(Explorer's Guide to Wildmount)
When Exandria trembled at the gods' footfalls, the ancient elves of the north pleaded with the Arch Heart to save them from the world's ending. Corellon did not respond, for it is said that their divine ears still rang with pain after their duel to the death with Gruumsh, the Ruiner. Desperate and panicked, the greatest mages of the elves performed a ritual powerful enough to encase their entire civilization in ice, in hopes of protecting it from the wrath of the warring gods while the elves escaped into the Feywild.
It is said that the ashes of the Calamity still blew upon the breeze when, centuries later, the barriers of ice melted and the elves of Wildemount emerged from the Feywild once more. On their return to the world, they found that their ritual had not held fast. The Calamity had wiped almost all traces of elven civilization from Exandria. With only the ruined husks of their mighty cities still standing, the elves began to rebuild.
Even though the human-majority civilizations of the Dwendalian Empire and the Clovis Concord view elves as reclusive relics of the ancient past, most elves view themselves as newcomers to the world, for their return to Wildemount is only a generation or two removed from the present day. The notable exception are the dark elves of Xhorhas, who have lived in Eastern Wynandir since time immemorial. Still, it is only in the past few centuries that they have abandoned the labyrinthine caverns of the Underdark and emerged to l ive on the surface.
The largest elf-majority civilization in Wildemount is the Kryn Dynasty of Xhorhas, which is made up primarily of dark elves. The drow of Xhorhas are respectful toward people of all races-including other elves-as they believe that their holy cycle of rebirth allows them to be reborn into non-drow bodies. The empathy to be gained by experiencing life in another body is crucial to their religion and their culture.
Elves who live outside the Luxon's cycle of rebirth are viewed with pity, for they have not yet seen the true path. Elves who dwell within the Dwendalian Empire are a notable exception, their imperial allegiance earning them only the cold bite of a blade.
The pallid elves are a mystical and insightful people with skin as pale as the surface of Exandria's largest moon.
The ancestors of the pallid elves were a group of reclusive elves who worshiped The Moonweaver and lived in a woodland on top of a mountain plateau in the Cyrios Mountains, protected by illusion magic by their moon priests. During the Calamity, however, the plateau on which the woodland stood sunk as minions of The Crawling King burrowed beneath it and sucked the life and color from the roots of the trees, leaving behind a valley of bleached, petrified trees that came to be known as the Pallid Grove.
During the Crawling King's attack, many of the elven denizens were dragged underground and tortured, but some survived among the sunken roots of the Pallid Grove under the protection of the Moonweaver. Forming clans, the survivors lived in fear of the Crawling King and hid underground from the destruction of the Calamity. Over time, the Moonweaver's blessings mingled with the elves' natural adaption to the Pallid Grove, eventually forming a new subrace of elves known as the Pallid Elves.
They emerged from the Pallid Grove this century and wander the world with childlike curiosity.