Half-Elves

Core concept

Home is a choice, not a birthright.

Belonging to the threshold

A Half-Elf belongs fully to neither parent’s world: too short-lived for the elves, too strange and slow to age for the humans. Rather than mourn this, most Half-Elves have made a culture of it: if you inherit no home, then you choose one, or build your own.

This makes them the realm’s natural go-betweens: translators, envoys, brokers, and guides, comfortable being slightly foreign everywhere they go. A great deal of the realm’s inter-continental diplomacy and trade quietly passes through Half-Elf hands.

Friction

Belonging to everyone means belonging to no one. Half-Elves are trusted to mediate precisely because they’re assumed to have no side, which is also why, when a deal sours, both sides find it easy to suspect their loyalty first.