What Is the Bois d'or?

When I dreamed up the idea for the magical elven forest at 16 years of age, I never thought that I would be writing about it nearly twenty years later. Back then I was taking High School French classes and decided to call the forest the "Bois d'or" (the Golden Wood). I thought that this would have a neat twist, naming the elvish kingdom in French.

In the Bois d'or, a Queen once ruled the land, but she ran off to an island, foresaking her right to rule and abandoned the elven kingdom.

But back in the elvish woods, various nobles attempted to rule the kingdom, waiting for the long lost descendant of the Queen to return.

Dorothea (daughter to Mohan the Wise in his elvish form) becomes the Queen and rules the land in peace and prosperity between the ending of "Dorothea's Song" and the opening of "Amelion's Song."

To prove herself worthy of becoming Queen, Dorothea becomes a Protectorate of the Bois d'or and she receives the Crystal Tear, a gem of power, from the wizard Mohan. Her ability to use the magical gem helps raise her in the ranks. Through her helping to save the Bois d'or from the Witches War, she becomes the Queen of the elvish lands.

Life in the Bois d'or is fairly simple. The Protectorates are the guardians of the elvish kingdom and an all volunteer army was instituted at the end of the Witches War to defend the forest against all intruders.

The elves of The Realms tend to be isolationists. They live in the Bois d'or, raise crops, tend gardens, research magic, and have a full life of creating wonderful pieces of art and music. Elves tend to not associate with humans if at all possible. Only a handful of elves travel from human city to city to experience trade, share knowledge, and exchange cultural information (dance, art, literature).

Elves in the Bois d'or live in treehouses that contain (what humans think of) tight ropes that connect one house to the next. With the climate being warm and comfortable year round, most elves rest outside at night under the stars. Humans, who have visited the Bois d'or, find the lack of structures disturbing and somewhat uncivilized. However, elves have created extensive passageways underneath the ground, allowing themselves to visit any portion of the kingdom with relative ease. The need for these passageways became apparent during the Witches War--elves were caught unaware during the invasion and many lost their lives.

As with any nobility of any race, elven nobels are haughty, out of touch with the real world, and greedy. Dorothea becoming Queen could be equated to a blue collar worker suddenly rising up and setting herself up as ruler. The other nobles frowned upon Dorothea's "common" ways yet she ruled extremely well and was popular with her subjects.

In "Amelion's Song," Queen Dorothea is missing, her daughter Amelion searches for her mother, and Prince Holven (son to Dorothea and the human Conulas) is attending a peace treaty signing with the humans in the city of Isil. Tensions are high in the elvish land. The borders to the Bois d'or are closed to humans and have been for several years. General Tolhelas is in charge of the army and with the Queen missing, leadership has fallen on his shoulders while his Prince is away.

Magic is rich and vivid in the Bois d'or, but secret and well hidden. Any human visitor would be hard pressed to see anything exotic or different than any other wood. However, with the fear from the human invasion still vivid in their minds, elves hide away their power and strength as a means of protecting their land.