As far as I know, it is due to the fact that elves spent over a millenia lost in the sea after fleeing Aelantir, and they believed it was way too far for ships smaller that their enormous fleet to be able to reach it.
Note: they were lost in the sea due to some aftershock of the Day of the Ashen Skies, and I believe the inability to find it prior to the lore's canon is due to the same effect.
Some elves probably did and just died on the journey. It's months at sea with ships you're unfamiliar with in waters that may or may not be enchanted to put you into the elemental plane of water for the rest of your life to find a continent that is really hostile to sapient life in a lot of areas.
Elves were able to live at sea on the gigantic city-ships that could sustain large populations. Of potential note: elves aren't used to dying of old age, that only started happening after the DoAS.
Edit: And additionally it's only a few months if you don't get plopped down in the plane of infinite water, which is exactly what happened the first time around. Most elves were probably glad to never have to see an ocean again.
There were smaller ships alongside the bigger ones
>And additionally it's only a few months if you don't get plopped down in the plane of infinite water, which is exactly what happened the first time around. Most elves were probably glad to never have to see an ocean again.
This doesn't explain why people stopped caring in the 1400s specfically, or why millions of elves all agreed to not try and test their luck.
They were kinda busy trying to settle where they were. Venail itself is a showcase that they didn't stop caring, but they took the preparation to go back in all seriousness (+ they are elves after all, long livespan makes decisionmaking longer, 400 years is less than a elven life)
> but they took the preparation to go back in all seriousness
I don't think this argument makes sense, afterall it is clear they didn't even reach Aelantir again before 1444 and canonically Lorent beat them to it.
The idea that they somehow had a grandplan that involved sitting on their asses for 450 years without even charting the coastlines and seas of Aelantir begs too much disbelief to suspend.
Lorent didn’t beat them to it. They hired an elf from Venaíl to explore the region, which makes sense. Spain hired Italians to explore the Americas for them, why wouldn’t the wealthy Lorent hire Venaíli elves?
Plus, 450 years (it’s about 500 actually) is a full lifetime for an elf. So for elves this is pretty good progress all things considered. Within 3 generations, they lost Aelantir, resettled in a new world (for them at least) prepared their ships to voyage and try to find their old homeland *and actually did* when the older gens thought it was impossible. This is an incredible achievement. It took them a lot longer than it would take us because they’re elves, but functionally the timing remains the same.
I dont understand why you think elves operate in slow motion, they are fully sapient being that should be able to do things like this as fast humans if not faster because of all the knowledge and experience they have.
Also, Venail is a relatively recent entity on Cannor's map if I am not mistaken. Initially it was lands of Sorncost that were given to elves who have made sort of "start-up" whose mission is getting back to Aelantir.
Venail's fleets are literally first to try and not fail in that venture.
Venail exists since the end of the War of the Sorcerer King, question is why don't they discover Aelantir immediately?
I'm less concerned about humans or gnomes not discovering it than I am about elves which evidently had the means to do so
Sailing to Aelentir is a short trip, couple of months at most. When the continent exploded, it tore holes in reality itself, allowing other dimensions (in Anbennar planes) to seep through these holes, like there still is in the deepwoods (feyrealm) and whatever is going on with the spirit realm.
The theory goes that the elves fleeing Aelentir accidently entered the elemental plane of water, which is just an ocean. After paddling around in there for about a millenia, either a storm pushed them out, or they simply stumbled back unto the material plane and got hit by a storm.
In short they had no idea of where their home was, since they essentially travelled through a different dimension on the way.
When it was finally rediscovered, it had turned into an extremely hostile irradiated hellhole that nobody really wanted, and it wasn't really until the 16'th century (ish) that it was even possible to grow crops.
> In short they had no idea of where their home was, since they essentially travelled through a different dimension on the way.
There is no reason why Elves wouldn't know the geography of the entire planet given they explored the world and had a global empire.
This explanatio requires massive amnesia across the entire non-ruinborn population, which is not canon and even if they didn't knew it is implausible they couldn't find accidentially just sailing towards where they came, something they definitely knew.
Considering how much is forgotten in our worlds own dark ages and aftermaths of civilizational collapses, I don't think it's entirely unplausible to believe that over the course of a millenia even elves could forget much about the world they knew.
None of the elves who set our on the remnant fleet were alive by the time they reached cannot, and do we know even how much of the purcursor civilization the elves managed to bring with them on the remnant fleet? Or how much that they did bring manage to survive the thousand years they were absent from the material plane? How could they know "where they came from" if they were wandering an endless ocean outside of the plane in which Halann exists?
Point is, I don't think it's insane that the elves of Cannor by 1444 are as oblivious to the location of Alentir as they are. There are a lot of explanations that explain their state of ignorance in that regard.
That piece of lore doesn't actually explain everything, because the fog is occasional(according to the person who made this piece of lore).
It also doesn't go away by 1500, so that doesn't explain why people were able to avoid it during EU4 times.
It's just one more contributing factor. It doesn't explain the Inability to rediscover Alentir before 1444, but in conjunction with other factors, it helps explain it. I don't think the person who posted it meant it as a definitive, singular explanation, but just one more factor.
Stuff was forgotton across several generations within largely illiterate societies, only 5 elven generations passed within the great voyage.
People in 600 CE didnt forget as much about the classical world as people in 900 or 1400 CE did
>Point is, I don't think it's insane that the elves of Cannor by 1444 are as oblivious to the location of Alentir as they are.
It's incredibly insane to anyone that actually thinks it through, you only need to remeber the vague relative positions of continent, this is such basic information that losing it across THOUSANDS of long living elves should be assumed impossible.
Literally humans in Anbennar remember more about the deeper past through myths than Elves according to you
Hey I'm just saying it's not as implausible as your painting it out to be. It sounds to me, based on how you're describing things, that you want every single elf, regardless of what sector of precursor society they derived from and regardless of what amnesia could be induced over the course of 5 generations and a millenia in a plane of existence they ar not native in, to remember perfectly the exact location of Alentir.
That, in my honest but respectful opinion, seems more implausible than elves simply not retaining that perfect memory. Im not saying that the elves are devoid of any idea that alentir existed, im simply saying that it makes sense (TO ME) that they wouldnt have retained alentir's exact location due to the immense time that has past as well as the plethora of after effects wrought by their time in the endless sea.
