Empyrean Elves

Empyrean Elves
The Empyrean Elves, also known as the Elves of the Staff and Wand, or the “Grand Elves”, are the most haughty of the Elven People. They are known for their use of magic in almost all that they do. They challenged the Skyrider Dweorhs by magically floating a landmass to rival the Dweorhs flying city-state of metal and stone. They stood next to the hovering Aviarus, magically showcasing their athletic prowess and dexterity, all the while angering the “Bird People” with their intrusion into their element. They tried to match the Lake Dweorhs, but abandoned their attempts after the debacle of their magical-floating city.

History
The Empyrean Elves were the first Elves to be taught by the Ignisians the concept of Focus and the use of "Force-Mastery". While all the races were taught and can use Focus and "Force-Mastery", the Empyrean or "Grand Elves" are exceptional in respects to understanding the mechanics of the "Adventuring Order of Force-Mastery". This expertise led to the "Grand Elves" to create the centers of what has begun to be called, the "Schools of Magic". Anyone can learn to use the different types of "Force-Mastery"; Facere (Creation) Magic, Anima (Spirit) Magic, Ventus (Air) Magic, Pugna (Earth) Magic, Ignis (Fire) Magic, and Tempus (Water) Magic. The Empyrean Elves decided to created six (6) great magical universities connected in a mystical pattern of containment and protection. The Elven Capital City of Praceptodum was founded within and around the six scholarly institutes, creating the center for the Elven races that did not wish to live in the wilderness.

The "Elven-Dweorh-Aviarus Cataclysm War"
The other Empyrean Elven city is one that they are not as proud of creating. It is the city-state of Volantes, the floating nation that caused the "Elven-Dweorh-Aviarus Cataclysm War", also known as "The Magic Land". The city-state of Volantes was meant to be a match for the flying city-state of the Skyrider Dweorhs, which had been flying over the homeland of the Elves for several centuries. The original Skyrider Dweorhs flying land was a marvel to most who saw it. Originally, it flew not much higher than the mountains to the west. It also could not support more than a few dozen Skyrider Dweorhs in residence at any one given time. The Empyrean Elves became begrudging of the flying land when it became clear that the Skyrider Dweorhs were expanding its size, which was starting to cause a yearly eclipsing of the land that fell beneath its shadow. The Skyrider Dweorhs did not understand why the Empyrean Elves were so concerned about something that only lasted a few days in any given area.

The Empyrean Elves started pulling up pieces of the surrounding countryside to block the path of the Skyrider Dweorhs city, creating a blockade in an attempt to dissuade the Skyrider Dweorhs from flying their city into the Elves' territory. The Skyrider Dweorhs would just added more lift mechanisms to their city, increased the available landmass to accommodate the increased lift and personnel, and flew even higher than the chunks of land that were being floated by the Empyrean Elves. The Empyrean Elves again and again raised lands to block the Dweorhs' flying city. The Skyrider Dweorhs would simply add more lift mechanisms, landmass, personnel, and carry-on with their traversing of the skies. The Empyrean Elven council eventually came up with a plan to effectively end the Skyrider Dweorhs need to parade their achievement across all the lands of Orenda. The Empyrean Elves decided to rip and float a large section of the original mountain range that the Skyrider Dweorhs originated in, along with the bronzed memorial statue/burial site of their cultural hero, the first Skyrider.

The idea was that the Skyrider Dweorhs would be unwilling to fly over or around their sacred mountain range. The effort that the Empyrean Elves put into raising such a large landmass caused more strain and threw off the timing and is believed to have set the catastrophe into motion. When the Skyrider Dweorhs' City-State came out of the darkness chasing the sun, they were to come upon the newly raised Empyrean Elven floating nation of Volantes. Some miscalculations were discovered when, as the "Grand Elves" began to magically raise the land it was not going up fast enough to move up and out of the way of the approaching flying artificial land mass. This started as a gradual realization, by those at the edges of the territory seeing that something was just slightly off about the approaching city-state. This miscalculation was confirmed when the metal flying city-state's edge started to dig into the earth at the upper edge of the floating nation. The message to Empyrean Elven council was met by an attempt to increase the speed of raising the land and holding it together, a mistake that resulted in about half of the appropriated landmass and at least half of the metal flying city-state to go crashing back to the surface of Orenda.

This began the "Elven-Dweorh-Aviarus Cataclysm War". Destruction to the land when the pieces of the Elven and Dweorh cities hit the ground blasted across the area. The shockwave destroying as much as the falling debri. The removal of the mountain range increased the area of the existing inland sea, but the fall of half of that same range did not occur back into the original location. Its fall was closer to the original coastline of continent, as the Dweorh city pushed Volantes to the West. This killed multitudes of Sauropsidans and other non-human races living in the areas. The fall of the flying Dweorh city did as much, possibly more, damage when its pieces connected with continent below. Explosions from ruptured boilers. Hurricanes and flash flooding from torrential downpours, caused by almost instantaneous evaporation of the waters in the inland sea. Weather changes, blast zones, mass deaths, earthquakes, the list of tragedies that befell Orenda on that day can only called a cataclysm. The response to this event was not the bringing together of the races. The Skyrider Dweorhs declared war on the "Grand Elves". The "Grand Elves" attempted to apologize, quickly turned to defending themselves, and eventually escalated the war instead. The Sauropsidans collected their survivors and tried to rebuild their lands, feeding an almost genetic dislike for the two originators of the tragedy. The Aviarus declared war on both the Empyrean Elves and the Skyrider Dweorhs because of the deaths and destruction they brought to the Fae Folk, Sauropsidans, and the Aviarus peoples.

To this day the floating city-nation of the Volantes still hovers over the newer parts of the inland sea. While the Skyrider Dweorhs altered their course away from the Southwest to Northeast figure eight pattern of its earlier days, to a Northwest to Southeast figure eight over the Dwarven lands and part of the unsettled wilds. The earthquakes and craters, created by the fall of the airborne land masses, caused deeper and darker waters than the original inland sea area contained. Darkness covered most of the remains of the fallen sections of both of the airborne landmasses, having fallen partly into and around the inner seas new depths. Adventurers can still to this day explore the sunken ruins of the Skyrider Dweorhs and the Empyrean Elves.