The History of Troimoira's Fane

History is a curious beast. It changes its colours for each viewer, each teller, each interpreter. In the world of Leithian, history is truly a chameleon, since it passes through the hands of diverse peoples who all have every reason to see it differently. This is the view of a single storyteller, and his character has inevitably coloured it.

Pre-History

Many hundreds of years ago, the dwarfs dug up through the crust of the world and saw the sunlight for the first time. Although they were truly the children of Moradin, the Father of the Deep Lands, they were delighted and amazed by all they saw around them. The vibrant colours; the singing air; the beauty of the stars, set like gems in the night canopy. Their souls belonged still to the Deep Lands, but they drank deep of the Light World.

On the surface of the world they found the gnomes, cousins long since lost. The two ancient races, of Light and Deep, learned much of each other, and found much that they shared. And they roamed across the land freely, for the world was very great, and they were few in number.

The Last Kind, the humans, were just beginning to turn their faces to the sky, and to give words to the wondrous things that they saw around them. They looked to the ancient races as their teachers, and although there was much in them that was regrettable, the older races saw in them a future of might and grandeur. And so they taught them very many things, of earth and sky, of metal and stone, of body, soul and mind. Mankind began to know itself.

And then the Elves came.

They marched out of the north in great hosts, fleeing from something behind them, something in their past so terrible that they chose to shed it like a skin and walk into a new world, leaving the wreck behind and trusting to chance to give them a second home. With them they brought their thralls; the Orcs, who marched in their vanguard, proud and terrible; and the Halfings, simple folk who loved the new land that they saw, and came to hate their masters for what they did to it.

Mankind instinctively fled from the Elanii hosts, with the sense of a hunted animal. The older races sought to welcome the newcomers, but they received only the courtesy of a slavers' net, for the Elanii would regard none as their equal. Those of the older races who escaped soon learnt from the dark wisdom of the Last Kind, and they fled to the underground and the Deeper places.

As for Mankind...the Elanii came to covert their strength and their freedom of will. They forever sought to hold men, and shape them to their desires, but they could never break them of their sense of self, or of their thirst for freedom.

Not all of the Elves fell back upon their old ways. Some, regarding the purity of their new world, swore to respect and preserve it. They broke away from the Elanii, and became known as Ythaldin, "The Outcast". The Elanii came to hate them more than any other kind, and they hunted them ruthlessly.

Thus it was at the beginning of the world, or so the ancient peoples say.