Ice Elves have pale alabaster skin and milky, pure white or transparent hair, but it is their custom to dye it with unnatural colors. The color of their iris changes of its own accord, though it becomes generally bluer as Corruption increases. They are tall, fully 5'8", and thin, around 150 pounds. Like all Elves, they have angular faces , pointed ears and no facial hair.

They are Iron Alliance and are affected by the High Metals as are other Faeries. Ice Elves neither eat nor drink. The Astsantse's long history of Dark Magic has had its effects of their physiology. When injured, their blood is light blue, almost electric, and steams and gives off a strange sweet odor. They are cold-blooded in that their body temperature is the same as their environment, but they suffer not at all from the effects of cold. They become ill at temperatures above 50 F, and since they can't sweat, their bodies become swollen.

Astsantse are also unique amongst Elves in they they can and do sleep and dream. Astsantse can lie asleep and Dream for years, their minds lost in the Dream Land. Their Dreams are not like those of mortals. The Astsantse Travel using their minds, and have made contact both with another Myth and with an abhorrent Alien Deity, which they call the Source.

Astsantse live only in the City of Glass, which is situated directly on the South Pole. The plateau that nestles the city in the Ringwall Mountains is called simply LandsEnd. LandsEnd is home to the Worldstree's only Dream Land animals. These creatures bear resemblance to normal Races, but can only be seen in total darkness as shifting 3D colored lights. The shadow animals are the pets of the Astsantse, and are only around during the long night (they dislike light because it both blinds them and makes them invisible).

The City of Glass is a city of soaring towers of pale hued Ice, both transluscent and opaque. The colors show best in complete dark, seeming almost luminescent, and sunlight saps their strength leaving them pale white or gray. Many of the towers are unused - the city is in an eons old decline. The towers may be single or linked with elevated catwalks. Although at first appearing unadorned and plain, the ice captures images from dreams, and shows them in shifting patterns in its murky depths.

Ice Elves have no social structure or politics: each lives in his own world and does as he pleases. The only spark of group consciousness that they  have relates back to the enigmatic Source.

The outlook of the Astsantse is one of decadence, power and absolute indifference. While other elves live partially in their memories, the Ice Elves live in their Dreams. Their private dreams have no less reality than the shared Dreams of Worldstree and the Higher Worlds