The Feywild

In the myths of this world it is said that the sun rose only once; a single dawn not repeated since. The elven storytellers describe a great golden star rising from the edge of an empty world to light the vast black fields of earth. The only day, they say, lasted a thousand years as the sun crossed the sky, searching for life and finding nothing. No path nor burrow nor blade of grass broke the black fields. And at last the sun came to the world's end, where a boundless sea as still as mirrored glass stretched to the horizon; and the sun, tired from her journey, sank beneath the water and doused her flames forever.

In the darkness then, the Mirror Sea boiled and there rose a great mist that covered all the world and hid the earth like a secret from the sky. But the black earth remembered the sun and missed its warmth and caused to grow great creaking boughs of ash and oak and thorn whose roots reached deep into the soil and whose branches reached up and up to breach the roof of the mists to see what could be seen. But there the great trees saw the golden sun was gone forever, and all there was was the black earth below, and the white mists around and the green trees growing tall under the cold stars.

And ages passed in shadow and silence. The great trees grew and gathered between and over their mountainous roots a rustling sea of dry, curled leaves that buried the black earth. And the world slumbered for what might have been a thousand thousand years. And time crept by with barely the whisper of still branches hidden in deepest night. Until all at once, unheralded, through the mists shone a pale silver light. And rising among the cold stars was a vast moon of pale blue that filled a quarter of the sky. And though its silver light was dim, it woke a restless magic in everything it touched; for in this world, where time was measured in the slow growth of trees that reached above the highest clouds, the moon itself was restless. In the time it took a single leaf to fall from the highest bough to the black earth below it rose and crossed the sky and set again.

But in renewed darkness the memory of light stirred a longing in the soil, even hidden as it was beneath the Sea of Fallen Leaves. For every leaf touched by the silver light held in it the memory and magic of the moon; and as they fell upon the soil the black earth gave them life. And so it was that the first elves woke beneath the stars, among fallen leaves and the mists of the Mirror Sea, in a world of ash and oak and thorn.

The earth imposed no single form upon these first elves, for their nature was like the leaves from which they had been made; to drift on currents of whim and to light on any form they fancied. And so they filled the world with every form they might imagine choosing to be beast or bird, insect or flower as the mood might take them. And they filled the world with life in this way.

One elven spirit chose a form with cunning hands for craft, and swift feet for reaching the far vastnesses of the world, and eyes to pierce its shadows, and a mind to learn its secrets and a voice to fill it with song. This first true elf was Corellan Latherian and he was The Elderborn, The Father of Seasons, The First Dreamer. In the darkness under the stars he wrought many wonders and his beauty was so great that many other elven spirits, inspired by his example, took forms as he had and together they filled the world with art and beauty and life.

And the moon rose once more, filling the world with its enchanted radiance, rising over the elves in all their infinite variety and all the wonders they had made. And it rose and set each night as the great trees reached into the sky and the white mists drifted among them, and the black earth slumbered peacefully below. To the elves, the moon is the source of all memory and magic for the creatures of this world.

And so we have the Feywild; a world of endless shadow, primeval forests, and beautiful and often hostile wilderness where every living thing is inundated with magic.