An incomplete history of the Tulari race

Selar was colonized by a group of Elenari who left Til Quintas, the oldest Elenari homeworld.

Most of the Elves from Til Quintas look like the Drow of Forgotten Realms fame, with black or dark grey skin and silver white or dark black hair.

The Draest'ari culture on Selar may have been a remnant of these original Elves, for they retained the dark appearance. They were certainly known as one of the oldest races and cultures there.

The Elves of Til Quintas adhere very closely to their cultural traditions. They are very racist and exclusive even toward those of their own kind who have split off from the original group and developed other traditions to which they adhere just as strongly. Deviation from these traditions is seen as crime which is punished severely, often by death, loss of honor, or both. They are a very violent bunch compared to other races of Elves, and the subsequent races of Elenari on Selar who sprang from their original stock.

It is said that the Til Quintas Elves who settled Selar "took another direction" from those who remained behind. This is very true, but how that came to be and from whom that direction came has never been written of before here on Earth, as far as I know. I may, in fact, be the only one who has as yet remembered it, but I have a strong suspicion that there are others who do remember and just do not speak of it.

The Goddess

The Goddess, the Divine Feminine aspect of Source, is worshipped by the Elenari. There are several names for Her. The Elenari are Her children. The StarSong within us is a thread that runs from Her through each of us to one another.

When the a group of Elves left Til Quintas to settle Selar, the Mother Goddess saw an opportunity to bring them out of their violence and hatred of others of their own kind and back to the Love of which She is.

She sent a race of beings to the Elenari on Selar through whom She could interact with the Elves directly. Some would classify these beings as a Celestial or Angelic race. The Tulari call them the Teachers.

The Teachers

The Teachers who descended to aid the Elves were full of the Mother's Light, full of Love. They literally glowed with it continually. It shone out their skin and their eyes and hair. They had the bodies of Elves but were very pale in appearance, with white skin and hair, and very light eyes. Sometimes the Light within them shone so brightly, that one could not see the irises of their eyes, only Light where their eyes should have been.

Their bodies were not made of the same dense matter as those of the Elves, but were less dense, though they appeared solid to look at. Therefore, they had shape shifting abilities, and could manifest long white wings for themselves at will when they wished to fly.

They worked with the Elenari, and split them into groups, each group following a smaller group of Teachers. They led them to different parts of Selar and there established the races: List'ari, Draest'ari, Alt'ari and Drae'ari. They did this by means of magick, teachings and interbreeding with the Elves (though the Draest'ari may have rejected breeding with them).

We don't know if it was the addition of the genetic material of the Teachers or the fact that Selar has only one sun while Til Quintas has two, but the skins of the List'ari, Alt'ari and Drae'ari all became much lighter than the original black pigmentation of the Elves on Til Quintas.
 
The Teachers taught the Elenari to Love each other and all life. They taught them the knowledge of the Mother they had lost, how to form linkwebs among themselves and all life surrounding them, powerful healing magicks for themselves and their world.

It was they who taught the Elves how to create the net of Love/Light covering their new planet, and how to use it for communication and weather control.

The Teachers traveled easily between the separate groups either by use of their great wings for flight or by portals which they created with only a thought and then stepped through. They used their Light to accomplish many tasks from great ones like these to as tiny as starting a cookfire. For them such things were as natural as breathing.

The Alt'ari

The Alt'ari developed medium to fair skin tones, with reddish or greenish undertones and gold overtones. Their hair color was usually blond but if they were descended from a line of Til Quintas Elves with black hair, their hair was often dark brown with many red highlights or red with gold highlights.

The Alt'ari lived in a rather harsh area of Selar plagued with storms (until the grid began to function) and full of predatory animals. They built their houses up in the canopy of the trees for protection. They worked with the trees, knowing them as sentient beings, providers of food and shelter.

Because of their development in a harsh place, they held onto some of the older traditions from Til Quintas more tightly than the other races. They were/are rather territorial and prone to violence (or displays of threats of violence) from that motivation. Their gains had been hard won, so who could blame them?

Their environment wasn't harsh anymore once the grid came online, but the Alt'ari still stuck to their ways. It was then that there came a difference of opinion among the Teachers of the Alt'ari.

Some of the Teachers decided to stay with the Alt'ari as they were and keep working with them, but several of the Teachers decided to take some of the Alt'ari out of their harsh place and establish a new race in a different place with a new and different culture.

The Tul'ari

This is how the Tul'ari came to be.

The Teachers brought a group of Alt'ari to a beautiful meadow spanning hundreds of acres that was filled with blossoms and speckled with trees. It was well protected by rolling green hills on its southern side and the sea with its great white cliffs plunging to sandy beaches on the north and east sides. To the west was a harsh desert where they did not go. Here in the meadow was everything they would need to survive in peace with enough room for everyone.

