The Vaathari people are an elven race native to the continent of, in the mortal tongue of its inhabitants, Ethrekas, a defining landmass inhabited primarily by the descendants of the Ethetian peoples. They rule the portion of Ethrekas known by its inhabitants as Tradarda, as, in centuries prior, they drove the majority of the human population into the barren and infertile deserts, the barren wasteland being referred to as Grecyda. Because of their location, they were able to continue with the practices of magic which had been gifted upon them by their gods, furthermore enabling the succession of powerful beings which might better rule over them.

The Vaathari race once belonged to the same kind of being as the Neiara, who descended from the lesser Cephareth of Arethayn. In becoming the Vaathara, they adopted worship of the Valdaen, powerful Novyi entities who inhabited within the void of darkness that could then preside over the matters of their people as a result of their summoning. Together, the three gods of the Valdaen, which include Moravir, Arovaera, and Eluvoris, taught them to be better than and overcome the darkness, and rather than the primordial absence causing them to slip into death and unknowing, they would instead be reborn within it. Regardless, the unity of thought and culture that the Valdaen instigated among the Vaathara caused them to develop increasingly dominating and persevering personalities who attempted to establish their own rule among the mortal world, and in time, they ejected the mannish peoples from the land which they would call Regaayn and thereby forcing them to live in the deserts of the west. This transition signaled the beginning of the new people, the Vaathara, who would easily become more common as the members of the Neiara turned to the new gods for sustenance and a more evolved concept of purity.

The Vaathara hold in high regard the values given to them by the Valdaen, such that the word of the Valdaen is absolute and must not be disregarded if one wants to be subject to their mediation and transformation into perfection in the afterlife. Specifically, the Valdaen taught them to achieve apotheosis through the conquering of the darkness, and it is through them that their souls may be reshaped and judged so that a perfection may occur. Because of their interweaving of culture with the Valdaen, these Novyi gods are known to sanctify the ancestor spirits of the Vaathara which pass through them and their courts, and thus, ancestor worship is commonplace and prolific throughout their people. Worship of such ancestors is held not simply in tombs that have been constructed from the pure element of dark crystal, but also in residential homes where a body is firstly held before its removal into an ancestral tomb. Upon the removal of the body from the home, there is a ceremony which indicates that the deceased have moved on from the world, and now reside in the liminal space of the tombs that are betwixt the physical world of mortality and that of the world of dark spirits that the Valdaen reside in.

Among the Vaathari people, there are many clans or families to be observed that observe the burial into a specific, familial tomb, though many times, the development or beginning of a new clan instigates its domination and integration into a preexisting, already established clan. These clans, though not being limited to people who share familial or otherwise ancestral blood, are thought to signify a kinship among them, and it is they who are most loyal to each other. In each clan, there is a patriarch or matriarch that is given a certain authority over their people, and they are thought to bear the messages of the Valdaen to be listened to by the others. This individual is thus an intermediary between the clan and their gods, and through them, the will of the Valdaen is able to be acknowledged and made familiar to their worshippers.

Though with the clan system there is a clear hierarchy and sense of duty to their superiors, there is no such concept to be observed between clans, and as such, many clans are rivals that compete for the affections of the Valdaen. It is thought that, with the Valdaen being composed of three deities of their kind, there is some favoritism among the variegated court system towards the clans. Thus, some clans are reportedly less attenuated to the demands of the Valdaen simply because of their leaders lack of involvement with the gods, thereby losing some connection with the divine. Despite this, there are still ceremonial holidays and festivities that observe the summoning of the Valdaen from the world of spirits, where they manifest and gift their people with various artifacts of a magical nature.

It is thought by the Vaathara that the Valdaen exist in a place beyond the stars, thereby possessing some power and supremacy over such elements of irradiant light and static being. Nevertheless, the Vaathara believe the stars to be a fragment of the earlier worshipped light of Caelarkhe, and that such astronomical bodies influence the occurrences of the mortal plane. Accordingly, their worship of Moravir is predicated on this, who is believed to have stolen secrets from the formation of the stars simply by residing in an era where the stars were formed. Thus, Moravir is the elder spirit of the Valdaen, who resides within the night and encapsulates both mystery and forbidden knowledge in his essence. The spirit is believed by many to be the supreme god of the Valdaen, and it is from him that the gift of their magic arises.

Owing to Moravir’s association with the stars and the night, he is associated with one of the three elements which are thought to comprise the mortal world, these being heaven, sea, and underworld, with Moravir representing the penultimate heavens. Then, Arovaera represents the sea, whose desires flow into another, and Eluvoris represents the underworld, whose flame provides the potential for growth and yet, harm. Then, Azratha, who is believed among the elven peoples to be an aspect of death and blight, is thought by these elves to be the imperfection of the dark who earlier had sowed his seeds of mortality throughout the world, and it is him that perfection occurs in spite of. Thus, Azratha is thought to be the agent by which humans incarnated into lesser beings, indicating the spirit’s relationship to humans in the tapestry that is the mortal plane.

As a race, they share the skin tone of the Arethara, being their mostly unchanged descendants. This skin tone consists of a deep golden to fair, with most being somewhere between the two states, having a golden tint but by most accounts being fair. The Vaathara also typically possess a hair color of a dirty blond, while the eyes are usually gold, which is seen as an attractive trait to the Eretia of Ethrekas. Because of this display of golden eyes by the elves, their enslaved mortals revere this eye color and acknowledge it as something divine.

They often live for a very long time, sometimes up to a thousand years, due to their great mastery of the arcane arts.

Just like other elven races, they reproduce rarely, since the lifespan of these elves are elongated compared to that of mortals.

They, along with the other elven races, possess the exquisite beauty of the divine, their slender and graceful bodies evidence of this, these bodies lithe and agile and their ears sharply defined. The facial features typical of this race are the sharp and oblique skulls that hint at such beauty and yet, at the same time, the emaciation of the dead. It is the worship of the stars that have drastically changed these elves to possess the beauty and charm of the gods they so admire and covet the values of.