An Arborean Epilogue
by Inward Looker)

Purification and Ascension

I don't remember much about my mortal life.

I have brief flashes, occasionally-- a taste of bread in my mother's kitchen, my wedding night -- things that are a fundamental part of my soul. Does this mean that on the cold Astral plane where memories go to die, those things can't be found? Perhaps if I did not clutch them so tightly within myself, they could be enriching others, spawning new realms and realities?

I digress.

I do remember waking up on the soil of Olympus, in the realm of the great goddess Athena. Others crowded around me, and they seemed to be family members I hadn't seen in a long time. I have no idea if they were or weren't-- aren't we all family under the loving care of a goddess? Anyway, they took me to their gleaming temples and ivory halls, taught me weaving and rhetoric -- they said I had it in me to be a per. The pers looked so strong and proud, keeping their provincial little godrealms safe from the bad outside world.

Others thought I showed promise too. They watched me as I stared at Selene/Artemis sailing the sky at night, and they watched me as I bathed in the early morning streams. The Others stole me away beneath the noses of Athena's exalted pers. They covered me in silk and deception and secreted me, still sleeping, in a hidden bower where the spirits of the wood-nymphs and fauns and treants, protectors of the Land of Land of Lands -- altered me, changed me, rewove me like Athena Arachne weaves the fate of men and gods (or so they say).

I asked them to, of course. That's the essential part. I asked them without even realizing it. That's the other essential part.

When I woke up, I pulled myself out of the cocoon I had, dreaming, made. I stretched my wings and joined my fellows. I was a coure, an eladrin, one of the Elder folk of Arborea, passion and curiosity incarnate. During my Long Sleep Athena's threads had been removed, making me purer in chaos and good. The life of an eladrin is all about seeking and understanding. We fly, skip, prance and swim across the width and breadth of our plane, trying to experience everything there. We take from each of nature spirits we come across, and leave what we can in return. With each experience we change slightly. I had hooves after the time I spent with the oreads, and I sprouted grape leaves when I left the companionship of the Bacchai. This can be dangerous: curiosity is to the Eladrin as pride is to the Archons (or is it the Baatezu?). Eladrins who absorb too much of the essence of other planes can, if their actions are not tempered by wisdom, become indistinguishable from tanar'ri. I've never heard of one of us becoming a slaad -- our true Limbic equivalents -- though it's not unheard of (is anything?) to see a lillend or even a chaos beast with eladrinai features. I understand that chaos beasts can become slaadi, though I have no proof.

Thankfully, all of this is rare. As we absorb the essence of Arborea we become more and more immune to such diversions -- purer, if you will. Big differences in terrain can make big differences in eladrins, though. An Other who spends any time in Ossa quickly grows flippers, the way a bar-lgura can start looking like a crow if they stumble on an aerial layer (and aren't eaten by vrocks).

Eladrinai Senses

Our senses are our most important attributes; it is through them that we grow and live. We have sight and hearing and touch and smell and taste in much finer degrees than mortals. Our vision extends far beyond the boundaries of red and violet. We are psionically aware, and we possess what we call soul-sight and clever dreaming.

Soul-sight allows us to see the color of the souls we encounter. It is this that allowed my fellows to see, even back when I was a petitioner of Pallas Athene, that I was Inward Looker. It allows us to see that we are all essentially the same -- just different parts of the same whole, different steps in the same dance. Our ascension is just the process of learning the whole, inside and out.

Clever dreaming is our way of processing the world. When we sleep, curled up still in a tree, a rock, a waterfall, or a cloud, we use it to travel are memories and what might be in an intelligent way. When we wake, dancing over root and water, fury and solitude, rock and air, we use it in the same way, moving from level to level of consciousness as we will, experiencing life and experience itself from every possible vantage.

Anatomy

We have no true forms. We change from shape to shape, stacking experience on experience and passion on passion with every breath and every glance. If one of us is slain, however, even if we are wind or water or fire or light, those that follow will find slightly spiraled bones composed of wood, ice, bronze, stone and anything else we absorbed over the years. Our flesh flutters off like a cloud of tiny birds, to be reabsorbed by the plane and perhaps produce a coure. Our hair remains as it is; some believe our strength is in it, but that is a falsehood. Is anything truly false, though? Isn't every story we create and every lie we tell reflected somewhere in the multiverse? In order to escape a band of cyclopes, I convinced one that I was her child, and three years later she birthed a real one exactly like the form I took. Was I responsible for this? I digress.

Gender

We take on the attributes of one gender or the others as we need to. We have no one true gender any more than we have one true body or one true mind. Changing more than just our appearance takes effort, however, and exposure to one we seek to emulate.

Procreation

Of course we can mate and birth just as mortals do. In fact, we make sure that we experience one side or the others of this process every so often. Our blood mingles with that of mortals to create what are called the aasimar. We do as well for them as we can before we send them off to have new experiences. We can, and do, also mate and produce offspring with virtually every race we have encountered. Some claim the lillendi are our progeny and the slaadi's. I'm sure that the telling makes the tale true, somewhere. The children of eladrin and eladrin inherit the traits their parents had at the time of conception, modified by the experiences of incubation. Some eladrin mothers carry their unborn for years or eons before mutually deciding to give birth. Some do it right away. We try to experience all of these options.

Sustenance

We eat everything. It's not the substance of the food, though we assimilate that into our current forms. It's the experience of the food that feeds us. If we've eaten enough of apples or game hen, then eating some more will do us no good.

Laws

Law is a transitory thing, don't you think? One may accept a certain game for a certain time, but ultimately the rules change. The powers of cold space and starlight rule Olympus one epoch, the next the giants hold sway over two realms. Later the elves and the meddling gods of storm and earth define their own customs and paradigms. Even in other Lands rules change and planes shift. A layer is lost here, an elder race disposed over here. Such-a-world is formed of so many spatial dimensions, but wait! Wouldn't it be much nicer if we were formed of that many instead? What some call Law is merely the game they play today.

(I would like to thank Rasgon for allowing him to post this wonderful article here.)