~o0o~

And so it was a dark and stormy night when our tale begins, but isn't that the way it always goes? Actually it wasn't yet dark and the storm had not yet begun. It was early evening and the dark clouds were only just forming overhead.

"I hate storms," Quaraun muttered as he looked up at the clouds forming overhead. "I think it's in my best interests to head to sidetrack off course a bit, head towards the village coming up on map. Or I'd think that if any other map was telling me to go there."

Quaraun pulled out his map and examined it again. The clouds were big and dark and terrible. They exactly matched the clouds that were scribbling themselves across the page of the map.

“Big, black and terrible, which means it might be a really big, really bad storm that I really did not want to be outside in. And you knew that. For all I know you made this storm. I hate you.”

According to the map there existed a village not too far ahead. It also said there was a storm coming, and it had previously told him the village was in the opposite direction.

“Villages don't move. Which means there's isn't a village.”

The map pointed arrows to the words.

"Screaming Unicorn," the pink robed Elf said reading the words. "It looks like a village, maybe. But I can't trust you."

Quaraun rotated the map to look at the drawings from a different angle, but all the images leaped up and rearranged themselves as he did.

“It is absolutely hopeless trying to read this map. And I have no idea where I am.”

He was uncertain if the symbols even stood for a village at all.

"Damn, I wish I had a better map. You've not been very reliable thus far. Must have been drawn by someone seriously lacking in map making skills. It's not helping matters that you stupid thing keep changing on me. And you're the only map I have of this area, I would think it's better than no map at all. Except you keep trying to get me killed and I don't think that's very funny."

Thunder rumbled in the distance. The dark clouds overhead showed a storm rolling in fast.

"I hate nature. And I hate outdoors, so damn much," Quaraun sputtered as he cringed at the thought of getting caught in a downpour. “I'm not a Wood Elf. I'm not made for this. I belong in castle. War. And dry. And not traipsing all over the countryside on the whims of a lunatic map. You are an evil map, created by an evil Lich. I can't wait to be rid of you.”

Quaraun was not an outdoor loving wild feral Elf. He was a Moon Elf who had grown up in a very aristocratic and proud civilized indoor dwelling clan. He was the son of the younger brother, of the Moon Elf king, or he had been, back when the Moon Elves were still alive. His servants had had servants. Quaraun was a fastidious, stuck up snob. He did not like to get his hands dirty, nor did the High Elf relish sleeping outside, not even on a good day. He didn't like being outside at all. Sleeping outside on a dark and stormy night in strange and unknown territory, left many uneasy anxieties on his mind.

Quaraun rubbed his aching side.

The thought of a night outdoors was worse today than normal. The wizard had been badly injured in battle only a few days earlier. The wound had begun to heal, but the Pink Necromancer was still weak and every step he took sent terrible pain through his entire side, down through to his leg and up his back into his neck.

The risk of sleeping outside, while injured like this, was too great, it left him vulnerable to attack. Quaraun badly needed a place to rest. Some place safe and quiet, where he could stay until he was fully healed. He couldn't risk fighting another battle while so desperately weakened.

"Perhaps, I'll get lucky and the town will be big enough to sport an inn or a tavern or a boarding house," the short Elf mused dryly as he trudged slowly onward, trying not to limp.

Villages were few and many miles between in these parts. The farther North the pink veiled Elf went the less populated the roads were. Once Quaraun reached the Deep North it would be weeks between houses, let alone towns. Here in the Far North, just South of Deep North, the prospects of finding a house wasn't much better, though changes of finding a house were better then chances of finding a town, and chances of finding a town with a tavern was going to be close to impossible around here. No one travelled these roads, there was no need to public resting places.

"Just public lodging of some sort. I hate knocking at strangers' doors like some pitiful beggar. Have to ask to spend the night."

It annoyed Quaraun very much. The silver haired Elf remembered how he felt to find a strange stranger at the door.

Quaraun was stranger than most strangers and he knew it. It would have been easier on Quaraun had he let go of ancestral pride and stopped being so arrogant about being of aristocratic blood or at least if the pink robed Elf dressed more like a common commoner. He knew that too, but he didn't allow it convince him to dress more inconspicuously.

