Many Elves have no knowledge of what is told below. Although they understand
they migrated to their forests from the North, the beginning of their acknowledged
history is the foundation of the Forest Kingdom, which was already ancient before
the Vedran empire began. The wise among the Elves know they they used to
live in cities and that the 'decadence' of that age brought disaster upon their culture but
the exact nature of the disaster is not understood. Only a few of the royal house have read the
ancient manuscripts and even their most trusted advisors have not been allowed to see them.
It is clear that the Elves had a flourishing civilisation by 20,000 B.V long before they ever encountered
Men although even at that time they had some dealings with the Dwarves. In any event Men appeared in the North
around 12,000 B.V. and being friendlier than the Dwarves and eager to learn the Elves welcomed them into
their cities. Indeed at that time, the Elves were reaching out to other worlds and other planes of
existence having experienced long years of isolation and the Elven cities swiftly became multi-cultural
with a smattering of strange races from across the multiverse. In their journeys to other worlds the Elves
frequently took their human friends and one such was a wizard, Sendal, who was dismayed to find
that for all the power and glory of the Elvish civilisation they were treated with some condescension by the
sophisticated multiverse dwellers. Sendal began to research the secrets of other civilisations and
in particular the things they feared most. After a while his thirst for knowledge gained him many
followers and a small cult grew up around him. His activities were tolerated but the Elven lords
did not fully understand his purposes or his growing arcane power. After many long years of
research, which Sendal extended his life to complete, he and his followers secretly created
an immense portal near the chief Elven city Atalande through which an alien being emerged.
Sendal's followers called this being Gol and worshipped it as a God. Whatever purposes
their cult might once have had were forgotten as they became totally subservient to
Gol's unstoppable mission of destruction.
The Elves sought help from their friends in the multiverse but all they could learn of Gol was that
he had destroyed other worlds and that even the Gods were afraid of him. The Elves shut their portals
and prepared to battle Gol on their own, few taking the opportunity to flee this world
because of their love for their land. Indeed the Elven sages understood that much of the power of the
Elves was bound up with the land and they hoped that the land would sustain them. At first the battles
went well: the followers of the Elven lords were more than a match for the followers of Gol and although
Gol was well nigh invulnerable he moved very slowly because of his immense size. As time passed, however,
the total destruction that Gol wreaked and the subtle power of the fear, panic and madness that he caused
began to sap the will of the Elves. One by one the Elven cities fell. Sendal's followers gradually abandoned
direct conflict and furthered Gol's progress by assassination and terror.
The Elves called on Corellon Larethian for aid and a desperate strategy was put in place. Through the power
of the great wizard Essendil Marakan and the sacrifice of his followers Gol was subjected to attacks of
piercing utter cold. Although the attacks appeared to have little impact at first over the next hundred and fifty
years Gol was gradually slowed until his progress ground to a halt and a great glacier grew over his body.
The cost to the Elves was huge, however, and few called it a victory. All the Elven cities were destroyed
and all the land that Gol had passed over was laid waste. The climate itself cooled dramatically and the
land could no longer support great numbers of Elves or Men, many of whom fled south. Essendil himself
was dead, exhausted by his efforts in the war against Gol. Essendil's son Garion , however, was not yet
ready to forsake his lands and moved North to found a new city Hekkate from which he could keep watch
on Gol's body and tend the wounded land.
Two thousand years passed in peace and the Elves adapted to the land once again and began
to develop resistance to the freezing winds that now blew through the North. They had assumed that
Sendal was long dead and that, although the re-emergence of Gol had been prophesied, that particular
calamity would be in the far future. It became apparent, however, that Sendal had survived and
returned once more to his dark research using portals that the Elves had thought were destroyed in the wars.
From the remnants of his followers he created, a new race the Norns which he ruled as Norn-lich.
Again he brought to our world a thing which it was said the Gods feared, a new magic or life-force, which defied
manipulation by conventional magic. A second Northern war errupted, but without the direct power of Gol,
Gollian, as Sendal was now known, could not overcome the Elves. Although the war lasted several hundred
years in the end Gollian was defeated and driven out of the City of the Norns which he had built at the
foot of Gol's
glacier.
Another five thousand years passed before that city was re-occupied. By this time the numbers
of the Elves had dwindled somewhat and in their isolation their power was waning. The Third Northern
War ended in stalemate with Gollian holding much of the North. At the end of the war in order to isolate the
Elves still further he made a pact with the cold goddess, Auril, and the climate deterorated yet
again. The majority of the Elves fled south at that time, feeling that Gollian's hostility to
them would at least further entomb Gol himself. This was the exodus that led to the founding
of the Forest Kingdom. Fifteen hundred years later the Vedran Empire was founded but even at its
height none had any interest in crossing into the wasteland behind the forbidding White Mountains.
The north of that realm and of its successor kingdoms such as Carandor was considered a backwater and
maybe the subtle machinations of the followers of Gol have kept things that way. The Elves for their
part never sought to look back.