The story of Aran Valoconibo "Calmcoast", the Trap of PassesPerhaps elves were the race that suffered the most from the endless strife in the world of The Portentous Domain. As other, inferior races are either mortal and subject to the imminent death or really cruel and murdersome, which leads to a quick death from some stronger foe, they aren't forced to live through eons, watching as everything you loved slowly crumbles to dust. Have they ever felt the horror of living two thousands years and seeing all the destruction that time and cruel greed of others cause? Have they ever remembered it all, the every day your friends were slain by fearsome beasts? Have they ever wondered, why their perfect world, shaped by the Creator himself, was turned into ruins by lowly scum?
Aran lived most of his life in one of elven retreats called Zealembrace, a blessed place of peace where creatures of nature and elves can rest and heal under canopies of majestic, giant trees. He lived there as a Peacekeeper, basically a guard, who overlooks over animals and the surrounding area, alerting the retreat in case any nature-hating intruders come to pillage and kill. Aran was a calm elf, unlike his other brethren, and he liked to gaze at the coast of the Ashen Ocean. That's why he got his surname, "Calmcoast".
However, the things around the peaceful retreat started to change. The once powerful civilizations of mountain-men and plains-men slowly crumbled, leaving behind an ancestry of corrupted arts and depraved acts. The world started to die out, with entire regions becoming fatal deserts full of undead, and that's why dwarves of the Prime Crest called the elves for help. Their mountains became fully deforested, and their soil was only able to grow scarce food. Perhaps the 'damn happies' could help them.
And that's why Aran was instructed by the druid to depart away from the place he loved and admired into the dark, lifeless mountains of pure obsidian, and investigate the cause of all the troubles, and get the latest news about rampaging adventurers that make the forces of Hell weep in terror, and perhaps sign an agreement about tree cutting limits. Soon he found the way, directed by the wind and rare birds into the bleak huts of hill dwarves.
A lovely waterfall I've found.
On the other day, he found out that somehow his bow, quiver and waterskin were missing. "Must be the greedy dwarves" - he thought, cursed the hellhole he landed in, and began to ask the poor dwarven farmers about surroundings and sources of evil.