It was bad enough that Quaraun dressed like a wealthy aristocratic lady, rather then a lord, that alone barred him entrance from most places, but the Pink Necromancer wore the gaudiest frills, embroideries, bead-work, and decoration imaginable and all in the brightest, most eye popping shades of pink. Few who meet the grief stricken pink robed Elf were even aware he was a male Elf, most folks thought him a woman of some sort. The pink robed Elf neither looked nor dressed like a male. He wasn't necessarily trying to pass himself off as a woman, and openly admitted his male birth to anyone who questioned it, but few did and most didn't care, as the aristocratic Elvish clans were seen as arrogant snobs and thus few people found any reason to associate with them.

Had Quaraun been able to let go of his arrogance and pride, he could have passed for one of the common races of Elves and gotten along with others better. Most people found the common Elves cheerful, friendly, and very easy to get along with. Common Elves were not avoided the way the High Elves were.

In fact, Quaraun's life could have been much easier if he would just stop wearing pink. The Guild had plastered thousands of wanted posters in hundreds of towns, cities, and villages, telling people to be on the look out for an Elf dressed in pink. The Pink Necromancer was a wanted criminal. A murderer. A serial killer.

Most days Quaraun wore shimmering silk bubblegum pink robes with many sparkling gold designs embroidered in the cloth, over which he wore an equally pink velvet cloak with large magenta pink beaded gemstone hearts sewn all over it. The outfit was often topped off with a wide brimmed pink hat decked out in large white ostrich plumes, though other times he wore a long embroidered veil. Under his robes he wore thigh high boots, also pink.

The Elf loved pink, there prevailed no question of that. He also looked like some prostitute out a king's harem, or so it seemed to those whom laid eyes on him. Because the Pink Necromancer was so very short, and so very feminine, dressed like this, it was rare any one identified him as male.

In his youth Quaraun had gained a reputation as a formidable wizard and people from all points of the world had sought him out, begging for his help. Helping people had thus become a habit of his, something the small Elf had started doing without thinking about. But he was just Quaraun the Moon Elf Wizard in those days.

Now he was The Pink Necromancer: Quaraun the Insane, and people were scared shitless of him.

Rumours followed Quaraun every where he went. Every one had something to say about Quaraun, though no one ever had anything to say to him.

People spread slanderous rumours and gossiping lies about him, to the extent, the morbidly depressed Moon Elf could go no where without finding rumours had arrived there first.

This depressed Quaraun to no end, for it made it impossible for him to make friends and the Rapunzel haired Elf was often greeted with angry mobs and people throw stones and chasing him out of their village before the anomalous Elf even entered it.

For 300 years, Quaraun had wandered from village to village, sad and alone.

Unloved.

Unwanted.

Hated by everyone.

Usually hated for things he did not do.

Hated because people were more willing to believe baseless rumours than they were to try to get to know him.

If someone died, no matter who or where, it ALWAYS, Quaraun's fault, even in villages the acutely suicidal Elf had never been to.

If someone fell sick, it ALWAYS, Quaraun's fault, always.

If crops failed to grow, it was Quaraun who did, had to be.

Everyone blamed Quaraun for everything.

And yet, Quaraun was peaceful, quiet, harmless. He kept to himself and bothered no one. He wandered aimlessly across the world, living in a tent that he set up along side the road and being extra careful to avoid contact with anyone and everyone, for fear of being blamed for yet another thing he had not done.

The most prevalent rumour, was that the world's most powerful wizard had gone mad and was now roaming the world slaughtering everyone in his path. There was some truth to this story. He had visited several villages and killed every last person, but the killings had not been as random as people thought.

Quaraun was seeking out anyone who was in anyway involved in his family's death and killing them. Often most people had no idea they had had a hand in BoomFuzzy's death. Few had ever heard of BoomFuzzy; those that did, only knew the name from having seen it on a box of chocolates.