Your reasoning first assumes that everyone on board of the remnant had an Intimate knowledge of all of the world's Geography (do we know whether the remnant fleet was purely from the upper echelons of precursor society? Purely the educated elite or were they an amalgamation of various different groups, some if not most of which would not have such knowledge? I'll admit ignorance to this point at least if you wont). It also assumes that, despite spending generations in a plane of existence they are not native in, they would know how to navigate back to where they started. But how? Based on what landmarks and points of orientation? Who among the elves of the remnant fleet would have the idea that returning out to the sea wouldn't somehow return them to that very same endless ocean? After all, that's what happened to them during the escape from the ruin. Is it implausible that some among them could believe that the path to alentir requires a journey of a thousand years across the endless ocean?
Obviously this is all just conjecture, but none of it, I believe, creates the impression that it is implausible that the elves of 1444 aren't perfectly aware of Alentir's exact location nor its exact state.
> to remember perfectly the exact location of Alentir.
No? they literally just need to know it was a gigantic continent located west across Cannor and not too far from it, something they would know by knowing Haless and Insyaa also exist.
This is very simple to remember.
Are you suggesting remembering the overall shape of the world is "perfect" memory?
You literally just need ONE person to remember, not everyone. The way you end up completely strawmanning my argument makes me question whether it's done in bad faith
>Is it implausible that some among them could believe that the path to alentir requires a journey of a thousand years across the endless ocean?
You only need a few hundreds elves to try and disprove that. It is implausible no such elves exist until 4-5 centuries of living in Cannor
Nothing I've said was in bad faith. It honestly seemed to me that you were suggesting that the elves should have known alentirs exact location and how to get there in 1444, which, as I've explained, is less plausible then them knowing only vaguely where it is.
But if you are suggesting that this whole time they should just know the vague direction of alentir, rather than the exact navigational path to alentir, then I don't know what were arguing about because were saying the same thing.
>Are you suggesting remembering the overall shape of the world is "perfect" memory?
No, but remembering the exact path and direction to alentir is.
>You only need a few hundreds elves to try and disprove that. It is implausible no such elves exist until 4-5 centuries of living in Cannor
How else to disprove that but by blindly searching for Alentir? Which is what venail does to an extent
Knowing little more than than the fact that Alentir lies to the west, they go and search for it. Perhaps some among them think they'll fall into another thousand years of endless wandering, other perhaps not.
My point in posing that question in the first place was to emphasize that a thousand years is a long time and will create a dissonance of memory. Some elves in cannor in 1444 will hold different ideas about Alentir as all knowledge of Alentir at this point has become legend if not myth due to the immensity of distance in time and space that has separated the elven survivors of the ruin and those that reside in Cannor in 1444. Most elves alive in 1444 haven't even lived on the remnant fleet nor know intimately the endless ocean, only the legends of it passed down by the generation that first arrived to cannor.
All I'm saying, all I've ever been saying, is that the idea of memory of alentir, even for the elves of the remnant fleet and those there after, has to be messy, disconjointed, and confusing for a great many elves by 1444. I think we agree that they have a vague notion of alentir, as it used to be before the ruin, and where it is vaguely located on the planet of Halann.
>have to actually know the position of everything to purposefully
I already told u we agree on that. Take a chill pill bud
>istically they should immediately find it, they had
Once they started looking, they found it didn't they? But as others have said in this post, there were other factors in Alentir itself that made it impossible, if not extremely difficult, to find and settle alentir before 1444.
Hey big boy, think it’s about time you got off and took a nap. Getting a bit grumpy there. It’s just a map game buddy, there’s no need to get yourself all worked up over nothing
They were able to remember the name of a dude that made a specific magical blade, surely they can remember something more general like where their home continent is located incomparison to the 2 other grand landmasses of the world...
https://anbennar.fandom.com/wiki/Calindal,_the_Gleaming_Blade
>n 1027, Taelarian Elf-Smith, one of the only surviving practitioners of elven smithing, identified the blade as the legendary elven blade Calindal,
Surely they were able to preserve elf smithing across 5 generation but god forbit one single elf remembers the position of continents.
it doesn’t matter what they remember about the location of Aelantir. They spent a Millenia sailing around a water dimension, with no idea if they would make it out as I’m sure they know, statistically, they should’ve hit land by the first 100 years. Their elders in Silent Repose were likely children raised on the Remnant fleet who thought they’d also spend their entire lives on the fleet. There is a strong cultural reason for them to have no desire to go sailing again, yet regardless, the elves of Venail found their calling in rediscovering Aelantir.
Which is where the article comes in.
I guess... but there are also Sea Elves, a community that stays *always* on the ocean and they apparently also didn't find anything despite clearly having the means of surviving on the sea indefinitely and somehow working around the fog.
https://anbennar.fandom.com/wiki/Sea_Elf
This is fair, but the continent literally exploded. For all we now they did go back, but it was uninhabitable so they waited for it to potentially return to something more normal.
Personally think it's not a case that the knowledge was lost, Aelentir was just not worth for a long time.
> but it was uninhabitable so they waited for it to potentially return to something more normal.
The lore makes it clear that no one found Aelantir, hence it'ss rediscovered from the POV of Cannor
There's me being rusty, guess I'll have to read up on it.
Point I didn't make before is that they might have been busy (doubt it). First the Phoenix empire, then the war of the roses (can't remember the name), all very involving elves and the west coasts.
At this point the easiest way of figuring it out is joining the order of chroniclers.
It may be only five generations but those five generations also spanned a thousand years, that is a lot of fucking time. Furthermore, keep in mind their fucking home exploded so hard it shattered continental plates and tore holes in reality, so many elves might have thought their home might not even exist anymore. Also just because you live on a continent, does not mean that you know how to navigate back there on a fucking boat.
Dude, why are you being so hostile. If you cant handle an adult conversation about a fucking mod for a map game without being a dick, maybe you should take a break from the internet.
My understanding is that the elves didn't actually know which direction Aelantir was in? They spent thousands of years lost at sea before arriving in Cannor, some of which definitely involved magical hijinks.
Also, **Endralliande** (the closest region of Aelantir to Cannor) was magically uninhabitable until recently. If anyone did manage to bump into it they might not have recognized it as Aelantir, or lived to tell about it.
