The elves came to Europa from Atlantis / Antillia some time in the 16th century AUC. They were the penultimate great race to come to Europa, the final one being the orcs.

Elves lived on Atlantis in the Second Age, but their original home was Coreworld. When they saw Coreworld in crisis, their leaders created a grand experiment, to create a Utopia for elvenkind in a new reality. They took an entire continent, hundreds of miles across, and transported themselves and it it to the surface of Altearth, crafting a floating continent.

The grand experiment was flawed from the start. The new continent itself had physical flaws, but elf society also had flaws. To accomplish the great feat, they had done ruthless, terrible things. They left many behind, not all of whom were volunteers. Individual elves did terrible things to get on the list of the chosen. Atlantis rose on the wings of magic and engineering, but it emerged from a sea of blood and betrayal.

Yet, Atlantis itself was beautiful, the apogee of “l’ancienne fae.” Marvels of technology, perfect cities, an abundance of everything. Perhaps driven by inner demons, which can often appear as inner dreams, the Atlantean Elves strove to exceed even themselves and to create still more miracles. They made whole new races, such as sprites and fairies and merfolk. They used new techniques, relying heavily on automatons.

But they did not know about phlogiston. They did not know their work was in fact weakening the very forces that held Atlantis together and kept it afloat. They saw the fractures, indeed, but did not know the cause, and the more they tried to fix it, the worse the fractures grew. These appeared not only in physical breaks and cracks, but appeared as well as unreliable spells, machines that worked one way then another, inexplicable weather, and dark beings whom no elf had created.

Final disaster struck in the form of earthquakes, flood, and storm. Elvish society convulsed in a paroxysm of panic. A whole generation was lost to madnes, decadence, fear, and desperate gambles. Monsters were created, and monstrous objects. Nothing is known for certain of this time; we have only the twisted, fearful legends handed across generations of wanderers.

Parts of Atlantis, drained of phlogiston, sank beneath the storms. The continent came apart, and only islands remained. As these began to disappear as well, elves began to build ships. Magical ships that could weather the terrible storms—what humans called wizard storms. They abandoned the last of the islands, believing they would sink. Ironically, this saved the fragments that survived. Those not lost beneath the waves became known as the Lost Islands. Those elves who survived are known as the Sea Elves. These sailed in every direction, but most went east.

They brought with them stories of their home. Centuries later, an Italian captain named Cristoforo Colombo persuaded the Queen of Spain that he could find the lost Atlantis and bring to her the wealth of the elves. We all know what came of that, especially when he discovered what he believed were elves in the West, the so-called Indian Elves.

Meanwhile, in the 1300s (AUC, for I shall use human chronology throughout), elves began to make landfall on the western shores of Europa: Eire, Cumbria, Cornwall, Breizh, Wasconia, Gallaecia, the Maghrib. No one knows how long they had been at sea, but it must have been multiple generations. Our earliest elven accounts of the “sea years” are laden with legend and later interpolations. The elves who entered Europa had to have been much changed from their ancestors. They were a broken people.

They came separately in fleets, landing all along the Atlantic seaboard over the course of a century or so. Specifics are impossible to determine, for they arrived during the Second Dark Age, when times were troubled. Many records are lost. Some even passed through the Pillars of Hercules. There are stories of elves in North Africa and even in the Middle East.

They seem to have been surprised to find other peoples and other kinds of animals. Reactions varied: joy, fear, fascination. But it was a fascination without curiosity. Elves did not not to study their new discoveries. They were simply surprised, then they became familiar and were no longer surprised.

For the most part, elves are nomads, an unconscious holdover from their sea days (Seetagen). Throughout elf culture are scattered variants on the theme of movement. En voyage. It’s a greeting, a farewell, an aphorism, forming the core of countless tales. Later anthropologists will say the ceremony of washing the wheels showed a subconscious need to return to the sea. Elves, they say, kept moving because they were always searching for their lost home. For Atlantis. Or to escape it.

The elves were never numerous. Upon landing, knowing nothing of farming, they dispersed again. They converted—or so goes the wagoneer legend—the wood of their ships into their wooden wagons, though others tell how the great ships formed the basis of towns and even cities located within deep forests. Their talent with animals led them to make use of horses, and the routiers were born.

At some point, Atlantis was a fresh memory and a fresh trauma. Their science had failed—twice, if you count whatever had gone wrong in the Second World. That post-diluvian generation would be full of warnings that developed into taboos. A taboo against magic devices edged into a taboo against magic at all, at least for the most extreme—the Cult of Two Eyes.

For the most part, elves have stood apart from the troubles of humans and dwarves. Individuals have become involved; sometimes, even whole elf communities have joined in a conflict or some great enterprise, including undertakings such as exploration and settlement. The participation, however, as ever been transitory, lasting a generation, maybe two or three. Never more. Some say all of elf history is the history of a people trying to return home.

This author understands the sentiment.