The Bosmer, or Wood Elves, are the Merish people of Valenwood. They descend from Aldmeri ancestors but developed into a distinct culture through their relationship with Y'ffre, the Green, and the Green Pact.
During the Age of Myth, Valenwood is not yet unified under the Camoran Dynasty. Bosmeri society is divided among clans, local rulers, sacred communities, and forest settlements that share broad religious traditions without forming a single centralized kingdom.
Y'ffre is central to Bosmeri religion.
Bosmeri tradition remembers Y'ffre as the god who helped give stable form to the world after the chaos of the Dawn. The Green is therefore more than wilderness. It is the living order of Valenwood and the sacred relationship between the Bosmer, animals, plants, spirits, and the forms established by Y'ffre.
This relationship shapes law, food, construction, hunting, ritual, and social identity.
The Green Pact is the defining religious covenant of Bosmeri life.
Its most famous requirement is that the vegetation of Valenwood must not be harmed. Bosmer therefore rely heavily on animal products, bone, leather, horn, stone, imported wood, and other materials that do not require cutting the living Green.
The Pact should not be reduced to simple environmentalism. It is a sacred agreement concerning the proper place of the Bosmer within Valenwood and the stable forms granted by Y'ffre.
Its interpretation can vary between communities, especially in how strictly particular customs are enforced.
Traditional Bosmeri diets rely heavily on meat, animal fats, insects, eggs, dairy, and other non-plant foods.
The strictest interpretations of the Green Pact also produce the custom later called the Meat Mandate, in which the bodies of slain enemies or animals should not be wasted.
This can include ritual cannibalism under specific circumstances.
Not every Bosmeri community practices these customs in exactly the same way, and foreign accounts often exaggerate them. Even so, the idea that flesh should be consumed rather than discarded is an important part of traditional Pact observance.
Bosmeri settlements are adapted to the forest rather than imposed upon it.
Communities may build with bone, hide, stone, clay, imported timber, or naturally shaped living structures. Some settlements are constructed around enormous trees without cutting them, while others occupy caves, clearings, elevated platforms, or areas shaped by older magical traditions.
Bosmeri architecture is therefore highly regional.
A settlement is often designed around the existing forest rather than clearing the land first.
Bosmeri political life is decentralized.
Clans, chiefs, elders, hunters, priests, and local rulers govern different communities. Alliances may be formed through marriage, ritual, trade, or shared threats, but there is no permanent authority controlling all of Valenwood.
The absence of the later Camoran Dynasty is important to the campaign period.
A traveler crossing Valenwood may pass through several Bosmeri territories with different leaders, customs, and interpretations of the Green Pact.
Hunting is central to Bosmeri life.
It provides food, clothing, tools, trade goods, and materials for construction. Hunters also serve as scouts, guides, defenders, and sources of knowledge about the forest.
Skill with bows is especially common, but Bosmeri warfare should not be reduced to archery alone. Spears, knives, traps, poisons, animal companions, ambushes, and mobility through difficult terrain are equally important.
A skilled Bosmeri hunter knows not only how to kill prey, but how to move through the Green without disturbing it unnecessarily.
The Wild Hunt is one of the most feared traditions associated with the Bosmer.
According to Bosmeri belief, participants can abandon the stable shapes established by Y'ffre and become an uncontrolled mass of shifting predatory forms.
The Hunt is invoked only under extreme circumstances because it represents a rejection of ordinary identity itself.
Those who participate are not expected to return unchanged.
The Wild Hunt therefore serves as both a weapon and a warning about the chaos that existed before stable form.
Bosmeri magic is strongly influenced by the Green, animals, hunting, spirits, transformation, and the traditions of Y'ffre.
Magic may be practiced through formal spellcasting, song, ritual, animal communication, herbal knowledge obtained through trade, or local spiritual traditions.
Shapechanging has particular cultural importance because Bosmeri religion preserves memories of a time when forms were less stable.
Ordinary transformation magic should not be confused with the Wild Hunt, which is far more dangerous and profound.
The Green Pact makes trade unusually important.
Because many Bosmer avoid harvesting living vegetation from Valenwood, imported timber, plant fibers, fruits, grains, herbs, and other plant products can become valuable goods.
Bosmer export meat, hides, bone, horn, crafted goods, animal products, and forest resources gathered without violating local religious law.
Trade connects Valenwood with Summerset, the Khajiiti lands, the Heartland, and coastal communities.
Foreign merchants who understand local restrictions can become highly valuable intermediaries.
Bosmer and Altmer recognize shared ancestry but have developed very different societies.
Altmeri observers may regard Bosmeri life as undisciplined, rustic, or overly shaped by Valenwood. Bosmer may consider Altmeri obsession with hierarchy and ancestral purity unnecessarily rigid.
Despite these differences, religious overlap remains significant, especially through Y'ffre and other older Aldmeri gods.
Trade, scholarship, and migration maintain connections between the two peoples even when cultural attitudes differ sharply.
Bosmeri communities frequently interact with neighboring Khajiit through trade, border disputes, migration, and local alliances.
These relationships vary considerably by region and should not be treated as permanent hostility.
The Imga also inhabit Valenwood and possess their own complicated relationship with Bosmeri and Altmeri culture. Some Imga admire or imitate aspects of Altmeri society, while others maintain independent traditions.
Valenwood is therefore not exclusively Bosmeri.
Bosmeri ideas of territory do not always resemble the surveyed borders of later kingdoms.
A clan may define its land through rivers, hunting ranges, sacred trees, migration routes, ancestral places, or agreements with neighboring communities.
The Green itself can complicate fixed geography.
Forests grow, paths vanish, enormous trees move, and supernatural forces may alter familiar routes.
Knowledge of local terrain is therefore a form of political power.
During the Late Merethic Era, the Bosmer are an established but politically fragmented people. Valenwood contains numerous clans and settlements bound together more strongly by Y'ffre and the Green Pact than by any common ruler.