Jong Guo

Could man and elf live together?  In the modern sense such a question seems silly.  Elves and humans mingle now freely it seems in most modern societies.  However this was not always so.  The races kept separate and distinct.  That is except for Jong Guo.  Elves from the East and Humans from the west met together on a continent months north of Geneva.  

Waring factions and racial tensions led to centuries of warfare.  The elves superior education magic could not destroy our beat back the infinite adaptability of the humans.  Numerous kingdoms sprung up constantly at war.  It was the machines of economics that forged the peoples together.  Unable to destroy either side traders began collecting elven goods and selling to the world of man.  Elves became fascinated with the crude but durable goods of the human world.  When merchants began to preach trade over war the multiple groups began to seek for each others better interest. Eventually to be found the largest population of half elves in the world.

A strange new type of government emerged slowly to man but rapidly to the elf of a republic.  The multitude of diversity they felt could not be ruled or controlled effectively with out the consent of the governed.  It was thought that no one monarch could possibly understand the large diversity of the population and make decisions that was the best for all.  So they created a large Senate where every faction and nation was represented and it was sure that no minority would be forgotten.  It was highly effective in some regards and very slow and tedious in others, yet it held this melting pot of cultures together for centuries.  

It was not until the arrival of the conquering Seanchan that it was truly tested.  And it failed.  While Jong Guo survived it only could do so by forsaking the old senate ways and placing in its stead an Emperor.  Though he too fell as the shadow Drow rose from the Underdark to pick the bones of the war torn country.  

The political instability was put to rest by the arrival of the Crystal Empire whose war ships and trained soldiers fought back the drow and established civilization yet again for a time.  The great crusade called the Imperial soldiers away and the drow returned.  When the Empire returned to reclaim their territory they found only a wasteland.  Scholars now believe the underdark of Jong Guo was ground zero for the devastating golemn virus that has erased drow from the world and now threatens all elven kind.  

Stands of the plague not only killed the drow but made them ravenous murderous monsters called reavers by some though their behavior reflected that of zombies.  Regardless of their academic classifications the once wonderful gem of Republican representative government in the world sits a ruined waste land where pockets of survivors struggle to exist every day. Their hope now rests in the Red Saint who is now only scouting the area looking for survivors to aid as he has in Babylon and Assyria.