There are only two options, die or become strange.
If you have not done one then you have done the other. This is the way of things.
Elves are a type of ork with fungus growing in them. They are first recorder sometime prior to REDACTED as a zombie plague that was spreading through orken populations. Post-REDACTION it would appear that the fungal parasite that caused the zombie infection had developed into a symbiotic relation with the host and that an established culture had formed.
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Elves, being a flavor of ork, are similar to them in many ways. They have several morphs, with the queen and drone being largely similar to their orken counterparts, but elven nymphs are very different to their orken counterparts and all other morphy are completely absent from the elven species. The average elf, while roughly analogous to the worker morph in an orken hive, is not a morph at all but rather a nymph that has been allowed to grow to adult age without receiving any caste jelly. To someone familiar with orken beauty standards an elf appears eerie, like a beautiful child with the proportions of an adult. In the narrative present this isn't especially remarkable to any but the most conservative and isolated orken populations but immediately post-REDACTION this was highly concerning to most orks.
Elven society centers around a queen who is the caretaker for a world-tree and is attended to and guarded by drones. The world tree is a massive fungal growth that serves as the anchor to the hive's centralized mind. The mycelium of the world tree growns through the soil of the entire forest and every single plant and animal in the forest is influenced by it. This allows elven forests to have an ordered quality to them that makes them visually distinct from natural wilderness. Paths are always clear, plants tend to grow in ways that are aesthetically pleasing, animals are always well fed and are not afraid of travelers but are also not so close as to be at risk of a hunter talking advantage of that trust.
All elves are able to freely converse with the hive mind, which they hear as a voice that accompanies their internal monologue when they are thinking, so long as they are near a source of elven fungus. An elf on their own will become isolated from the hive-mind and will generally become irritated and sickly until they get close to another of their kind and can reestablish and repair that connection.