The mist Elwens- whose Primal name, menudi (men-OO-dee), means simply "gray mist"- have perhaps the least magic of any race of Elwens. However, they make up for this lack in other ways, mostly through technology. They live quietly in their home, the Pemlenni Menua or Misty Meadows, with few enemies and even fewer heroes. For the most part, they have not troubled the world, and the other races have ignored them.
For the most part.
Come among them, if you will- the mist Elwens, the Children of Jamalen.
PHYSICAL MAKEUP
Menudi have a pale gray skin color unique among Elwens that almost exactly mimicks the color of the mists they live among. Their skin is not transparent, however, and does not shift or flow like fog. It merely makes them hard to distinguish against the background of mist, especially on a day that has gray skies. Menudi, unlike many other Elwens, actually appreciate such days, and welcome rain and fog. They do not trouble or inconvenience mist Elwens, so much as refresh them and heal them.
Mist Elwens also have very pale hair and eyes, for the most part, though startling, vivid hair colors such as red and gold are not unknown. Menudi almost never have dark hair, and those who do have it are considered blessed of Jamalen (see below). Dark eyes are always a sign of outside blood, though sometimes purebred menudi have star-flecked eyes, dark blue with silver or golden specks. Pale gray hair and silver eyes are very common, and considered beautiful, as they would not be almost anywhere else. Hair is usually worn to the shoulders, and no longer, in the case of both men and women. This is believed to be the fashion it was worn in in ancient days, and menudi do not believe in changing anything they do not have to.
Menudi, like most Elwens, are tall and slender, standing from 5'7" to 6'2", with women often slightly taller than men. They weigh about 150 to 190 pounds, usually, which would undoubtedly be considered guant anywhere else. Menudi, though, have a graceful way of moving that generally distracts the eye, making them look like drifting mist.
Menudi have silver blood, though it burns through their skin with golden light when they are especially angry (the eye colors of some mist Elwens may alter when they are angry as well, usually to some brighter shade of the same color). They can run about sixty miles an hour when needful (though it is not often needful; see below), and live twelve thousand years when allowed to achieve their full span. They die of old age much more often than other Elwens. The last war that menudi fought in, save against the magical enemies in their own territory, was so long ago that the name is not remembered.
EMOTIONS AND PSYCHOLOGY
Most menudi, as noted above, are calm and peace-loving, withdrawn from the world, and content to watch that world go by. Among themselves, they have their own passions, their own quarrels, and their own concerns. But few if any of these would make sense to outsiders, and the menudi will make no attempt to explain them unless an outsider truly wishes to know. Someone who is being inquisitive for some reason other than pure knowledge will often falter to a halt, staring, while the menudi in question stares at him with piercing eyes and says nothing.
Mist Elwens do trade with others, but establish special towns, called san'jii, on the borders of their territory to do so. It is rare for anyone to venture there without pressing business (either trade or some important personal concern, such as chasing a missing relative who was last seen in that town). No other merchant is allowed beyond the towns, unless, as noted above, he has passed the test of true inquisitiveness and has been found acceptable as someone who wants to learn about mist Elwens, and perhaps live among them. The menudi rarely use violence to turn back outsiders unless it is truly needed. They much prefer to call up mist and baffle him until he wanders back into the center of town one too many times and gives up in disgust.
In the center of their own territory, menudi go about the daily round of life with interest and intense focus: teaching their children, farming, studying in their university towns, and worshipping their goddess Jamalen, who led them from their original birthplace in the south of Kemiebeyst to the sanctuary of the Misty Meadows (see below). Propriety is often in place, but rarely enforced. The thought of a raised eyebrow or a stare is almost always enough to curb a young Child of Jamalen who otherwise might do something foolish. The endless round of duties and pleasure continues, with the menudi easily finding the sacred in everything they do.
Some war does go on, with the wildmist, patches of thick roaming mist that bewilder travelers and resist menudi control, and some other magical creatures said to have come to the Meadows when Jamalen and her people first did. However, the mist Elwens are rarely killed by such creatures, and their attacks become less and less frequent as the years pass by. Few things change here, and the few things that do continue towards greater peace. Few menudi would want it any other way.
MAGICAL MAKEUP
Menudi, as mentioned above, have very little magic. What they do have is mainly bent towards two sources: mist and fog magic, and the technology that they use almost alone of Elwens.
