first of their race by impregnating the Spirit of The East Wind; an acorn; his own mother; or possibly all three at once. These legends may indicate an ancestral memory of a union between Furniture, Sjkarblae and Kryatures before the opening of the Darkrift. Whatever the case, they share many aspects of their physiology and behaviour with birds - such as their extremely low body-mass-to-volume ratio, their high lung capacity and their ability to excrete nitrogenous waste as uric acid in their faeces instead of urinating.

When they are unclothed (an occasion few humans have witnessed and lived to describe – fewer still have lived after they described) the differences from humans in their anatomy become more noticeable. Their bodies are entirely hairless, and neither males nor females seem to possess nipples, though the females do have breast-like organs on their chests. It is thought that nipples develop on the females only when they are nursing a child, though this is entirely speculation. Less still is known of the structure of their reproductive organs, only that they are entirely alien to human experience, and to attempt to describe them any further would be to enter into indulgent fantasy.

Despite this fundamental incompatability, female Witch-Elves have been described as enchantingly beautiful, and their expressions and gazes are often described as "lusty" or "longing", even though these concepts do not translate into the culture of the Witch-Elves and are merely projections of the viewer.

Life Cycle

A young Witch-Elfling begins life as an egg, and after three months hatches at about the same level of development as a human one-year-old. Possibly due to the low mass of the adults, Witch-Elflings reach reproductive maturity within ten years, and are at this age as mentally capable as a human twenty year old. Once mature, Witch-Elves age more slowly than humans and live much longer, their average life-span (barring attempted genocides) being around 120 years.

Magic

Both the greatest strength and greatest weakness of the Witch-Elves lies in their Elemenstation. On the one hand, every Witch-Elf ever hatched possesses at least as much magical ability as the average human Elemenstor, more than making up for their lack of physical strength in battle. Unfortunately, their magical abilities lie almost entirely in the fields of Air and Stream Elemenstations (in keeping with their avian physiology and purported heritage), and most Witch-Elves find it nearly impossible to grasp even the most basic principles of Earth, Water, and Fire. They deny the existence of the Secondary Elements entirely, holding that Stream Elemenstation is merely an extension of Air.

Flying

Despite these shortcomings, Witch-Elves have one great advantage over the other races when it comes to Elemenstation: The combination of their light bodies and skill with Air magic permits them, with some practice, to fly. This is an ability that they use only rarely, for even a momentary loss of concentration can send the practitioner veering wildly off course or fling them to the ground with fatal force. Some of the less fortunate Witch-Elves who venture upwards in the wrong weather literally never come down again, doomed to be tossed helplessly from one stratospheric current to another until they freeze to death. There is even a memorial in the northernmost tree-village to the six (on average) Witch-Elves lost every year to thermal updrafts. Some have pointed out that this figure is inflated, as it includes those Witch-Elves who, having been blown away from the Forest Woods, eventually managed to land safely but were simply too embarrassed to return home.

Additional: Pseudoanthropologists have recently come to the conclusion that Witch-Elves are technically not Elves at all, the similarities between the two races merely being one of nature's coincidences. This theory has been hotly contested amongst the scientific community, especially by those who already own a copy of "What Elf Is That?" and aren't about to shell out half a week's wages for the revised edition.

See also: Elf-Witches

Fan Art