Editing Elfquest (section)

===The Wolfriders===
The central characters are the [[Wolfrider]] elves, a tribe of ferocious hunter/warriors closely allied with [[Wolf|wolves]] who serve as mounts, hunting partners, and friends. Their culture is roughly comparable to the [[Iroquois]] [[Native Americans in the United States|Native American]] nation. Within their founder group, a female High One named Timmain had been the only member to retain her shape-shifting ability. When winter came, Timmain shape-shifted into a wolf to hunt food for the starving elves around her. She sank deeply into her wolf-form and eventually forgot her original identity, even mating with a native wolf to produce a half-wolf [[Chimera (mythology)|chimeric]] son whom she handed over to the Elves after teaching him as much as she could as a wolf. They gave him the name Timmorn Yellow-Eyes and he became the first Chief of the Wolfriders, bringing the wolf pack and the stranded elves together to form a close [[symbiotic]] alliance. Because of his mixed blood, Timmorn was mortal, unlike his progenitors. Timmorn then went on to sire many children, with both wolves and elves; as a result, the entire tribe and their bonded wolf pack can all trace their bloodline back to Timmorn in some way by the point at which the series begins. This mingling of wolf and elf blood produces unexpected results; aside from maintaining a feral, wolf-like mentality (known as the Way), the Wolfriders are the only elves who can, eventually, die of old age. In addition to the close bonds with their wolves, the Wolfriders also have some basic [[psychic]] [[Elves (Elfquest)#Magic|powers]] like [[telepathy]] (known as "sending"), healing, and plant manipulation. Because of the hybridization, their wolves also possess powers of telepathy, allowing Wolfriders to "send" with their wolves.

The central storyline, beginning with the series known as the ''Grand Quest'' or ''Original Quest'', focuses on the tribe during the leadership of their eleventh chief Cutter. At the start of the story, the Wolfriders' regular forest life – intermittently interspersed by conflict with superstitiously genocidal humans – is lost when the humans set fire to the forest in retaliation for a previous battle.

The Wolfriders seek refuge in the caverns of their sullen, greedy, cowardly trade partners, the trolls. The elves claim that the trolls owe them sanctuary because of all the ways the Wolfriders have helped them over the years, but the corrupt troll king, Greymung, feels humiliated for being held at knifepoint by an elf and plots revenge. The elves are taken down a long tunnel toward what the trolls claim will be a land of bright promise, but is actually a trackless [[desert]].<ref name=MarvAge/> Then their guide seals the tunnel behind them. Desperately inspired by a piece of "magic" [[lodestone]] they obtained from the trolls' caves that acts as a crude [[compass]], they make an arduous journey across the wasteland until they encounter an oasis called Sorrow's End, populated by a tribe of sedentary, agrarian elves called the [[Sun Folk]].