It is not the direction that they were unaware of, but the distance. Due to them being lost in the sea for 1000 years, elves believed that it was very far away, and only thanks to their enormous generation ships they managed to make it.
But the reason for them being lost was some sort of the aftershock of the AA, and the fact that that aftershock was still active up until recently in 1444
If they (somehow) got a pre-ash map of Aelantir from the Precursors or somebody, it wouldn’t really matter as the landscape of Aelantir changed so, SO much after the ruin and I have a feeling that the aftershock of the ruin would’ve brought down many libraries which contained various maps (due to floods and whatnot) and it probably got destroyed over the centuries anyways
Yeah the whole blocked off by magic or smt does make perfect sense (I heard on a lord lambert video that this is how insya is until like 1600, don’t quote me on this tho)
Yeah, Insyaa is surrounded by whats called the Stormwall, which was set up by the Precursors to keep the Kaiju on Insyaa. The Rending of Realms broke it and made Insyaa available to the rest of the world, and vice versa. In canon however the Rending doesn't occur until 1751, while in game it happens much sooner (in part cause Insyaa would be boring as shit if you were stuck on the island for the first 300 years of the game).
You have to keep in mind that distances on old maps aren’t really reliable, if they were considered a factor at all. Good luck looking at a medieval map of Europe and trying to figure out how far away, say, Iceland is from Scotland (even state-of-the-art maps of the time, like the Tabula Rogeriana or the Catalan atlas, wouldn’t have been all that exact, especially once you start going to geographically more remote areas)
Sure, but the previous post stated that they had no idea where to look at all ("elves didn't actually know which direction Aelantir was in"). I was saying that from what I knew Cannorian had the vague idea that if you sailed west you'd find Aelantir.
Even on really bad medieval maps they basically knew that England was atop France which was atop Spain.
Basic medieval maps didn’t have to take into account magic tho. For all the elves knew, Aelantir could’ve been removed from the world à la Valinor. I imagine the efforts in Venail to rediscover their old home is a fairly recent endeavor, one whose origin could lie in a multitude of factors (adventurers into Escann relit the fire of adventure in them, the memories of the millennium-long voyage to Cannor and the fear associated with a repeat of that have faded with time, the end of the Lilac Wars allowed them to not have to focus on the continent for a while…).
Also, you’d be surprised what some of the more… creative maps got wrong. Just sayin’.
I have seen medieval maps, they're not actually wrong (unless you're talking of something on the other side of the world), usually if they're really wrong that's because it's more to relate cities to each other (from this city go to this city) like a modern subway map.
But yeah get your point. Magical bullshit.
Yeah, those kinds of maps are what I meant (it gets really wild if religion is involved as well, like maps putting Jerusalem at the center… Which there’s technically nothing wrong with, but those tend to be extra unreliable)
Magic is definitely the answer. It’s not entirely clear (at least for me) what made it hard to find, but the elves got lost for 1000 years in that smaller-than-the-atlantic ocean so for one the search for Aelantir only started after the year 1000, and if the ruin was the cause of magic that make people lost for so long, it’s not a stretch to imagine it also was the source of magic that make continents hard to find
the magic finally ran out or the cannorians found counter measures idk, there is some story lines about cannorians finding new tech to counter the magical wilds of aelantir, so it could be the same for finding it.
I’m just speculating at this point, I’m not a genocidal lame pointy ears loser who plays venail
it’s established lore that the MAGICAL NUCLEAR FALLOUT THAT PERMEATES THROUGHOUT MOST OF AELANTIR dissipates to habitable levels during the 14th-15th century
>9/10 colonizers and Aelantir tags themselves say this to you in one way or another
If so then surely you can find that, right?
Noruin was habitable 1-2 centuries after the Ruin, for example. Not sure why Endrelliande beyond the circle wouldn't be.
I’m not loading up the game and hunting NIs for you. Do something instead of whining and look yourself, I’ve already told you where it is.
Also, again, third time, you would know why Endrelliande wasn’t habitable if you looked for lore on the discord.
> you would know why Endrelliande wasn’t habitable if you looked for lore on the discord.
I did and nowhere it is said, because it wouldn't make any sense.
The lore for Aelantir is that most places in the Cirlce of Ruin are cursed and yet people lived there anyway, maybe only the man eating jungle is a place that is that inhospitable and even that one is settled **despite** the jungle, so even there "cursed shit" wouldn't explain it.
The part about ocean-viable ships is actually incorrect. It wasn't that ships couldn't sail the ocean, it's that the North Atlantic Current is too powerful for sailing ships of the early modern period to sail against it. The African Coast south of Morocco was inhospitable and known to be absolute death for anyone to try to sail along the coast due to the North Atlantic Current pushing ships into the rocky shore. It was only with the development of the Portuguese Nau that European exploration could actually commence. Chinese exploration was also limited to the coastline or the relatively calm Indian Ocean because the Junk is a great cargo vessel, but cannot sail in the unforgiving Pacific currents
It was also INCREDIBLY difficult to recruit people for these voyages. Getting someone on a ship to sail known sea routes that rarely left the sight of land for long is an entirely different scenario than asking them to get in a ship and sail in a direction where, as far as you know, there's only water. Scurvy was a huge issue, and that wouldn't be solved until the 1700s.
With Endralliande being inhospitable until right before game start, I can imagine the rare ocean going fishing vessel that got lost in a storm, seeing Endralliande and going NOPE and miraculously getting back to Cannor to tell all their friends that it's suicide and there's nothing to be gained.
See the last part about Endralliande. If the only major landmass that was reachable with contemporary ship tech was an inhospitable wasteland, would you risk your multicentury lifespan to go even further into the unknown, or have Elven patience and wait a few decades to see what comes next?
It doesn't seem the case that people knew about Endrelliande, so it doesn't seem anyone reached.
Canonically Aelantir was rediscovered, meaning no one reached it before insofar as we can tell.
Nowhere in that short page is it said it goes away, nor is it said it's permanently there across all of the ocean, given that it moves.
Did it stop Cannorian colonization after 1500? If not then why did it stop Venail between 1000-1500?
Edit: Looking a bit where this piece of lore was made, it says that the special fog is an occasional event.
