Mirror Elves

In humanity’s infancy, its rapid population explosion was watched by the elves with a mixture of fascination, resignation, and alarm. When mankind reached the borders of their domains, elven civilizations great and small were divided on how to respond. Some opened their doors. Many nocked arrow to bowstring. Other fled: to the sea, to the sky, to north and south, underground, or deeper into the forests.

In those times there was a group of several far-flung settlements that were linked—geographically through a series of portals, and academically through a respected order of illusionists and loremasters. Acting upon the order's advice, the elves in these cities and villages chose to hide. First they cloaked themselves and their dwellings in illusions. Still the humans came, eventually bearing down on the elven cities until that they could not be diverted or misdirected away. The elves turned to invisibility and magical architecture, living in and among the humans in secret. With heartbreak, they watched as their groves were cut down for housing and their sacred springs were turned into watering holes and cesspits.

Finally they sought simply to escape. But disastrous forays into the Plane of Shadow and the Ethereal Plane nearly wiped them out. Broken and embittered, they returned to their homelands, now smothered by full-fledged human cities.

In the end, the elves turned to the only place left to them. They disappeared into the mirrors of their occupiers.

In the Plane of Mirrors, the disparate clans merged into one people. Together they bear the name a dwarven antiquarian, the first to conclusively document their existence, gave them: Murrowfey—mirror elves.

Other elves hate orcs, goblins, and all manner of monstrous humanoids. But to the Murrowfey, these are nuisances easily foiled. Murrowfey save their ire for cities and those who live in them: dwarves, gnomes, halflings, and especially humans. Civilization, in the urban, trash-strewn, hive-like manner practiced by man, is an anathema to mirror elves, who remember their carefully constructed groves and living crystal towers of old. They watch through the windows of their despoilers’ own mirrors and quake with rage at the devastation of their homes.

Sometimes they work in secret to subtly influence lords and politicians through illusions and carefully worded compulsion spells. But when they can bear it no longer, they burst back through the mirrors with slaughter as their only aim. When a king does in a locked and warded room with no sign of entry, you can be sure the Murrowfey are to blame.

Were travel to and from the Plane of Mirrors easy, mirror elves might be humankind’s greatest scourge. But most mirror elves lack the magic to do so—and those who do are busy contending with the Mirror Plane’s other inhabitants—so such assassination attempts must be carefully parceled out.

And Murrowfey are not immune to the dangers of their adopted home. As experienced planar travelers know, the Plane of Mirrors responds to interlopers by spawning duplicates who attempt to kill them. Mirror elves who are not careful returning home from a mission can find themselves assaulted by their mirror twins when they can least afford it.

Thus, they plan their journeys into man’s world very carefully. So for the most part murrowfey watch…and wait…and seethe.

The Murrowfey’s expatriation to the Demiplane of Mirrors came at a high cost. Mirror elves no longer have the typical elven affinity for the natural world. They may not become druids or learn druidic magic of any kind, nor cast spells in the Plant domain. As avowed hunters of men, many mirror elves become rangers, but they cast spells as sorcerers rather than as divine casters, and they may not cast any ranger spell that is also on the aforementioned forbidden lists. They may, however, substitute spells of equal level from the assassin class list.