Elf
(p. Elves)
Elves are the dominant sentient life form on the World.
They are born and tied to their environment. For example, Forest Elves is born in the forest and is tied to the forest psychologically. Leaving their home environment (like going to the desert) is at first just slightly uncomfortable, but continues to grow until it reaches full blown panic, it's only goal in life then is returning to it's home environment. This is a phenomena known as The Anxiety. Some are affected faster or stronger than others. Thus only some elves can perform duties that require inter-environmental travels, like currying messages or transporting goods. This is a huge factor in the shaping of Elven society: politics, technology interchange, immigration, communication etc.
Perhaps the cause of their tie to their environment is that Elves are slightly elemental by nature. A Forest Elf is an elf of life, trees, the woodlands, etc. and a Mountain Elf is an elf of strength, the earth, metals. It has been observed that these elemental ties help influence an elf's Gift.
All Elves, without exception, are born with some unexplainable, supernatural Gift, each one unique and varying in applicability. They can range from making your hand glow to manipulating a raw elemental force. Gifts can help shape an elf's profession and skills, a Forest Elf with the ability to grow and shape parts of a tree would might like to contribute to their city by creating houses and buildings and thus learn to be an architect as well.
In addition to the other major psychological difference listed above, Elven brains are a somehow different in their relationship to and/or processing of numbers. Evidence for this: Age is given in moons, even though they're on a similar, 29-day cycle as we are. This means they increment their age into the thousands every 29 days and generally recall it with ease.
There's a whole sub-language of Common Elvish for expressing numbers in complex ways. This also makes it easy to insert numbers and even simple equations into fairly regular sentences.
Basic Information
Anatomy
Completely humanoid except for their pointed ears and slightly larger eyes.
Genetics and Reproduction
Each elf is spontaneously generated from its environment. An elf is always generated nearby another elf (within earshot) and the first thing an elf does is scream and cry until it is held. Planet-wide, this happens general once every year or two, meaning that the elven population is very slow growing.
Despite their lack of reproductive capabilities, elves still have genitalia and enjoy sex as humans do.
Growth Rate & Stages
Elves grow remarkably like humans, reaching full maturity between 20 - 30 years of age. Most elven societies consider an elf to be an adult at 18.
Ecology and Habitats
The optimal environment for an elf changes based on race, but it is always the environment they were born in.
To clarify and provide an example, a Forest Elf leaving the forest and living the desert is not optimal and will eventually drive them to become feral, known as The Anxiety. However, they do not have to return to the same forest to be in an optimal environment, any forest will return their sanity.
Dietary Needs and Habits
Elves eat plants and animals much like humans do. They have taken to learning how to cultivate crops and raise livestock to make this process simpler.
However, elves do not need as much food as humans do. Although they lack the technology to measure it, elves generally consume about 800 calories a day, with some of reaching up to 1200 calories.
Biological Cycle
Elves mature from babies to adults in the same way humans do. After reaching a certain age, which varies greatly depending on the elf, they simply stop aging. Elves are immortal and will always appear that age until killed. Death is usually by violent means because elves never get sick.
There has never been an elf that appeared to be less than about 25 years of age and most appear somewhere between 25 and 35.
Additional Information
Perception and Sensory Capabilities
Some Gifts can provide extrasensory abilities, but otherwise elves have the same senses humans do, with their eyesight and hearing slightly better on average. They still have the same range and variation between individuals as humans do. For example, some elves can still be deaf or blind.
Civilization and Culture
Naming Traditions
Elves of various elements have different naming traditions, usually influenced by their cultural values. Some examples: elves born in the forest allow an elf to pick their name and change it if they feel it no longer suits them, and elves born at sea have a ritual for interpreting the ocean's name for the newborn.
- Forest Elves allow an elf to pick their name and change it if they feel it no longer suits them
- Sea Elves have a ritual for interpreting the ocean's name for a newborn
- Air Elves don't name their children, instead having a cultural ceremony where children name themselves after learning it from meditation
Major Organizations
All of the elvish leaders come together for Council generally once every other year. Here, they help collectively decide the direction of Elves as a species by talking out issues like trade goods and border disputes. Prior to the adoption of Council, elven populations had stagnated as everyday dangers like these border disputes or raiders would kill as many elves as were being born. This year was the 350th Council.
