Eladrins

When Planes of Chaos was published, eladrins hadn't been invented yet, so that book discusses nature spirits and bacchae, but no eladrins. Pretty much Planescape Monstrous Compendium II and the 3e Book of Exalted Deeds are your best sources.

Anyway, fan-created stuff:

http://www.oocities.org/ripvanwormer/eladrin.html http://www.oocities.org/ripvanwormer/eladrin2.html http://www.oocities.org/ripvanwormer/eladrins_history.html

Hey, here's an excerpt from my ongoing PS story:

"
"I know that freedom can only be given,
and is the gift to the giver
from the one who receives.

I am owned by the blood of all of them
who ever were owned by my blood.
We cannot be free of each other."
--Wendell Berry, 'My Great-Grand Father's Slaves'

The orphans gathered around, rescued from dark powers who had sought to use their innocent souls, or simpy saved from the cruelty of their fellow mortals. The lost boys and lost girls, they watched with delight and clapped their hands to the rhythms with varying degrees of accuracy. Yet still they were part of the Harmony, their seeming mistakes incorporated into the music in the next moment. A few even held hands shyly with each other or celestial children. As they sat or stood by each other in pleasant discomfort, the parents of the latter group glanced out of their eyes' corners and smiled. Many of these older eladrin looked at each other, recalling their own first loves--seeds from which the strawberry runners had spread and continued to grow.

The trees were alight as glowing coure gathering upon their branches, a full moon bathing Aborea's children with its cool yet comforting beams. One of the plane's exemplars strode into the forest, his shadow teasingly shaking the butterfly-winged adolescents from their resting places. Laughing, they followed him into the clearing. He moved between columns of fire and iridescent orbs, whirls of snow and water, and mischevious marbles of light brushed his body and tugged gently at his flowing black locks. Dressed in a purple velvet cloak over the shoulders of his otherwise black silver-lined outfit, Esaal strode into the movements of his fellow eladrin with a graceful two-step, careful not to break the flow. The Dance of Players received him with gladness.

The coure fly from him when he leaps into the air and spins, each ball of light caught in the hands of other eladrin. The coure transform into their demihuman shapes, receive quick kisses from their bearers, and are passed to others who toss them in the air. There they spin in fluttering circles, faster and faster until they transform again so they seem like whirling comets drawn by joy and music.

To fiends, power is a selfish pursuit that allows them to fulfill their own cruel desires. Yet with each level of power attained, their hungers only grow, until their existences become nothing more than unfulfilled voids that yawn with emptiness. For the celestials, each level of power was not an expression of selfishness, though one may strive for personal achievement. Each level of power was a means of giving to others, it offered the opportunity to express love in a new way. Even within this central truth, the celestials saw the role of power in their own races differently.

Their seagreen hair flying, the blue skinned angels of Aborea gather together into an inner circle, from where the tulani lift them and toss them toward the stars. The guardians of the waters become transparent dolphins that burst into rain, each drop becoming a snow flake in a whirlwind, and those thrown up as novierre have come back down as bralani.

For the archons, power was carefully measured out by a level of understanding. Each time an archon ascended to a higher station, it was because it had come to understand more about the balance of Justice and Mercy. Thus power was proportional to one's alignment with the Mount's sacrosanct mission. For the guardinals, power was a means of both communal and individual acts of good. What mattered was not how much power one had, but the goodness performed within the boundaries of that power. Thus the tiniest of mice might outshine the greatest of lions.

Pillars of fire blazed around the inhabitants, the heat bringing drops of sweat on many brows. Each eladrin grinned at the joyful perspiration, kissing the salt off each other as they switched partners over and over again. Two eldarin kissed deeply at the center, a ghaele and a shiere. When their lips parted, each had taken on the aspect of the other as they moved back into the current of shifting forms.