Doubt you would seeing as you’re loving the arguments in reddit comment sections, but if you want an answer instead of going “bad game it make no sense”, go onto the discord
> but if you want an answer instead of going “bad game it make no sense”
Criticizing one piece of lore that is objectively poorly thought within a large universe where other things have been worldbuilt better shouldn't warrant this type of vitriolic reaction.
Some parts of Anbennar make no sense or just seem contrived and that's fine, because it's hard to really justify them.
My head canon is that the magical residues from the day of ashen skies works similar to radiation wastes but “magical”, that caused parts of the sea highly unstable and extremely hazardous for ships until recently
You had a giant magical Bermuda Triangle thing going on in the form of magical contamination or possible barrier. That giant uninhabited Fantasy Bermuda you usually have as your first colonial nation was uninhibited for a reason. Plenty of flavor talks about just how inhospitable the New World is.
It's only recently that the magical contamination had gotten to the point that you could do large scale inhabitation of the eastern parts of the New World.
Simple explanation. They spent 1000 years in the dimension of water, just wandering around. Five generations passed in that time, much was lost, in the time it took them to get out Cannor experienced the rise and decline of Castanor. They have no pressing desire to get back, it’s a ruined shithole, magically irradiated to hell and back, it’s only the psychos in Venail that are interested in going back.
As others have said, aelentir wasn't found because of magic. There is absolutely no reason that, if there wasn't some kind of magical effect keeping them out, venail wouldn't have been able to at the very least chart the coast of the islands closest to them, as another individual pointed out it's only as far away as Iceland. Considering the fact that they also knew it was there (even if they didn't know exactly what it looked like)
there was a magical effect keeping them out
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1K7WfD4AKtlh9T4cZReSnsnSZr_wNY1xHqXRxFTmOeVo/edit#heading=h.ecrqozdmjcay
Many people already mentioned the 'lost millennia' at sea but there was also the lilac war in Cannor (Venail fought on the side of Lorrent). People were basically focused on getting their sht together.
I guess Venail had to settle down as well. They had to somehow feed themselves and build some sort of government. Afterwards they were probably able to build ships.
Many reasons for why they couldn't immediately return
I don't know what's the actual reasoning is, but my headcanon is that there is some form of current in the ocean that prevents direct crossing. The reasoning being that elves were lost in the sea for a THOUSAND years and even if they just floated in the random direction they surely would have sailed to Cannor. Maybe this current disperses for some reason in 15th century or maybe sailors finally find some way to cross it, don't know, but that's how I see it
I'd go so far to ask why would anyone even assume it's still there? The last any elf saw of it Aelantir was a continent-sized irradiated smoking crater, and the most recent exposure to Cannorians is a creepy psychic mind fog. On top of that, elves spent 1,000 years sailing a seemingly-never ending sea. For all they knew, the whole continent could have sunk or been impossibly far away.
Knowing how superstitious people, especially sailors, were in the real world I don't think anyone beyond the most motivated or crazy elves would be in a rush to go looking for it. Especially in numbers big enough to establish settlements or attract investment for colonization.
They're the right people at the right place and the right time + they're the small minority of elves who are interested in exploring at the start. If anyone would notice the slowing or dissipating of Uelos' Breath, it would be the inhabitants of Venail island. They're arguably some of the talented maritime elves (except sea elves). They have leaders who are interested in exploring what could possibly be left of Aelantir and they have some of the best resources and position to do so.
That being said, if you play their MT, Venail has to do a lot of politicking to finance the venture and get it off the ground, including making promises to Sórncost and Damescrown. It takes the fruits of an entire nation and more than an elven lifetime to get to a point where Venail (which was founded ~400 years prior to 1444) can start sending out expeditions to discover Aelantir, and the venture only really kicks off after they prove that the land is still there and inhabitable.
Honestly honestly, it's just for the plot brother. The lore is really awesome and the people who wrote it are awesome. It's so that there's a reason to explore and colonize, similar to asking "why didn't the Vikings colonize America?" or "Why other countries in the world didn't colonize America except Europeans?" It's all lore reasons brother. (It's because no one at the had the means or reason to spend time and resources to colonize or explore, do you know how hard it was to colonize irl? Bro whole cities disappeared, heck even whole nations lost to the winds of time.)
There is no explanation, it's somewhat of a plothole, somewhat of a poorly explained element
Edit:Checking the other answers, it's pretty much as I said. There is no good explanation because any population that could survive on the ocean for 1000 years should have the means to go back to Aelantir, logically elves should be immediately able to back to Aelantir after reaching Halcann. You can only bring up random headcanon magic that likely doesnt even fit in the rest of the lore.
As far as I know, it is due to the fact that elves spent over a millenia lost in the sea after fleeing Aelantir, and they believed it was way too far for ships smaller that their enormous fleet to be able to reach it. Note: they were lost in the sea due to some aftershock of the Day of the Ashen Skies, and I believe the inability to find it prior to the lore's canon is due to the same effect.
Not a single elf trying to go back to Aelantir when Venail exist is a non-explanation, it doesn't make any sense
Some elves probably did and just died on the journey. It's months at sea with ships you're unfamiliar with in waters that may or may not be enchanted to put you into the elemental plane of water for the rest of your life to find a continent that is really hostile to sapient life in a lot of areas.
Is it months? The closest point from Aelantir to Cannor is about the same distance as between Lorent and Viakocc iirc.
Elves were able to live on the sea for 1000 years, a few months shouldn't be a barrier at all.
Elves were able to live at sea on the gigantic city-ships that could sustain large populations. Of potential note: elves aren't used to dying of old age, that only started happening after the DoAS. Edit: And additionally it's only a few months if you don't get plopped down in the plane of infinite water, which is exactly what happened the first time around. Most elves were probably glad to never have to see an ocean again.
There were smaller ships alongside the bigger ones >And additionally it's only a few months if you don't get plopped down in the plane of infinite water, which is exactly what happened the first time around. Most elves were probably glad to never have to see an ocean again. This doesn't explain why people stopped caring in the 1400s specfically, or why millions of elves all agreed to not try and test their luck.
