An elven manuscript bound in pale birch bark, its pages thin as flower petals yet somehow indestructible. The text is written in flowing Elvish script with a Common translation beneath.
To understand the Elfwood is to understand its Queen. And to understand the Queen is to accept that some truths span millennia while mortal lives flicker past like sparks from a fire.
Aelra Sylanthiel has ruled Vel Enweir for four thousand years.
Let that number settle in your mind. Four thousand years. When she took the throne, humans had not yet discovered writing. The dwarves were still carving their first halls. The gods’ war against Taelkor was within living memory—her living memory, for she fought in it.
She inherited a realm fractured by loss and grief. The Last Battle had been fought in what would become the Elfwood, and though the elves had been on the winning side, they had paid dearly. Clans blamed each other for failures real and imagined. Blood feuds threatened to tear apart what Taelkor had failed to destroy.
Aelra, then a young warrior-priestess with silver hair already touched by starlight, saw what others could not: that the elves would destroy themselves unless united under a single vision. She did not conquer the clans. She convinced them. One by one, through patience, wisdom, and occasional displays of power that reminded them she was no ordinary elf, she brought them together under a single banner.
The realm she built is unlike any other in the world. Balandel, the capital, is not merely constructed among the silverwood trees—it is woven into them, a living city where architecture and nature are indistinguishable. Walkways of pale wood connect the great trees. Singing vines provide music that changes with the seasons. Moonlit pools reflect not the sky above, but visions of the past and possible futures.
And at the heart of it all sits the Queen, ageless and watchful, her eyes cool as mountain springs and sharp as drawn swords.
Visitors to Vel Enweir often find her distant, even cold. This is by design. Aelra has watched countless mortal kingdoms rise and fall. She has seen allies become enemies and enemies become dust. She does not give her trust easily, and those who betray it rarely get a second chance.
But those who prove themselves worthy find a different Queen beneath the formal exterior. She has been known to spend hours in conversation with mortals who interest her, asking questions about lives that will end before she finishes her next meditation. She remembers names—every name, of everyone she has ever met who dealt with her honestly. And when her realm is threatened, she does not hide behind armies. She walks to the front lines herself, wielding magic so ancient that modern mages cannot identify it.
There are those who resent her. Some elves whisper that she has ruled too long, that her caution has become stagnation, that Vel Enweir needs fresh vision. These whispers never last long. Not because the Queen silences them—she considers free thought sacred—but because those who spend time in her presence tend to understand why the realm has endured when so many others have fallen.
Four thousand years. Four thousand years of wisdom, memory, and power beyond mortal comprehension.
May she reign for four thousand more.
—Translated from the Elvish by scholars of the Marble Academy