What Every Elf Knows

• Elvenkind once lived north of the Boundary Mountains, but were driven south almost 5,000 years ago by some tragedy known only as the Great Sorrow.
• The elves brought their goblin and gnome servants with them south of the Boundary Mountains.
• To this day elves are forbidden to venture north of the Mountains.
• The new lands were largely wild, inhabited only by stone giants, lizardfolk, merfolk, and primitive humans led by the Druids, a caste of shape-changing priests.
• The exiled elves founded the kingdom of Norumbega in these new lands.
• The stone giants laid the foundations of the five great elf halls: Norumbega the Shining, Wintervale, Highfalls, Deepwood, and the Fair Spires.
• The goblins mined and worked metals, while the gnomes mined for gems and worked with wood. Hobgoblins formed the core of the Elvish armies.
• Nearly 1,600 years ago Norumbega reached the height of its power. The hobgoblin armies guarded the land from all trespassers.
• The goblins and hobgoblins rose up in a bloody revolution against the elves some 500 years ago. Wintervale, Highfalls, and Deepwood were destroyed; Norumbega vanished from the earth.
• Today the Fair Spires, ruled by the Elf Queen, is the last standing citadel from old Norumbega. The Spires are home to high elves, and located on a island in the Sundering Sea.
• The survivors from Wintervale, Highfalls, and Deepwood are wood elves and have their own, much diminished kingdoms.
• Most living elves were born after Southrons began pushing into the north, and many were born before the Southrons destroyed the hobgoblin empire.
• The oldest elves in the North can remember Norumbega at its height. Most communities have at least one elf who remembers the goblin uprising.