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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Bran Blackbyrd" data-source="post: 1488974" data-attributes="member: 1710">This is interesting and sort of goes with what I have below.This might also explain why elves and humans might interbreed, despite things like vastly different cultures and lifespans, social stigma, and the fact that a lot of elves might view humans as being beneath them.On the one hand; <ol> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">Elves and humans are simply from different worlds.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">Humans are looked upon with disdain by many elves</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">Your human mate will be a rotting corpse before your children are even considered to be ready to leave the house.</li> </ol>On the other hand; <ol> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">If you're an elven female getting ready to hit your mating cycle and none of the male elves in your community are in synch with you, the perpetually fertile human males might start looking pretty good compared to a 6-7 year wait.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">You're a horny elven male used to bedding down with elven women who are only fertile for a few months every 6 or 7 years and then you have sex with a human woman during your own fertile period. Oops, you forgot human women are fertile practically all the time... She is now what some humans would call "your baby momma".</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">By the time you get the "Seventy Year Itch", your human mate is dead anyway; so finding a new lover won't break any matrimonial vows (that don't involve reincarnation spells). So for the elf that doesn't want to be tied down to one woman/man, a human mate might be more appealing.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">Love conquers all. Love is blind. All you need is love.</li> </ol>With that in mind, there are plenty of reasons that half-elves would exist.An interesting idea...Recently scientists have been exploring a possible link between longevity and reproduction. Many creatures exist soley to reproduce.Many species die soon, if not immediately, after they reproduce.When you prevent such species from reproducing, their lifespan can be drammatically increased.It is thought that since so many women are having babies later in life due to careers etc, that the window of time in which they remain fertile could possibly increase, along with the human lifespan. Whether or not that's true, who knows. Apply it to D&D and you could have a situation where elves are just an offshoot of humans that, many eons ago, started having children later in life and eventually increased their lifespan to many times the normal for humans.Imagine we're only talking about one or two particular communities of humans who evolved in such a way. The gene pool gets sort of shallow and some common traits begin to surface and over time, all ultra-long-lived, late-breeding humans might share a common trait like pointed ears or a certain height or build. These humans, now called elves, can breed with regular humans because they are still the same race; their view on life and their culture has been changed considerably by virtue of the perspective gained through their longevity.The weak link in this theory is that we have to take into account that males are designed to breed with as many receptive females as possible, as often as possible. They don't bear young, and their lifespans are shortened by a number of factors, namely they do dangerous things to compete for the attention of women. Like fight with other men.Then again, if the women are living longer, they may start caring for their young longer before letting them out on their own (like elves). This gives competitive males a leg up, longevity-wise, because they're already older by the time they're free to compete for female attention; with that age they may have also gained some wisdom and civility *gasp* that would preclude attempting dangerous acts and life-threatening brawls simply to win a chance to breed. Which could increase the lifespan of the men as well.I try to forget posts like that, rather than glorify them.</blockquote>

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