Deep within the isolated forests of Okami and the wild woodlands between the League and Thenol lives a race of elves frozen in time: The Hulderfolk. Buy Time of the Dragon: https://www.dmsguild.com/en/product/16960/time-of-the-dragon-2e?affiliate_id=50797
Transcript
Cold Open
Bound by an ancient grievance forgotten by history, this mysterious race of elves has spent over three millennia completely vanishing from human sight, weaponizing time, illusions, and deceptions against anyone who dares cross their borders.
Intro
Welcome to another DragonLance Saga episode. My name is Adam, and today we are stepping into the deep, untouched woodlands of Taladas to uncover the most mysterious elven subrace on Krynn: The Hulderfolk. I’d like to take a moment and thank the DLSaga members and Patreon patrons, and invite you to consider becoming a member or patron — you can even pick up Dragonlance media or get $10 by signing up to StartPlaying.Games using my affiliate links. I’m referencing the Time of the Dragon boxed set for this information. If I leave anything out or misspeak, please leave a comment below.
Discussion
The name “Hulderfolk” literally translates to “Hidden People” in the ancient tongue of Taladas, stemming from their foremost tradition: Shunning. Millennia ago, the elves took slight to a long-forgotten act committed by humans, prompting the entire elven nation to forgo contact with the world of man. While surface elves eventually forgot the explicit code of shunning due to human expansion, the Hulderfolk never did.
At its core, shunning means not being seen. If humans settle near a hulder wood, the elves initially engage in psychological harassment—stealing tools, loosing livestock, and luring children into the thickets. If that fails, they move deeper into the forest. Because their homelands are steadily shrinking, this harassment has turned violent, evolving from harmless tricks to terrifying, injurious spells.
Their camouflage is practically supernatural. Cloaked in the deep woods, they can walk right through human farms without alerting the farmers or their livestock; only dogs seem capable of sensing their presence. Bards often describe the Hulderfolk’s domain as a separate world entirely, crossable only through invisible borders.
While shunning forbids standard interactions with humanity, it explicitly encourages trickery. The Hulderfolk take great delight in executing three types of tricks: time, deception, and gifting.
Tricks of time are the most legendary. A human traveler is invited into a quiet clearing to share a lavish meal or escape a storm. The hosts are perfectly courteous, pliering their guest with marvelous food until they fall into an exhausted sleep. The traveler awakes in the exact spot they met the stranger, only to discover that centuries or decades have passed in the outside world. The text notes a tale of one man who fell asleep a century before the Cataclysm and woke up two hundred years after it!
Tricks of deception usually target attractive young men and women. An elf will visit them alone in the evening, posing as a suitor or an absent spouse. Using natural grace to charm the victim, they lull them into making binding oaths. Humans falsely assume these promises are easily broken, but the Hulderfolk possess magical enforcement to ensure the oaths are kept.
Tricks of gifting are rare and bittersweet. If an elf is genuinely moved by a human’s romantic passion or artistic spirit, they will grant a magical gift—but always at a steep cost. A farmer may gain supernatural prosperity but lose his son to the woods. A bard may be gifted a flawless, wonderful singing voice, but go completely blind in the process.
Despite their trickery, the Hulderfolk live by absolute, unyielding cosmic laws. A Hulderfolk physically cannot break their word once given to a human; breaking an oath is entirely inconceivable to them. Furthermore, humans can protect themselves if they know the rules of the game: if a Hulderfolk is touched by cold steel—an extremely rare, special metal—their magic is automatically negated and they take physical damage. They cannot enter human places of worship, and if an individual’s secret true name is spoken aloud, that specific elf must immediately flee and can never return.
The most sinister tradition kept alive by the Hulderfolk is the practice of changelings. Elves will sneak to the cradle of a human newborn, stealing the healthy infant and leaving a sickly elven baby in its place. While magic disguises the switch, a mother can always tell. The stolen human child is raised with love and care by the elves, though they are never fully accepted as one of their own.
Remarkably, the Hulderfolk acknowledge this as a debt. If the human family raises the sickly elven changeling with genuine love, the Hulderfolk will secretly bless the household with immense good luck and success. If the humans treat the elven child poorly, the Hulderfolk will bring absolute ruin upon them.
The Hulderfolk look exactly like normal elves, but their clothing reflects an ancient era when they were truly the “Children of the Forest.” The men wear cloaks woven from green leaves and a wondrously supple bark-cloth, while the women wear flowing, diaphanous gowns made of spun spider silk and fresh flowers. They do not mine or forge metal, relying entirely on ancient weapons traded from the dwarves millennia ago, favoring light elven chain, shortbows, spears, and elegant fencing blades.
They possess no villages or visible government. They build no houses, viewing the entire forest as their home, the sky as their ceiling, and a hollowed-out tree trunk or decorated burrow as a simple sleeping quarter. They are ruled by a King and Queen, but their court features no titles, politicians, or military commanders. The only official offices belong to the Tale-Spinners, who sing at court banquets. Personal disputes are settled purely by ancient custom or by the King’s personal decree.
While they despise humans, they hold no animosity toward gnomes, dwarves, or goblins. Other elven subraces, like the Silvanaes, are initially welcomed as long-lost kin, but the cultural divide is too immense to bridge. Modern elves cannot comprehend the primeval simplicity of the Hulderfolk, and the Hulderfolk constantly fear their children will be lured away by the modern comforts of their cousins.
Outro
But that is all the time I have to talk about The Hulderfolk. Would your adventuring party survive a night in a Hulderfolk clearing, or would they find themselves hunting down an elven thief to recover a stolen changeling baby? Leave a comment below.
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Is this something you two do regularly? I’ve heard married couples do some strange things but this seems kind of weird…
