Wood Elves

**Wood elves**, also known as **copper elves**, were the most populous of the elven races. Wood elves saw themselves as guardians of the enchanted forest homes that were largely abandoned, but unlike most elves they did not view themselves as a people apart from the rest of Oracle.

## Description

Wood elves were easily identifiable by their coppery skin and green, brown, or hazel eyes. Wood elven hair was usually black or brown, although hues such as blond or copper red were also found. Wood elves tended to dress in simple clothes, but with fewer bold colors and a greater number of earth tones that blended into their natural surroundings. Accustomed to a harsh, naturalistic lifestyle, wood elves loved to wear leather armor, even when they were not under immediate threat. Wood elves were roughly identical to other elves in height and build, with males larger than females.

Wood elves were often stronger than other elven races, but were frequently less cerebral than the eladrin, who put a greater value on education.

## Personality

As a people, wood elves were largely seen as calm and level-headed. Arousing strong emotions in wood elves was not something that was easily done, although many did have a strong aversion for large cities, having lost the passion for urbanization after their departure from the enchanted forest. To wood elves, the trappings of civilization, including the mightiest of fortresses or tallest walls, were transient and impermanent things that would eventually be overcome by the long processes of nature. To many, this attitude seemed condescending, weakening the bonds between wood elves and other races. Additionally, wood elves could sometimes seem off-putting compared to other elves, with a gruff manner that made them less charismatic, despite their avowed compassion and humility.

Wood elven romantic and sexual relationships were often polyamorous in nature, members of the race freely engaging or ceasing relations with new partners. Feelings of jealousy and possessiveness were as a result viewed by the race as reasons for teasing or mockery. As a result of these perspectives on love, the high elves often believed that any relationships engaged with wood elves would be destined to fail from the start.

## Culture

Wood elves considered themselves the heirs of the ancient elven empires. Although a proud people, wood elves felt that compassion was a greater virtue than strength and wood elven realms were less concerned with expansion than they were with maintaining amiable relations with their neighbors. Wood elves were not nomadic, however, instead they were organized into scattered, carefully concealed villages united under a gerontocratic hierarchy composed of village councils consisting of the most distinguished families' eldest members. These councils were often advised by local druids, whose influence played no small part in wood elven politics and who frequently served as the webbing that bound any number of villages together as one realm.

Compared with other elves, wood elves had a notable disinterest in the arcane arts. To a wood elf, a wizards' spells were little different from the mason's castle walls or the tiller's plow—a means of controlling the natural world, which was contrary to the common ethic of living in harmony with nature rather than trying to dominate it that so many wood elves espoused. As such, wood elven adventurers were more likely to take on careers that did not require the use of arcane magic. In particular, many were drawn to the path of the fighter, the ranger, or the rogue, relying on their natural-born skill to overcome obstacles. Compared with other elves very few wood elves went on to become spellsingers or bladesingers. The one major exception to the wood elven taboo on arcane magic was the arcane archers, who counted among their number several wood elves. Other wood elves from more remote areas were drawn to the ways of the barbarian while many religious wood elves became druids with clerics often seen in much the same light as wizards. Those wood elves who did become clerics might eventually become hierophants.

### Art and Leisure

Wood elves commonly felt that they were in harmony with their natural surroundings and an examination of their art helped to justify this belief. While wood elves did not wander like wild animals as the wild elves did, wood elves did their best to have a minimal impact on their natural surroundings, a fact reflected in their architecture. Frequently, wood elven homes were made of natural fieldstone or carefully furnished wood, but on occasion wood elves were known to do without even these creature comforts, living in the limbs of mighty trees or sheltered caves, rejecting furniture or any possessions they couldn't carry with them. So close did wood elven villages resemble their surroundings that humans were occasionally known to wander through one without even noticing.

In keeping with their naturalistic inclination, wood elves were not particularly fine metalworkers and had no interest in developing any such skills. However, wood elves were among some of the world's finest carpenters and stoneworkers, masters in the crafting of bows and arrows as well as in leather tanning. Wood elves even developed a number of specialized arrows, including those that flew further than usual as well as some that were used as signal devices. So carefully guarded were wood elven crafting secrets that even experienced fletchers from other races had difficulty emulating wood elven designs. Wood elven leather armor also often doubled as camouflage, disguising a wood elven hunter from potential enemies.

While wood elves felt it better to have a minimal impact on their surroundings, the race had no particular aversion to meat-eating and were passionate hunters. Many hours of a typical wood elf's life were spent on the hunt, which was both a practical activity and a pleasurable one. Most of the time that wood elves were not hunting they were enjoying themselves at ease within the highest branches of their forest homes. Wood elves did not, however, commonly keep pets, but instead formed bonds with local wildlife in a manner similar to those of a ranger. Wood elves were particularly fond of mountain lions, pumas, and leopards.

### Magic and Religion

Wood elves were generally uncomfortable with most forms of magic, viewing wizards and other arcane spellcasters with no small amount of distrust. Clerics and other divine spellcasters fared little better in wood elven eyes, who saw their prayers as a useless call to distant and alien gods. However, wood elves were largely at ease with the ways of the primal magic used by druids, barbarians, and shamans, which they felt was the truest expression of supernatural power—or rather, a reflection of nature itself, used to protect the wilderness. However, wood elves were not completely adverse to arcane magic and wood elven bards, sorcerers, and wizards were far from unknown, although wood elves as a whole had no particular tradition of the Art.

Many wood elves had a special place in their heart for the gods Silvanus and Mielikki, whose protection of the wilderness was something the wood elves themselves tried to espouse.

## Relations with Other Races

Although a proud people themselves, wood elves often felt that their elven kindred, such as the eladrin, too often put on an air of superiority and xenophobia that was ultimately detrimental. Wood elves looked to the examples of the ancient elven empires and, seeing failure after failure, felt that their aim should be compassion and humility, rather than political or military strength. Unlike many of their kin, wood elves felt that their fates were inextricably tied to those of Oracles's other races and they made no effort to pull away or isolate themselves. Ironically, so reclusive were wood elven settlements that, despite their open nature, wood elves rarely actually saw people from outside their race.

Of all the humanoid races of Oracle, the ones most familiar with the wood elves were the humans and dwarves native to the North, who often lived within the vicinity of the denizens of the enchanted forest. Still, few humans or dwarves had ever actually met a wood elf and when they did it was often largely by chance. However, when meetings did occur, they were largely friendly and, like the eladrin, wood elves saw themselves as allies and teachers of humanity, rather than as rivals.

Wood elves also felt a kinship with sapient giant owls, with whom they formed a symbiotic relationship. In return for the elves acting as protectors for the owls, the birds of prey often acted as advance scouts for wood elven warriors.

Wood elves, like most elves, had a strong contempt for orcs, though their reasons were more out of the devastation that raiding parties often brought to the forests that wood elves held dear.

## History

Wood elves were the last of the elven subraces to appear on Oracle, though not through the same method as the other subraces. The wood elves were actually native to Oracle, the descendants of eladrin who decided to retreat to their deepest woodland sanctuaries. Unlike the majority of those who abandoned their homelands and went on to found new kingdoms elsewhere, the ancestors of the wood elves stuck to their ancestral holdings and swore to never wage war on their kin again.

## Homelands

Wood elves were the most common of the elves in Oracle, and could be found in many scattered groups across the continent.