Back to the Wilderlands of High Fantasy - Hacking the Wilderlands With Castles & Crusades - Spies of Light Elf By Bryan Hinnen

 ""The Spies of Lightelf is the second booklet in our series of works titled "The Wilderness Project". Each booklet covers an area of wilderness in the Lands of the City States in great detail: any villages in the area have various establishments and prominent NPCs listed, history and way of life of the people briefly described, and a list of interesting events and encounters for passing adventurers....

This particular booklet contains maps of twenty-two five-mile hexes in the area of the Wood of the Gnomes, including the Gnomes' village of Lightelf and the village of Palewood, inhabited by Grey Elves." 

So we're going to pick back up from yesterday's blog post here & dive head long into the Wood of the Gnomes, including the Gnomes' village of Lightelf and the village of Palewood, inhabited by Grey Elves. Spies of Light Elf By Bryan Hinnen isn't so much of a module as it is an adventure tool kit to detail the area around the village of Lightelf itself. 

The Gnome village of Lightelf & the Gnomewoods in  our own City State of the Invincible Overlord's campaign was a strong hold of Fae elemental magic. Magicks that came from the Grey Elves. And our own campaign info on the Grey Elves came from the two sources the Advanced Dungeons & Dtagons first edition Monster Manual II & the Greyhawk rpg setting. According to the Greyhawk Wiki entry on Grey Elves; "Grey elves built the old elven cities which now stand abandoned or were given up to other races as they moved through. They are more given to intellect than other elves, but physically weaker. They practice the oldest elven arts, but hide from the eyes of younger, shorter lived races in their isolated settlements. Once inhabiting mountains, many Grey elves have now settled in meadows and forests.They are thinner than high elves, and have either silver hair and amber eyes or pale golden hair and violet eyes. The latter sort are generally called faeries^[1]. They wear complex gowns and flowing robes, favouring clothes the colour of pure driven snow, the noon day sun, silver and gold, with accessories of polished leather, and contrasting colours and jewels. Their cloaks are often deep blue or purple. For battle grey elves favour plate or chainmail, with winged helmets""
So the gnomes move into the lands of the Gnome Woods & take over the old Grey Elven works. They find the Elven elemental magical knowledge & practice it. For Castles & Crusades this comes from the Castles & Crusades Adventurers Spellbook

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The magi of the City State fear these elemental magics for a multiplicity of reasons. They enable the Gnome wood to be a 'free area' & there is still the unknown Grey Elves lurking at the edges of the wildness. A part of the Wilderlands but yet not a part of it!? This has lead to massive speculation that they may have their own reasons for passing their magicks onto the Gnomes. 
The Gnomes themselves are escapees from the Fae courta. So the gnomes' pass their knowledge onto the local Neolithic & Bronze age style people's magus or shamans to give the human tribes a fighting chance. The wilderness is rife with monsters just look at Spies of Light Elf's encounter tables. 

Make no mistake Spies of Light Elf continues the Wilderlands tradition of vast tracks of unexplored wilderness that adventurers can & will get themselves into trouble. There's 25 miles of wilderness surrounding the villages & wilds of Gnome Woods and it's right in the description; "' For Castles & Crusades using Spies of Light Elf requires the Castles & Crusades Monster & Treasure book as a must 

The real conflict within Spies of Light Elf By Bryan Hinnen is two fold. One is the Gnomes & Grey Elves vs the humans or the humans vs the wilderness. The latter being the real conflict as the Gnome Woods present actual Non human areas for the PC's to adventure within & perhaps come into 

conflict within. But this isn't  the only area where adventurerers can get into big trouble