Corellon

Corellon, or more fully Corellon Larethian, whose titles included Creator of the Elves and the Protector, was the patron god of all elves. He was the creator and preserver of the Tel'Quessir, governing those things held in the highest esteem among elves, such as magic, music, arts, crafts, poetry, and warfare. Corellon lived in the realm of Arvandor. He approved of those who killed orcs and followers of Lolth, blessed those who aided others, and became angered at those who defiled the dead, or fled from their foes.

Description
As the personification of all things elven, Corellon was at once a warrior and a poet, a mage and a bard, and a male and a female. However, in his love of Araushnee, he settled into the aspect of a male gold elf warrior, a counterpart to her female dark elf artist. While he retained the capacity to assume female or male form, he conventionally appeared as an androgynous male elf possessed of lithe build and preternatural beauty. His avatars stood tall and displayed exceptional speed, reflexes, and grace, as well as a strength obvious to all.

He always appeared wearing a sky-blue cloak, a large amulet displaying a crescent moon within a circle, and a pair of dazzling gauntlets.

Personality
While Corellon shared the elven trait of pride that could border arrogance, this never got the better of him. He was a god with an endless willingness to learn from others and acted on it, even including mortals in his sources of discovering new information, methods, and philosophies.

Abilities
Corellon was a master swordsman and a powerful mage. He expertly wielded his longsword and longbow and could cast spells from all spheres and schools. He could cast any ritual of elven high magic like casting a normal spell and could summon one to four powerful air elementals once every 10 minutes who then served him as long as he needed them.

Corellon was immune to everything that inhibited his ability to move, caused wounds, or tampered with his mind, as well as to all illusion spells. It was impossible to hurt him with a weapon with an enchantment of less than +3.

Possessions
Corellon owned Sahandrian, his glittering longsword, and Amlath'hana, his longbow, which he could use to hit targets up to away. He did not lack for ammunition because his quiver had an endless supply of arrows.

His amulet worked like an amulet of pure good. He had a wand that worked like a staff of power, staff of the magi, and a wand of frost with unlimited uses.

Divine Realm
Corellon's realm was on Arvandor on the first layer of Arborea.

Activities
Elves believed that they were reincarnated with a definitive, final goal of perfection. Corellon, alongside Sehanine Moonbow, was the souls' guide towards that perfected state.

He wandered incognito on Toril to observe priests and craftsmen, and was even known to take a direct hand in protecting elven borders. As a general rule, he watched over the elven race as a guardian.

Seldarine
Corellon was the leader of the Seldarine, the elven pantheon, and was generally close with all of them, except Fenmarel Mestarine who was Lolth's, his former wife's, partner in adultery. He was married to Angharradh.

Others
He was allied with various deities from the Faerûnian pantheon who dealt with nature or magic as well with the leaders of the dwarven, gnomish, and halfling pantheons, because to Corellon, human expansion was a source of fear.

He was allied with his daughter Eilistraee. This relationship was polite but distant, and Erevan Ilesere was closer to his daughter than he was. He was also known to be on good terms with the other deities of magic Azuth, Mystra, and (through Sehanine) Savras.

Enemies
Corellon had a long list of enemies.

Gruumsh
According to orcs, the relationship between Gruumsh and the elven deities degenerated to hostility after the latter participated at a prank with the gods of other pantheons. They rigged a lot drawing to determine where each race was entitled to live and there were none for the orcs. Gruumsh was mocked, but destitution for the orcs was averted by Gruumsh creating a niche for the orcs to live. Henceforth, the orc pantheon was an enemy of the others, including of the elven one.

While the orcs deny it, Corellon was said to have cut out one of Gruumsh's eyes. From their mingled blood was spawned the Elf-Eater.

Dark Seldarine
Corellon's enemies from the drow pantheon only held his daughter Eilistraee as an exception.

Lolth
Lolth was once Corellon’s wife. She tried to take over his position as the head of the Seldarine and failed. For this crime, she was sentenced to banishment. She changed into a spider monster and attacked Corellon. Corellon couldn’t kill her and she escaped.

Lolth hated Corellon and, due to her inability to fight him directly, her hatred took the form of hurting surface elves. She considered this at best a secondary priority. Having fun at urging and seeing the drow fighting themselves was more important to her than putting efforts in killing the people of her former husband.

Vhaeraun
After Vhaeraun’s betrayal during the War of the Seldarine, Corellon Larethian practically cut his son off with a shilling and exiled him.

He gave up on the idea of turning his son Vhaeraun to abandon his ways. He vowed to kill him, if he ever tried to hurt his sister, which was an empty threat, for the Masked Lord did threaten the Dark Maiden’s life, without known action against him on Corellon’s part.

Interestingly the one type of magic, that Protector considered too corrupt for elves and thus suitable for drow, the usage of the Shadow Weave, was the niche Vhaeraun filled in his role as the patron of shadow magic.

Other
Other enemies of his were the goblinoid and orc pantheon and Bane, Cyric, Malar and Talos.

Prior to the War of the Seldarine
Corellon originally came from the plane of Ysgard. At some point in his life, he came up with the idea to conquer a part of Arborea by driving out the resident giants and did so and Arvandor was founded. The surviving giants went to the land, the elves abandoned in their emigration to Arvandor and founded Jotunheim on Ysgard, the first layer of Ysgard.

