Of Sunargh, Elf, and Human: An Introduction

We know of the gods’ three intelligent creations, Sunargh, Elf and Human, (though in truth, the Sunarghs were more an accidental byproduct than intentional creation.) Of these, the sunargh princess known as Lightbringer is, by far, the most prominent. In a recurring theme, our Loreseekers venturing to speak with this important immortal have always returned home disgraced. At least they didn’t end up dead.

Much of what we know about the Sunargh (skinners or bloodmages, as they were called by the elves of Taogh), has its origin in Fiery Tales. They speak of monsters lurking in the dark, bent on capturing the lone elf child, feeding it, breeding it, and finally butchering it. Indeed, many of the scrolls historians unearthed from Sunargh ruins were made from elven skin. And as horrible as this is to our sensibilities, (and I’m not excusing the behavior, merely explaining it), when we look at how elves and humans treat cows and sheep, for example, what is the difference? Parchment is parchment, no?

Does our own sentience set us apart from creatures that don’t possess self-awareness? Over the millennia thousands of learned people have argued and philosophized on exactly this question. Not so much in the elven Empire that was Gathran – the wounds of bloodmage enslavement still run deep in the west – but in the cities and nations east of the Bridge, where arguing and reason are treated with great reverence, such questions have been asked again and again.

Ultimately, if we want to condemn one, we must condemn the other. To us Elves, Humans seem just as dimwitted as cows and sheep, after all.

Which brings me to the second species; my own. Unlike Sunarghs, who spontaneously originated from the First Ones guarding Dragoncrest, the gods knew exactly what they were doing when they seeded Elves on all the continents. The gods had learned from their mistakes. Where the Sunarghs were more or less an accident, and spread outward from Dragoncrest, Elves were to thrive by themselves, without prior mentorship. It can be argued that they placed tribes in isolated areas, gave them rudimentary abilities, and then just watched them develop. (Some might call this a deranged experiment, and they might well be right. The gods are capricious, and while not directly malevolent, they tend to, at times, observe how a kettle boils over and what happens.)

On Taogh, the existence of Sunargh city states had an opposite effect. Whereas Comhara, Claddanh, and Dhachainnh experienced comparatively separate developments, Taogh’s Elves were soon discovered by the Sunarghs. They were caught and bred to act as slaves and used for their bodily raw materials. Eventually, Taogh’s elves rose against their masters, having acquired some of their masters’ knowledge; they managed to defeat and ultimately destroy the Sunargh race. This, however, meant Taogh’s Elves had achieved a higher development than the Elves of the other three continents. It seems things would have progressed faster, or rather more evenly, had they not just created groups of people who were left to fend for themselves. 

Since all people, Sunargh, Elf, and Human alike, speak the same language, it stands to reason that either the gods gifted their new creations with the ability to speak and understand, or that the Sunarghs living away from Taogh aided the newcomers in learning the language – in the same way the slavers taught the enslaved upon our own continent. This is guesswork, however, since histories we have access to were not written anywhere near the time of the Seeding of Elves.

The gods did not create us immortal. While our lives span centuries, we age and die, unlike the Sunargh who can only be killed. How much was learned from our skinner enslavers, and how much is owed to our own ingenuity? We know the Lightbringer taught Potential magic to the free elves of Taogh; did they in turn spread it east? Or was it Sunarghs who fled the madness of raids and warring city-states to live on the other continents who taught our kin? There are certain secrets still guarded, and cooperation between Sunargh and Elves is haphazard, at best. Maybe time will tell.

Though gods didn’t make Elvenkind immortal, in our considerable lifetime we can dedicate ourselves to the mastery of anything we set our mind to. And therein lies the problem to this day: Our attention wanders. 

When you have centuries to work on a problem, putting it off a day, week, month, year, or decade isn’t unusual. There are few things we pursue with single-minded intent, but chief among these is war. (Which goes to show that the Lord of Sun and War was quite influential in our creation. 

We love battle, be it as spectators or participants in the arenas. (It’s interesting that every tribe or nation from one end of the hemisphere to the other has its own version of arenas. And each of them has blood sports as both a form of entertainment and punishment for criminals.) Philosophers have debated this for as long as our people learned to learn, read, and write. And every time a group of learned elves meet, this topic inevitably comes up. And the conclusion is always the same: Lesganagh wanted us to find pleasure in battle – be it as participant or spectator.

It’s even reflected in our art. Mosaics, frescos, tapestries, carpets, and children’s toys; it’s all warriors and weapons. We do love peace, but eventually our minds wander to the clash of arms. So we interrupt our studies, for a day, a week, a month, or a year, to seek out battle, either as spectator or participant.

