Wolfrider - History

History

For many millennia the Wolfriders lived in a forest known as the Holt (at least three different holts are known), hunting and gathering and living in balance with nature, until a conflict with humans resulted in the forest's destruction. Led by their eleventh chief, Cutter, the Wolfriders sought refuge with King Greymung's trolls in their underground caverns, but Greymung distrusted the elves and tricked them into a tunnel leading to a harsh desert.

After several days journeying through the desert, the Wolfriders discovered the oasis village of Sorrow's End, populated by a hitherto unknown elf tribe called the Sun Folk. After an initial skirmish, caused partly by Cutter's paranoia after the trolls' betrayal and partly by his Recognition - and abduction - of the village healer Leetah, the Wolfriders and Sun Folk became friends and allies, learning new skills from each other.

Their use of magic before the destruction of the Holt was limited to utilitarian powers directly related to forested wilderness survival, such as telepathy (which the elves call "sending"), healing, plant manipulation, etc. However, after arrival at Sorrow's End, the Wolfriders learned other powers from the community's elders.

Most of the Wolfriders subsequently left Sorrow's End to find an unknown evil force that had caused the spirit of the Sun Folk's leader Savah to be trapped outside her body. This turned out to be an elf, Winnowill of the Gliders, a decadent and stagnating tribe cloistered within Blue Mountain. After a bitter struggle the Wolfriders temporarily defeated Winnowill, and the Gliders' leader Lord Voll, no longer in thrall to her, promised to take the Wolfriders to the lost Palace of the High Ones, where they would learn once and for all the secret of their origins.

But the Palace was jealously guarded by a warlike tribe of trolls under King Guttlekraw. Lord Voll was killed, Cutter was grievously wounded, and only the intervention of another, heretofore unknown elf tribe, the Go-Back tribe, saved the Wolfriders from being wiped out. Joining forces with the Go-Backs, the Wolfriders defeated Guttlekraw's trolls and returned to the Palace, where they did indeed learn the truth of their origins and discovered the long-lost High One, their ancestor Timmain. But the Palace was not a home, and so the Wolfriders established a new holt within the woods near Blue Mountain, but hidden from all.

This covers the events in the original Elfquest series, 1978–1984.