Immanent Elves

The "Immanent" are those elves who resolved to their earthly, material natures when touched by the dissonance created by the destruction of the Tide-born crystals around Ektau. While the Immanent have existed only for a very brief time thus far, they've shown enough similar traits that scholars and sages have been able to deduce certain traits in common amongst them, and extrapolate certain other qualities. The vast majority of elves are Immanent- more than nine-tenths of those changed have resolved as Immanent.

Immanent are those elves that have become intimately intertwined with the substance of earthly reality. Everything about them is acutely real, even the colors brighter and the shapes sharper in outline. Their simple presence creates a kind of crispness in the world that makes even the smallest detail stand out sharply to them and to others around them. They are hardier than their old elven forbears; while they are as slim and lightly-built as before, their flesh seems reluctant to acknowledge injury or weariness. They even move more quickly than other elves, as the substance of the world cooperates with their motions to let them move lightly over broken terrain or in tangled woods.

Immanent elves no longer share the psychological traits of their elven forbears. They do not trance as the True do, nor do they tend to remember specific details in the same way.Their minds are much more like human minds, sharing a general holistic perception of their surroundings and possessing an almost intuitive understanding of the natural order of the world, one that commonly is taken for wisdom. They can tell when something "feels right". More impressively, an Immanent has the ability to focus into a brief moment of inhuman precision and bodily control. Nearly impossible shots or astonishingly accurate blows can be leveled while in the grip of this focus. Scholars argue amongst themselves whether this accuracy is the consequence of great physical control in the Immanent or in actual altering of the world around them to accommodate their aim.

Immanent grow weary after long exertion, and must sleep and dream as humans do. This change was the most frightening one for the newly transformed elves, as elves do not naturally experience unconsciousness. Each night's sleep was like a kind of death to them, haunted by delirious hallucinations of events that never happened and were usually quite impossible. In addition, the inability to trance seemed a sure harbinger of uncontrollable Drift, and it wasn't until the first few weeks passed without identity loss that the elves were able to calm. Even so, many Immanent still experience difficulty reconciling themselves to this 'night death', and addiction to stimulant drugs is not unknown as they try to fight it off.

While no Immanent has yet experienced it, healer-sages have determined that they are likely to grow old and die within three hundred years of the change, and newborn Immanent are unlikely to live any longer than three centuries. They grow to maturity as swiftly as humans do, but the end and decline happen rapidly, with a hale Immanent becoming aged and dying within the span of six months at the end of their lives. The absence of Drift among their kind ensures that they will live for this span as the same elf, with no changing of identities. Elven culture is still struggling to adapt to this new reality, as thousands of years of discipline and stricture bent on preserving individual identity against Drift are no longer relevant. It is no longer necessary- nor possible- to selectively harvest the sweetest and most satisfying of one's memories and thus exist for five hundred years of undimmed health and steady identity. Now they must live in all ways, remembering all things and choosing freely between a life of simplicity or a life of greatness. Many Immanent are still trying to reconcile their former ways with this new condition.

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