Silvertree Chronicles Bk. 12

The snow-elves were never heard from again. They did not heed Brycen's advice about interbreeding. Those who looked did not get further than a few miles onto the ice pack before turning back. There were no signs of life or having been there.

The Gods knew they were dead within 50 years of the arrival; ready for the cold they were not ready for what would lie beneath the ice or in the oceans in general as the humans would discover.

The wood elves and moon elves both thrived through the region doing business with each other, the dwarves, halfling, gnomes, and centaurs as well. The dwarves and gnomes both flourished in the mountains and hills. The halflings built up 4 shires in the area pointed out to them and took produce to market in Quatarsia every few months. Creating the most well-defined road into the area.

A small group of humans set up a village 4 weeks east. The small village did not have a large enough population base, no healers, no horses left for them, and it was too far from Quatarsia when the diseases struck the population. They died off within 3 years. The rest pushed on to the eastern coast through all of the mountains. They encountered some of the less friendly indigenous 'civilizations' in the area.

Fewer than 800 made it to the coast, their horses killed for food en route. Some had experience in traveling the ocean and set about building ships to take them to another continent. The first ship launched 30 years later and was crushed by some sea creature less than a mile from the shore.

They became a farming and fishing community and grew rapidly. Every 50 years or so they would try the ocean again and perish within a mile of the shore. The local Gods kept them isolated to the one continent, for now, to truly prove themselves.

The humans who left together before the gate was up, hunted the northern plains. They fought with the indigenous 'people' of the world. Attempts to inbreed with them failed. They were eventually killed off by a horde of the barbaric creatures a century later. They used rocks for weapons with great accuracy.

The centaurs kept mostly to themselves except when they needed to trade for anything metal and they had leather and dried meat to barter with the dwarves for that. They did not shy away from the other races but they did not seek them out very often either.

It was almost 600 years before any of the indigenous people encountered an elf. One elf was killed. Six others destroyed all but one of the aggressors. They were killed with magic. A horde of 800. The one who lived was sent back to send a message.

They used a tongue spell to communicate with him or 'it.' They told him, "Never return to this area and pass the warning this area was off-limits." The elves did not go looking for trouble but when trouble came, they dealt with it swiftly.

Access to the eternal forge never occurred after Brycen passed. The last weapon built upon the forge had been Nolla. Attempts to bring gold back as a currency by the dwarves failed. Bartering was a better solution to the new elven people without the gold-elves support for making coins relevant.

It was a hard sell as the dwarves were the only ones who benefited from the arrangement. Enchanters would trade goods, but only for using it as a raw material to make something, like rings and jewelry.

The Halflings, Centaurs, and Gnomes seemed to agree which made gold relatively worthless to mine...except when used as a racial currency only used by dwarves in their own settlements. Then they had to deal with inflated prices and even a couple of civil wars before they saw reason in what Brycen stressed to them centuries ago.