Re: Background Knowledge
KYONIN
Alignment: CG
Capital: Iadara (56,340)
Notable Settlements: Greengold (10,400)
Ruler: Queen Telandia Edasseril, the Viridian
Crown
Government: Monarchy
Languages: Elven
Religion: Calistria, Desna, Nethys, several
obscure elven deities
During the long centuries of
elven abandonment, many
of the elves left behind
gradually grew away from their
traditions, becoming erratic
hermits or assimilating into
the barbaric human societies as
the long-lived Forlorn. Others
delved deep beneath the earth,
seeking a refuge to wait out the
coming destruction from above,
and in the process became forever
twisted and darkened by what
they found there. Those loyalists
who remained in Kyonin kept
primarily to Iadara, their illusionshrouded
capital, and carefully
hoarded their racial lore. Locked
up behind their graceful walls,
the residents of Iadara could
only watch in frustration as their
abandoned communities were
looted by vandals and bandits,
their former homes annexed by
tribes of squatters. Artifacts and
treasures lifted from these fallow
communities flooded the markets
of Avistan, and to this day many
elves of Kyonin consider their sale a slight against elvenkind.
Yet sprawling human nations were hardly the largest threat to
beset Kyonin during the dark years of the elves’ absence.
In 2497, the great demon Cyth-V’gug, Lord of Filth and Pollution, grew
dissatisfied with the work of one of his spawn. As punishment,
the enraged demon exiled his minion Treerazer, the self-styled
Lord of Blasted Tarn, to the Material Plane, where he would stay
until such time as he could prove his worth. Suddenly finding
himself among the lush, carefully tended trees of the southern
Fierani Forest, Treerazer quickly realized that his prison could
also be his playground, and he immediately set about sucking
the life from the forest, poisoning the very earth with his fecund
filth. In his wake, the wilderness grew twisted and dark, and
men and elves feared to tread within its borders. As the demon
pressed north and encountered Iadara, however, he discovered
the true scope of its opportunity. With whispered feelers probing
the minds of the remaining elves, he learned of the Sovyrian Stone,
and set about trying to corrupt it, attempting to break its connection
to the elves’ strange refuge and use its power to bring Golarion in line with
the Abyss, opening its gates to the demonic hordes.
In far away Sovyrian, the elves felt the shift and took action. In a
great procession that took weeks to complete, the elves marched back
through the gate and into Golarion, the sun shining on their armor
and f lowing pennants. With sword and spell they descended on the
corrupted woods, cleansing the land and driving Treerazer back into a far
corner of the forest. There, however, the demon entrenched himself, and
despite their best efforts, the elves were unable to truly slay the Lord of
Blasted Tarn. Instead, they wrote off the tainted groves as lost, naming the
dark section of woods the Tanglebriar and setting guards to watch it, lest the
demon ever attempt to stray beyond the polluted vale’s borders once more.
The demon dealt with, the elves
looked around for the next threat,
expecting at any moment to be descended upon by teeming
hordes of humans. Instead, they found the land recovered from
the darkness following the Earthfall far quicker than they had
projected, with their former human adversaries now deep in
the Age of Enthronement—an era of relative civilization and
refinement. Believing these new human nations capable of
reason, the elves elected not to use the Sovyrian Stone to leave
once more, but instead proceeded forth into the world, intent
on retaking former holdings and resuming their residence
among Golarion’s green places, starting with the abandoned
communities in Kyonin. While in many places the elves met
armed resistance from humans to whom the idea of elven society
was but a half-remembered fairy tale, the suddenness of the elven
return was its greatest strength, and before the rulers of Avistan
and Garund could react, fires burned once more in forgotten
hearths, and strange new banners f lew over the crumbled
remnants of ancient cities.
Filled with pastoral beauty and picturesque landscapes,
Kyonin is the largest enclave of elves on Golarion. Although even
their own scholars are hard-pressed to say when and where the
elves first arose, all agree that the rolling fields and deep, vibrant
forests of Kyonin are where their hearts lie. For thousands of
years, the elves lived in harmony with the land, building elegant
settlements that seemingly grew from the landscape itself,
or else festooning the land with monuments and fountains,
orreries and sculptures of unknown meaning and function.
The ancient, abandoned ruins of these structures
still dot the Fireani Forest north of the Five Kings
Mountains, their scars eloquent of a time when
the elves fought tooth and nail with the humans
of Old Azlant. These conf licts came to an
abrupt end just before the Earthfall, when elves
from across the world gathered in Kyonin to
step through the gate created by the sacred
Sovyrian Stone and abandoned Golarion to the
coming cataclysm, traveling across unknown
distances to their mysterious community of
Sovyrian—the unknown country or world
from which they are whispered to have
originated. What transpired in this faroff
land is unknown to outsiders, but for
thousands of years the elves remained
missing, leaving behind only a few
stragglers and stewards to watch over
their former homes.
Kyonin is a standoffish realm, a serene
place where the elves can seek refuge from a
human-focused world paced far too quickly for
their tastes. While gnomes, being closely tied to nature
and the fey of the First World, are largely tolerated by the elves,
the few visitors from other races allowed within Kyonin’s borders
are pointed toward the human-run community of Greengold.
Government: Kyonin is ruled by Queen Telandia Edasseril,
the current bearer of the Viridian Crown. Although her serene
beauty and calm authority cannot be questioned, there are many
within her elaborate councils and courts in Iadara who grow
dissatisfied with the current state of affairs, urging the queen
to reopen more of the ancestral holdings across Avistan and
Garund, or else pushing for a final solution to the problems of
Treerazer and their dark cousins below the surface.
Iadara: A glorious affair of wood and crystal spires, Iadara’s
buildings are built in perfect harmony with the trees and streams
of the forest. Its beauty, however, is deceptive—the walls and
structures of Kyonin’s capital are shrouded in layer upon layer
of artistic illusion, their constantly shifting edifices making
it hard to tell where the magic ends and reality begins. In ages
past, these illusions transformed the entire city into a canvas, but
of late the illusions ref lect the citizen’s isolationist tendencies,
and magical fog and vines frequently shroud the glimmering
towers. Indeed, many enemies have trouble locating the city at
all, so perfectly can it blend with the surrounding landscape.
Greengold:
While small hamlets and farming
communities lie scattered across Kyonin, it remains a nation too
small for its borders, and many ancient settlements sit uninhabited
due to its people’s slow population growth. As a result, the largest
city save Iadara is, ironically, the human-run trading town of
Greengold. Here, the elves are content to allow human traders and
politicians their own carefully governed community within elven
lands—an ongoing experiment to determine if the elves can trust
other civilized races to help rebuild their fallen empire.
ELF GATES
The exodus of an entire race is a difficult thing to organize.
In order to better facilitate the elves’ original departure, many
communities built the aiudara, magical portals those races that
came behind them vulgarly termed “elf gates.” Through these
elaborately sculpted stone arches, elves were able to step easily
between settlements on opposite sides of the globe, although
only the gate deep in Kyonin was capable of reaching fabled
Sovyrian. Powered by the same artifact, the Sovyrian Stone, these
gates represented a huge part of the elves’ power, as resources
could be called instantly from across continents.