Character Group Rules - Elves

It's me, again, Hannah.
Trinity has been writing things about how her story works. I thought I'd take a page out of her book and write a bit on the rules concerning Elves, Dragons, and other creatures in my world.

Okay, first of all, to fully understand what I'm going to be writing, you have to have read this post here: http://quillinherquiver.blogspot.com/2012/12/location-post-seventh-dimension-aka.html

Just a little run-through before we start: the elves live in a different dimension than we do. This is a bit hard to explain. It's hard to work out in my own mind, but they don't live in this universe. They don't have the same planets, sun or moon... I haven't quite worked out what the sun and moon are like. I've given their dimension about the same properties as ours, as it's easier without having to worry about the amount of gravity and oxygen and so on.

Now, about the elves, elaborating on the dimension-thing.

One remarkable thing that I've "noticed" is that eye problems are practically non-existent in that dimension, such as near-sightedness, far-sightedness, etc. So if you wear glasses in this dimension, you won't need them in the Seventh Dimension. There are instances, of course, in which someone loses their eye from a stab wound or something. In that case, they can't see on that side. And there is a single example of an elf who was born blind. In fact, she's pretty famous, being the Princess Sundeep. The elves don't really understand what caused her blindness, and she seems to be the only one naturally afflicted by it.

Okay. I'm going to try to make a list of how elves are different from humans.

The most obvious point is that elves have pointed ears. And, as in common legend, they age more slowly, time-wise and appearance-wise.
In my... what do I call it? In my elves' world, they normally live up to 100, maybe 120 years.
Also, their physical appearance bears mentioning. Six feet tall is an average height for elves. Elves are also naturally slender and have, shall we say, pleasing facial features. They can have all type of skin and hair color, and their appearances do differ, but for the most part, they are rather attractive.
Elves are quite agile. Some of them (especially main characters) have seriously Olympic-level skills. It's pretty hard to tell you using words, so let me give you an example:

 Trinity came across this movie today, and we were both very impressed. I kept telling my younger sister, "This is how elves are!"
Then, we went on to imagine, what would happen if there were a giant battle with hundreds of elves? And what if the elves could all do this type of thing? We could imagine them bouncing off each other, knives or swords in hand... they would be incredibly destructive. My sister, Sarah, recalled one of the antagonist groups in my series, a giant breed of snake. She told me that the snakes would definitely be dead within the first few minutes of the battle, and went on to describe the flipping and bouncing and stabbing that the elves would be doing on the snakes from head to tail.
Also, for those of you who have seen Princess Bride, imagine the Man in Black vs. Inigo Montoya dueling scene, but fast-forwarded, and if possible, even more awesome.

Now, do the elves have any special powers?

Besides the extreme agility, elves naturally have super-strength. An average elf can probably lift or move up to three times the weight a human can. They can also move a bit faster, see a bit farther, and their endurance is remarkable.

As for their language, elves' communication primarily uses the languages Elvish and Engling. Engling is the trading language - literally, as eng means 'trade' and ling means 'language'. Engling is basically English, but with a slight Elvish twist. Elvish, in the current time, is almost a lost language. Engling has mostly taken over, though some people still choose to speak the old tongue, and scholars are trying to revive it in Elvish schools.

What else can I say? My elves have a lot of human characteristics. They aren't quite as aloof as other versions, and they're all a bit different. Actually, few have remarkable accents in Eyra. They sound a bit like Americans, for the most part, though they don't use quite as much slang, and some colloquialisms are foreign to them.
There are also big differences between the typical elvish community and the typical human community, not only because of the time difference. The elves live in medieval times, which means no computers, phones, ipods, CDs, movies, guns, etc. No texting teenagers. No movie quotes. No Sherlock or Doctor Who either. Sorry, guys. But have you noticed what a difference modern books and movies have on our society? Elves don't sarcastically call others 'Sherlock' or 'Einstein'. There are no Lord of the Rings quotes, and they have no idea who Harry Potter is.
I have to be conscious of these things while I'm writing. Sometimes it gets kind of difficult, and I find myself referencing when words were invented to make sure that I'm in approximately the right time period.
Also, I think I'm going to have to make my elves invent clocks.

There is probably a lot of other things I could say, but nothing comes to mind at the moment.

It has recently occurred to me that it might be better to post actual pieces of my story instead of talking about it. Or maybe just write. Yes or no? (Not about whether I should write or not. I know the answer to that. Sigh....)

Location Post - Eyra

A Location Post, the first of it's kind.
Sorry, it's Hannah. Hi. It's also my second post today, but the other one was short, so, oh well.

So, anyway, a Location Post. It's like a Character Post, but describing a fictional Location in any of our books, such as a country in general, or maybe something more specific, like a camp, a town, or a village.

Eyra

(Ai-rah)

Known as the home of the elves

Resides in the Seventh dimension

Now, Eyra is basically a medieval country, so as you can imagine, helicopters aren't very common. So I haven't been able to get a good picture of the entire landscape, though I'm working on it.  For now, you'll have to settle for a map that some kind elf sketched out for me. She told me to please realize that not everything is to scale, and this is only a section of the northwest coast. However, that is the part we'll be using most is the northwest coast, so it ought to work.