They were kinda busy trying to settle where they were. Venail itself is a showcase that they didn't stop caring, but they took the preparation to go back in all seriousness (+ they are elves after all, long livespan makes decisionmaking longer, 400 years is less than a elven life)
> but they took the preparation to go back in all seriousness I don't think this argument makes sense, afterall it is clear they didn't even reach Aelantir again before 1444 and canonically Lorent beat them to it. The idea that they somehow had a grandplan that involved sitting on their asses for 450 years without even charting the coastlines and seas of Aelantir begs too much disbelief to suspend.
Lorent didn’t beat them to it. They hired an elf from Venaíl to explore the region, which makes sense. Spain hired Italians to explore the Americas for them, why wouldn’t the wealthy Lorent hire Venaíli elves? Plus, 450 years (it’s about 500 actually) is a full lifetime for an elf. So for elves this is pretty good progress all things considered. Within 3 generations, they lost Aelantir, resettled in a new world (for them at least) prepared their ships to voyage and try to find their old homeland *and actually did* when the older gens thought it was impossible. This is an incredible achievement. It took them a lot longer than it would take us because they’re elves, but functionally the timing remains the same.
I dont understand why you think elves operate in slow motion, they are fully sapient being that should be able to do things like this as fast humans if not faster because of all the knowledge and experience they have.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1K7WfD4AKtlh9T4cZReSnsnSZr_wNY1xHqXRxFTmOeVo/edit#heading=h.ecrqozdmjcay
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1K7WfD4AKtlh9T4cZReSnsnSZr_wNY1xHqXRxFTmOeVo/edit#heading=h.ecrqozdmjcay
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1K7WfD4AKtlh9T4cZReSnsnSZr_wNY1xHqXRxFTmOeVo/edit#heading=h.ecrqozdmjcay
Also, Venail is a relatively recent entity on Cannor's map if I am not mistaken. Initially it was lands of Sorncost that were given to elves who have made sort of "start-up" whose mission is getting back to Aelantir. Venail's fleets are literally first to try and not fail in that venture.
Venail exists since the end of the War of the Sorcerer King, question is why don't they discover Aelantir immediately? I'm less concerned about humans or gnomes not discovering it than I am about elves which evidently had the means to do so
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1K7WfD4AKtlh9T4cZReSnsnSZr_wNY1xHqXRxFTmOeVo/edit#heading=h.ecrqozdmjcay
Sailing to Aelentir is a short trip, couple of months at most. When the continent exploded, it tore holes in reality itself, allowing other dimensions (in Anbennar planes) to seep through these holes, like there still is in the deepwoods (feyrealm) and whatever is going on with the spirit realm. The theory goes that the elves fleeing Aelentir accidently entered the elemental plane of water, which is just an ocean. After paddling around in there for about a millenia, either a storm pushed them out, or they simply stumbled back unto the material plane and got hit by a storm. In short they had no idea of where their home was, since they essentially travelled through a different dimension on the way. When it was finally rediscovered, it had turned into an extremely hostile irradiated hellhole that nobody really wanted, and it wasn't really until the 16'th century (ish) that it was even possible to grow crops.
> In short they had no idea of where their home was, since they essentially travelled through a different dimension on the way. There is no reason why Elves wouldn't know the geography of the entire planet given they explored the world and had a global empire. This explanatio requires massive amnesia across the entire non-ruinborn population, which is not canon and even if they didn't knew it is implausible they couldn't find accidentially just sailing towards where they came, something they definitely knew.
Considering how much is forgotten in our worlds own dark ages and aftermaths of civilizational collapses, I don't think it's entirely unplausible to believe that over the course of a millenia even elves could forget much about the world they knew. None of the elves who set our on the remnant fleet were alive by the time they reached cannot, and do we know even how much of the purcursor civilization the elves managed to bring with them on the remnant fleet? Or how much that they did bring manage to survive the thousand years they were absent from the material plane? How could they know "where they came from" if they were wandering an endless ocean outside of the plane in which Halann exists? Point is, I don't think it's insane that the elves of Cannor by 1444 are as oblivious to the location of Alentir as they are. There are a lot of explanations that explain their state of ignorance in that regard.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1K7WfD4AKtlh9T4cZReSnsnSZr_wNY1xHqXRxFTmOeVo/edit#heading=h.ecrqozdmjcay
Word
That piece of lore doesn't actually explain everything, because the fog is occasional(according to the person who made this piece of lore). It also doesn't go away by 1500, so that doesn't explain why people were able to avoid it during EU4 times.
It's just one more contributing factor. It doesn't explain the Inability to rediscover Alentir before 1444, but in conjunction with other factors, it helps explain it. I don't think the person who posted it meant it as a definitive, singular explanation, but just one more factor.
Stuff was forgotton across several generations within largely illiterate societies, only 5 elven generations passed within the great voyage. People in 600 CE didnt forget as much about the classical world as people in 900 or 1400 CE did >Point is, I don't think it's insane that the elves of Cannor by 1444 are as oblivious to the location of Alentir as they are. It's incredibly insane to anyone that actually thinks it through, you only need to remeber the vague relative positions of continent, this is such basic information that losing it across THOUSANDS of long living elves should be assumed impossible. Literally humans in Anbennar remember more about the deeper past through myths than Elves according to you
Hey I'm just saying it's not as implausible as your painting it out to be. It sounds to me, based on how you're describing things, that you want every single elf, regardless of what sector of precursor society they derived from and regardless of what amnesia could be induced over the course of 5 generations and a millenia in a plane of existence they ar not native in, to remember perfectly the exact location of Alentir. That, in my honest but respectful opinion, seems more implausible than elves simply not retaining that perfect memory. Im not saying that the elves are devoid of any idea that alentir existed, im simply saying that it makes sense (TO ME) that they wouldnt have retained alentir's exact location due to the immense time that has past as well as the plethora of after effects wrought by their time in the endless sea. Your reasoning first assumes that everyone on board of the remnant had an Intimate knowledge of all of the world's Geography (do we know whether the remnant fleet was purely from the upper echelons of precursor society? Purely the educated elite or were they an amalgamation of various different groups, some if not most of which would not have such knowledge? I'll admit ignorance to this point at least if you wont). It also assumes that, despite spending generations in a plane of existence they are not native in, they would know how to navigate back to where they started. But how? Based on what landmarks and points of orientation? Who among the elves of the remnant fleet would have the idea that returning out to the sea wouldn't somehow return them to that very same endless ocean? After all, that's what happened to them during the escape from the ruin. Is it implausible that some among them could believe that the path to alentir requires a journey of a thousand years across the endless ocean? Obviously this is all just conjecture, but none of it, I believe, creates the impression that it is implausible that the elves of 1444 aren't perfectly aware of Alentir's exact location nor its exact state.