While it was true Quaraun had killed everyone involved in BoomFuzzy's death, the truth of that was that the bereft Moon Elf had done so all at once, 300 years ago on the 100^th anniversary of BoomFuzzy's death. Quaraun was NOT wandering the world in search of more people to kill. Quaraun wandered the world in search of BoomFuzzy's ghost.

BoomFuzzy's ghost had escaped, 300 years ago. Quaraun had started the Lich making spell, but the bumbling Necromancer had not finished it. BoomFuzzy's ghost had escaped and fled, and the Lich remains of BoomFuzzy was out there, somewhere, drifting between dimensions, not quite in the spirit world, not quite in the physical world.

Quaraun was looking for gingerbread. BoomFuzzy lived in a house made of gingerbread. Bigger on the inside. Capable of changing form, and looking on the outside like nothing but a small box, and on the inside being a vast world all it's own.

A magic gingerbread house that could anything. A mimic of sorts, it came to life and required feeding. Usually the gingerbread house sat peaceful and still, an actual house made out of gingerbread. But hungry, the house grew huge, becoming a monstrous grey granite manor, that devoured any traveller foolish enough to enter it.

BoomFuzzy himself was a Phooka, a Welsh Bogart. A shapeshifter who could take any form. Be anyone or anything. A Dark Trickster Faerie, who could see into the minds of others, search for their deepest innermost fears, and become the thing they feared the most, or the thing they most desired.

Like all Phookas, he ate people and sifting forms was simply to lure them into a trap, so he could kill and eat them.

In his true form, BoomFuzzy was a tiny black unicorn with a gleaming silver horn. He was barely the size of a Golden Retriever. A shaggy, long furred miniature horse.

And thus what Quaraun was seeking, was a tiny black unicorn, whom lived in a mimic that took the form of a gingerbread house. But both the Phooka and his Mimic could look like anything or anyone, making them nearly impossible to location. And thus Quaraun had wandered the world for 300 years, searching for BoomFuzzy and his gingerbread house.

There existed several guilds, or there had existed several guilds, regulating the use of magic. One guild in particular, known by all the rest as simply “The Guild” was made up of the most powerful wizards from around the planet and had taken control over the governing parties of nearly every country. The Guild had goals of global domination and they nearly succeeded. They would have succeeded if not for two laws, which they had passed, which had been at the core, the cause of BoomFuzzy's death.

The first law banned Dark Arts, with Demonology and Necromancy being made crimes that were punishable by death. BoomFuzzy was the public form alter ego of the Guild's most wanted criminal: King Gwallmaiic, Elf Eater of Pepper Valley, the Necromancer who had built the Lich Lords. The Necromancer whom had been Quaraun's lover, 400 years ago.

The second law decreed who one could love. Same sex relationships were forbidden and also punishable by death.

These laws were the source of the rumours which made it difficult for Quaraun to settle down and live a normal life. It had been members of The Guild whom had gone from village to village spreading slander about Quaraun. Had The Guild left Quaraun alone, the Elf would have had no reason to kill. No thought of killing would ever have entered him mind.

But Quaraun had no peace. Every where the crestfallen Moon Elf went, rumours had arrived first. Quaraun's life was one of bullying and abuse, harassment and torture, at the hands of people who did not know him, because of slander spread by people who hated him, for reasons of their own.

And thus Quaraun began to kill. At first in self defence from villagers who attacked him, hunted him, and made hell of his life for no reason at all. But it was not long before he just started killing any one who annoyed him. And didn’t take much to annoy him. He liked his privacy and nosy, gossiping busy bodies were quick to spread slander about him, and soon he was killing anyone who had anything to say about him.

After having killed every one directly involved in BoomFuzzy's death, Quaraun concluded that had those two laws not been in place, the people behind BoomFuzzy's death never would have gone after him to begin with, and so, Quaraun set out to find every last Guild member and kill them, their families, their friends, and every villager in each Guild member's village.

In 300 years, Quaraun had become mean.

Still quiet.

Still shy.

Still keeping to himself.