Most leaders do not command standing armies and most of their time is spent helping run the internal workings of their society. Since overt skirmishes and wars proved too expensive, most leaders have turned to espionage instead and typically have specific agents they rely upon for specific tasks.
Each element of elf tends to have a different religion, with a somewhat different interpretation based on their environmental interpretation. For example, elves born in the forest revere Nature as a forest goddess and imagine her physical avatar to be a tree overflowing with wild animals and moss and vines and branches. For almost all elves, their goddess is silent, however, and that generally is a part of their worship of her. Most of the people who claim to be able to speak to Nature are fraudulent or insane.
Gender Ideals
Most elvish societies allow the individual to specify their gender and pronouns. Some older members of the society may choose to not respect these, but those people are generally frowned upon.
Relationship Ideals
Elvish relationships are similar to those of humans, with a wide spectrum of relationship styles and sexualities.
Average Technological Level
This varies by their element and what you consider technology. The largest Wood Elf city is also a giant tree, complete with automated lifts and areas for growing crops and livestock. The largest city of the Mountain Elves is all but powered by coal and steam, reminiscent of a steampunk aesthetic.
Major Language Groups and Dialects
Elves have typically come to settle on one particular language, Common Elvish, an inevitable mixture of now-dead regional languages given the immortality of the species. Regional dialects still do exist and sometimes slang takes time to travel between environments.
Common Etiquette Rules
Etiquette typically varies between elements of elves, but there are always similar elements.
Common Taboos
Specific taboos depend on the birth place of the elf. For example, elves born in the forest are most closely aligned with Life and that has manifested itself in their high cultural value of autonomy and self-direction. For these elves, to rob someone or something of it's autonomy is taboo.
History
Elves have about 4000 years of recorded history, scattered amongst the various races. In truth they are only about 4500 years old as a species. The first one, Lorien, was generated at that time.
Elves are organized according to their environment and their traditional interpretation of the element they feel they represent. To provide a concrete example, of the elves born in the forest (Forest Elves, there are Wood Elves, Life Elves, Tree Elves and Hunter Elves. In modern times, these many different kinds of elves born in the forest no longer make war, but allow any elf to freely choose which group they feel they belong to most. In fact, a lot of elven ethnicities have this mutual understanding among their respective societies.
Because of both their varying gifts and their limited, inter-environmental communication and technology exchange, the various elven societies have more vast difference in their technological abilities and culture.
For about the first 3300 years of recorded society, elves often warred with one another. Sometimes, the opponents were within the same environment, vying for which interpretation of themselves was "correct," most of the aggression came at environmental borders because changing the environment near the border meant the acquisition of habitable land. Unfortunately, in their zeal, the leaders of each group failed to pay enough attention to their own populations, many of which were starving and dwindling given elves' extremely low spontaneous generation rate. This led to many ebbs and flows to the aggression, but the threat of death and destruction at the hands of their fellow elves was always nearby.
In 3301, the First Council was convened to put a stop to the endless cycle of violence. It was called by Erendriel, who is now generally thought of as a savior and teacher of peace. At the First Council, the leaders collectively came to the understanding that their species would eventually die if these wars continued. They vowed to end them and focus on improving the living conditions of their people instead. They decided to meet every two years in an effort to continue this peace. This led to the immediate dissolution of all standing armies except for defensive forces to protect themselves from the monsters of the wilderness if necessary.
However, what was once a solidified peace is slowly declining into espionage and assassination. Just a month before this most recent Council, for example, the leader of the Sun Elves had sent an assassin to eliminate the leader of the Moon Elves, only to fail in the attempt. While Council normally sits for 15 days, this year it sat for 45.
Historical Figures
About half of the current Council members are leaders from before the First Council and thus the leaders of their people during wartime. Many of these are considered living heroes by their people.
Additionally, the caller of the First Council, Erendriel is generally considered a Savior and Bringer of Peace.
Lifespan
Immortal
Comments
Author's Notes
This is an ongoing article. It's going to be an extensive overview of Elves as a race, but I just need to write it all down.