Heofon

Athenaeum field report. Correspondent of record: Vel Asharen. Status: four visits; four escorts out.

Overview

Heofon is a breathtaking, aggressively isolationist plane of impossible natural majesty. The Verdani — the True Elves who live here — call it home and call it perfect, and to this correspondent's eye, it kind of is.

I have visited Heofon four times. I have been escorted out four times. The escorts were never rude. They were also never absent. The entry that follows draws on those visits and on the correspondence of others who have managed longer stays.

Geography

In the Athenaeum's standard descriptive vocabulary, Heofon defies summary. The correspondent's preferred working description:

Colossal redwoods, miles tall, their trunks wider than cities, their canopies forming a continuous sky-layer of living green. Between and above them, vast floating islands drift in slow rotation — some the size of small kingdoms, some carrying entire forests, some bearing rivers that cascade off their edges into mist that never reaches the ground because there effectively is no ground.

The "floor" of the realm is a tangled bioluminescent understory, predator-rich, considered deeply uncivilized to set foot on. Waterfalls fall upward in places. Massive winged creatures drift between the islands. Every sunrise is staggeringly beautiful, and the Verdani themselves are widely understood to consider this an entry-level observation.

The Verdani

Tall, slender, near-immortal True Elves — three to five thousand years standard lifespan, some far longer. Insufferable, in the polite assessment of this correspondent. Beautiful in the way that makes mortals feel briefly inadequate just looking at them. Skin tones run from pale silver through deep mahogany to soft violet.

Wings

All Verdani are born with membranous, iridescent wings patterned like impossibly large butterfly or dragonfly wings, colors shifting with mood and lineage. Size and elaboration scale strictly with caste rank. Wings are an immutable, public declaration of bloodline that cannot be hidden or grown beyond birth-allotment. This correspondent has confirmed this through correspondence with Verdani physicians, who took the question seriously and answered it precisely.

The Caste System

Rigid. Bloodline-based. Older than recorded history.

• Crown-blooded — Ruling families. A few thousand individuals. Wings span impossible distances and trail iridescent residue in flight.
• High Houses — Nobility just below Crown. Vast estates on the largest floating islands.
• Mid-castes — Artisans, scholars, merchants, military officers. Aspire upward. Look down constantly.
• Low-castes — Laborers, servants, lower soldiery. Small wings; long flights tire them.
• The Branchbound — Semi-mythical underclass whose bloodlines are considered so degraded they no longer count as true Verdani. Live on the despised understory floor. Most Verdani pretend they don't exist.

Bloodline purity is everything. Marriage outside caste is taboo. Marriage outside the species is unthinkable. Mixed-union children are immediately reclassified as Branchbound regardless of parentage. The correspondent has confirmed this last point from three independent Verdani sources, all of whom were embarrassed to be asked.

Isolationism

The Verdani want nothing to do with the Common Plane (which they consider primitive and mongrelized — the Alfheimr True Elves are spoken of as embarrassing degenerate cousins), Earth (genuinely beneath their notice), or any of the Yggy pantheon gods (politely ignored — they have their own god, thank you).

In this correspondent's assessment, the Verdani's isolationism is the single most consistent fact about Heofon. It is older than their caste system, older than their written records, and entirely successful. Most Common Plane scholars do not know Heofon exists. Most Verdani consider this the correct arrangement.

Yggy on Heofon

The valley entrance exists. Hjarn is coiled at the base. The Verdani have collectively decided to pretend it isn't there. The valley is unmarked on every Verdani map I have been permitted to examine. Pilgrimages are socially unthinkable. The few Verdani who have crossed planes are quietly disowned by their Houses on return.

Resident Gods

Tindrel, the Preening Beloved — a planar deity unique to Heofon, worshipped by the Verdani exclusively. He is not part of the main Yggy pantheon. He prefers it that way. The arrangement is mutual.

Yggy Status

Open, but ignored by the locals.

See Also

• _Planes Index
• Tindrel
• Hjarn
• Yggdrasil World System

— Vel Asharen, The Interplanar Athenaeum