Still living in a tent set up wherever he could find a place to put it.

But now angry.

Bitter.

Fed up with being lied about.

Sick and tired of the slander and gossip.

Full of fear and dread and lashing out violently at anyone, after 300 years of being conditioned to the fact that no one approached him unless they were seeking to hurt him.

The end result was, Quaraun killed a lot of people and now, every last member of the Guild was dead. Every last person Quaraun could think of who had a hand in BoomFuzzy's death was dead.

In his youth, Quaraun would never have hurt a fly. He was shy and timid and quiet and spent most of his time sewing elaborate outfits embedded with magic powers. The thought of hurting any one or any thing abhorred him. But that was two centuries ago. Now killing had become second nature to him. He killed without thought. Killing had become easy. But the depressed Necromancer had not killed at random, as the rumours told. He had killed with a very clear intent and purpose, and now Quaraun had run out of people to kill.

With no one left to kill, Quaraun had no more reason to wander around the world looking for people to kill, and had now set out to return home, back to the Deep North, back to where BoomFuzzy had died, to kill himself.

In spite of having become a serial killer and murdering thousands, Quaraun still abhorred hurting anyone and deeply hated what he had become.

The guilt and remorse for what he had done weighed heavy on his heart and the eminently grief stricken Elf took no pleasure in the deaths of those he killed. He had thought it would help take away the pain of BoomFuzzy's death, but it had only made the pain worse. Now on top of the pain of BoomFuzzy's death, was the guilt at having murdered so many. He could not live with what he had done, and all the frightened little Elf really wanted to do was be reunited with BoomFuzzy. But BoomFuzzy had turned himself into a Lich and Quaraun simply could not find him.

Once Quaraun had been captured by the Lich, but had been so horrified by the creature, and how unlike BoomFuzzy it was, that he'd killed it. The problem was, you can't kill a Lich. They just regenerate and come back.

Quaraun had set out to find the Lich, expecting to find BoomFuzzy, but what the grief stricken Elf found was a glowing blue, incorporeal, ghostly corpse like skeleton that appeared to be make of a clear blue crystal glass. The flesh had rotted off the bones and the bones themselves had crystallized into a strange phosphorous blue quartz. The shock of seeing his beloved BoomFuzzy, returned to unlife in such a state, was more then Quaraun's frail mind had been able to take.

Many people tried to determine what could have happened to result in the dramatic change from the kind, helpful, elegantly dressed Mage to become the outlandishly pink Necromantic holy terror.

According to most rumours, his wife had been murdered many years ago and he'd worn her wardrobe since her death, because he refused to forget her and this was the only way his slipping sanity allowed him to not forget.

Truth of the matter was the heartbroken little Necromancer had dressed like this long before he married her, and if you were to dig even deeper into the truth, the immensely sad Elf never actually married her at all. The entire marriage had been a false public image his father, younger brother to the king, had put together, to hide Quaraun's true nature from the public eye. Not that it did much good, as it was rather hard to hide dresses that were pink enough to be seen a mile away and covered in enough glittering trim to blind an entire village on a sunny day.

Rumours.

Rumours.

Always rumours.

There was always someone willing to flap their lying tongue. And when Quaraun found them, the jaded Elf cut their tongue out.

Quaraun was fed up with the slanderous lie filled rumours people spread about him and his life.

He wanted to be left alone, but rumours followed him everywhere. And every time the lonely Necromancer heard a rumour being spread, he killed the person spreading the rumour.

An end to the rumours. This is what the melancholy Elf wanted.

What the rumours didn't say was that, Quaraun had only married the she-Elf to save the life of his male lover BoomFuzzy, whom the Moon Elf king was going to execute if Quaraun did not marry the she-Elf. Unfortunately, the whole thing had happened so fast, that BoomFuzzy had been unaware of Quaraun's reasoning for marrying the she-Elf and on the night of Quaraun's fake marriage, his lover BoomFuzzy commit suicide.

Since BoomFuzzy's death, Quaraun had not done much of anything, other then devote his life to necromancy and resurrecting the dead. No one really knew why the mysterious Moon Elf did that, they simply assumed he had gone insane.

