Elves Are Not Doomed!

[Kurotowa]

That reminds me of a campaign world idea I came up with, mostly as a thought experiment, about five years ago.

Look at elves. They're all good looking, naturally thin, magically inclined, ridiculously long lived, and possess an array of handy benefits like sharp senses and low sleep requirements. It's amazing how close to perfect they are. Which is no surprise, given how much effort they put into it.

If you went back, all the way back, the original elves weren't really elves. They were a lot closer to, well, humans. Great civilizations rose and mastered the ways of magic. They used it to improve their cities, to improve their world, and finally to improve themselves. Minor upgrades at first, but then larger ones. Longer lives meant smaller populations. Fewer physical needs reduced the amount of infrastructure needed. Cities were abandoned in favor of enchanted forests, carefully crafted biological creations designed to provide every resource and comfort needed. After a few thousand years of this the result was the elven race as it's known today.

The one downside to all this was that they'd negated their own natural evolutionary process. Long lives, low birth rates, and artificial perfection meant that their race was now fixed in place. And they knew it. So they undertook a new grand project to generate new traits that could be incorporated into the elven race and keep the bloodlines fresh and vital. A short lived race, competitive and fractious to drive evolution quickly, but biologically compatible with elves. When exceptional individuals appeared they could be bred into elven families and their vigor spread. Throwbacks to the earliest days of the pre-elven people were created, a wild race seeded and left to grow on its own. Humans.

 

[AnonymousOne]

If I might ponder a bit. There is alot of talk about how elves seem to fight best in their own environment. I wish to elaborate on this point because I think that this will help to explain my view that the elves are completely viable as a military force.

1.) If, give fiat, we believe that the elven spellcasters are more in tune with nature and the natural world and less attuned to the domains of war in the realm of spells, then we must conclude one thing: The Elves will ALWAYS be fighting in a superior position. Consider this: If an Elven commander does not like the battlefield, he simply calls up his master spellcasters to terraform the battlefield to his needs. Given this, it seems that Elven troops will always fight at an advantage.

2.) If the elves see swordsmanship and archery as art forms, this makes them all the more dangerous. Of all the realms the Elves seem to me to be the ones where function follows form to a greater degree. Also if we consider the idea of forms of combat being artistic, we must look to 2 classes: The monk, and the Swordsage from Bo9S, both of whom treat combat as a kind of artform or intellectual pursuit. Both are deadly and extremely viable combatants. As such I see no reason to assume that beauty and perfection in combat cannot be melded to sheer ferocity and grace in combat.

-A1

 

[shilsen]

Elvish pacificism is mythical. It is based on a misguided extrapolation from the narrow sliver of elvish history Tolkien reveals in the LotR.

What elves that remain in Middle Earth for the conclusion of the War of the Rings have carefully preserved the last remnants of their strength over the millenia for the final show down. That required a kind of patience and focus extreme even within the ranks of elves.

Crack open the Silmarillion and there are plenty of stories of bloodthirsty and reckless elves.

That's a good point. Maybe it's because I've read the Silmarillion a dozen times that I've always been slightly confused when someone expresses the idea of peaceful, pacifistic elves in Tolkien. In the Silmarillion (which is, after all, actually about elves, whereas LotR is mostly about humans and hobbits), elves are consistently and very effectively martial. The only time they are really pacifistic is in Valinor, which is understandable since there is absolutely nobody to fight there. And even the elves that stay there after the Noldor leave are apparently getting in a lot of practice, since they come to Middle-Earth as the Host of the Valar and seriously kick Morgoth's ass.

 

[Nahat Anoj]

What do you think, my friends?

I agree that elves don't need to be a doomed race - they have a lot of things going for them, not the least of which are their immense life spans. Certainly on an individual level, elves tend to be much more powerful than the average human IMO (in D&D terms, they would tend to be higher level). Coupled with age-old knowledge of ancient secrets (in some cases, the elves may have personally met with their gods), this truly makes them a force to be reckoned with.

The idea of elves being pacifists as a rule also doesn't hold much weight with me. I generally think of elves as being no more or less bloodthirsty than a human - they just generally go about it in a more elevated, graceful manner. Indeed, one of my favorite characters was Rhoube (pronounced "Rove") Manslayer from Birthright - he was decidedly warlike. Another more general character concept that I really like are wild elf barbarians, incarnations of the savagery and brutality of the fey.

With regards to Tolkien's elves, I think they are less doomed than they are deeply heart sick. They have seen it all, fought evil only to see it come back again and again, lost so many loved ones, and so on that IMO they are mostly sick of Middle-Earth. A weariness hangs over many elder members of the race - they are simply old and tired. Of course, there is also lots of talk about how the world is changing and the elves are no longer of this earth, etc. I think though, at of the end of the Third Age, that if elves really wanted to they could remain as a dominant force for centuries to come.

 

[Particle_Man]

Reincarnate. It gives you a young adult body. Kill yourself before you die of old age, and have a druid reincarnate you.

The druid part interests me. Druids live in the woods and love nature. Elves live in the woods and love nature. I wonder how the two get along? I wonder if elf-friendly powers would be more likely to be reincarnated than elf-hostile powers?

I still see the elves (and elf-friendlies) as having the long-term single dude as uber advantage, here.

 

[freyar]

With regards to Tolkien's elves, I think they are less doomed than they are deeply heart sick. They have seen it all, fought evil only to see it come back again and again, lost so many loved ones, and so on that IMO they are mostly sick of Middle-Earth. A weariness hangs over many elder members of the race - they are simply old and tired. Of course, there is also lots of talk about how the world is changing and the elves are no longer of this earth, etc. I think though, at of the end of the Third Age, that if elves really wanted to they could remain as a dominant force for centuries to come.

QFT

 

[hong]

With regards to Tolkien's elves, I think they are less doomed than they are deeply heart sick. They have seen it all, fought evil only to see it come back again and again, lost so many loved ones, and so on that IMO they are mostly sick of Middle-Earth. A weariness hangs over many elder members of the race - they are simply old and tired. Of course, there is also lots of talk about how the world is changing and the elves are no longer of this earth, etc. I think though, at of the end of the Third Age, that if elves really wanted to they could remain as a dominant force for centuries to come.

It's like the mother of mid-life crises.

 

[AnonymousOne]

Awwwww freyar and hong have the same avatar ... how cute ...

 

[hong]

Awwwww freyar and hong have the same avatar ... how cute ...

In 24 hours, this will make no sense at all.

 

[Someone]

Edena defined his elves (who, as we may remember, do not exist) as unable by their own nature to build and maintain a civilization, specially by military means, while SHARK defined elves as humans, only much more experienced, powerful, well connected, rich, and military advanced. It's not surprise Edena's elves are doomed while SHARK's elves would thrive.

I like my elves doomed.