[FR] Sun Elves as evil or neutral instead of good?

[Shard O'Glase]

They anoying continued the trend in AEG. Every time a item had a list of types ,like wine,they would have at least one Kewl elfy thng. Eleven kewl wine, this is the greatest wine in existence everyone else grovels before the kewlness of elves.

 

[Fenes 2]

Thank god for rule0. I don't tolerate uber-elves imc - and I play in the FR.

 

[Sixchan]

Lately, I've been feeling that there's only three kinds of elf worth using. Drow, as your big evil evil elfy evil race, Wood Elves, because I like the elves of old, with their parties, and their songs, and their naked fireside dances...naked fireside dances...mmm...oh, um...got a little carried away there. And a slightly more expansionist version and just a little less on the not so nice to other races side for sun elves coupled with a few hundred ships, and voila! Instant Imperialism!

This is, IMO, a problem with sun elves. They seen to be a lot more isolationist, rather than expansive as they once were. Elves don't engage in the perry short wars of man, but why not? Take some Sun Elves out of their homes, put them in a self sufficient city, and point them in the direction of the barbarians. Elves always seem to be one of these "minority races". Which I find strange. I mean, if you were an elven King, Humans are still in the stone age, and there's all this land to conquesr, you'd head straight for it, right? But how often do we see Elven empires of the scale of Rome or Britain? Not too often, and I think this should be the little Niche for Sun Elves. And of course, since they're civilising the barbarians, that makes them LG, right?

 

[Drakron]

The dark elf issue is easy ...

Greyhawk did not had a subrace cursed into drow, they had all evil elves cursed into drow.

Dark elf usually means evil elf (not always, in Tolkien it means they simply did not seen the light of those things I dont recall the name) and its usually a insult.

In Toril only a subrace was cursed but because in WotC their editors leave a lot to be desire and prefere to cut-and-paste that actually write t again to prevent such silly things ...

As for gold elves ... you can thank the (non Greenwood) novels for that information, note that nowere does the setting support that claim that gold elves are always like that ... some are but then again its not limited to gold elves only ... remenber that Starmyr leader during Myth Drannor time was a moon elf and he was the one that make a pact with Moander to corrupt the Starymr moonblade, not a gold elf.

 

[Aaron L]

Dark elves are those who never saw the light of the trees of Valinor.

 

[Khorod]

From the novels, 2ed Complete Elves, and 2nd & 3rd FRCS, Gold elves never struck me as being CG, at least in terms of their leaders and heroes. I've always pegged the bulk of Gold elves as extremely proud NG people, who get wrapped up in their charismatic leaders and follow along in plots which vary from CG to LE. So, I'd probably recategorize them as Usually NG, with description text that points out that almost half the elves are scattered across the alignment spectrum.

Disregarding the fact that books label them as CG, what do they look like? They have enough consistent aspects of law and non-good that this seems to be one of those non-issue alignment debates. Particularly as CG being so kewl, it can encompass everything if you're of a mind for it. I don't see where anyone on this issue is truly wrong.

**

For the Dark Elven debate... from RPG's, fantasy fiction, and mythology as a whole I have somehow absorbed the notion that in fantasy terms, a Dark Elf is evil, and that's the only generic definition of the term. I can't cite that because its just one of those terms - and many people seem to feel the same way.

Forgotten Realms has pretty much redefined it, not in defiance of convention but because the ages have changed the meaning of the word to the Elves of Faerun.

***

And that's my interpretation.

 

[Hypersmurf]

This is why I believe that in FR, dark elf is just another name for drow.

That's true.

Things may be different on Krynn, I wouldn't know, as I've never read Dragonlance.

They are. On Krynn, at least during the time of the Chronicles, any elf who is evil is shunned by all other elves and called "dark elf".

As people have pointed out, there are no black-skinned elves in Dragonlance, so the term has a different meaning to the same term used in Forgotten Realms or Greyhawk.

-Hyp.

 

[Numion]

From what I've read in FR dark elf indeed means the same as drow. At least I've never seen it used in other context.

In Salvatores books, which tell a great deal about FR drow, they at least give this impression. Even Drizzt is called a dark elf, even though he is good.