There were lots of rumours.

Always the rumours.

Lots of talk.

Lots of gossip.

Endless slander.

Never any truth.

People always had something to tell everyone else about the infamous Pink Necromancer, but no one actually knew him, so nothing they said was ever true. And in 300 years of people spreading their lies and never checking their sources or facts, the world began to think of Quaraun as the most powerful, most feared wizard of them all. This made The Guild furious, for they believed they were the most powerful and most feared wizards of all the universe, and for someone to challenge that, was unthinkable. And so, more rumours rose up. Rumours started by The Guild.

And yet, the truth was that Quaraun was simply a merchant of magic cloth, which he wove and embroidered and sewed into magic cloaks, magic robes, and magic bags. Only this and nothing more.

Quaraun wove pink Thullid silk, embroidered it with dainty pink flowers, crafted dresses and bags and capes and cloaks and veils and hats and robes and sold them to mages and witches and wizards and sorcerers, as he travelled from village to village, town to town, port to port. Along the way, Quaraun had met and fallen in love with a candy maker named BoomFuzzy. But BoomFuzzy was old, and one day became injured, his wound mortally infected, and to end is suffering, BoomFuzzy had drunk poison and killed himself. Devastated Quaraun cast a spell to preserve BoomFuzzy's body in a blue crystal coffin, until he could find a spell to restore life back to his lover.

But his relationship with BoomFuzzy had been hidden from the public eye. Only the royal family had known of it, and so no one out side of the palace, made any connection between the candy maker's untimely death and Quaraun's sudden obsession with necromancy. And this secrecy had allowed rumours to rise and spread. And now 400 years after BoomFuzzy's death, everyone KNEW everything about Quaraun and yet no one actually knew anything about him at all.

Quaraun was still simply a merchant of magic cloth, which he wove and embroidered and sewed into magic cloaks, magic robes, and magic bags. Only this and nothing more.

Quaraun still wove pink Thullid silk, still embroidered it with dainty pink flowers, still crafted dresses and bags and capes and cloaks and veils and hats and robes and still sold them to mages and witches and wizards and sorcerers, as he travelled from village to village, town to town, port to port.

But his ability to make a profit on his craft or even make any sales at all, was hampered by the rumours and lies and slander. And with his business in ruins, Quaraun retreated into solitude, a hermit, now rarely see.

Most people Quaraun encountered could have overlooked the outlandish outfits had they been on a more normal looking Elf.

Most people were used to seeing the common Elves, especially the Wood Elves. Wood Elves had golden tan skin, dark eyes, and black hair.

Other races were darker and others were lighter, but Wood Elves were the most common race of Elves and so everyone judge the colour of an Elf by how close in colour they were to the Wood Elves.

Outside of the Elves themselves, no one really cared about the skin colour of Elves. An Elf was an Elf and that was all anyone every really thought they needed to know. Most non-Elves separated the Elves into two groups: The Common Elves and the High Elves.

To non-Elven races, the Common Elves were seen as nature loving, tree hugging, happy wild men. Hippies. They were not all like that, but that is how they were thought of by none-Elves.

Few of the Common Elves set up permanent villages, most travelling in caravans, following the changes of the seasons to wherever the land was greenest and harvests most plentiful. They were harvesters and gathers and saw little need for pomp and finery, caring nothing for racial segregation of the High Elves. While Common Elves were shy and kept to themselves, non-Elven races saw them as pleasant company when they encountered them.

To non-Elven races, the High Elves were seen as haughty, arrogant, vain, pompous, racist, self-important, and very bitter, often outright bitchy. The High Elves lived in small close knit communities, with huge shimmering palaces and grand fairy tale castles, which had no need to be as big as they were.

The High Elves claimed they had royal blood, some claiming to be children of deity. They made demands of everyone, treated everyone like slaves, and spent most of their days primping in front of mirrors and fussing about what they looked like. They were prone to mood swings and temper tantrums, and throwing major hissy fits if they didn't get their way.

