What scares an Elf?

[AverageCitizen]

I am running a game with a blend of faction-based warfare and cosmic horror.

Presently, the party is split along a civilized / sylvan axis. I run the groups independently, on different days. This wasn't the case at first, and the composition will likely change again.

So right now I am having a hard time deciding how to handle the magical-forest-dwelling half of the party. So far, they had an encounter with the faerie Lord of Fall, and spent the night in his court. I started with a "Midsummer Night's Dream" feel, with magic and wonder, and then slowly transitioned it into a Black Sabbath. As the night wore on, they realized the Lord of Fall was more malevolent then he seemed, and had fallen into forbidden ways. This played out very well. In retrospect, I think they will realize that he let them see what happened there because he wanted them to know, and he wanted them to be afraid. In the end the court abandoned them alone in the woods at night.

So now they are high-tailing it back to the Elven stronghold to warn them. Which begs the question, "What scares an Elf?" I have an elf and a fae player, and I need them to be invested, partially so that I can creep them out. But elves and fairies have always been the mysterious "other". Right now a lot about elven culture is still undefined in my world. It is hard because I need build a background for them that will allow me to scare my players in a way that also builds their inhuman characters. Right now they are going "home" for the first time in the campaign, and I have no idea what that will look like. Do elves have daddy issues? Do they have scandal and jealously? Do they have human realities, like food and waste and sweat and sex? And if not, what would they be like instead, and how can I use that to frighten my players?

How have you guys dealt with the humanity/inhumanity of fictional races?

 

[Hand of Evil]

For a lived race I have always thought they would appreciate the things that remain the longest, what they have grown up around. Stuff that would scare them; A forest fire would bother them but forest will grow back in 5 to 20 years but a strip mine would poison the land and it could be hundreds of years for recovery. Extinction of animals, to see a vast population disappear. Landmarks that get torn down.

 

[Umbran]

Which begs the question, "What scares an Elf?" I have an elf and a fae player, and I need them to be invested, partially so that I can creep them out.

Then, what scares elves is less the question than what scares your players.

Really, find out what gives the players the heebie-jeebies, and then adapt that to be applicable.

How have you guys dealt with the humanity/inhumanity of fictional races?

If it is a PC race, then I usually follow whatever lead the players present. It does me no good to paint a race as inhuman, if the player is just going to play a human with pointy ears anyway.

 

[Dioltach]

A Balrog.

 

[Mishihari Lord]

The first thing that comes to mind is loss of control over one's self. Elves are often portrayed on the far-chaotic edge of the alignment spectrum, with free will more important than anything else. So scary things would be imprisonment, confinement, slavery, addiction, and being changed against one's will. I read elsewhere that that last point is the very essence of horror for real people, so it seems like it would be particularly potent.

The challenge with any of these, of course, is keeping the game fun while doing them or even giving a credible threat. PC control is rightly regarded is the sole province of the players; infringing on this risks resentment and loss of players. It can also suck the fun out of the game for your players. Normally I would say that if you want this in the game, talk to your players first, but if you really want to creep them out, springing it on them by surprise works better. You'll just have to use your judgement about whether this is an appropriate approach for your group and whether you should talk to them first.

I'm interested in hearing how this runs out.

 

[Celebrim]

Really, entirely up to you. I wouldn't want to impose my definition of 'elf' or 'fae' on your game.

I would say in general, if you have even achieved a degree of alienness in your play, you are doing pretty good. Getting a player to not think entirely in a human way is a challenge, and one of the reasons most DMs default their races to humans with bumps on their forehead is that its very hard to communicate to players how they should play their character if their character isn't basically human in concerns and modes of thought.

Please don't take the following answers as definitive, nor are they the best. They are just one mythological approach, and my advice would be to create your own (which you seem to be doing). However, since you ask questions:

1) What scares an Elf?: Pretty much everything that humans aren't particularly scared of. They are a xenophobic, isolationist race whose long life has left them little willing to spend it. Imprisonment in a dark and ugly place would have to be high on the list. Mental anguish frightens them even more than physical anguish. Boredom, tedium, filth, ugliness, brokenness... the average human cosmopolitan city is something out of a nightmare to most elves. New York would horrify them. Old London before sanitation would be like something out of Dante's Inferno. A tenement apartment, a slave ship crossing the Atlantic, heck the restrooms at a stadium during the 7th inning stretch.. it's not that they couldn't even imagine how that would be inflicted on someone, but how a human could endure it without almost instantly dying.
2) Right now they are going "home" for the first time in the campaign, and I have no idea what that will look like: Like a society that has spent the last 4000 years perfecting the techniques of Frank Lloyd Wright's 'Falling Water' and has had the time and energy to patiently landscape the entire landscape in this way, so that there is no distinction between wilderness and parkland, and between natural and garden, and between wildflower and cultivation.
3) Do elves have daddy issues?: I have no idea what you mean. They have fathers. Sometimes they get in conflict with them. Sometimes they don't have one present, and that's also sometimes an issue.
4) Do they have scandal and jealously?: Yes, though the sort of things that provoke jealousy and scandal might not perfectly correspond to any human culture. But certainly they can feel envious of the social approval that someone else experiences that they feel they better deserve, and they can do any number of things that would cause coordinated social disapproval. In some cases, the elf may even care that they are ostracized.
5) Do they have human realities, like food and waste and sweat and sex?: Yes, but they don't always approach them the same way as humans. Sexual lust is ubiquitous in most humans, but a fairly rare emotion in elves. Gluttony for food is much rarer in elves than in people. Elves are far more likely to overindulge in music or listening to poetry. It would be completely in character for an elf to get so lost in appreciation of beauty of some sort, that they forget to eat and pass out from hunger. Alcohol on the other hand is something both races appreciated, and the more jaded sort of elf can appreciate hallucinogenics and narcotics. After you've been around for centuries, novelty is a very highly prized possession. Waste and sweat provoke revulsion more akin to a modern person use to showering daily than would a medieval or early modern person. When your race has natively low constitution, you can't afford to be around disease reservoirs.

