Lore:Ayleid Survivals in Valenwood

This report was commissioned by the   Committee of Alliance Relations to investigate whether there might be an indoctrinal advantage to emphasizing the   lineage woven into the bloodlines of our cousins the  . My extensive travels in   have enabled me to determine the historical facts behind the matter; whether these facts can support a useful campaign promoting alliance fellowship is up to the Committee and the Sapiarch of Indoctrination.

As   has noted in her magisterial " ," blame for the White-Gold Catastrophe of   can be attributed to a half-dozen disastrous factors, of which the bloody insurrection by indentured human laborers may not be the most important. Pluribel emphasizes, quite rightly in my belief, the   of the late  , which pitted the more conservative  -worshiping Ayleid clans against those decadent yet undeniably vigorous clans that had adopted  -worship. This conflict reached its climax in   at the  , when King   of   led a combined force of Daedraphile warriors against the traditionalist   of Ayleidoon. The Barsaebics were driven out of the   into northwest  , and thereafter organized opposition to Daedra-worship in   was effectively over.

In any event, by most measures Ayleid civilization had been in decline for several generations by the time the White-Gold Tower fell to the savagery of the  s. Standing amid the ruins of a great   culture, the victors concocted a justification for the blood on their hands by painting the defeated clans as vicious Daedraphiles who reveled in torture and cruelty. An exception was made for those clans, mainly Aedric adherents, who had thrown in their lot with the hordes of the Slave-Queen. Of course, this only delayed their extermination, for the barbarous Nedes inevitably came after their former allies once the other Elves of Cyrodiil had been hunted to extinction.

Thus began the Ayleid Diaspora, in which the Heartland Elves sought to find new homes elsewhere in  &mdash;to decidedly mixed success. Those who fled north into the lands once held by the Falmer were slaughtered by  s led by the infamous   the Butcher. The Barsaebics, by that time well established in Argonia, refused admittance to their former persecutors the  , and most of that clan died on an ill-fated expedition into the lands of the  . Several clans set out on the long march through   to the  , and some actually made it, where they joined with (and were absorbed by) the long-established   of  .

Most successful&mdash;and they were more than a few&mdash;were the clans that fled southwest beneath the canopy of Valenwood. The clans of  ,  ,  ,  , and   all escaped largely intact to carve out a new life under the trees. These clans all worshiped Daedric Princes, but they seem to have done so with less fervor after their enforced migration to Valenwood&mdash;possibly due to the fact that the Princes, when called upon, had offered little or no help to the forsaken clans. Fortunately their new hosts, the Bosmer, were remarkably generous in welcoming the Ayleids into their realm, so long as the Heartland Elves agreed to adopt aspects of the   and refrain from harming the forest. Having little choice, the Ayleids agreed, and this probably contributed to the dilution of their culture.

For diluted it was, absorbed over time, and eventually forgotten. I have walked the great Ayleid ruins of Valenwood&mdash; ,  ,  ,  , and a dozen more&mdash;and none of them, not one, was still occupied only two thousand years after the Diaspora. For some reason, once the Ayleids were under the great  s they, and their distinctive culture, simply melted away.

In explaining the extinction of the Valenwood Ayleids, my predecessor   was very attached to his " ," which held that for some reason the Forest Ayleids became unable to breed with each other and could only generate offspring by mating with the local Bosmer. This would certainly account for the Ayleids' gradual disappearance, but unfortunately Gelgarad's theorem is supported only by old stories and legends, and absent facts it cannot be proven.

It is worth mentioning here the competing theory of   of the   Academy. Her explanation blames Ayleid decline on over-consumption of the unusually potent beverages of the Bosmer. Doctor Thetis believes the Ayleids, vulnerable in their grief over their losses, fell prey to the Wood Elves' paralyzing brews and simply gave up trying. In this they may have been encouraged by the Bosmer themselves, who often seem insulted by others' displays of industrious effort.

And what did our forest-dwelling cousins learn from the Ayleids? Precious little, apparently, other than some advanced techniques of stonework and masonry. Heartland Elven culture seems to have made little lasting impression on the culture of the Wood Elves. Their attitude seems to me summed up by the statement of  , the Yorethane of  , whose response when I asked him about the Ayleids was as follows: "The Ayleids? Oh, yes. Nice fellows. Took themselves too seriously, though, and what did it get them?"