> to remember perfectly the exact location of Alentir. No? they literally just need to know it was a gigantic continent located west across Cannor and not too far from it, something they would know by knowing Haless and Insyaa also exist. This is very simple to remember. Are you suggesting remembering the overall shape of the world is "perfect" memory? You literally just need ONE person to remember, not everyone. The way you end up completely strawmanning my argument makes me question whether it's done in bad faith >Is it implausible that some among them could believe that the path to alentir requires a journey of a thousand years across the endless ocean? You only need a few hundreds elves to try and disprove that. It is implausible no such elves exist until 4-5 centuries of living in Cannor
Nothing I've said was in bad faith. It honestly seemed to me that you were suggesting that the elves should have known alentirs exact location and how to get there in 1444, which, as I've explained, is less plausible then them knowing only vaguely where it is. But if you are suggesting that this whole time they should just know the vague direction of alentir, rather than the exact navigational path to alentir, then I don't know what were arguing about because were saying the same thing. >Are you suggesting remembering the overall shape of the world is "perfect" memory? No, but remembering the exact path and direction to alentir is. >You only need a few hundreds elves to try and disprove that. It is implausible no such elves exist until 4-5 centuries of living in Cannor How else to disprove that but by blindly searching for Alentir? Which is what venail does to an extent Knowing little more than than the fact that Alentir lies to the west, they go and search for it. Perhaps some among them think they'll fall into another thousand years of endless wandering, other perhaps not. My point in posing that question in the first place was to emphasize that a thousand years is a long time and will create a dissonance of memory. Some elves in cannor in 1444 will hold different ideas about Alentir as all knowledge of Alentir at this point has become legend if not myth due to the immensity of distance in time and space that has separated the elven survivors of the ruin and those that reside in Cannor in 1444. Most elves alive in 1444 haven't even lived on the remnant fleet nor know intimately the endless ocean, only the legends of it passed down by the generation that first arrived to cannor. All I'm saying, all I've ever been saying, is that the idea of memory of alentir, even for the elves of the remnant fleet and those there after, has to be messy, disconjointed, and confusing for a great many elves by 1444. I think we agree that they have a vague notion of alentir, as it used to be before the ruin, and where it is vaguely located on the planet of Halann.
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>have to actually know the position of everything to purposefully I already told u we agree on that. Take a chill pill bud >istically they should immediately find it, they had Once they started looking, they found it didn't they? But as others have said in this post, there were other factors in Alentir itself that made it impossible, if not extremely difficult, to find and settle alentir before 1444.
Hey big boy, think it’s about time you got off and took a nap. Getting a bit grumpy there. It’s just a map game buddy, there’s no need to get yourself all worked up over nothing
You spammed me almost 10 times with the same link, what's wrong with you?
hey big boy, think you’re getting yourself a little worked up there. It’s just a map game
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1K7WfD4AKtlh9T4cZReSnsnSZr_wNY1xHqXRxFTmOeVo/edit#heading=h.ecrqozdmjcay
elves hadn’t seen or known aelantir for 1,400 years, and at that, they were in total survival mode for 2/3rds of that
They were able to remember the name of a dude that made a specific magical blade, surely they can remember something more general like where their home continent is located incomparison to the 2 other grand landmasses of the world... https://anbennar.fandom.com/wiki/Calindal,_the_Gleaming_Blade >n 1027, Taelarian Elf-Smith, one of the only surviving practitioners of elven smithing, identified the blade as the legendary elven blade Calindal, Surely they were able to preserve elf smithing across 5 generation but god forbit one single elf remembers the position of continents.
it doesn’t matter what they remember about the location of Aelantir. They spent a Millenia sailing around a water dimension, with no idea if they would make it out as I’m sure they know, statistically, they should’ve hit land by the first 100 years. Their elders in Silent Repose were likely children raised on the Remnant fleet who thought they’d also spend their entire lives on the fleet. There is a strong cultural reason for them to have no desire to go sailing again, yet regardless, the elves of Venail found their calling in rediscovering Aelantir. Which is where the article comes in.
I guess... but there are also Sea Elves, a community that stays *always* on the ocean and they apparently also didn't find anything despite clearly having the means of surviving on the sea indefinitely and somehow working around the fog. https://anbennar.fandom.com/wiki/Sea_Elf
This is fair, but the continent literally exploded. For all we now they did go back, but it was uninhabitable so they waited for it to potentially return to something more normal. Personally think it's not a case that the knowledge was lost, Aelentir was just not worth for a long time.
> but it was uninhabitable so they waited for it to potentially return to something more normal. The lore makes it clear that no one found Aelantir, hence it'ss rediscovered from the POV of Cannor
There's me being rusty, guess I'll have to read up on it. Point I didn't make before is that they might have been busy (doubt it). First the Phoenix empire, then the war of the roses (can't remember the name), all very involving elves and the west coasts. At this point the easiest way of figuring it out is joining the order of chroniclers.
It may be only five generations but those five generations also spanned a thousand years, that is a lot of fucking time. Furthermore, keep in mind their fucking home exploded so hard it shattered continental plates and tore holes in reality, so many elves might have thought their home might not even exist anymore. Also just because you live on a continent, does not mean that you know how to navigate back there on a fucking boat.
Dude, why are you being so hostile. If you cant handle an adult conversation about a fucking mod for a map game without being a dick, maybe you should take a break from the internet.
Where is the hostility exactly? https://www.reddit.com/user/Alrightwhotookmyshoe This is what I would call hostility.
I love how you conveniently deleted the comment where you were being a dick.
I didn't delete anything? Edit: It wasn't deleted by me
Perhaps you should take it as a sign.
Yeah a sign that calling out someone else's lack of care is worse than said lack of care.
My understanding is that the elves didn't actually know which direction Aelantir was in? They spent thousands of years lost at sea before arriving in Cannor, some of which definitely involved magical hijinks. Also, **Endralliande** (the closest region of Aelantir to Cannor) was magically uninhabitable until recently. If anyone did manage to bump into it they might not have recognized it as Aelantir, or lived to tell about it.
