Race Position (Communities): Completely Intermixed

Race Position (Segregation): None

Race Position (Rights): All are equal.

Race(s) (Primary): Elf, Wood; Gnome, Forest

Race(s) (Secondary): (None)

Languages: Elvish, Gnomish, Anishinabe (Native/Trade)

Literacy: Low (oral and shamanic traditions)

Technology Level: Stone Age (by choice, masters of woodcraft)

Industries \ Trades: Sustainable lumber, herbalism, animal pelts, diplomacy, shamanism, guidance.

Arms \ Equipment: Bows, spears, magical charms, leather.

Government System: Joint Council

Ruler(s): Council of Elven "Tree-Speakers" & Gnomish "Root-Shamans"

Came to power by: Forged by the "First Blight" (c. Y15)

Social Alignment: Chaotic Good

Civilization Archetype: Native American

Settlement Type(s): Village, Large

Settlement Population: 500

Cultural Archetype: Native American

Rebelliousness: Very Low

Brigandage: Low

The Founding of the Anishin

Part I: The Two Harmonies (Year 0)

When the Fifth World was born, the gods seeded the islands of the Anishin archipelago with two distinct, nature-bound peoples: the Wood Elves and the Forest Gnomes.

They were not reincarnated into cities or camps, but into the deep, ancient, and primal forests of their new home. They awoke in perfect harmony with the land.

• The Wood Elves took to the "Green," the high, sunlit canopies. They became the hunters, the trackers, and the silent watchers, their "Chaotic Good" nature expressing itself as a fierce, protective freedom.

• The Forest Gnomes took to the "Brown," the shadowed, root-filled forest floor. They became the tricksters, the shamans, and the speakers with animals, their "Chaotic Good" nature expressing itself as a joyful, curious, and gentle stewardship.

For the first few years, they lived as two separate, peaceful nations, sharing the same forest in a balanced, symbiotic, but separate existence. The Elves hunted, and the Gnomes tended the wild gardens.

Part II: The First Blight (Circa Y10-Y15)

This perfect, separate harmony was shattered. A sickness, a "Blight," began to spread through their islands. It was a dark, magical corruption—perhaps a lingering echo of the fiendish wars raging far to the south, or simply a natural rot of the new world.

The Blight was indiscriminate. It attacked both domains with equal prejudice.

• In the "Green," the high canopies of the Wood Elves, the leaves turned black and fell, the high-flying birds grew sick, and the great trees began to rot from the outside in.

• In the "Brown," the root-filled burrows of the Forest Gnomes, the soil soured, the animals grew violent and mad, and the roots of the trees decayed from the inside out.

The two nations, true to their nature, tried to fight it separately.

The Elves, as hunters, sought a "heart" of the Blight to kill, a beast to track. But there was nothing to track. Their arrows were useless against a creeping, magical decay.

The Gnomes, as shamans, tried to soothe the sickness. They performed rituals, spoke to the panicked animals, and tried to heal the earth. But the Blight was too strong, a void that consumed their magic, and their efforts failed.

The forest was dying, and both nations were failing. This shared threat forced them into their first-ever Joint Council. An Elven "Tree-Speaker" and a Gnomish "Root-Shaman" met on the border of their two dying worlds. They both spoke the same truth: "Our way is not working. The forest is dying." It was clear that to save their shared home, they would have to merge their two peoples into one.

Part III: The Birth of the Anishin (Circa Y15)

The "Joint Council" determined that their separate approaches were the problem. The Elves were trying to kill the Blight, and the Gnomes were trying to heal it. Neither could succeed without the other.

They devised a new, combined strategy.

• The Gnomish "Root-Shamans" would no longer try to heal the infected land. They would use their magic to find the last pockets of pure, untouched earth—the "Heart-roots" of the forest that were still healthy.

• The Elven "Tree-Speakers" would then use this information to fight a new kind of war. They would not be hunters; they would be surgeons. They would cut away the blighted, rotting limbs of the great trees to save the living core, and they would establish a hard, defended perimeter around the Gnomish "Heart-roots" to protect them from the encroaching sickness.

It was a long, painful, and desperate struggle. But it worked.

The Gnomes, as stewards, identified the "life" of the forest. The Elves, as protectors, defended that life by cutting away the death. By combining their "Chaotic Good" philosophies, they stopped the Blight and saved their islands.

In the decades that followed, this "merger" of Gnomes and Elves became permanent. They were no longer two separate peoples; they were the Anishin. Their "Native American" cultural archetype was born: a single, unified people who understood both the "Green" and the "Brown," the Sky-Father and the Earth-Mother. They became a civilization of Elven hunters guided by Gnomish wisdom, and Gnomish shamans protected by Elven strength, living together in large villages defined by this perfect, hard-won harmony.