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Quithayran

The Eternal Forest — the cradle of the whole elven race, and the home of the Fayes, the spirits of nature.

Quithayran is not a nation in the political sense — no government, no army, no embassy — but the origin-place of every elf and the living heart of the Daïkinee (Paths of Destiny, Beetle totem). It is less a country than a metaphysical taproot. The elves' very existence is bound to the forest: the closer an elf lives to its heart, the longer they live and the better their body shrugs off harm. Far from the cradle, an elf becomes one of the Maalivatë — "those who have left" — their long lives (60 to 120 years) shortening with the distance. The presence of the Fayes, the nature-spirits dwelling in Quithayran, seems to sustain them even in exile.

The Daïkinee are the forest's closest people, the original stem of the elven race, still living a sylvan life in symbiosis with beast and plant. From this one cradle the elven race split into three that "are no more one people": the Cynwäll (Dragon, Light) who exiled themselves to found what became Cadwallon, the Akkyshan (Spider, Darkness), and the Daïkinee (Beetle, Destiny) who stayed. That schism left a wound: Daïkinee women suffer a curse laid by Scaëlin, matriarch of the Akkyshans — they die soon after bearing the fruit of their first union. And it is the Daïkinee, keepers of the oldest true memory on Aarklash, who still tell of the ancient Serpent people that once held the Cadwallon site and allied with the most evil of dragons.

In Cadwallon

The forest is distant, but its people and its spirits reach the city:

  • Daïkinee residents — sylvan elves far from their cradle, living as Maalivatë; rare, and bound to nature. Yalin Aoue is the campaign's young Daïkinee, her forest-animae possibly a fragment of Desire and the Garden of Desire.
  • The Fayes — nature-spirits of Quithayran's kind, drawn to Cadwallon's Magical Groves, which (unknown to most) are shoots of Desire's prison-garden.
  • Daïkinee lore is the city's best source on the Ophidians and the pre-Cynwäll past, and the longevity-by-proximity rule shapes the backstory of any long-lived elf.

Relations

  • Daïkinee — the people of the forest; the original elven stem.
  • Cynwäll & Lanever — the Light branch that exiled itself from Quithayran to settle this peninsula.
  • Akkyshan — the Dark branch; Scaëlin's curse on the Daïkinee binds the two peoples in tragedy.
  • Yalin Aoue — the campaign's Daïkinee child, far from the cradle.
  • Magical Groves & Desire — the Fayes-haunted vegetation echoes Quithayran's nature-spirits.

Canon & scope

Drawn from the Cadwallon PHB. Quithayran's geography, the Fayes as beings, and the deep history of the elven schism belong to the Confrontation / Rag'narok line and aren't table canon until we adopt them. Note the PHB frames Quithayran as a cradle and spiritual source, not a polity — treat it as the elven origin-myth made geographic.

See Also