Who were the Elders?

The Elders were 25 star-faring beings of colossal size that fed upon starlight and other cosmic bits to survive. No pictures or vids exist of the Elders, however, ancient Elder-Kind artists depicted them in various ways in drawings and paintings. They generally appear as huge, planet-like beings roughly 2000 to 3000 miles in circumference, with a ruddy, brownish appearance. Their appearance was fairly indistinguishable from ordinary ferrous planets.

The Elders had the ability to travel the stellar byways, however, these long trips through open space could be deadly to them if they did not discover proper sustenance along the way. At some point in the ancient past, they began the practice of making use of smaller, lesser creatures to fare the stars for them, to scout ahead and predetermine the location of suitable starlight for them to feed upon.

The Elders apparently made use of a number of such creatures through the ages; what the fate of the precursor creatures serving the Elders was is not known—it is written that the Elders spoke of them kindly. It is with the last group of creatures serving the Elders, The Elder-Kind, that the story of the League of Elder centers.

The Elder-Kind

In the final ages of the Elders, they were served by a humanoid group of people called, for lack of better terms, the Elder-Kind. Whether the Elders snatched the Elder-Kind away from some distant and long lost home world, or simply created them from scratch, is not known, though it is assumed the Elder-Kind hailed from a place called Earth.

The Elders were delighted with their children and were very fond of them. They found them to be strong-willed, devoted, wildly emotional and somewhat naïve. The Elders were kind to their children and bestowed upon them a number of Gifts: the Gift of Youth and the Gift of Health being chief among them. The Elder-Kind were thusly freed from the ravages of age and of disease, it is even said the Elders bestowed the Gift of Immortality upon them as well, however, modern Elder-kind are quite mortal, living about 220 years.

Epochs of Time

The Elder-Kind served the Elders for a mammoth length of time, marked by Epochs. Each Epoch spanned the slow, steady migration through space where the Elder-Kind were settled on differing home worlds for a long length of time. When a place could no longer safely sustain the Elders needs, they moved on and began a new Epoch.

There were Five Epochs of the Elders:

AX --The long lost age centered on the world Lemuria
BX --The Age of Riches, centered on Emmira
CX --The Age of Youth and Health on the world Cammara
DX --The Age of Decline where the Elders began to weaken, on the world Eng
EX --The Age of the League, where the Elders died, centered on Kana

The EX Epoch marks the demise of the Elders where they grew old and died. The Elders worried about their adopted children, the Elder-Kind, for they had nothing of their own—no culture, no identity. The Elders announced that Kana would be their final home. They made a great library of learning available to them, and bade they begin making their own way as the Elders watched and leant their help from time to time.

This learning and slow expansion from Kana marked the beginning of the League.

The Seven Tribes of the Elder-Kind

As the Elder-Kind began spreading out through Kana, they separated into Seven loose confederations, or tribes:

The Vith --The strong, star-faring peoples of the north
The Barrow --Wise and full of love, they settled on the western island
The Esthers --Loyal and full of Star-light, they settled in the far east
The Halas --Simple and hearty, they became the food-growers of Kana
The Remnaths --Stately and proud, they settled far to the south
The Zenons --Intelligent and proper, they settled to the south east
The Calverts --Frightened and lost, the Elders worried most about the Calverts

The Gifts of the Mind

The Elder-Kind began thriving on Kana. The Great Elder Nylax was said to possess a Great Animalium—a massive stockpile of lesser beast genetic material and turned them loose on Kana. These animals, some Earth-like, others rather alien and monstrous, found the gentle world of Kana to their liking and thrived as well.

During this time, an alien creature was introduced to Kana, ether via the Animalium, or via direct Elder-intervention. This creature was known as the Haitathe , a bipedal hermaphroditic monster of giant size. The Haitathe proved to be extremely war-like and hostile and quickly began killing and enslaving the Vith, Esthers and Halas. Soon, they began eating the Elder-Kind in droves, and they cried out to the Elders for help.

The Elders determined that the Elder-Kind needed to toughen and deal with the situation themselves, for they would soon be alone, and they did not choose to directly intervene. Instead, they chose to imbue the Vith, and some of the Halas, Remnath and Zenons with a new retinue of Gifts, so that they could better defend themselves:

The Gifts of the Mind:

The Gift of Strength --Fists of stone and nearly as strong as the Haitathe
The Gift of Stare --To see into a person's soul and know their secrets
The Gift of Sight --To see things unimaginable
The Gift of Waft --To teleport short distances at will
The Gift of Cloak --To hide in illusion and invisibility
The Gift of Dirge --To control the Haitathe with the spoken word

The Elders marked those blessed with the Gifts with blue hair. The blue-haired Vith, armed with these new Gifts, fought back and began a long string of bloody battles with the Haitathe. Eventually, the Elders tired of the bloodshed and removed most of the Haitathe to a place unknown.

The League

Free of the Haitathe, the various tribes began branching out from Kana and settling nearby worlds. They colonized nearby Onaris, and, with the help of the Elders, terraformed the rock Bazz into a breathing world. They then headed out into deeper space, founding the worlds of Hoban, Mallets, Poteete, Hydelide and Brindval. These various worlds, still beholden to the Elders, became the League, united in their service.

The Decline of the Elders and the Xaphans

Toward the end of the EX Epoch, the Elders began dying, their bodies disappearing from sight. They were replaced by sinister creatures of similar appearance to the Elders that called themselves the Xaphans . The Xaphans were bizarre and cruel. They demanded the League serve them as they had served the Elders. The League, loyal to the remaining Elders, refused, and instead made war on the Xaphans, preventing them from sucking the light out of star systems and killing all within.

The Great Betrayal

Eventually, the Elders all passed into memory—only the evil Xaphans remained. After a few more centuries passed, the Xaphans managed to convince 25 Great Houses, mostly of Vith heritage, to betray the League and join them in nearby space. Thus began the League/Xaphan conflict. The Great Betrayal , as it became known, marked the end of the EX Epoch, the Lords of the League choosing to start over, marking time with a Second AX epoch.

And that's where the story of the League of Elder begins, in the AX Epoch at a time where the Xaphans, as the Elders before them, become weak and irrelevant. The Betrayers, now called Xaphans right along with their masters, though are still strong and their grudge with the League is now old and deeply–rooted.