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WolfriderIn the comic book Elfquest, created by Wendy and Richard Pini, the Wolfriders are a fictional tribe of elves on the World of Two Moons. The Wolfriders, as the name suggests, are allied with wolves, which they ride while hunting, but the alliance goes deeper than mere social bonding. The Wolfriders originated when Timmain of the High Ones shapeshifted into a female wolf and mated with the alpha wolf of a wild pack. The resulting offspring, Timmorn Yellow-eyes, was a hybrid of elf and wolf, and became the first Wolfrider chief. Over the centuries Timmorn's blood has become diluted, but gives all Wolfriders characteristics unique to their tribe. In particular, they have generally greater physical strength and endurance and have much sharper senses of smell and hearing than most elves. The presence of wolf blood also gives them facial hair, and has important consequences in terms of their longevity. For several centuries the Wolfriders lived in a forest known as The Holt, hunting and gathering and living in balance with nature, until a conflict with humans resulted in the forest's destruction. Led by their eleventh chief, Cutter, the Wolfriders sought refuge with King Greymung's trolls in their underground caverns, but Greymung distrusted the elves and tricked them into a tunnel leading to a harsh desert. After several days journeying through the desert the Wolfriders discovered the oasis village of Sorrow's End, populated by a hitherto unknown elf tribe called the Sun Folk. After an initial skirmish, caused partly by Cutter's paranoia at the trolls' betrayal and partly by his Recognition - and abduction - of the village healer Leetah, the Wolfriders and Sun Folk became friends and allies, learning new skills from each other. Their use of magic before the destruction of The Holt was limited to utilitarian powers directly related to forested wilderness survival like telepathy, healing, plant manipulation etc. However, upon arrival at Sorrow's End, the Wolfriders eventually learned various other powers from the community's elders. Most of the Wolfriders subsequently left Sorrow's End in order to find an unknown evil force that had caused the spirit of the Sun Folk's leader Savah to be trapped outside her body. This turned out to be an elf, Winnowill of the Gliders, a decadent and stagnating tribe cloistered within Blue Mountain. After a bitter struggle the Wolfriders temporarily defeated Winnowill, and the Gliders' leader Lord Voll, no longer in thrall to her, promised to take the Wolfriders to the lost Palace of the High Ones, where they would learn once and for all the secret of their origins. But the Palace was jealously guarded by a warlike tribe of trolls under King Guttlekraw. Voll was killed, Cutter was grievously wounded, and only the intervention of another elf tribe, the Go-backs, saved the Wolfriders from being wiped out. Joining forces with the Go-backs, the Wolfriders defeated Guttlekraw and returned to the Palace, where they did indeed learn the truth of their origins. But the Palace was not a home, and so the Wolfriders established a new holt within the woods near Blue Mountain. This covers the events in the original Elfquest series, 1978 - 1984.
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