Lore Spotlight: The Highborn of Eldaria and the Crypto Crystals

We’re back with another Lore Spotlight, continuing with our theme of looking at the Highborn of Eldaria.

Last week, we gave you our first introduction to the faction leader, Madame Violet. If you haven’t read that article yet, then we recommend that you do so first, as it serves as a part one to this edition.

This week, we are going to expand on the Highborn of Eldaria by looking into their relationship with the Crypto Crystals. So without further ado, let’s get into it!

Before the Crypto Crystal Storm, the Eldarian sector was known to be populated by an ancient race of elves who worshipped the goddess Elda, one of the Celestial Children of Arcana. These elves were ruled by a Council of Elders, who had overseen the lives of the elves for thousands of years.

The elves were divided by a caste system, on top were the Highborn of Eldaria, who were blessed with magical powers, and below them where the Lowborn, who for unknown reasons possessed no magic whatsoever.

The Highborn spent their days researching arcane magic and hunting in the dense forests, while the Lowborn were reduced to carrying out menial and manual labour that the Highborn saw as being unworthy of their time. Though this system was unfair, the Lowborn had no means of opposing the Highborn and so learned to endure their status.

When the Crypto Crystal Storm struck, and the subsequent cataclysm ripped through the Hermeian Galaxy, the elves thought that they had withstood it better than most. This was because their sector was the furthest of all sectors from the eye of the storm.

However, their joy was short-lived. Soon after the storm ended, the elves noticed that they began to age at an alarming rate. Their once smooth skin developed wrinkles, and their purple and blue hair turned grey and started to fall out.

Fearing this aging process, the elves turned to their arcane arts to try and cure what they thought to be a disease, however they were all unsuccessful and the elves began to fall into desperation. When the alchemists started to work on a cure, the Council of Elders, who viewed alchemy as an abomination, ordered all of the alchemists to be exiled, and those that resisted were to be executed. Instead, the Council declared that the elves must pray to Elda and Aren’isaar (the mother of the moon in Eldarian) for their salvation.

As the months passed, the elves became more desperate, hating the aging process that took over their once immortal bodies. The Highborn could not stand looking at the wrinkled faces and started to wear masks, and ordered the Lowborn to follow suit, but with a clear difference between the two. Gradually, these masks became an essential piece of elvish attire and fashion. However, the move to force the Lowborn to cover their faces was the final straw for the Lowborn and unrest ensured, some Lowborn left the cities entirely while others openly rebelled and fought against the Highborn.

The anguish of the elves finally ended when a self-exiled alchemist, Madame Violet, discovered a cure to the aging process why using the sap from the local wildlife that was corrupted by the Crystal Scourge.

Madame Violet held a deep hatred to the Council of Elders as she held them directly responsible for the murder of her master and father figure. So armed with the cure, she distributed it equally between the Lowborn and the Highborn, gaining the support of both castes. Marching to the Council of Elders, she refused to give them the cure and swiftly took over as leader of the elves.

As leader Madame Violet’s first course of action was to begin extracting the Crystals from the ground, out of the local wildlife that had been corrupted by the Crystal Scourge, and harvest the glowing sap from the Crystal infected trees. Initially, she sent only the Lowborn to mine them, however, this resulted in many Lownborn perishing due to the heavy radiation from the Crystals. This forced them to develop special rods that would extract the energy from the Crystals and safely store them in canisters worn on the worker’s backs.

Madame Violet understood that there was a finite amount of Crystals on her planet so she gathered the best minds of the Highborn military and ordered a massive modernization of the elvish infrastructure. The elvish engineers and architects used the Crystals energy that was gathered to create new technology that aided their great expansion. Crystal energy powered weapons that could be used to fend off against all matter of beasts that emerged from the depths.

However, Madame Violet was not the great liberator that her people initially saw her to be, in secret she had also concocted elixirs that she distributed to the Lowborn. Due to their lack of magical powers, this elixir reduced them to an almost zombified state, bending their will entirely to Madame Violet.

How will the elves continue now that they have started down this new path, only time will tell.