In the beginning, O best beloved, when the worlds were still young, the name 'elf' did not mean what it does today. In those high and far-off days, there were fiends in every Lower Plane. Now how the rakshasa lost their status I shall tell another time, but the fiends in Pandemonium were called elves. They were a cruel and powerful race. They had no gender, except that which they gave themselves to mate with mortals. Their faces had beauty only when they wanted it. And their hearts knew no mercy, only the sparing of prey for later torment. And the elves hated the eladrin, who were more beautiful and skilled than they were. The elves were ruled strictly by a goddess whom we now call the Faerie Queen of Air and Darkness.

It came to pass that the elves mounted a raid on a prime world, for they were the most lawless of fiends and traveled the worlds on a whim. They came at length to an inhabited forest, and they swept in and killed many of the humans there before they were driven back. And as they retreated, many abducted mortal women and lay with them. And it came to pass that half-elves were born, but they were no more today's half-elves than the elves were today's elves. Now the humans were especially merciful in this place, and they spared the lives of the young tieflings (for such they were) and also the lives of the captured elves. Chief among those elves was Corellon Larethian. He escaped one night and stole into the forest, intending to return to Pandemonium. But before he could, he met a pixie. He had already had a softening of his cruel heart when the humans spared him, and he was so moved by the beauty of the faerie creature that he talked to it, and learnt about the faerie gods, who in those times were yet more powerful than they are today. Correllon loved the stories, and for the first time an elf repented of its evil.

He prayed to Titania, and confessed, and she told him to arise and apologise to the human settlers, and plead for his allies' freedom, so that he could show them the error of their ways. He did so straight away, and all his followers repented: and their names were Aerdrie, Sashelas, Erevan, Fenmarel, Hanali, Labelas, Sehanine, Solonor, Eilistraee, Lolth and Vhaeraun*. They told the faerie powers of the evil their race had comitted, and the faerie gods were moved by this plea. They did two great things: firstly, they imprisoned all the elves they could find in a demi-plane, known to this day as Elfland. The only one who escaped was Kiaransalee, and she went and hid in the plane of Negative Energy, where no-one might find her. Secondly, they raised all Corellon's companions to godhood, at the cost of much of their own power. Corellon and his friends blessed the half-elves, and called them 'new elves', who might set right all their forbears had done wrong. And because they were really tieflings, they were blessed with long life. Hanali made them beautiful, as their fathers could not truly be. And the new elves were happy, and spread throughout the worlds.

But as the worship of the grateful new elves made their young gods powerful, there was discord. For while the old elves had had no gender, the new elves were male and female after their human ancestry. Most of the gods did not mind this. Some had a sneaking fondness for one or the other, but respected Corellon's evenhandedness. Two powers disagreed. Lolth thought that the female elves should be the greatest, whilst her brother Vhaeraun thought that the males deserved to rule. They made war, and Vhaeraun lost, and was imprisoned in Carceri. But Corellon was angry, and cast out Lolth from Arvandor, which they had made their home, into the Abyss. Her followers he branded black as ebony, in token that they had chosen to behave like their evil ancestors. Some repented under this treatment, and Eilistraee, goddess of swordwork, took them as her own. In this way, the drow and the light elves were sundered. And that is the story of the elves. Pray that Elfland never empties itself into your world.

With apologies to Rudyard Kipling and Terry Pratchett.

* It is notable that this story does not mention Frey, Freya, Kurnous, Isha and the other elven gods. Perhaps Corellon had a model for his new elves.