Elves and fauns are an ongoing story about defiance and acceptance in the face of loss.

Before the doom

Elves used to be at the top. Graceful, sardonic, some would say haughty. They went through the ages feeling the years like a soft breeze, no real care in the world beyond their indulgences. Tree of Splendour reach up to the sky and blessed them all with seemingly eternal life. Close to it anyway, they aged very slowly. Then the tree withered and turned in on itself, leaving a hollow dried stem. No leaves and no immortality.

The elves haven't really changed but since the Tree of Splendour turned to Sorrow, there's a gloom about them. With this the elves started to age, they didn't rejuvenate wounds the same way either. While their brethren that turned into the fauns accepted this, many of the oldest families of elves, the haughty elves, refused.

They did find a solution. Not a good solution, it will still fail them and have them succumb to an unnatural torpor as their body fails them. But if blood form other beings can stave off death for a few hundred years? It might be worth it.

Most elven families need to drink blood, but some drain people’s energy instead — there are benefits to this: no marks and you can’t kill someone directly. But they also need to feed more often and tend to be avoided as “buzzkills.”

Fauns

The fauns accepted their new lot, perhaps not with glee but at least with determination. They were not content about it but what else could they do? They left the shadow of Sorrow and travel out into the world, learning how to live with their shorter lifespans from other people.

​​As the years went by and turned to generations, they changed. They grew horns and antlers and many of them have hoofs instead of feet. The forests accepted them as their adopted children, and the fauns had arrived. More fickle and emotional than they used to be, but full of life.

For the last three-hundred years, the faun family of de Markos has been the rulers of the farm and trade heavy Leaf Marshes.

Elves​

The elves remains. In their gloom and doom they turned to older myths, chased down rumours of magical aid and they sustain. There's less of them than the fauns, but there's also a bit more elven kids than there used to be. Drinking blood for lifeforce is a crude tool at best, and at least they can't pass it on to others but that’s a rather hollow boon. But they're immortal! With the caveat that immortality only lasts a thousand years if even that. Some succumb to torpor at a few hundred, withering away in loneliness and loosing touch with the outside world.

Through stories and ideas about the elves and their struggle to return as immortals, other beings managed to unlock vampyrism as well. Much to the chagrin of the elves those vampires do not fall into a withered state at all. Not for lack of trying, but the elves and fauns seem unable to catch this vampyrism strain, they’re locked into their own cursed hell.