Lesser-Known Peoples of Tamriel I: The Coastal Wood Elves

One of the most curious things that a visitor to Valenwood quickly discovers is that the Wood Elves, or Bosmer, are a dizzyingly heterogeneous people. As someone familiar with the three-and-thirty principalities of High Rock and the moon-forms of the Khajiit, I found the diversity of the Bosmer at once familiar and deeply enigmatic. Both in terms of culture and physical form they exhibit astonishing variety. A typical (if such a word can be used here) example of this would be the Bosmer of the far southern coast of Valenwood, among whom I was permitted to reside for several months.

The elves of the south identify themselves as Bosmer, but I distinguish them with the name ‘Coast Elves’. Small in form like their neighbours, they tend towards the yellower skin of the High Elves with whom they trade by sea. Physically isolated by thick tracts of forest, impenetrable even to the surefooted Wood Elves, they have developed their own shore-hugging culture. They live in small fishing communities and in one larger trade settlement, whose name translates as ‘Haven’. They respect the green pact as much as any of their race, but maintain that Valenwood Proper ends where the sea begins and thus have become skilled farmers of seaweed. Naturally they also fish with great skill, and they hunt the great beasts of the sea: leviathans, thunder crabs, whales and sea-tigers. Their villages are built of sturdy whalebones around which are woven mats of dried seaweed. They cast great nets of cunningly-wrought leviathan tendon to catch fish by the thousands, which they eat raw by custom alongside sweet or salt-tasting sea plants. Their ships are not the work of woodcarvers, but are great hard fruits of enormous size which grow natural sails a little like those of the maple seed. These strange vessels are their only mode of transport.

The beliefs of the Coastal Elves are unique among the Bosmer. They hold that the princes of Oblivion reside not in the sky but in the depths of the ocean, and that the land, sea and sky were once one and the same. At some point the air and water were divided in a great cataclysm, and their god Y’ffre sacrificed himself to become the land so that his children might not perish. As such the coast is a holy place to them, the point where three worlds meet, and few of them ever leave the shore for long. Their holy warriors wear armour fashioned from driftwood and enchanted with carved symbols, and they have made an art of battling with net and spear. They keep no books, and sacrifice all forms of writing to Herma-Mora by casting them into the waves once they have served their immediate purpose.

The strangest thing about these Coast Elves is the hardest for me to describe. It can be observed that many Bosmer are born with unusual physical attributes: horns, small tails, cat-like eyes and so forth. Among this particular community many are born with some aspect of the sea reflected in their bodies. Webbed fingers and toes are common, patches of fish-like scales are occasionally seen, and I even witnessed one or two warriors with crab-like pincer claws. After I had gained the trust of these people I learned that perhaps one in every hundred of their kind is born drastically altered. Lacking feet or hands, and with gills like a fish, these newborns are cast into the sea as a sacrifice. My hosts only revealed this to me after much plying with alcohol, and refused to discuss the matter any further. I let the matter lie, but on windless nights I occasionally heard strange sounds out on the ocean. Sometimes I would see the elves stiffen as they heard it too, before resolutely ignoring it. Naturally this raised more questions, but I fear I hadn’t the courage to enquire.