Elf
Playable Race
Elves are a race of fey-like humanoids that live in most corners of Melyria. These graceful and elegant creatures are known most magically adept and long-lived ones among all the humanoids, and elves themselves are very knowledgable and proud of that fact.
Elves come in several different subraces, some of them look quite humanlike, others wilder and more alien. The subraces share some commonalities, presented in this article, but also their own individual quirks, that one can take a deep dive in their own articles.
Basic Information
Biological Traits
The life span of an elf can vary greatly. In very rare cases, an elf can find their end naturally in less than 300 years, but most average somewhere between 500 and 650 years, however, sometimes the life of an elf can expand to 750 years.
Training on arcane arts might push that even further, but unless elf devotes their life to becoming archdruid or something like the undead, there is not really any way for and elf to live over 1000 years.
Genetics and Reproduction
About Elves, Sexuality, Reproduction & Marriage
Elves have the longest estimated lifespan, up to 400-750 years without any magical enhancements. Also, elves reach sexual maturity between 16 to 20 years of age and remain fertile even their entire life span - the fertility rate can start to decline after 300 years or so, but slower than with other species. This sounds like a great advantage at first, but it comes with the cost of their overall low fertility rate. Elven pregnancy takes about 1 year, and elven woman is in theory ready to become pregnant just some months after, but this barely ever happens. Most elven siblings have at least 5 year age cab, often closer to 18 to 65 years.
Due to this low fertility rate, particularly long and dangerous pregnancy period, and the fact that elves don't truly consider those among them as a "fully matured" before 100-years-of-age, elves are likely to put extra effort into raising their children, further enforcing the age cabs between children. While the possibility of having tens if not hundreds of kids in their life span, most elven women have between 1-6 children in their lifetime. This also means that especially in smaller communities elven children have very few if any other kids of their age range to play with, and getting a partner of your own age range can be hard or even impossible.
In most elven cultures, children under 15 years of age are considered too young to date, and youngsters between 16-30 years old are allowed to mingle and train dating among themselves but are not considered appropriate to date by an elf above the age range. Elves between 31-50 years of age can mingle with elves ~ 25 years older than them, and 50 to 74-year-olds with elves about 50 years older than them. As long as both elves are above the age of 75, there is no common consensus of appropriate age cab between partners, even though especially on younger elves large age cab is still undesirable, but not openly frown upon (though often gossiped about).
Many elven cultures are also alright with different forms of polygamy as well as same-sex couples, though sensitivities vary wildly. Long lifespans mean longer and more complex relationships, making some of them quite bizarre and foreign for many other humanoids. This also means complicated forms of marriage, and other relationship-forms other humanoids do not necessarily even have a word for.
| Drow |
Males: 147 cm to 175 cm
Females: 157 cm to 186 cm |
|---|---|
| Eladrin |
Males: 157 cm to 186 cm
Females: 149 cm to 177 cm |
| High Elf |
Males: 164 cm to 195 cm
Females: 153 cm to 182 cm |
| Sea Elf |
Males: 159 cm to 189 cm
Females: 148 cm to 176 cm |
| Shadar-kai |
Males: 166 cm to 197 cm
Females: 155 cm to 184 cm |
| Wood Elf |
151 cm to 180 cm
|
| Drow |
Males: 44 kg to 60 kg
Females: 50 kg to 68 kg |
|---|---|
| Eladrin |
Males: 50 kg to 68 kg
Females: 46 kg to 61 kg |
| High Elf |
Males: 55 kg to 74 kg
Females: 48 kg to 65 kg |
| Sea Elf |
Males: 52 kg to 69 kg
Females: 45 kg to 60 kg |
| Shadar-kai |
Males: 56 kg to 76 kg
Females: 49 kg to 66 kg |
| Wood Elf |
47 kg to 63 kg
|
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