The first thing the Teachers did was divide this group into clans, each major family group to its own. There were four of them, so each clan was named for one of the four elements. The Sa'ilth'ini for water, the Tualth'eni for air, the Kesperi'oni for earth and the Kholi'ani for fire. Each clan would have its own functions, traditions, style of braids, chants, colors – everything, yet all would know that above that they were Tul'ari.

The Teachers did this to wash away the last of the old violent ways and create a harmony and interdependence between the clans that would never be shaken. They needed each others' functions to survive, so they could not be violent toward each other.

After living this new interdependence for 3 generations or so, the memories of the old violent ways were mostly gone. The Tul'ari had become successful at planting crops and had domesticated some of the local fauna so as to have a readily available supply of meat.

Then the Teachers set to helping the Tul'ari create their White City and their great Temples to the Mother, so that She Herself might eventually come to dwell among them. They built the land bridge across the sea to the lands where the Listari lived, so that the races would not lose contact with each other after the Teachers were gone.

Villages arose around the city and the Temples, and the Tul'ari multiplied and prospered further. The Alt'ari got word of this prosperous place, and some of them moved closer to their brothers and sisters, building houses in the trees of the forests bordering the great meadow. They looked at the Tul'ari as having new fangled ways with suspicion. The Tul'ari looked at them as hopelessly backward, wild and uncultured (Kathilas). Still, they traded with each other and were generally peaceful toward one another.

The Kholi'ani

When this came to be, the Teachers saw that their time among the Elves was nearly complete. Their purpose was to prepare the Elves to have the Goddess come to live among Her children, and this they had done.

However, there was still one more task. The Mother would need servants after the Teachers were gone.

Only they could survive meeting the Goddess face to face. Only they had that direct, living, Light-filled connection to Her at all times. They knew they would have to establish their great gifts in a special bloodline of the Elves they were leaving behind – a Royal line, a Priestly line, able to converse with both the Goddess and other Elves directly, a line of Elves with the same Light as they contained who could lead the Elenari of Selar on the right Path once they were gone.

Since the Goddess is made of living Light/Love, the Fire Clan was the logical choice to take on this sacred task.

And so it was done. The Kholi'ani felt very honored to be the ones chosen. They were honored among the Tul'ari for the great sacrifice of their very bodies in great service to the race. Forever would they be committed in service to the People as their Kings and their Priestesses.

The Teachers bred with the Kholi'ani, and then a second set bred again with their children once they were grown, and so on, each successive generation infusing more and more of the Teachers' pure genes born directly from the Mother into the Elves. Eventually, there came a time not too many centuries after they began this task, that the Teachers achieved what they had set out to do.

The Kholi'ani became the Elves who acted, spoke, ate and thought like Elves, but who glowed with the Light of the Teachers and who would not burn to cinders immediately upon exposure to the living presence of the Goddess. Their skin became very pale indeed, and their hair very light blond, but still with the typical golden shadows of the Tul'ari race, of whom they were still a part. Their eyes were a very light blue that shown with Light even when their faces were in shadow. They were "more than most" as the Elves would say, meaning that they contained more Light, more of the Mother's Substance than other Elves.

Of course, the Teachers' gifts were more prominent in some Kholi'ani families than in others. That is the way of biology. Some of the Kholi'ani could not shapeshift while others could.

The Teachers chose the purest lines who exhibited the most of their powers to become the Royal Family and the Head Families of the Clan from which the Priesthood would come who would serve in the great Temples. These would be the Mother's servants when She indwelt there. They placed them in the positions of leadership in service to the People. Thus, the Enrai, his family, the 'Lesias of the Temples and their Maidens are all direct descendents of the Teachers.

The Teachers then took the Kholi'ani, who were their own children now, to a remote place away from the others not so infused. There they taught them rituals particular to the Teachers' race. Secret things they were to tell no one else but another Kholi'ani. Things they would need to do for each other. That these things were even taught to the Kholi'ani at all is a secret of the clan revealed here for the first time.

When the Goddess first appeared in the Temples that had been prepared for Her, She called all the Teachers to Her. They were very happy to hear Her Call. There was great excitement and celebration among the People as the Teachers proclaimed the arrival of the Goddess. Singing and Dancing Her praises, the Teachers went into the Temples, to the inner sanctums where the Goddess manifested part of Her indwelling Light. Some of the honored Kholi'ani they had taken as Lifemates went with them. The Elves then saw them no more.

The Goddess told those who remained that they are part of Her, remain with Her, and travel forth from Her at Her Will, and this was written down, carved into the wall of the Temple. So we know that the Teachers yet live and were not destroyed by Her, but that they became part of Her essence once more.

The Elves and the Goddess lived peacefully and prospered for many millennia, until the Corruption came to Selar and they were forced to resurrect some of their old violent ways to defend themselves in war.

That story is written elsewhere.