Author's Introduction:

    Being a Human in the Empire of Elves has always been difficult, even if 
we're better off now than we were, oh, say a thousand years ago.
    Unless you're a Human historian. Then you're pretty much screwed. And it's 
not just a matter of prejudice, either, although there is quite a bit of that in 
some academic circles. No, the fact of the matter is that a Human just has 
difficulty getting a good handle on Elnohfec history. We live only eighty or 
ninety years; we can't comprehend why Baron Mulhord of Tree-by-the-Sea would 
deliberately wait one thousand and seven hundred years before exacting his 
revenge on the Count of Ricefield. It's hard to look at history when the Empire 
you live in will likely be just the same when you die as it was when you were 
born.
    Changes in Elven history, you see, are very, very slow. Our own benevolent 
and wise Empress, Zerika the Third, has been on the throne of the Empire for one 
thousand one hundred and seventeen years. She can safely expect to live three 
times that many years, as can most Elves.
    As a result of this ridiculously (and, some say, unnaturally) prolonged 
lifespan, Elven history is more a process of evolution than revolution. Changes 
take hundred, sometimes even thousands of years to occur. Fashions and fads can 
change as slowly as the landscape. The population barely ever rises appreciably, 
and social paradigms are nearly static - at least, to the perceptions of a Human 
such as my humble self.
    Humans sometimes have difficulty really understanding this. I can recall 
trying to explain the forming of the Empire to my brother, Sergeant, and despite 
the fact that he is a clever and perceptive individual, he still had a hard time 
grasping that the Empire had been around for a quarter of a million years. He 
would ask why this or that hadn't managed to change in such a tremendous stretch 
of years, and frankly I had a hard time coming up with a better answer than, 
"Because they're Elves and Elves are boring". (The historian renders her 
apologies to any Elves who happen to be reading this treatise and who take 
offense at the preceding statement.)
    In preparing to write my Senior Thesis, I had decided that this couldn't 
possibly be a hard and fast rule. I thought that there must be some point in 
Elven history where events brought about rapid and sudden change, and I went 
looking for such an event. Luckily for me, I found just such an event, which 
seemed, as near as I could tell at the first, to hinge around five peculiar 
individuals.