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I came across the following scenario this weekend:
Suppose, in a single turn, all of a player's remaining elves are wiped off the board and returned to his hand, leaving him without any elves in play. On his next turn can he start from anywhere (that would be a legal starting territory), since he has no adjacent territories to attack?
Absolutely, the rulebook (on page 4) under the section on Enemy Loss & Withdrawals explicitly covers this:
If all of a player's Regions were attacked this turn, leaving him with some Race tokens in hand but none on the board, he may redeploy these as if he was doing a First Conquest, on his next turn.
As stated in the other answer, you can also voluntarily withdraw troops from some or all regions.
Yes - but you can also do this every go anyway. You simply need to abandon all regions when starting your turn.
Abandoning a Region
If the player chooses to abandon all the Regions he previously occupied, his next conquest must follow the same rules as its First Conquest (see First Conquest, p. 4).
http://cdn1.daysofwonder.com/smallworld/en/img/sw_rules_2015_en.pdf
