The End of Perfection (Patreon)

The death of the Elven Primus was executed without ever identifying his killers.  When the Primus' body was discovered, it was left in place for fear that it was some kind of loyalty test.  On the outside, Perfection endured, but amid the nobility silent panic reigned.  The idea that an immortal, with millennia of knowledge and political experience, could die was never considered.  Any outside aggressor, it was assumed, capable of doing so would require incomprehensible power that the Perfection would destroy it.  But now with the Primus dead, silent questions raged: who could have done it?  Who was to rule now?  And most pressing: did one of their own somehow accomplish it?

The debates among the nobility were fierce.  Should they announce it?  Should they elevate a new, inferior Primus?  Should they create an illusion?  Who would control it?  Should necromancy be attempted on the Primus?  Lacking their own holy magic, should they beg humans to raise their leader?  Where before the Primus acted to moderate these differing opinions to find the most reasonable arguments and points, now only greater chaos and discord could be found.  Worse, as the debates drug on, the lower echelons began to learn increasingly of something being wrong.  Many began to silently question what had happened.

In desperation, in an attempt to stall, a cabal of nobles created an illusion and gave a public address.  In it, they spoke of the need for calm and to trust in the cabal who would be administering the Perfection while the Primus went into seclusion.  Then, at the conclusion of the address to the masses, mid sentence, the illusion was dispelled.  Another clique, outraged at the deception and power grab, refused to let the farce proceed.  And thus all the Perfection learned of the Primus's death, not through honest declaration, but via dispelled deception.  Cracks formed from the top of the hierarchy to the wildest elf.

Yet the perfection endured with the hope that a solution could be found.  However, factionalism reared its head again and again.  Knights were increasingly torn between their duty; did they still serve the Primus, nobles, the people, or their own interests.  Nobles clamoring to attempt necromatic restoration were violently put down when they attempted to steal the Primus' body, which lay rotting, untouched, where he'd been discovered.  A triumverate was established to attempt some system of reconcilation.  The commons still held fast to the faith that somehow it would all work out.

But the issue of the murder remained.  Any investigation was marred by accusation and suspiction.  Some cried out for outside investigation, while others were horrified at the idea of having mortals in their halls.  Some cried the only solution was the eradication of all humans, dwarves, and otherwise as they might potentially be complicit in the murder.  Others accused them of the murder, and that their calls for genocide were merely to hide their own duplicity.  Pleas for outside help were silenced as Knights began to align more and more with specific nobles.

It was in the midst of all this chaos that a sage noticed something: their fingernails were longer.  Such things did not happen after a certain point; the point in which an elf was old enough to become their replacement.  The phenomenon, along with growing hair, suddenly raised a new horrifying reality.  The elves... were aging.  Their immortality was no more.  And like that, the Perfection shattered.

Panic reigned.  If immortality was gone, what else might be gone?  Would elves grow old?  Infirm?  Die?  Was the elven race doomed to extinction?  It should be noted that elves were effectively a created race; first created by the Ith, and then created by the Primus.  When an elf needed to be born, the Primus simply cast a spell on a female to make them give birth to the replacement needed.  Nine tenths of the elven population were female for this very reason.  The idea of sexual reproduction was generally considered to be abhorrent.  And while a very few were receptive to the possibility (mostly wild elves and common elves more familiar with natural gestation and biological birth) many found the concept traumatizing.

It was then that an elf attempted to leave the perfection... and did so without becoming drow.  They then brought a human back and saw they did not transform into an animal.  The wards that protected and restricted them were gone.  Every day, dozens of elves who had had no other choice but to serve their role, departed.  They encountered shock and welcome from the human nation of Guldyrr, right off the coast, who offered aid and even proposed attempting divine magic to raise the Primus.  Millions of elves cried out to let them.  If only to restore their own immortality.

But a group of extremists, disgusted with the idea of human magics being used, possibly even being superior to elven magic, refused.  They rallied knights and seized control of the capital.  They declared those willing to work with Guldyrr to be traitors.  The ousider faction had no choice, and attempted to rally knights.  For the first time ever, elf fought elf en masse.  Elf killed elf in masse.  Spells designed to kill human kingdoms were employed in the heart of their own continent.  Sentient assassination spells were dispatched on leaders.  Diseases poisoned hundreds of thousands.  Mass conflagerations consumed whole blocks.  Trees and animals were twisted into horrible, mad monstrosities.

Then a mountain exploded.  The Dwarven Dominion, concerned about the escalation, had readied their contingency plan: releasing a magma plume under the heart of the continent.  However, a mistake in preparations had triggered a small eruption on scale with Krakatoa.  The explosion turned the Perfection into a frenzy.  As fire and ash fell, some elven death squads teleported into the Dominion to murder indiscriminately by the thousand.  Other elven squads teleported to the Dominion to prevent the slaughter and prevent a further escalation.  Both simply turned the Dominion's halls into battlefields.  

Meanwhile, back in the Perfection, the battle for the capital spread further and further.   Individual aristocrats now tried to fortify their own holdings and schemes.  Loyalty shifted back and forth in constant flux.  Some attempted to prevent the flight of commoners, while others attempted to facilitate the relocation of elves to more stable lands.  Accusations of murder and treachery rebounded.  The dwarves watched the events with grave eyes, fearing that if they did melt the Perfection, it would simply spread the chaos to the rest of the world.  the humans of Guldyrr went to the homeland in desperate bids to try to stabilize some small pockets while hosting hundreds of thousands of elven refugees.

Even drow, cursed exiles, reached out to their displaced brethren, teaching them local human customs and expectations.  Some even taught that sexual reproduction might be unusual for them, but it did have its upsides.  While some elves still viewed sex as repulsive, many conceded it beat extinction, though they would struggle with the idea of 'placeless' elves, or even them being able to change from their assigned role.  Some drow made passionate pleas in Floria, Aran, the Pash, Ventaros, and Olderune to allow elves to be relocated, and all became destinations for millions of refugees, releasing some pressure from Guldyrr.

Much to the relief of the Dominion, the violence would drop to a simmer as the conflict transformed the continent into an uninhabitable battleground.  Even the individual aristocrats would fall to betrayal by their knights and sages.  Some aristocrats applied their old decadent habits to breeding new bloodlines, and some sages even attempted a eugenics program of their own to attempt to 'reproduce' a Primus.  Things were further shaken when a lowly functionary prayed to the slain Primus and found herself capable of doing holy magic.  While a tiny fraction rejoiced with the idea that the Primus could be raised with elven divine magic, others were abhorred and claimed the Primus had in fact ascended to godhood!

A century after the death of the Primus, the elves were forever changed.  The Perfection, now known as 'The Bloodland' was all but uninhabitable.  Monsters, murderous bands of leaderless knights,  and fanatical aristocrats continued to strike at any and all targets.  Murder, revenge, and retribution were a constant cycle.  The carefully tended woodlands were now shattered and twisted.  Wonders lay forgotten amid the ruin.  Veins of lava oozed through it all from the vent.

And at the apex of the palace from which the elves dictated the fate of whole nations, the Primus' body lay where it fell, sprawled on the floor, desiccated and forgotten.