Pathfinder Chronicles - Gazetteer - Asamnet

Adventuring dwarves tend to be the most reserved and
conservative members of their bands, while at home their
interest in immersing themselves in the world of the
“Inheritor Races” is interpreted as a passing youthful phase.
Dwarves tend to view their elf companions as weaklings who
abandoned the world and allowed orcs dominion during the
Age of Darkness. They see half-orcs as the progeny of a race
dwarves warred with for millennia before humans started
counting millennia. No one holds a grudge like a dwarf.
Still, even an obstinate dwarf is capable of looking past
the prejudices of his ancient people to make exceptions for
his battle-tested comrades, and dwarves value friendship
higher even than the gems and gold that notoriously fuel
their lust for adventure.
elves
Elves reached their peak thousands of years before the rise
of humans and clashed constantly with humankind as it
clawed its way toward civilization. Despite superior skill in
arms and magic, the old elves could not stem the endless
tides of savage human warriors.
Never a fecund race, the elves knew they must
ultimately cede the world to their barbaric cousins. As
their numbers grew fewer and fewer, the wisest among
them turned their attentions to a series of interplanetary
gates created in antiquity to explore the many worlds
of Golarion’s star. On the eve of the Earthfall, the elves
abandoned Golarion to its sad fate, departing through
their gates to a mysterious community called Sovyrian,
the legendary homeland of the elves.
Some of the few elves who stayed behind took refuge
from the world-cataclysm of the Earthfall by delving deep
into the subterranean chambers below Golarion. There,
in utter darkness, the elves discovered a terrible presence
and were forever changed. Their skin turned black as
night; their hair took on a shade of utter white. They had
become drow—meaning “accursed”—tainted exemplars
of the worst traits of high elvenkind: capriciousness,
cruelty, arrogance, and disloyalty. In the darkness they
thrived, dominating neighboring cultures of derro,
duergar, troglodytes, and worse to become perhaps the
most potent threats of the world below.
Sensing that their old human enemies had evolved
enough to be reasoned with, thousands of elves returned to
Golarion from Sovyrian in 2632 ar, causing great tumult
throughout Avistan. These elves resettled many of their
old holdings, taking up arms against human warlords
who refused their ancient claims of birthright and
sovereignty. Beneath the great elven city of Celwynvian,
in Varisia’s Meiriani Forest, the elves came upon the
descendants of those who had stayed behind.
Unsure of these new developments and facing
mounting losses from vicious drow and their vile allies
Gazetteer: Characters
surging up through the lightless depths below, the elves
collapsed the tunnels below Celwynvian and abandoned
the haunted capital, embarking across Avistan in a great
procession to the ancient elven kingdom of Kyonin, on the
far shore of Lake Encarthan. Some instead traveled west
along the island chains of Varisia to raise the Mordant
Spire on the edge of the world. For generations, the elves
remained an ephemeral presence in Golarion, dwelling
in secluded forest kingdoms or isolated island homes.
Tentatively, as the centuries passed, the elves emerged
from their strongholds and now thrive wherever elves
once lived on Avistan and even parts of Garund, whether
or not the current rulers of those lands accept their
timelost sovereignty.
Elves are slighter and taller than humans, with long
pointy ears and pupils so large they fill most of the
eye. Most elves keep to the wild natural places of the
world where, over time, they take on aspects of their
environment. In cultured lands elves bedeck themselves
in the finest garments, and the seldom-spotted high
nobility of Sovyrian are known for their unearthly grace
and raiment of otherworldly beauty.
Elves who grow up outside sheltered elf society do so
among people who grow old and die in the time it takes a
long-lived elf to simply reach maturity. This experience
warps the elves and grounds them in the world in a
melancholy way many “proper” elves cannot understand.
Elves call these creatures the Forlorn, and they make up
a disproportionately large number of elves who consider
themselves adventurers.
Gnomes
Of all the demihuman races of Golarion, the wily gnomes
cling tightest to their ancient immortality. When Old
Azlant itself was but a collection of curious primitives still
scratching at the surface of science, gnomes dwelled not
in the mortal world of Golarion but with its mysterious
progenitor, the First World, realm of the fey. Gnomes first
appeared on Golarion during the Age of Anguish, as the
lifting darkness of the previous era revealed a changed
world. The stocky, wrinkled talespinners of the oldest
gnome enclaves have a story and a smile for nearly every
event in the history of the race since, but of the original
advent of gnomes on Golarion they claim only that the
idea struck the gnomes out of the blue, and they simply
stepped from one world to another out of curiosity. The
eldest dragons and the reclusive aboleths speak of a great
tragedy in the First World that mirrored the devastation
on Golarion brought on by the Starstone, and they claim
that the gnomes f led their homeland to wash suspicion
from their mischievous hands.
The first gnomes on Golarion scarcely understood what
it meant to be mortal. They abandoned concepts of family
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