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So the big setting lore chapter in SF AP #42: Whispers of the Eclipse(Horizons of the Vast Part 3 of 6) is on the history and current state of elven culture, titled the Elven Diaspora. Not referencing elves specifically inhabiting the asteroid belt known as the Diaspora, but rather the scattered & broken state of the elven people as a whole.
I want to talk about it, and I'm going to be doing so with no thought nor restraint on spoilers though from what I can tell it doesn't have much if anything to do with the plot of the AP itself - I get these things for the setting info & monsters and don't look at the actual adventure content.
So first thing to note is that I've never been a particular fan of elves. Like, at all. In anything. Conceptually I've liked them in a few settings, in Pathfinder I liked that they were from another planet but the confused nature of their lore presented two sides of them that I found equally unappealing. Just never been my thing.
But I did find this article deeply intriguing, both for the info it had on elves themselves but also more general setting info both for Starfinder but also implications for Pathfinder. So I'm going to highlight some points;
First thing first, the article reveals that the elf gates weren't wholly original elven inventions. They were based off of preexisting artificial magical portals on Castrovel that early elves found & used to explore and settle various other planets; specifically the article names Akiton, Triaxus, and Verces but the wording implies that these were just the main three of at least a few other worlds "within the solar system" that they traveled to. Golarion, notably, isn't one of these - the gate there was one of the ones the elves created on their own only after starting to settle the others.
Now I don't know if this has been established before elsewhere and I skipped over it because I presumed disinterest in elven topics, but if nothing else the question of who put those portals there and why is one filled with intrigue, as is the related question "why no pre-existing portal to Golarion?"
Second thing: the Oatia. This is an ancient sect of tattooed elven "scholar priests" that broke off from mainline elven society because while most elves were focused on establishing connections with the land of the worlds around them, they were looking out to more distant stars for wisdom, surveying even stars outside the Starfinder galaxy.
What's interesting here is two things; one, their methods included receiving messages from distant galaxies and making contact with "bizarre and powerful aliens" and "communing with cosmic demigods". So, that could mean a lot of spooky and dangerous things out there in the cosmos got some calls from Castrovel that could have drawn in some attention.
Second thing that's interesting to me about them is that the Oatia actually managed to spread out as they fractured into mores specific niches of specific study, they actually spread out into the stars closer to the entities or areas they were focused on as individuals. Including, explicitly, travelling to distant galaxies, and that is interesting to me because it is, so far as I am aware - and I could well have missed it - but this is the first mention of successful intergalactic travel in Starfinder.
It was a known thing in Pathfinder(And the Oatia and everything I've mentioned so far takes place well before even when Pathfinder is set) that Intergalactic travel was possible, but the idea of it hasn't really been touched on in Starfinder at all other than it specifically being mentioned that the Drift apparently doesn't allow for it. So I'm curious as to whether this is just an acknowledgement of this being something that used to be possible in this universe but isn't anymore, or if this might be bringing it up just to put it in our minds in case it's a limit that might be going away with Drift Crisis.
So yeah, one we could have tattooed elven old ones cultists waiting to herald the return of their cosmic demigod patrons into the world as an adventure hook and a possible hint of other galaxies being open to us, if I'm not looking too much into things & being overly optimistic.
So to highlight how far back in time this is, we now get to the bit on the Age of Darkness which is noted as being one of a few different things to happen within a relatively short span of time(for elves, at least) that caused a collapse of this interplanetary elven civilization. Absorbing a mass of refugees from Golarion back to Castrovel put a strain on them, but it would have been a strain they would have been able to handle if not for at the same time being pushed off of Triaxus by the dragons who were just now launching their conquest of the planet, and *something* happening on Akiton where all of their communities just flat out disappeared, and everyone they sent to investigate disappeared, so they just up and destroyed the gates to Akiton to be safe.
So they lost three of their major colony worlds at roughly the same time which, and it has been a long while since I've read one of the deep dive articles on Triaxus, but I think this might be the first mention of a firm date for when the dragons established their kingdoms there; to my memory that had always been presented as something of a time immemorial type situation on the planet. But the dragons rising at roughly the same time as Earthfall and the Age of Darkness is probably coincidental.
What really interests me here is what in the hell happened on Akiton. A part of me wonders if maybe this is going to lead into Aktion's John Carter of Mars origins & we'll see a hidden population of native drow on Akiton as the cause of this to stand in for Barsoom's black martians - seeing that they were the strongest inspiration for drow in the first place - but that almost feels too mundane to me. Maybe Aktion just likes to eat elves every few thousand years. Either way, I am intrigued.
We don't get any mention of what happened to the Verces colonies - or any of the other potential colonies they might have had though given the state of the other planets in the solar system we can at least guess on those. But presumably there might just be an uninterrupted elven population on Verces dating back to this time.
There's a quick recap of them resettling Golarion after the darkness passed, but the last thing on the pre-gap history section I want to talk about is on the "technological revolution" which is another piece that confirms the solar system, including Golarion, had entered into an interplanetary space age before the gap started. Elves were apparently somewhat late adopters, slow to embrace technology in general and starships in particular because of their comfort with magic and specifically magic portals, but at least one group, the Ivaria, eventually set off in a fleet of generation ships to explore other solar systems and are credited as being responsible for a whole bunch of still existent populations of half elves.
