Dwarves were a remarkable race.
Elves, humans, and dwarves were known as fantasy's essential trio. No work of that kind seemed complete without them.
But unlike the Warhammer setting Aaron knew, the Realms had only five native races. Both dwarves and elves were outsiders.
To be more precise, dwarves and elves were aliens.
Elves had arrived in the Realms very early. The Cormyrean history books Aaron had consulted mentioned that elves had appeared well before 25,000 DR before the calendar's beginning. Back then, they had been a mighty interstellar civilization, immensely powerful.
By that time, the empire established by the mysterious Sarrukh had already crumbled into dust. The other Creator Races had been thoroughly beaten by dragons, the dominant race of the age. Whether fey, avian, aquatic, or even the once-glorious giants, all had fallen before the dragons.
Until the elves appeared.
The elves made a tremendous splash as soon as they arrived. Faced with the aggressive dragons, they united to cast a high magic spell, the "Dragonrage Mythal." This world-spanning magic sent some dragons into mindless destruction and madness, making it impossible for them to unite again. Instead, they fractured and slaughtered one another.
The age of dragons ended, and the age of elves began, lasting thousands of years.
The elves' influence on the Realms ran so deep that any nation's history books could omit the Creator Races, skip several great disasters, or selectively conceal shameful episodes, but they would always mention the role the elves had played.
It was much like the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland in Aaron's previous life. You could dislike Britain, mock its present decline, or dig up its dark history and list all the terrible things it had done. But if a history book failed to discuss the Industrial Revolution,