Gathran was the uncontested master of war, her armies conquered the entirety of Taogh, and her empire stood for generations. It wasn’t outside forces that brought down that empire. Gathran’s Leghans in their steeloaken armor, her mage officers reminding arrows to come crashing down as trunks, obliterating any enemy. None could defeat them. And Gathran was not magnanimous in victory. Enemies were given the chance to surrender and become part of the empire, rebels and attackers were obliterated. Comhara’s plains recount the campaigns Gathran fought against hundreds of tribes; their remains can still be found if one digs deep enough. Legend tells of a Wall of the Headless. Hundreds upon hundreds of defeated tribal warriors decapitated, covered in tar, the bodies erected on wooden frames to mark the point beyond which any attacker would die. Yes, all flesh rotted, eventually, until it became a wall of headless skeletons. It and its legend served as a warning for a thousand years. A thousand years of peaceful trade.

No, Gathran was killed from within.

It was mages, plain and simple. The gods roll the dice in distributing magical aptitude, but Gathran’s nobles wanted to dominate this field as well. So they bred their daughters and sons to male and female mages, trying to create a new bloodline. Eventually, these Mages, (by that time it became synonymous with nobility hence the capitalization,) ousted the royal family, and replaced it with a Council. And thus the bickering and backstabbing began. The Council of Mages found themselves incapable of controlling an entire continent, and instead of trying to cooperate, they argued and intrigued, vying for power that should have lain with all Gathrani. Instead of finding common ground, they didn’t bother to understand how the empire had functioned. Yes, it was by magic, but magic was merely the means of communication. Now, with Mages vying for supremacy and trying to control as many magical resources as possible, the lines of communication that had existed for millennia fell silent. Outlying provinces simply stopped receiving orders in the traditional way, and when the Council Mages sent missives, it took months on horseback to get anything from Honas Graigh to the ends of empire. By that time people who had chafed under Gathrani rule for generations shook off the yoke and decided it was time to live free. The Leghans who had kept order and security in the provinces waited until their supplies ran low, and when locals refused to provide them with the much needed grain, the soldiers took what they needed for their journey home, and left region after region to their own devices.

Gathran withstood every external threat, defeated every outside enemy, but fell to the shortsightedness of nobles with delusions of grandeur.

So much of Breiamhbéo’s history is tied to Gathran; after all, we were one of those abandoned provinces. Gathran took other people’s achievements and improved upon them. Everything elven on Taogh is more or less Gathrani nowadays. Sure, old traditions resurfaced as abandoned tribes and cities struggled to reclaim an identity long suppressed, but even here, in the capital of New Gathran, the traces of Honas Graigh are everywhere.

Some ask what was truly original to the Gathrani, if they so often adopted and improved other people’s teachings and technology. That answer is simple: how to treat steeloak, and the teachings of their Obhanhs, their battlemages. Steeloak only grows in Gathran Forest, none other ever learned the secret of how to fell those trees or cut the wood. They guarded these trees for they made smelting and working metal virtually obsolete. As for the battlemages, only citizens of Honas Graigh ever learned the art of turning eighty arrows into tree trunks all at the same time. We tried, and failed – as did everyone else. Gathran’s bloody-mindedness might be the one thing that eludes us.

Around nine-hundred years ago, the gods decided it was time for a change. Suddenly, Humans appeared, naked, primitive, and short-lived. Like their Sunargh masters before them, Taogh’s elves took to turning these new creatures to slaves. They might not have skinned them, but they did encourage vigorous breeding. And even if they fed them plenty, and taught them our language, they did exactly what the Sunarghs did to their ancestors. Again it was the Lightbringer’s intervention which changed everything. We Elves saw our error, and freed the Humans. 

On Comhara and the continents to the east, things were different – but only marginally.  There, the Elves first hunted humans for sport and then treated them as pets. The change there was more gradual, I believe. Once a “pet” displayed an aptitude for learning, its owners encouraged the behavior. Perhaps this was simply out of curiosity. But in time, this “pet” taught other, until one day one of them, a woman named Unora, the pet of a philosopher, demanded they be treated as equals. She presented argument after argument, laid out irrefutable proof.

The transition was difficult on either side of the Bridge, and it took decades to change habits. Sometimes Humans needed to reassert their independence, but eventually they were, more or less, treated as equals. Since we don’t know how much influence the Sunarghs had, it’s impossible to tell how they affected developments of both Humans and Elves.