I think that Elves aren't immortal...naturally. It never made sense to me that the rest of the intelligent species just... let the Elves run everything, like the Goblins the Trolls, the Orcs, they're all really strong really war driven species, and they just... let these pacifist wimpy 'oh we can't handle violence or guilt without breaking emotionally' Elves stay in control? Like sure... they have powers, but the Orcs have chemical warfare and the Trolls are turning their newborns into mutant war machines. So...why? Unless perhaps they weren't always peaceful exactly... My idea is that at one point in distant history the Elves were as violent as the some of the other species, with their powers they would have been nigh on unstoppable on the battle field (this would also partly explain the prejudice against the Talentless and Bad Matches, weak parents have weak children that are useless for the war effort.) and then something changed... A new craze began to sweep through the alchemists. Was Immortality possible? failed experiment after failed experiment eventually led to a breakthrough. Alicorns were immortal. (They were sentient too, just not in the way the 'intelligent' species with their biased worldview tended to define it.) (The gnomes knew, they knew many things, but they Forgot. It was safer, for everyone, to Forget.) The Elves hunted the Alicorns to the point of near extinction. The immortality elixir was a world-changing success. They did not yet know what price they would pay. Soon every Elf was immortal, and the children of the immortals were immortal as well. Or so they thought. within a few generations they began to notice some... problems. Some were to be expected, Grief was less common and therefor less understood and harder to deal with. The 'only have one child' idea was necessary to ensure a stable and healthy population. As was the more refined Matching system, to prevent inbreeding. But other problems were more... worrisome. The younger generations didn't handle violence well. And when a horrific accident took the life of a young couples only child... they both went insane. In fact there were more and more cases of those who had witnessed violence or tragedy losing their minds. The Elves began to realize what was happening, and rushed to fix it. They offered treaties that the other species were only too happy to accept. They went about creating a utopia civilization that would support their new reality. They altered the history books and covered their tracks. As the centuries passed more problems surfaced. the first generations of immortals... began to lose themselves, forgetting things, important things, becoming confused. No species were supposed to live for millennium. The Alicorns had known this, had had a complex saying in their unearthly mind-language that translated roughly to: True Immortals Always Die. Vespera happened. Atlantis sunk. The tales the Humans told of the Elves took on a darker more wary tone. An instinctive fear, remembered long after the legends that had inspired it were forgotten lingered in the other intelligent species.
And Elysian? She had been a talented young Alchemist, the daughter of two talented Alchemists. Her special power was one of those unique ones. (In the era of the immortals these unique powers were simply called 'super rare') But she barely used it, so it didn't matter. At first she hadn't had much to do with the search for immortality, instead studying the powers of Darkness and Light, and of course, the Shadows between. Eventually these studies led her back to the search for immortality. But after a couple of months making substantial progress, she stopped. Retreated to a small family home far out, away from everything. closed herself off, cut off her friends and family, became a recluse. She continued her experiments in secret. And though history would not know it, she found her own way to immortality many, many years before anyone else. Not the flawed immortality that her kin would later discover either. She hid her discovery from the world, paranoid and knowing what would become of it. she considered destroying it all, finding a way to reverse the effects on herself, and taking the secret to the grave. But the thirst for knowledge and a stubborn unwillingness to flush years worth of work down the drain stopped her. She returned to her studies on the properties and powers of the Ethereal Elements. Her abilities helped with that. She gained more and more power until She WAS power. In a way so literal it made even her uncomfortable. Around the same time, the other Elves found their own way to a more troublesome Immortality. She was found not long after. In the aftermath she was sealed away, fading from memory until she was nothing but a strange mention in a mysterious myth. A Power source. Eventually the cracks that had been in the Elvin society since the beginning would show themselves. Rebellions would form and certain power hungry Elves would find the myth of Power, the legend of Elysian. A certain Lady Gisela would begin to recreate certain ancient experiments. A Moonlark would be born. To the save the world or destroy it only time would tell. Children born into a world of peace begin to train for war. A desperate scavenger hunt leads two groups to one location. And from a millennia long slumber Elysian awakens...
