The oldest creation account I have found resembles, in broad form, the stories still told in many temples today, though its earliest versions are rather more complicated. In them, the Goddess of Light and the Goddess of Darkness were both present at the beginning. Neither stood apart from creation, though records show only the Goddess of Light participated in the act of creating the world.
The first people were said to be six pairs, twelve individuals in all, created by divine magic and raised from infancy by the two goddesses within a vast, fertile paradise. They were not cast out, punished, or driven away. They simply grew beneath the care of their creators until the Goddesses departed the mortal world and ascended once more into their divine realms. Only then did the six pairs and their descendants leave that first homeland and spread outward.
I suspect some remnant of this story survives in the names the aelvar peoples still give themselves. The Váel’sarí, the pale-aelvar, are the Children of the Night; my own Saelári, the high-aelvar, the Children of the Sky; and the Letheri, the wood-aelvar, the Children of the Forest. Ancient fragments imply that the remaining three founding pairs possessed similar names, though I have yet to recover what they were or what became of their descendants. I have my theories, however. I will not boor you with such theories unless I believe they are accurate based on the preponderance of the evidence I have collected.
More intriguing is what the oldest A’lárian versions say happened when the Goddesses departed. Their ascension supposedly left the Twelve Shards behind in the mortal world. Later high-aelvar and wood-aelvar traditions contain no trace of this detail, suggesting it was forgotten sometime after the Binding.
Whether this is history concealed inside mythology or merely mythology that has survived history, I cannot yet say. Still, twelve founders and twelve shards appearing together in our oldest surviving traditions is a coincidence I find increasingly difficult to dismiss. The number twelve is considered a sacred number according to g to all races.
— from the research notes of Zyr’Magi Tes’Lothen “the Blade”, high-aelv scholar, mage, and swordsman