And for the eladrin, who loved freedom so much they would die for it whether it was their own or another's, power was both a means to joy and grave burden. Each eladrin knew this truth, for to have power was to be bound by the heart to do good. Yet power itself could limit one's capability as the mind grew used to that state of being. Knowing relative weakness was the key to using strength, and knowing strength was the key to countering it with seeming weakness. For their goal was not to hoard power, but to empower others. They were the eternal students of their charges. Only by constantly changing, constantly varying the degrees of power and responsibility, could they keep each other continually rekindled in the battle against the uncountable dominations and infinite tyrannies.

A tornado rose to touch the sky, swallowing many of the dancers who seemed to continue dancing as they disappeared into the roaring funnel of clouds. When an orphan blinked she missed the moment it began dissipating as it scattered pure white snow over the forest. Where each flake landed, a coure rose up and either rested or flew back into the dynamic interpretation of the eldarin heart and spirit.

This, then, was the purpose behind the Dance of Players. The eladrin would exchange parts in their collective story through the whirling bodies and intricate rhythms. Seen from above, this ritual might resemble a kaliedoscope. The random movements resolved themselves into beautiful geometries, each arrangement sustaining the shifting harmony through celestial intuition. One could not be sure afterward whether one would be novierre, coure, ghaele or another form with another purpose. Even tulani participated, though some did not do so for millennia depending on their individual contributions to multiversal liberation. Only Morwel, the Nailed Queen, served her fellow eladrin by bearing the burden of eternal responsiblity for the race and the cause. Locked into her position, it was deemed that she was needed to guide them through the eons. Their lady had martyred herself to serve as mother for all those in shackles of mind, body, and spirit across the spinning universes.

Esaal began to measure his steps, carefully continuing the semblance of harmonic randomness. He had a purpose here, and though part of him felt it was sacrielege to make the ritual part of his plans he did so for the greater good. Besides, he thought as he moved through a pillar of roaring fire, they of all people should not be limited by tradition. Not when so much was at stake.

Though it had been many millennia, Esaal had left his court to attend the Dance. He needed to be free of the duties to his people and land if he was to complete the quest he, Gorsan, and Cadriele had begun so long ago. And he could not afford to be seen wearing the form he had used to throw back the fiendish hordes from the Outlands. Too much depended on remaining an unknown in all this. Perhaps he and the archon had seen it as a never ending battle, but the ursinal had seen the end and planned for it. Šamayím...

A ghaele flew into his arms, they moved in intricate circles into and out of whirlwinds of snow and pillars of fire, and as she slipped from their tango she turned into a ball of eldritch light that a dolphin of glowing water refracted as it passed through before it became a blue skinned novierre once again.

He pushed away all distractions of past and future, focusing on the moment at hand. He needed to appear to be part of the random fluctuations of the Dance, though what he truly needed was a sense of the artistic in place of his raw power. Whether consciously or not, a work of art was being made from the threads of many lives. Regardless of the quality, he needed to understand the shape of it with sharper instincts than which he currently possessed.

Then he turned as the music slowed suddenly, and the circle of fierres turned with a pool of flames carefully cupped in each of their extending left hands. Esaal's own steps have brought him near a pale beauty and he looks briefly into her red eyes. Then before the moment passes he drinks the flame as she bends her wrist and straightens her fingers to pour it into his mouth.

He feels the flame changing him, burning away his power even as he senses a hundred nearby minds beyond the forest seeking to capture Beauty in their own way. Through melancholy, through joy, through roses and bones. In marriage or commemoration, he senses the union of Art and Love on his homeplane. This brings some ease to his troubled heart.

Esaal balances himself on his toes as he moves with the sticatto and claps his hands together over a tiny ball of light. The coure cupped in his hands, he moves in a circle as though he were a swan bending its neck to taste of the river. He is on bended knee as he pours the light from his hands. It's forming even as it falls, becoming a tall elf-like lord with an aura rivaling the moon above. A fierre bowing to a tulani noble...."

heh, when you lead with some good poetry it brightens everything after.

also -> totally willing on my end. might be a bit slow for me to write stuff up but will definitely contribute.