A reasonable person would assume that of all people in Aleona, elves would have the most knowledge about the time known as the Age of Elves, or at least the most questions about the period. And yet, it seems that elves barely give it any thought. Many half-blood elves have become accustomed to imperial revisions to history, and the more traditional elves don't have written accounts. Their emphasis on oral history, although rich, has transformed over the centuries from what may have once been historical fact to vague myths and legends.
What we do know is that there were some number of elven cities, and they were supposedly bigger than even Sentra. They were places of wonder where magic was stronger than it is now, and devices akin to those crafted by today's magewrights, but more complex. The elves ruled these cities, and all other people lived under them. The greatest of these cities, and perhaps center of the ancient elven government, was Aleorinia.2
There are many fantastical tales about the ancient elven cities. Some stories mention that whole cities could fly amongst the clouds, and others talk about towers reaching beyond the sky. These truly dramatic scales lead me to believe one of two things. Since no sign of any ancient elven city has been found, then either the grandeur of the cities have been mightily exaggerated, or there was a cataclysm great enough to destroy the cities utterly. Although Imperial historians will disagree vehemently with my opinion, I believe in the latter. The idea of these elven-built cities seems hard for my human counterparts to imagine, but I posit that not only is such a thing possible, but eminently likely.
Reader, the Imperial historians will have you believe that the cities of myth could never be real and only the humans' grand cities could even approach such magnificence. Yet we know that orcs built cities of their own, and we have heard from many dwarves that their cities, although underground, are equal in size to any human city. And although not nearly as large, the Caithan cities use their strange powers to help grow and support their population in ways that ancient elves might have done with their own arcane skills.
To this day, elves have not built any large communities. Although some have acclimated to life in the Empire and have settled down in human towns and cities, traditional elves are nomads and wanderers. Typically roaming the Sabein Desert, they never stay long in one place. Other elves are known to travel from settlement to settlement in caravans. Why is there no elven-centered city? The elves remember "The Fall of Aleorinia" as a time when their former greatness led only to a bitter end. (One does not have to be an award-winning historian to see potential parallels to the rise and fall of the ancient elves and the hubris of today's humans.3)