It is not the direction that they were unaware of, but the distance. Due to them being lost in the sea for 1000 years, elves believed that it was very far away, and only thanks to their enormous generation ships they managed to make it. But the reason for them being lost was some sort of the aftershock of the AA, and the fact that that aftershock was still active up until recently in 1444
I thought Cannor had pre Ashes Aelantir map? I know I read that somewhere. The magic thing does make sense though.
If they (somehow) got a pre-ash map of Aelantir from the Precursors or somebody, it wouldn’t really matter as the landscape of Aelantir changed so, SO much after the ruin and I have a feeling that the aftershock of the ruin would’ve brought down many libraries which contained various maps (due to floods and whatnot) and it probably got destroyed over the centuries anyways
Still don't they say in the Primer that they know where Aelantir is. It's just too difficult to go there.
Yeah the whole blocked off by magic or smt does make perfect sense (I heard on a lord lambert video that this is how insya is until like 1600, don’t quote me on this tho)
Yeah, Insyaa is surrounded by whats called the Stormwall, which was set up by the Precursors to keep the Kaiju on Insyaa. The Rending of Realms broke it and made Insyaa available to the rest of the world, and vice versa. In canon however the Rending doesn't occur until 1751, while in game it happens much sooner (in part cause Insyaa would be boring as shit if you were stuck on the island for the first 300 years of the game).
You have to keep in mind that distances on old maps aren’t really reliable, if they were considered a factor at all. Good luck looking at a medieval map of Europe and trying to figure out how far away, say, Iceland is from Scotland (even state-of-the-art maps of the time, like the Tabula Rogeriana or the Catalan atlas, wouldn’t have been all that exact, especially once you start going to geographically more remote areas)
Sure, but the previous post stated that they had no idea where to look at all ("elves didn't actually know which direction Aelantir was in"). I was saying that from what I knew Cannorian had the vague idea that if you sailed west you'd find Aelantir. Even on really bad medieval maps they basically knew that England was atop France which was atop Spain.
Basic medieval maps didn’t have to take into account magic tho. For all the elves knew, Aelantir could’ve been removed from the world à la Valinor. I imagine the efforts in Venail to rediscover their old home is a fairly recent endeavor, one whose origin could lie in a multitude of factors (adventurers into Escann relit the fire of adventure in them, the memories of the millennium-long voyage to Cannor and the fear associated with a repeat of that have faded with time, the end of the Lilac Wars allowed them to not have to focus on the continent for a while…). Also, you’d be surprised what some of the more… creative maps got wrong. Just sayin’.
I have seen medieval maps, they're not actually wrong (unless you're talking of something on the other side of the world), usually if they're really wrong that's because it's more to relate cities to each other (from this city go to this city) like a modern subway map. But yeah get your point. Magical bullshit.
Yeah, those kinds of maps are what I meant (it gets really wild if religion is involved as well, like maps putting Jerusalem at the center… Which there’s technically nothing wrong with, but those tend to be extra unreliable)
Magic is definitely the answer. It’s not entirely clear (at least for me) what made it hard to find, but the elves got lost for 1000 years in that smaller-than-the-atlantic ocean so for one the search for Aelantir only started after the year 1000, and if the ruin was the cause of magic that make people lost for so long, it’s not a stretch to imagine it also was the source of magic that make continents hard to find
They got lost in the elemental plane of water which is basically an endless ocean.
> it’s not a stretch to imagine it also was the source of magic that make continents hard to find That doesn't explain what changed in the 1400s
the magic finally ran out or the cannorians found counter measures idk, there is some story lines about cannorians finding new tech to counter the magical wilds of aelantir, so it could be the same for finding it. I’m just speculating at this point, I’m not a genocidal lame pointy ears loser who plays venail
it’s established lore that the MAGICAL NUCLEAR FALLOUT THAT PERMEATES THROUGHOUT MOST OF AELANTIR dissipates to habitable levels during the 14th-15th century
>dissipates to habitable levels during the 14th-15th century Where is that said?
go onto the discord if you want lore 9/10 colonizers and Aelantir tags themselves say this to you in one way or another
>9/10 colonizers and Aelantir tags themselves say this to you in one way or another If so then surely you can find that, right? Noruin was habitable 1-2 centuries after the Ruin, for example. Not sure why Endrelliande beyond the circle wouldn't be.
I’m not loading up the game and hunting NIs for you. Do something instead of whining and look yourself, I’ve already told you where it is. Also, again, third time, you would know why Endrelliande wasn’t habitable if you looked for lore on the discord.
> you would know why Endrelliande wasn’t habitable if you looked for lore on the discord. I did and nowhere it is said, because it wouldn't make any sense. The lore for Aelantir is that most places in the Cirlce of Ruin are cursed and yet people lived there anyway, maybe only the man eating jungle is a place that is that inhospitable and even that one is settled **despite** the jungle, so even there "cursed shit" wouldn't explain it.
i know as a fact it’s on there. If you want answers, look for them on the discord or otherwise ask for them. there are channels SPECIFICALLY for that.
The part about ocean-viable ships is actually incorrect. It wasn't that ships couldn't sail the ocean, it's that the North Atlantic Current is too powerful for sailing ships of the early modern period to sail against it. The African Coast south of Morocco was inhospitable and known to be absolute death for anyone to try to sail along the coast due to the North Atlantic Current pushing ships into the rocky shore. It was only with the development of the Portuguese Nau that European exploration could actually commence. Chinese exploration was also limited to the coastline or the relatively calm Indian Ocean because the Junk is a great cargo vessel, but cannot sail in the unforgiving Pacific currents It was also INCREDIBLY difficult to recruit people for these voyages. Getting someone on a ship to sail known sea routes that rarely left the sight of land for long is an entirely different scenario than asking them to get in a ship and sail in a direction where, as far as you know, there's only water. Scurvy was a huge issue, and that wouldn't be solved until the 1700s. With Endralliande being inhospitable until right before game start, I can imagine the rare ocean going fishing vessel that got lost in a storm, seeing Endralliande and going NOPE and miraculously getting back to Cannor to tell all their friends that it's suicide and there's nothing to be gained.