So now we move on to the Gap & the disappearance of Golarion, where it's mentioned that Golarion's elves were estimated to account for "at least half" of the total population so losing that over night was a big hit. It's also just speaks to either how few elves there are in general or how many elves lived on Golarion because apparently during the Gap the elves had tried expanding out again, with evidence of them trying to resettle Triaxus as well as the moons of the gas giants, and even the Marixah Republic and Daimalko of all places.
I'd like to pause a moment here and note one thing about the gap section of the article that either bugs me or concerns me because it notes repeatedly that the gap erased memories of interpersonal connections, but previous lore on the gap was very explicit on that not being how it worked. It erased memories of dates, times, events, but you still had your interpersonal relationships. You wouldn't remember when or where or how you met your spouse, or how long you'd been married, but you still recognized them to be your spouse. You didn't know how old your kid was, but you still recognized them as your kid. That sort of thing.
This article doesn't treat the Gap's memory loss as working this way, noting that a significant portion of the specific elven trauma is having to live with not knowing who your family, who your lovers, who your children are over that long period of time, and touches on communities established during the gap trying to rebuild with the relationship between the community members being unknown.
So, either this is a mistake and a misunderstanding on the part of the writer who otherwise did a great job with this article, which bugs me because that opens up the possibility that some of the other little tidbits I've latched onto in the article as intriguing hooks might be mistakes or misunderstandings themselves, *or* it's a retcon as to how Gap memory loss worked & they decided to make it somewhat crueler in terms of what you lost, which makes me think the immediate post gap fallout should have been even worse than it was if people didn't even have those very basic connections to hold onto for some form of stability during that time, and also if this is a conscious change to the lore of how Gap memory loss works, it should have been communicated better because a lot of people are going to miss out on this article. *Or* as a third possibility I suppose it's possible that this is just specifically how it affected elves and no one else for some reason which there could be a hook there but that would be an odd thing and it's not communicated as such in the article.
So moving on to the post Gap era and we've got a break down of the current events, restating that the "collective elven nation" suffered "a betrayal" during the gap with still no explanation as to what that could have been. I will state a certain frustration here, in that I realize it's left open ended (and should be) so a given DM can just make it be whatever they want to suit their purposes, but I feel without at least some sense of the impact of that betrayal, it feels very difficult to empathize with it. Leaving what the betrayal was and who did it blank is fine, but without knowing what the betrayal did, how it harmed the elven nation, the whole idea is rather silly because without a sense of the consequences, the majority of the elven nation retreats into isolationism and paranoia based simply on the knowledge that a betrayal occurred with no indication that the betrayal actually caused any material damage.
Speaking of isolation & paranioa, the image of Sovyrian painted here is one of it's more unflattering. Like it's not full on North Korea but the article definitely doesn't present this as being a good thing for the elven nation or the elves themselves.
Aside from Sovyrian, the Elven Diaspora is broken down into those elves who reacted to the trauma of the gap by spreading out into the stars, then the Delvers - those who've dedicated themselves into trying to locate lost Golarion and seem to being leading the most concentrated effort to do so that I'm aware of, specifically to recontact and if necessary rescue the elves that presumably still lvie there. Apparently these guys are hoping to commune with the Starstone to make that happen.
Then we've got the Vindicators who're a group of calistrian elven assassins who cultivate false friendships in order to assassinate those they believe are responsible for that betrayal up there. Their targets are all based on guess work in an entirely irrational need for revenge so these guys can be a great villain to add to a game of a friendly elven npc who secretly really wants to stab the party because they're convinced that the party is secretly behind whatever horrible thing happened to the elves that they can't remember. Their outfit looks amazing, btw. Kudos to the artist here.
Then you've got Utopians who're out exploring new world explicitly looking for undiscovered ones ripe for colonization so they can start a new purely elven society that will one day supplant Sovyrian as the center of elven culture in the galaxy. Lot of great villain possibilities with these guys on an even larger scale.
And one of the juicier bits; Planar Explorer elves who're settling not other planets, but other planes with limited success in the First World, the Plane of Air, Elysium, and the Astral Plane. This gets me hyped for potential planar adventures coming in the future.
So, yeah. I need to go to sleep now but this is far and away the most interested I've been reading an article on elves that's come out of paizo. Lot of nice tidbits and story hooks and that's the kind of thing I really love in these articles. Left me excited for what if anything might be coming next.
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"why no pre-existing portal to Golarion?"
The answer to that question tends to be: Rovagug.
"why no pre-existing portal to Golarion?"The answer to that question tends to be: Rovagug.
Certainly the most plausible and likely answer. Does imply that whoever built the original gates on Castrovel knew that Rovagug was there but I assume some basic divination magic would tell them that.
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Just had a tangential thought/idea:
What if the elves were supposed to watch Golarion for any indication that Rovagug was popping loose/had popped loose?
This would be a very huge thing after the Gap, when suddenly Golarion is just GONE.
There would definitely be feelings of betrayal, both internally among the survivors, and from whoever had given them the task to watch.
Better, this even scans with why the elves (mostly) evacuated during Earthfall - - if the Cage was going to be shattered, then they needed to be a safe distance away to be able to report it to whoever had given them the assigned task.