In truth, the High Elves were not Elves at all. Many thousands of years ago, a star ship had crash landed in the Atlantic Ocean, and a few survivors swam to shore and being trapped on a strange planet with no way to get off of it, they made due with what was available and built themselves a small village. Because their features were similar to Elves, the Humans had called them Elves. But when one saw the two together, it was clear that they were not Elves, but something different. And so Humans began to call the Elves, True Elves or Common Elves, while the aliens were refereed to as High Elves, or Elves Whom Had Fallen From The Sky.

In their native tongue they were three races:

Ecrodones: Blue eyed, albinos

Traylkites: Golden skinned red haired

Paretheans: Brown skinned, black eyed, think straight black hair.

If other races had existed on their home planet, it was unknown and forgotten centuries ago. These three alone survived on Earth.

All three groups migrated to the Deep North: Canada, Greenland, Lapland, Scandinavia, keeping to the deepest, snowiest regions, and avoiding everything native to the Earth as much as possible.

At first the three groups banded together, but after a few hundred years, each group had multiplied big enough that fighting started among them and they separated into three separate tribes, divided by skin colour.

But than, another few hundred years, saw divisions within the groups.

Not much was known about the Paretheans. The migrated inland and avoided the rest of the High Elves. Some rumours suggest that they evolved and became the race now known as The Phookas. No one knows for sure. In any case, Phookas are considered Faeries, not Elves, but the Faeries say Phookas were not Faeries, so they called the Phookas Dark Fae.

The Traylkites divided into several groups. Most of them now considered “lost” or “forgotten”. The last known group were the ones the Humans called The Sun Elves. A strange cult like group, who lived by extreme rituals, with everyone dressing alike, styling their hair the same, wearing the same makeup.

Males.

Females.

Adults.

Children.

They all looked exactly the same.

Completely identical. If one was born looking different, they were surgically changed to look like the rest, or killed outright. They developed a hive mind, and exists as one. All had habit dyed the same bright neon yellow, styled in the same shoulder length perm, all wore the same gold mask over their faces. All wore the same long green hooded velvet cloaks, under which they wore gauzy neon orange and yellow robes.. By everyone looking exactly the same, they had eradicated racism. Sort of. The claimed they had eradicated racism, but in fact, they were the most raciest of all the High Elves, slaughtering any who did not conform to their society of zero deviation, slaughtering any child born looking even slightly different.

The Sun Elves, would soon become very to Quaraun's life, for a quickly a time would come, when the Sun Elves found an imposter among them: a half-Elf, and it would be Quaraun who would save the half-Elf’s life and take him under his wing.

But that is another story, for another day.

The most arrogant of all, were the Ecrodones. The King had been on the star ship and he had survived the crash, so so his descendants, claimed leadership over the rest. The Ecrodones broke off into several tiny groups. The Humans dubbed them:

The Snow Elves

The Frost Elves

The Crystal Elves

The Christmas Elves aka Santa’s Elves

The Cookie Elves of Lake Gitchagumi

and...

The Moon Elves.

All where white. Very, very, very white. Not peach, like a “white” human, but pure, chalk white, like the snow in which they lived.

White skin.

White hair.

Pink, blue, and white eyes.

Like the Sun Elves, they lived in cult like societies of everyone looking and dressing and styling their hair exactly alike.

Disagreements over what these outfits and hairstyles should be, is what lead to there being so many small groups of tiny white Elves in the Deep North.

Regardless of their type, all of the High Elves had one thing in common: High Elves were not pleasant company due to their racism, arrogance, obsession with beauty, and vanity, and so most non-Elves avoided them.

The Elven races had separated themselves millennia ago, by virtue of skin colour. Darker coloured races were by far more common.

The paler the Elf the rarer they were, and the more self important they saw themselves. The whitest Elves, let their whiteness go to their heads and crowned themselves as rulers over not only the other Elves but every race on the planet. Nothing was whiter, more arrogant, more self-centred, or more bigoted then a Moon Elf.

