ZEITGEIST Trying To Understand Eladrin and Elves in this Setting

1. Was the empire of Elfhaivar made up of elves AND eladrin or just eladrin?
2. Did elves also worship Srasama and therefore did their womenfolk also die?
3. Can elves and eladrin interbreed?
4. If the Eladrin have been retreating into the dreaming, what have the elves been doing?
5. If some eladrin womenfolk try to pass themselves off as elf women, does that mean that they didn't die out and if so why don't eladrin and elves intermingle?
6. If the eladrin are flavored as they are in 4e, in that they're elves with a stronger fey connection, then what beliefs and culture do the elves have or are they just trying to be like eladrin but never got the special teleporty powers?
7. Where are the elves right now?

RangerWickett said:

Often in older D&D the rules differentiated between 'wood elves' and 'high elves.' Wood elves did all the archery and druid stuff, and high elves did the wizardry.

Legolas would have been a wood elf.
Galadriel would have been a high elf.

(And then they added in sea elves and dark elves and so on.)

When 4th edition D&D came out, instead of having elf subraces with different stats, Wizards of the Coast just made two different races - elves were basically all wood elves, and eladrin were basically all high elves.

Meanwhile, Pathfinder came out, and they only had one elf race.

We published ZEITGEIST for 4e and PF, and since I started working on it for 4e, I made used elves and eladrin. Elves are mostly native to Risur, the Yerasol Archipelago, and the lands north of Drakr. Eladrin are specifically the people who were in Elfaivar, back before it collapsed five centuries ago, and their descendants. There are no doubt small settlements of both groups scattered around the world.

Originally in 2011, we used "elf and eladrin" in 4e, but "wood elf and high elf" in Pathfinder. That got confusing, so when we did the hardcover compilations, we created a new 'eladrin' race for the Pathfinder version, so we could use the same terminology for both.

So that's the Out of Game explanation.

In the setting of ZEITGEIST,

1. Elfaivar was just eladrin (except for, like, immigrants and such).

2. Elves did not worship Srasama. Elf women didn't die off.

3. Sure, they can interbreed. They might take after either parent, when it comes to stats. Definitely some eladrin men after the Great Malice moved to elvish settlements, but they were foreigners - like having a guy from India move to a small town in Scandinavia or something. Generally they'd be mistrusted, especially as post-Malice revenge attacks began. By the way, a half-human/half-eladrin would probably just have the stats of a half-elf.

4. The elves just, like, live in settlements in the woods mostly, like typical D&D elves. Some of them have moved to the more human-dominated cities for jobs.

5. Eladrin women are really objectified by people in the setting, so to avoid hassle when traveling, some will pose as elves, by hiding their eyes or using magic to conceal them (because eladrin eyes glow if they use magical abilities), and using makeup to look more pale, and faking a different accent. Eladrin are rare enough that an average person who saw one, they'd just think it was a tanned elf.

Elves and eladrin do intermingle in some places. Outside of Elfaivar, expatriate eladrin men might have over centuries integrated into elf communities and maybe even have had kids who are basically elves. But inside Elfaivar, the drive among eladrin to maintain their identity is strong, so it's not like they're inviting elves to come settle.

6 & 7. Eladrin all originated from Elfaivar, but other elves live all over the place and have all sorts of local customs and beliefs. Eladrin specifically had their empire overlap this world and the Dreaming, which is how their people developed the fey step power over thousands of years.

Elves really weren't prominent. They live in remote areas and have not lately had any great nations that influenced world politics. For this adventure path, they weren't really that important. As I recall, there's like one half-elf (Nilasa in adventure 2) and two elves (Ottavia in adventure 4, and Lauryn the Risuri Minister of Infiltration). Likewise, I think there are only a handful of gnomes and halflings (Tinker Oddcog, the Waryeye family in adventure 2, and a guy named Alloquicious making a steamsuit in adventure 3).

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