d8 reasons to fear the legacy of the predator queens

Springing from this take on how we get more elves - "An elf who wishes to produce offspring selects an ordinary animal and begins teaching it" from David J. Prokopetz - and extrapolating what happens when the elves abandoned their works in progress.

In the time after the elves abandoned this land but before the animal-ling populations stablised and the current crowns and thrones were established there was a period of bloody conflict. Nothing so organised as war, it was the brute struggle of the strong against the weak, known as the time of the predator queens.

Abandoned by their one-time mentors and guides, the animal-lings picked up those things the elves left behind and tried to carry on. Those who mostly swiftly turned the tools of the elves to the purpose of subjugating their peers rose to become bloody-handed rulers. They waged war on one another for territorial domination until the lands were depleted and their realms collapsed beneath them. Many of the lords of that time were creatures that have since passed to memory - their energies spent on building thrones of skulls instead of self-sustaining populations of their kin.

Now all that remains are the horrible remnants found in their old fortresses, filled with tools of the elves made into curse-like dangers. Those places are shunned, only those power-mad for vile weapons would even consider venturing there.

d8 Things found within the shunned lairs of the predator queens
1. Dreadful warbeasts - made with the stolen and misunderstood knowledge of the elven shapers
2. Dominator crowns - woven with corrupted strands of elven cultural induction aids
3. Feral cults - known as were-cults, where attempts to create dominator crowns fail and the strands of enchantment magic flail wildly and unpredictably. The worst of these attract the attention of one of the dark gods and become stabilised on a new path but even the minor ones are a deadly peril for all those unfortunate to encounter them and be dragged to their 'inductions'
4. Self-growing weapons - corrupted from elven organic battlegear. At best, cancerous armours and blades that eventually kill the user, at worst, all consuming, self-replicating animated blades and armour sets that devour all they encounter in the goal of making more of themselves
5. Crushing stones - once used to float towers and cities, reworked into dreadful traps. Things like these are one of the reasons a key warning of predator queen lairs is the soaked in blood of ages.
6. Ur-forms - escaped from misunderstood attempts to re-create elf-shaping, leaving true-breeding, smarter bears, elk, herons and other creatures lurking around the lands. Some of these are no better or worse than most awakened animals but often there have been attempts to induct them into feral cults
7. Glorious altars - meant to exalt the culture of the elves, their corrupted focus makes those who atten d them yearn for equivalent power and glory for themselves
8. Mighty tools - the magical means used to raise river spanning bridges, clear deep ports and divert rivers wielded as siege engines to slice open cities and tumble mountains onto foes