Common to all menudi are:
Changing into mist. All Children of Jamalen can change into mist when they wish, in which case they become impossible to strike, perfectly able to blend in with "natural" mist, and experience a shattering of the senses rather akin to trying to look through the bars on a window. The sights they see, the sounds they hear, generally add up to form a coherent picture, but it takes some time for a young menudi to get used to it. Menudi also sometimes use this ability to pass invisibly in and out of enemies' strongholds. Nothing but an air-tight room can keep them out.
Calling fog. Menudi can also raise fog and mist without becoming it themselves. As noted above, this is sometimes used to baffle opponents. More often, the menudi use it to obscure themselves in the earthbound clouds they love.
Shapeshifting. In truth, all menudi have this ability, though legend and superstitiion insist that the gift is confined to a few. The mist Elwen can assume the form of almost any animal by changing into fog and then forming back into an animal rather than his or her Elwen body. Usually, the animal has fur, scales, skin, or feathers the color of the menudi's hair, and their eye color remains the same, even if not natural for the species; but menudi in this form are otherwise indistinguishable from normal animals.
Latent breeding magic. Mist Elwens seem to have something of this ability that is also common to other races. The animals they breed come, over the generations, to live longer, be more intelligent, possess more hues, and sometimes have magic of their own. The tuvi or menudi horses, which live for several hundred years and are as intelligent as monkeys, are probably the most famous products of this ability; they can sell for more than a year's salary.
Technology. Menudi seem to have the ability to craft machines that will obey the dictates of magic, without bringing the otherwise opposed principles of magic and science into conflict. They most often use the frozen magic exported by the parsepi, the meadow Elwens, for this purpose, but no one knows exactly how they do it, save for the menudi themselves. Using the combination of magic and technology, menudi have created scad'jii, round flying craft that hurtle through the air with great speed; drugs that can keep a patient awake and aware, though feeling no pain, during a dangerous operation; the sonortaken or "silver road," which sends messages to individual menudi via a system of magical silver threads; and various other such inventions.
ORIGINS AND MODERN SETTLEMENTS
Menudi were born in the extreme southeast of the continent of Arcadia, in the province called Kemiebeyst. Unlike most other Elwens, they have no special legend of their birth; it is what happened after that is of the most concern to them. They found they could not live in the country of their birth. The legend does not state why, but inimical diseases or persistent enemies are almost certaintly to blame.
From among them rose Jamalen, the patroness of their race, whom some call a goddess, but who is believed by most scholars to have been a minor spirit of heaven who took a mortal form to help the mist Elwens for unknown reasons. This last theory is supported by the legend of a great wolf who accompanied Jamalen everywhere she went, who may have been the Attendant common to such minor spirits. Jamalen and her people undertook the Silent Passage (an event still celebrated among the mist Elwens) over the continent, a seemingly endless journey that at last brought them to the Misty Meadows.
When Jamalen knew that she was near to death, she dictated several books of prophecy that were intended as signs to help her people recognize her next incarnation, as well as foretellings of what her next incarnation would do. She prophesied that she would be reborn in a daughter of her daughter's line, which was renamed Godtouched in her honor. She died soon after this, and her Priests have divided their time between watching for the next incarnation of their patroness and revering the memory of a woman who, if the legends are right, guarded her children as fiercely as any mother.
The only important modern settlement of the menudi is in the Misty Meadows. Very small settlements are sometimes found elsewhere. Most mist Elwens who travel outside the Pemlenni Menua are either traders or exiles.
LANGUAGES
The menudi speak a descendant of the language they spoke at their birth. The original name of that language is lost; it has been referred to as Jamalenin since the recording of mist Elwen history began. However, Jamalen does not seem to have created its words, though she certainly enriched it.
If scholarly theories are true, in fact, and Jamalen was a minor spirit of heaven who became fond of the mist Elwens and decided to help them, then she may have drawn the tongue named after her closer to the language that the gods still speak among themselves, and from which most Arcadian languages are said to have descended. This might account for the strange feeling that sometimes come to those who speak to the menudi, described as "a faint and far-off echo of something greater," or "a sense of something so old that it's only describable in words I don't possess." However, this theory is not widely believed, or there would be a good deal more discussion of Jamalenin than there is at present in Arcadia's linguistic scholarly community.
More to come.
