Wood elves

Wood elves are smaller than other elves averaging 1.70m, their skin tends to be copperish in hue, sometimes with traces of green. Their hair tends toward browns and blacks but is occasionally blond or copper-colored. Their eyes are green, brown, or hazel. Wood elves are faster than other elves, and have a natural talent to hide while in woods, they can also invoke the strength of trees, hardening their skin and making it akin to wooden bark.

Government

The society of the wood elves has no strict hierarchy, usually, communities are guided by an elder who could be either male or female, or sometimes by a woodland spirit such as a dryad or in rare cases a nymph. There is no proper form of government, the entire group judges crimes against the community, and verdicts are reached on a case-by-case basis.

Army

Wood elves do not have an army, but almost any wood elf is a skilled fighter, and communities are known to work together to drive out invaders. Most wood-elven arrows are made from ironwood, fletch with local foliage, and are usually tipped in poisons. Wood elves like to fight by ambushing their prey and deliver a quick decisive blow, and though can fight in a prolonged engagement, they prefer to retreat and prepare other ambushes. They do not like to set physical traps because of possible collateral damage.

Economy

Wood elves collect metals from surface or near-surface deposits, believing that digging deep mines would ruin their forest ecosystem for this reason they do not possess large quantities of rare or valuable metals, and little coal to power furnaces or make steel, so the only common metal in wood elven society is iron. Wood is the main material used by wood elves, but trees are rarely completely cut, most wood in wood-elven society comes from pruned trees or dead and diseased ones, trees are pruned to help them grow, cutting branches that are not getting much light consuming precious nutrients and not providing much aid to the plant, cutting this branches allows the plant to prioritize its energies in growing taller or growing more useful branches. Magical forests while superficially similar to mundane ones are actually very different and more complex ecosystems. Many species of plants are unique to these regions such as carnivorous ones, plants able to move, either only some branches or roots, or even their entire body. The most important plants to wood elven societies are the ironwood trees and the many poisonous and medical plants of the region. Ironwood is used to make weapons and sometimes armor, its name is derived from its properties, though slightly lighter than iron it's harder with a similar hardness to mild steel, compared to mild steel it has a higher elasticity but a lower plasticity, it is too dense to float and can burn although is fairly hard to light compared to other kinds of wood. Wood elves do not have a strong economy and their trade with other nations is almost non-existent, trading almost exclusively between other communities of wood elves or circles of druids. Wood elves do not use coinage but a trade-based system of promises where they write their debts on large stones near their houses, so a wood elf might "buy" a bow promising in return to give something back in the future either a physical item or service and the bowmaker would write on his stone: "wood elf name promised me x before date".

Religion

Wood elves believe in the same pantheon as the other elves but their religious hierarchy is skewed more towards gods associated with nature. In addition to the elven gods, wood elves pray to woodland spirits, their founder Nimloth (a god that symbolizes harmony and coexistence with nature) and his twin children Peng (a female minor goddess of archery) and Magol (a male minor god of swordsmanship).

Naming Traditions

Family names

Wood elves use the name of their community instead of their family, it is to be said that more often than not smaller communities are made of just one family but this is not the case for larger ones. Communities are usually named after a tree or another plant, often flowers. Examples:  norno (oak), finios (larch), thôn (pine), ekko/a (thorn/spine),  tathar (willow),  siquilissë (weeping willow, also lamentation), meril/Merrillè (rose), Loth (the elvish spiderflower that grows in dank dark caves, not highly regarded as names go since it is associated with an elven goddess most wood elf consider evil),  eirien (daisy).

Culture

Shared customary codes and values

Wood elves are fiercely independent, capable of hunting, foraging, and defending themselves, this does not mean that they do not value their community, they are known to be very social, especially during the later stages of their lives when they tend to take on the role of mentor to younger wood elves. Nevertheless, wood elves value personal time just as much as social interactions, choosing to spend hours alone in the forest before returning to their group. Wood elves prefer to isolate themselves from communities they disagree with instead of fighting to change their current community, sometimes gathering other like-minded individuals and forming new groups. Peaceful by nature, wood elves fight only as a last resort, usually to defend their life or the lives of those they care for. They are mostly vegetarian eating only animals they hunt, hunting is seen as a form of environmental preservation and not as a form of sustenance, only animals that are problematic to their forest's ecosystem are hunted, the carcass is entirely consumed and every body part that can't be eaten is used to create clothes or various utensils. Fiercely territorial, uninvited guests that come to their forest are seen as dangerous invaders and can expect to be struck by an arrow or stabbed in the back before they can even see a wood elf.

Art & Architecture

Wood elves live inside large living trees, wood elven architects learn the practice of tree shaping from a master, it takes centuries before a student might be able to shape a tree into a simple house and only the best can do intricate complicated designs. The size and shape of the house depends on the tree it was made from, they usually have many smaller rooms with windows and multiple doors, are almost always on multiple floors with external stairs on the side of the trunk and some of the more luxurious have balconies made from branches. Wood elves take great care of their tree houses watering them and providing the appropriate nutrients.