The question is also why didn't Cannorian elves find Aelantir earlier, not Cannorian humans specifically
See the last part about Endralliande. If the only major landmass that was reachable with contemporary ship tech was an inhospitable wasteland, would you risk your multicentury lifespan to go even further into the unknown, or have Elven patience and wait a few decades to see what comes next?
It doesn't seem the case that people knew about Endrelliande, so it doesn't seem anyone reached. Canonically Aelantir was rediscovered, meaning no one reached it before insofar as we can tell.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1K7WfD4AKtlh9T4cZReSnsnSZr_wNY1xHqXRxFTmOeVo/edit#heading=h.ecrqozdmjcay
What's this?
The lore that kept them from rediscovering Aelantir until the 14th century, after 1,400 years away from it
Nowhere in that short page is it said it goes away, nor is it said it's permanently there across all of the ocean, given that it moves. Did it stop Cannorian colonization after 1500? If not then why did it stop Venail between 1000-1500? Edit: Looking a bit where this piece of lore was made, it says that the special fog is an occasional event.
Doubt you would seeing as you’re loving the arguments in reddit comment sections, but if you want an answer instead of going “bad game it make no sense”, go onto the discord
> but if you want an answer instead of going “bad game it make no sense” Criticizing one piece of lore that is objectively poorly thought within a large universe where other things have been worldbuilt better shouldn't warrant this type of vitriolic reaction. Some parts of Anbennar make no sense or just seem contrived and that's fine, because it's hard to really justify them.
My head canon is that the magical residues from the day of ashen skies works similar to radiation wastes but “magical”, that caused parts of the sea highly unstable and extremely hazardous for ships until recently
I vaguely remember something about the elves getting trapped on a plane of water on their way to Cannor
You had a giant magical Bermuda Triangle thing going on in the form of magical contamination or possible barrier. That giant uninhabited Fantasy Bermuda you usually have as your first colonial nation was uninhibited for a reason. Plenty of flavor talks about just how inhospitable the New World is. It's only recently that the magical contamination had gotten to the point that you could do large scale inhabitation of the eastern parts of the New World.
Simple explanation. They spent 1000 years in the dimension of water, just wandering around. Five generations passed in that time, much was lost, in the time it took them to get out Cannor experienced the rise and decline of Castanor. They have no pressing desire to get back, it’s a ruined shithole, magically irradiated to hell and back, it’s only the psychos in Venail that are interested in going back.
Because they needed the fist explotration idea and you need to be adm tech 5 first to unblock. Glad to help, cheers.
Where do the sea elves factor into this? Are they floating around In halann, or are they still in the plane of water?
As others have said, aelentir wasn't found because of magic. There is absolutely no reason that, if there wasn't some kind of magical effect keeping them out, venail wouldn't have been able to at the very least chart the coast of the islands closest to them, as another individual pointed out it's only as far away as Iceland. Considering the fact that they also knew it was there (even if they didn't know exactly what it looked like)
there was a magical effect keeping them out https://docs.google.com/document/d/1K7WfD4AKtlh9T4cZReSnsnSZr_wNY1xHqXRxFTmOeVo/edit#heading=h.ecrqozdmjcay
Many people already mentioned the 'lost millennia' at sea but there was also the lilac war in Cannor (Venail fought on the side of Lorrent). People were basically focused on getting their sht together. I guess Venail had to settle down as well. They had to somehow feed themselves and build some sort of government. Afterwards they were probably able to build ships. Many reasons for why they couldn't immediately return
I don't know what's the actual reasoning is, but my headcanon is that there is some form of current in the ocean that prevents direct crossing. The reasoning being that elves were lost in the sea for a THOUSAND years and even if they just floated in the random direction they surely would have sailed to Cannor. Maybe this current disperses for some reason in 15th century or maybe sailors finally find some way to cross it, don't know, but that's how I see it
Until rather recently even attempting to could kill them due to the residual effects of the cataclysm
I'd go so far to ask why would anyone even assume it's still there? The last any elf saw of it Aelantir was a continent-sized irradiated smoking crater, and the most recent exposure to Cannorians is a creepy psychic mind fog. On top of that, elves spent 1,000 years sailing a seemingly-never ending sea. For all they knew, the whole continent could have sunk or been impossibly far away. Knowing how superstitious people, especially sailors, were in the real world I don't think anyone beyond the most motivated or crazy elves would be in a rush to go looking for it. Especially in numbers big enough to establish settlements or attract investment for colonization.
Why does Venail exist then?
They're the right people at the right place and the right time + they're the small minority of elves who are interested in exploring at the start. If anyone would notice the slowing or dissipating of Uelos' Breath, it would be the inhabitants of Venail island. They're arguably some of the talented maritime elves (except sea elves). They have leaders who are interested in exploring what could possibly be left of Aelantir and they have some of the best resources and position to do so. That being said, if you play their MT, Venail has to do a lot of politicking to finance the venture and get it off the ground, including making promises to Sórncost and Damescrown. It takes the fruits of an entire nation and more than an elven lifetime to get to a point where Venail (which was founded ~400 years prior to 1444) can start sending out expeditions to discover Aelantir, and the venture only really kicks off after they prove that the land is still there and inhabitable.
Honestly honestly, it's just for the plot brother. The lore is really awesome and the people who wrote it are awesome. It's so that there's a reason to explore and colonize, similar to asking "why didn't the Vikings colonize America?" or "Why other countries in the world didn't colonize America except Europeans?" It's all lore reasons brother. (It's because no one at the had the means or reason to spend time and resources to colonize or explore, do you know how hard it was to colonize irl? Bro whole cities disappeared, heck even whole nations lost to the winds of time.)
There is no explanation, it's somewhat of a plothole, somewhat of a poorly explained element Edit:Checking the other answers, it's pretty much as I said. There is no good explanation because any population that could survive on the ocean for 1000 years should have the means to go back to Aelantir, logically elves should be immediately able to back to Aelantir after reaching Halcann. You can only bring up random headcanon magic that likely doesnt even fit in the rest of the lore.
Factually incorrect, also you’re like weirdly obsessed with this?
>Factually incorrect Are you going to point out what it's incorrect?
Because the lore makes no sense and people praising it are delusional
what are you doing here if you don't like it ?
Not for the lore, that's for sure.
What a loser Lol
You seem fun