What is Elfquest??? You heathen, you! You culturally deprived scoundrel! How can you have lived as long as you have, be intelligent enough to work a computer in order to get here, and not know Elfquest??!?! But I am merciful... Instead of casting you out for such a question, I shall enlighten you on the World of Two Moons.
Elfquest was created by Wendy and Richard Pini, and was first published in the 1970s. It has taken many forms over the years, including the origional quest, Seige at Blue Mountain, Kings of the Broken Wheel, Dreamtime, Shards, Blood of Ten Cheifs, The Hidden Years, Khavi, Jink, The Rebels, New Blood, Wavedancers, A Gift of her Own, Bedtime Stories, the Big Elf Gathorium, and The Wolfriders' Guide to the World of Elfquest, as well as the various collections, graphic novels, and anthologies.
Countless years ago on the World of Two Moons, the Palace came from the sky and settled to the ground. The doors opened, and out came the High Ones, bringing with them the trolls and the preservers. The humans at that time were primitive, and in fear they attacked and killed many of the High Ones. They were the Firstcomers, struggling to survive in a world where their magic so depended upon for survival flowed weakly.
Timmain was a Firstcomer, a High One, who learned to work with the strange world and lived in harmony with it. She was a shapechanger, taking on the forms of many plants and animals. During the Long White-Cold, Timmain took on the shape of a wolf in order to hunt for her people and provide them food. However, as time wore on she seemed to become less and less an elf and more and more a wolf. Eventually she had a cub, fathered by the leader of the wolf pack.
Thus was born the half-elf, half-wolf known as Timmorn Yellow-Eyes, who came to lead a tribe of the decendants of the Firstcomers that later came to be known as the Wolfriders. However, other groups of the High Ones' children also survived, those known include the Sun Villagers, the Gliders, the Go-Backs, and the Wavedancers.
Many countless years after the Palace of the High Ones crashed onto the World of Two Moons, Cutter, Blood of Ten Chiefs, Timmorn's decendant, and leader of the Wolfriders would recover the lost Palace and bring together four of the scattered tribes. Chief of changes, the "origional quest" tells the story of his tribe from the moment their world was shattered to the recovery of the Palace of the High Ones, and continues to tell their story in other series. That is the history of elves.
Elves have pointed ears, four fingers, and average height is about four feet tall. However, very very old pureblooded elves do grow taller, usually to about five or six feet. Pureblooded elves will live until something kills them, and are immortal in that regard. Wolfriders, whose elf blood is mixed with that of the wolves, will live only so long before they die of old age, but nonetheless they can live to be well over 500 years old. However, all elves have a spirit that lives on forever after death. Many elves have soul names to guard their spirits (it's complicated). Pureblooded elves' spirits are bound to the Palace of the High Ones, but Wolfriders' spirits can return to the Palace or wander free on the World of Two Moons.
Elves are inherently magical, part of the High Ones' legacy. All elves have the ability to "send," though the power is sometimes dormant and they often cannot perform any other kinds of magic. Sending is a kind of telepathy from spirit to spirit. It is the touching of minds and spirits, rather than simple communication. Thus it is the purest form of communication possible, and lying in a sending is near impossible. Door and Winnowill are the only elves known to be able to lie in a sending. The benefit of sending is that humans and trolls (often the enemies of the elves) generally don't know about this ability of the elves, allowing them to communicate silently and over long distances, although range is limited.
Other kinds of magic workers on the World of Two Moons include rockshapers, treeshapers, shapechangers, healers, gliders, floaters, watershapers, fire-starters, and fleshshapers. They are what they sound like. There are also other kinds of magic, including pain-sending/anti-healing, black-sending, sheilding, deep-sensing, mental sheilding, hypnosis, and astral projection (the "sending out" of an elf's spirit onto the astral plane).