The Moon Elves were legendary for their vanity and conceit. Snow wasn't even as white as these stark white albinos. They had long ago migrated to the Deep North for it's short hour days and it's long endless winters, thus they could go outdoors without fear of sunlight tainting their pure white skin. Generations of incestuous inter breeding had created increasingly whiter offspring, at a great cost to their health. Moon Elves were frail and weak, prone to heart disorders and fainting spells. Moon Elves, in their obsession with white purity, neglected to pay any heed to the increasing illnesses their inbreeding was causing. They considered their frail health a small price to pay for the gloriously enthrall beauty. The vanity of the Moon Elves knew no match. No race on the planet was as vain or as self focused on physical appearances as the Moon Elves were.

Quaraun was a Moon Elf and every inch of him was whiter than the whitest driven snow: white skin, white hair, even his eyes were the palest white-blue eyes you'd ever seen, so light you could hardly tell they were not white as well. His hair was the purest white and spilled like a silken waterfall over his shoulders, to his waist, and down to his knees. In the sunlight his glorious locks glinted with silver and blue gleaming like opals.

Quaraun was a High Elf, often a very high, High Elf as Faerie drugs had become a part of his habits. He was also a Moon Elf.

The Moon Elves were supposed to be all dead. The entire clan murdered by the Lich Lords, but Quaraun alone had survived. And there was lots of rumours about that. Quaraun knew what had happened to his people, how they had died and who had killed them, but no matter how much you questioned him, the odd little Elf never said a word about it. The only answer any one could get out of him about it was simply this:

"A Lich killed my family."

A statement which was often followed by other statements such as:

"My soul is broken."

...and…

“I'm a monster.”

...and…

"I have nothing to live for."

...and...

"I must become a Lich to be reunited with my love."

...and sometimes...

"My father and the she-bitch should have died sooner."

...and one in a great while...

"I miss BoomFuzzy."

It was these statements which had in fact lead to the rumour that the Lich Lords had murdered his wife, slaughtered the royal family and then razed the Moon Elf village.

The grief stricken pink robed Elf would not confirm nor deny these rumours. Instead the poignant Elf wizard would wander to the nearest tavern, order drugged Faerie wine and talk about Liches, Lich Lords, and most especially, The Elf Eater of Pepper Valley, leader of the Lich Lords, who he said killed his family, but he never talked about BoomFuzzy or who he meant when he said the phrase “my family”.

Thus people assumed the rabidly depressed Elf meant the wife and four children whom had also been killed the day all the other Moon Elves had died.

When Quaraun said the words “my family” what he actually meant, was his male lover BoomFuzzy.

That the Moon Elves had died two hundred years before anyone in any Human village had been born, left Quaraun with few people still living who thought of the event as anything other than ancient history. Elves were getting scarcer as Humans quickly over populated the planet and most of the beings Humans referred to as “The Magical Races” were dying out. Elves, Dwarves, Faeries, Gnomes, they were all fast facing extinction as the wave of Humanity swept over the planet, with Humans killing every non-Human creature they laid eyes on.

The Magical Races whom had once separated themselves by species, were now banding together in small communities, in areas where the Humans were still uncommon.

The Faeries had been hit the hardest by the Human plague, and most Fae creatures were now believed to be extinct. Once in a while a lone Phooka or Leprechaun surfaced, only to scurry away fearing they too would be killed.

Gnomes and Dwarves now lived together, races that formally hated each other, joined forces against the Human onslaught.

Many of the common Elven races were now banding together, the Wood Elves and Mountain Elves often seen in troupes along side the River Elves and Desert Elves.

Only the extremely arrogant, highly self-righteous, very pompous and self-important aristocratic High Elves of the Deep North, remained separate and isolated. They thought of themselves as god-like and invincible.

There were the silver haired white skinned Moon Elves, the equally pale Frost Elves, the whiter then snow Snow Elves, and the ever elusive blue skinned Crystal Elves. The whiter they were the more arrogant they were, with the Moon Elves being by far the worst, seeing every race, even other High Elves as nothing but foot stoles beneath their feet.