He used to be every elven aspect in one but fixed his form into that of a male sun elf warrior when he made Araushnee to his bride. The background of this fixation was to create a perfect balance like his "male warrior" to his wife's "female artist" and so on. He also gave dominion over the dark elves to his wife. They had twin children, the elder called Vhaeraun, the younger called Eilistraee, of whom the latter was the favored one.

By this point, his enmity with Gruumsh was quite old. According to legends, it started with him having participated at rigging lots to the detriment of Gruumsh (see Relationships). But he managed to draw the god to the negotiation table. Gruumsh attacked him there, destroying Sahandrian. Corellon fought and basically lost due to a combination of elven arrogance and support from a traitor, unbeknownst to him his wife Araushnee, that caused his blade to break. While he was running for his life to reach Arvandor, he was tracked down by the orc god and there Sehanine Moonbow appeared and restored his sword to him. The elven and orcish god fought and Corellon disarmed and gouged out one of Gruumsh's eyes. The battle than was ended because Corellon couldn't kill an unarmed and wounded enemy. Corellon then went home to Arvandor, because Gruumsh promised he would fight him if he stayed and the elven god didn't want to risk his own demise. In elven myth, drops of Corellon's blood mixed with the tears of Sehanine (or in some stories Angharradh) and from this emerged the first elves.

Back home, he was assaulted by Malar who was persuaded by Araushnee to attack Corellon, they fought and the elven god won.

War of the Seldarine
Araushnee tried to kill her husband again. This time by starting a war between an army of pantheons, that are against the Seldarine, like the goblin pantheon, bugbear pantheon, kobold pantheon, and other deities. This army was expected to lose. The real plan, Araushnee and her son and confidant Vhaeraun pursued, involved organizing matters so that Eilistraee gave her father a cursed scabbard, that drew arrows to the wearer, and let the daughter shoot her father to death by drawing her arrows. The battle started, by this point, Corellon knew that he had a traitor in his pantheon. When Ghaunadaur, an addition even outside of Araushnee's calculations, appeared, Corellon understood the depths of depravity the traitor was capable of for the ooze god could only come to Arvandor when a real force of evil was there. He was attacked by an ogre god and tried to draw his weapon but Sahandrian was stuck in the cursed sheath and Eilistraee's arrows hit him.

Two factors saved Corellon, the sturdiness of his ribcage and the fact that Eilsitraee used ogre-sized arrows, thus getting stuck in his ribcage. Araushnee tried to poison him with a dose of Eilistraee's hunting poison, but was saved by Sehanine Moonbow. The moon goddess created his new wife Angharradh with Aerdrie Faenya and Hanali Celanil. After healing her husband, Araushnee and Vhaeraun were on trial. Sehanine recounted her story and the sentence was banishment, but the nature of the banishment between mother and son was different in that the latter had still the option to return while the former had not. Eilistraee followed willingly into exile on request of her brother for she had visions of undefined dark times, that she believed could be stopped if she went into exile, too. Said dark times turned out to be the rise of the drow.

Araushnee was declared a tanar'ri and after a short fight against her former husband escaped.

First Flowering
Around, non-dark elves came up with the idea to create a dark elf-free piece of land, they tried to create it, and would have botched it if not for Corellon's and other elven gods' direct intervention. Evermeet was created with the First Sundering, the literal sundering of an entire continent, as a side effect. The Protector and Angharradh appeared before Starleaf and gave her the Tree of Souls around.

Crown Wars
The sun elf nation of Aryvandaar wanted to get rid of the dark elves as a species. Their chosen method for doing this was to devise a ritual, that tied the dark elves to faerzress tying them to the Underdark and keeping them there. Towards that end, Corellon's magic, channeled through his priests and high mages, turned all dark elves into drow and they were forced into the Underdark around.

After the Fourth Crown War, Corellon urged the elves to form the Elven Court. They decided House Vyshaan to be the responible party for the Crown Wars and Corellon mandated elves in general to kill them. The Fifth Crown War started and ended thus around.

Founding Time
The activity of the Seldarine during the Crown Wars, especially the Descent and the killing of the entire House Vyshaan with Corellon's mandate made the sun elves who founded Siluvanede wary of the elven pantheon and their society was a godless one, that eventually gave rise to the race of the fey'ri.

Age of Humanity
Some time before 714 DR, in other words before the fall of Cormanthor, elves started to feel weary about competing with humans over land, and they wanted a piece of land for themselves that they did not need to compete over with the encroaching human expansion. Under Corellon, the Seldarine started the Retreat, a mystical compulsion felt by elves to abandon their lands for Evermeet. Most of Corellon's orders followed the call and left Faerûn.

In 1379 DR, a High Magic ritual performed by Q'arlynd Melarn transformed hundreds among those drow who were not tainted by Wendonai's blood or who followed Eilistraee back into their original dark elven form, and Corellon thus permitted the souls of the newly transformed dark elves to enter Arvandor.

Post-Spellplague
After the Spellplague, Corellon's power stayed that of a greater deity, something that couldn't be said about the other deities of the Seldarine.

Worshipers
Among Corellon's worshipers were elves, eladrin, and their descendants, as well as many bards. His clerics wore silver circlets and gossamer robes of the brightest azure. One of his most frequent holy days was the quarter moon and Corellon was worshiped at natural geological formations with beautiful objects sacrificed to him monthly.

Orders

 * Fellowship of the Forgotten Flower: The fellowship was a loosely structured organization made of elven knights or elven warriors dedicated to the recovery of lost elven relics from long-abandoned realms.

Background
James M. Ward created Corellon Larethian for the Deities & Demigods (1980).