The following commentary was issued from someone who survived the Great Slaughter, in the year 1420 of the Golden Realm, about 120 years ago. While the world has made great progress since those times, the presence of racism and the continuing troubles with imperialism and clusterism render the potential for genocide an ever-present threat.

Name: Akina Ojoba
Sex/Gender: Female/Femme
Ethnicity: Tarson Elves
Country (before the Tarson Wars): Tarson
Country (during/after? the Tarson Wars): Tolsiki Empire

This is the record of Akina Ojoba, of the late great state of Tarson, which was once the proud home of the Tarson Elves. We were once the best and brightest of elvenkind, back in days of old. We built fairy towers and we crafted rainbows, we kept trolls at bay and played pranks on leprechauns, we loved our forests and built golden cities. It was a lovely time, in days of old.

I grew up in the middle classes. Our home was nothing spectacular, a rowhouse in Anselheim, the national capital and largest city, a teeming port with electricity and all the modern amenities. We had amusement parks in the days of old - that's, like, 1400 or before, right? About 20 years before the Slaughter and maybe 18 before the war. We lived on the Princes' Canal, near the grand clock of the Western Temple. How marvelous were the chimes of the clock then! Before the great dictator of the Tolsiki came to power, such an evil man, a person of numerous brutal horrors. He gave his name to the Tolsiki Empire: he was Jokim Tolsik. By species he was a human, by race he was a Pompard; he loved the notion of both human and Pompard superiority and he came to power in what was then the Republic of Pompia. It was named after the city, you know? Pompia itself. I've actually been there once, as a little girl. It was all sorts of tall buildings and wondrous machines, all rather foreign, metal and steel and glass. Nothing like our familiar woodwork and cobblestones and occasional brick building.

I didn't think much of Jokim Tolsik before. He was yet another bragging politician in a foreign country. We had our own politics to worry about. Then came the Great Earthquake of Jurch 11, 1411, which shook the region of Pohaka. Both Pompia and Tarson felt it. It bent buildings and shattered glass in Pompia, raining shards on numerous people, each shard shining, sparkling, glittering. In Tarson, buildings rattled, timbers fell down, whole walls of masonry collapsed, cracks opened and shut in the ground, and some 42 people, mostly elves but also including the occasional human and maybe a couple of trolls, were killed. The earthquake was followed by the tsunami, which devastated the Pohaka area, including a magic factory where electricity, spells, and various other things, were produced. A great wave rose and smashed the mages’ house, drowning the mages and causing several spells to be unbound. The result was an enormous magical excursion which shattered houses and froze time in the vicinity of the magic factory, as well as producing eddies and local areas in which time ran faster or slower. Some folks were caught up in those eddies, suffered rapid aging in part of their bodies, and died. New mages were called in to stop the carnage, but much damage was done and Magic-Factory Town was off limits for five years.
The upshot of the Jurch 11 disaster was a great recession that swept both Pompia and Tarson, with scarce electricity and some goods shortages. People were thrown out of work, and dragons went unfed. Hard times indeed.
Jokim Tolsik blamed the earthquake and magical excursion on the elves, and particularly those of the Tarsonian nation. The elves had long been bankers and middlemen in his country, as well as hired hands and skilled magic-wielders. Well, Jokim Tolsik said the elves were responsible for all the world’s misdeeds and sins. To hear him tell it, WE supposedly wheedled Pompia out of its hard earned money and aggressively wielded magic against Pohaka and Pompia. WE had a supposed blood enmity since time immemorial. WE supposedly used leprechaun and human blood in demonic magical rituals and drank blood from a gilded cup. WE were also inferior to the humans, and especially the Pompards, the true generators of ideas and strength, or so Tolsik said.