 

[AverageCitizen]

The first thing that comes to mind is loss of control over one's self... and being changed against one's will. I read elsewhere that that last point is the very essence of horror for real people, so it seems like it would be particularly potent.

That inspires me. In the setting, I've established fey as physiologically transient, they take on "veils" of matter and develop them slowly over eons, often layering one on top of another, in a subconscious form of self-actualization. So over ages you get treants, satyrs, beast-men, sprites, etc. (Elves are different, they were shaped by Pan to resemble men). The "forbidden ways" that the Lord of Fall has turned to was that at the end of the Black Sabbath he cast one of the cavorting fey into the fire, then peeled and twisted his veil (e.g., his flesh) and turned him into a kind of hellish imp. Instead of being horrified, the fey seemed to enjoy it. Changing the veil of another is supposed to be Pan's thing, and he never did it like that.

On top of that, the fae PC is changing into something more deadly than he has been and he doesn't know why, and I saw later he recorded in his in-game journal "I think I am turning into a monster."

So I think you are really on to something, and on top of that I think it will go well with what is happening in-game.

The challenge with any of these, of course, is keeping the game fun while doing them or even giving a credible threat. PC control is rightly regarded is the sole province of the players; infringing on this risks resentment and loss of players. It can also suck the fun out of the game for your players. Normally I would say that if you want this in the game, talk to your players first, but if you really want to creep them out, springing it on them by surprise works better. You'll just have to use your judgement about whether this is an appropriate approach for your group and whether you should talk to them first.

I think I'll be ok. I taught them to play, and we try to blur the lines between my turf and theirs. I do want it to be interesting, though. I just had a thought... what if I tie it in with the elves/fey's Sanity? Instead of it being, "if something changes your body, you lose sanity", make it "if your Sanity sits too low for too long, you start to change". I'll have to think about that.

I'm interested in hearing how this runs out.

Slowly. But I'll keep you posted.

 

[AverageCitizen]

Really, entirely up to you. I wouldn't want to impose my definition of 'elf' or 'fae' on your game.

I would say in general, if you have even achieved a degree of alienness in your play, you are doing pretty good. Getting a player to not think entirely in a human way is a challenge, and one of the reasons most DMs default their races to humans with bumps on their forehead is that its very hard to communicate to players how they should play their character if their character isn't basically human in concerns and modes of thought.

Please don't take the following answers as definitive, nor are they the best. They are just one mythological approach, and my advice would be to create your own (which you seem to be doing). However, since you ask questions:

1) What scares an Elf?: Pretty much everything that humans aren't particularly scared of. They are a xenophobic, isolationist race whose long life has left them little willing to spend it. Imprisonment in a dark and ugly place would have to be high on the list. Mental anguish frightens them even more than physical anguish. Boredom, tedium, filth, ugliness, brokenness... the average human cosmopolitan city is something out of a nightmare to most elves. New York would horrify them. Old London before sanitation would be like something out of Dante's Inferno. A tenement apartment, a slave ship crossing the Atlantic, heck the restrooms at a stadium during the 7th inning stretch.. it's not that they couldn't even imagine how that would be inflicted on someone, but how a human could endure it without almost instantly dying.
2) Right now they are going "home" for the first time in the campaign, and I have no idea what that will look like: Like a society that has spent the last 4000 years perfecting the techniques of Frank Lloyd Wright's 'Falling Water' and has had the time and energy to patiently landscape the entire landscape in this way, so that there is no distinction between wilderness and parkland, and between natural and garden, and between wildflower and cultivation.
3) Do elves have daddy issues?: I have no idea what you mean. They have fathers. Sometimes they get in conflict with them. Sometimes they don't have one present, and that's also sometimes an issue.
4) Do they have scandal and jealously?: Yes, though the sort of things that provoke jealousy and scandal might not perfectly correspond to any human culture. But certainly they can feel envious of the social approval that someone else experiences that they feel they better deserve, and they can do any number of things that would cause coordinated social disapproval. In some cases, the elf may even care that they are ostracized.
5) Do they have human realities, like food and waste and sweat and sex?: Yes, but they don't always approach them the same way as humans. Sexual lust is ubiquitous in most humans, but a fairly rare emotion in elves. Gluttony for food is much rarer in elves than in people. Elves are far more likely to overindulge in music or listening to poetry. It would be completely in character for an elf to get so lost in appreciation of beauty of some sort, that they forget to eat and pass out from hunger. Alcohol on the other hand is something both races appreciated, and the more jaded sort of elf can appreciate hallucinogenics and narcotics. After you've been around for centuries, novelty is a very highly prized possession. Waste and sweat provoke revulsion more akin to a modern person use to showering daily than would a medieval or early modern person. When your race has natively low constitution, you can't afford to be around disease reservoirs.

I really like your points. I may need to adapt my assumptions about my setting to accommodate some of them. Especially 4 and 5. Have you read/played the Burning Wheel?

 

[GMMichael]

A Balrog.

What scares a Fellowship?

"They have a cave-troll."

How have you guys dealt with the humanity/inhumanity of fictional races?

I decided to humanize them all, so they all basically play by human rules.

But what scares an elf? Dwarves. Or worse: marrying your daughter off to a ranger.

 

[TarionzCousin]

What scares an Elf?

A naked dwarf.