I've made it large scale so that you can see it better:

This map has a lot of history.
 

Silennoe Palace

The Silennoe [SYE-len-no] mountain range, for instance, has been the long-time home of royalty. The castle (wittily named Silennoe Palace) is in the foothills, on the actual Mt. Silennoe. This mountain is not the tallest of the mountain range, since life on an elvish Mt. Kilimanjaro would be pretty difficult, even if you're an elf. If not for the altitude, the cold, and the thin oxygen, there would be the journey up and down the steep slope, made worse by the fact that there is snow everywhere.

Silennoe Palace is rather like a community. Although the currently-reigning monarchs do reside there, there is also several hundred servants and soldiers. Soldiers' families are also welcome to stay, which adds to the head count by a large quantity.

Darkvale - your typical enter-at-your-own-peril forest. Every good fantasy story needs one. Though a path has been cleared through the woods to the peninsula on the other side, it is still not advised for travellers to take a shortcut through the, excuse the overused dramatic description, treacherous woods. You see, there's a terrible infestation of snakes in the forest. Not like a big pit of snakes, or knots of vipers scattered all along the path. And no, the ground is not just one heaving mass of serpents. Actually, the snakes average ten to fifteen feet tall, and are around seven feet in circumference. They are big (understatement) and lethal, and Darkvale is their favorite breeding ground. 

It is highly recommended for any visitors to instead go around Darkvale, following a path along the ocean, in order to get to the peninsula, if they really want to get there that badly. Really, the peninsula is just a small, inhospitable, rocky, deserted chunk of land that's about forty feet long or so.

In the experience of those of us who have ignored the warning, the journey through Darkvale on horseback will take two to three days, allowing for night stops, and assuming you don't have to backtrack or escape very large serpents.

A lot more cheerful in comparison to Darkvale.

Merewoods: this area is unlabeled, but if you look at the area around Darkvale, you'll see a bunch little things that look like tents. I'll get to those in a minute. Around the tents, in a cresent shape, is a bunch of woods, thinner than the rest of Darkvale. This is the Merewoods. 

It's a lot more cheerful in comparison to Darkvale.

Also, the wide clearing between Merewoods and Darkvale is a common campground for Aiken's Gang (which explains the tents).

Aesselve and Faeles: The sea to the left and the ocean to the right, respectively (provided I haven't mixed up my lefts and rights again). I have no picture of these, besides the map.

Across the Aesselve sea, you may find a country called Ente, the land of the dwarves. But that's another long, long story, another book actually, so wait on that one. There have been no new countries or major continents discovered in the Faeles Ocean to date. If there are, I'll let you know. 

Now onto the two major cities in the northwest coast, apart from Silennoe...

Undunah: a well-off city, in which resides several lords, ladies, and other well-known elvish "celebrities". It was one of the first cities settled in upper Eyra. It has a fortress that has been built in case of an attack against Undunah, in the event of which the citizens of the city will have a place in which to barricade themselves.

Timarae: this city is not as posh as Undunah. It's a bit more rural, and there are fewer famous or important elves that reside there. Timarae is a bit like Bree from Lord of the Rings. The building are small, slap-together shacks, and the fortress and outer wall are less durable than Undunah's. However, that doesn't make it any worse of a city. Several good elves have come out of Timarae. It was Aiken's hometown, for example, and Lina was raised there for a time.

Silola River. It's a river. There isn't much of a history on Silola, though I'll see what I can find.

The Armoury: an armory is a building specially used to house weapons and armor of different kinds. This armory is a favorite place of Lina's, for sentimental reasons, among others. This was the place she got her first real sword. I'm getting a bit tired of saying it, but that's a long story too. Suffice it to say that The Armoury is an iconic place for my characters.

I may have to make another post later concerning all of these things, making information updates, and adding anything I may have missed. Please remember that I know next to nothing about geography, and for all I know the map could be incorrect and it's actually impossible for a mountian range to be next to a beach. I suppose for now I'll just trust the artist and say that this is how things look in upper Eyra. All this information has been collected from various sources around Eyra, and I assume that the information is reliable.

Left-over little tidbits of minor interest:

*The current rulers of Eyra are King Aleron and Queen Cyra. Their children are Prince Laserian, Princess Adhara, Princess Sundeep, Princess Nyree, and Princess Fern. 

*Above Ente, to the left of Eyra, is a country called Orphna, in which live humans in medieval times. Some of these humans are unaware of the existence of an elvish country.

*Aesselve and Faeles can be unscrambled to read elves sea and elf sea respectively.

*The name of the elf artist who drew this map can be translated as Ohana Lost-tide.

Feedback is welcome. If you would like to know more about Eyra, or an elvish city in particular, just leave a comment. If you would like to tell me that this was just way too long and boring... well, I guess I can take it, so, again, go ahead and say something.

And to Trinity: Four posts in a row! Booyah!