The tension between creating a race that is appropriately alien and inhuman and yet having the race be playable is always there in any RPG.
This is the write up for the elves of Korrel, that I give to any player wishing to be an elf. Your elves don't have to be like this, because they are your elves. But these are mine:
The elves believe that they alone remember the true purpose of the free peoples and have stayed true to it. The elves believe that they were created to mend the wounds caused to the world during the God’s War, and that they were wisely imbued with the necessary gifts to fulfill this most highest of callings, while the other races were unwisely created to continue the agendas and evils that lead to the God’s War in the first place and are usually little better than pawns and servitors in the god’s maneuvering.
Of all the created free peoples, the elfin race is closest in nature and form to the fairy peoples that inspired their creation. While not truly immortal, they are very long lived with a life span generally reckoned to be nine times that of humans. They are close to the natural world, and feel a deep kinship and empathy for animal life, plant life, and the spirits of the natural world. Because of this most elves practice vegetarianism and pride themselves on not eating meat – or drinking blood as they would put it more vulgarly when disgusted by the practice. Generally, only elfish travelers and warriors eat meat, and then only after or before great exertions to quickly recover strength.
Compared to humans, elfin passions and vices are cool and strange. They are not given much to lust or greed, and elfin anger is more like ice than fire. Murder of one elf by another is extremely rare. Theft in their communities is almost entirely unknown. Possessions hold little attraction for them, as they can see clearly that all material goods pass away, break, and decay. Indeed, for an elf, all of life seems to be one long rushing, breaking, cracking, painful act of destruction. Stopping or at least slowing the destruction is one of their consuming passions. Elves love comfort and security, but have little care for wealth as humans or dwarves know it. When an elf crafts an item, he tries to craft it so it will last as long as possible. With their long lives, an elfish crafter can exceed even the considerable skill of a dwarf master. But unlike the dwarves, who sell their goods to their profit, elves seldom part with their goods and are content with a simple cottage economy, bartering goods and trading with their neighbors. Only rarely will they trade with members of another race, and indeed if an elf sees a member of another race with a piece of elfish craftsmanship his first assumption is likely to be that the owner murdered an elf in order to obtain it.
An elf’s greatest passion is beauty, and particularly music, stories, and songs. All races appreciate beauty, but for an elf this drive goes beyond mere desire to literal need. An elf deprived of beauty begins to feel an ache akin to hunger, which grows over time and eventually is a knife every bit as sharp and fatal as that of thirst or starvation. An elf which is imprisoned in a dingy and ugly place will die within days even if food and drink is available. Indeed, any confinement at all will eventually kill an elf. For this reason elves cannot be enslaved, nor does any other race try. It is perhaps for this reason that goblins have acquired an especial taste for elfish flesh, for there is no other use to which such captives may be put.
Elves compared to humans have a stronger inclination to both goodness and chaos, though there are definitely exceptions to both. Even among those of good hearts, elves are subject to vices just as are all free peoples. The lust for knowledge and beauty lead them to forget the feelings of others just as lusts can in other races. Gluttony is rare, and obese elves even rarer, but elves are just as prone to overindulge in strong drink as other races. Fortunately, this usually tends to sleepiness, rather than ill-temper. Elves frequently rebel for its own sake, sometimes forgetting even their own interests in haste to contradict. It is sometimes joked that the best way to best an elf in an argument is to take the position you do not want him to have, for he will say, “No.”, by reflex. Likewise, elves are prone to isolation and detachment even from others of their kind, and amongst elves too much detachment is seen as a terrible warning sign and a precursor to one of the two great insanities that plague the elfin people – anarooth and dhahelx. Both are terrible afflictions, and the elves do not like to speak of them much to outsiders.
An elf suffering from anarooth loses his cognitive mind, and becomes for all practical purposes an animal. They go wild, and often lose the power of speech – or at least the inclination to do so. Some elves believe anarooth results from the consumption of too much blood, but this is likely only a superstition or a reversal of cause and effect. Those suffering from anarooth do tend to become hunters and lose all inhibition about consuming meat, including raw meat, but there is little firm evidence that the reverse is true. One difficulty is that unfortunately, the normal spectrum of elvish activity overlaps anarooth sufficiently that it can be difficult to diagnose it, especially by a non-elf. Many elves will go through periods of their life getting in touch with nature and spending time alone to think or meditate, where they will seem wild and speak little. However, a gentle word may return them to something akin to normalcy, or even reawaken a desire for fellowship with other free peoples. With true anarooth however, there is usually never improvement in the condition. Even if the bestial behavior does not extend to true evil, an anarooth is dangerous to approach and may lash out in fear. Others become murders, and even cannibals.
Worse still are those that suffer from dhahelx, sociopaths who lose their ability to feel emotion and become inhumanly rational creatures, lacking all compassion, and all attachment to other beings. Completely deprived of mercy and empathy, the dhalelx become effectually beings of pure passionless murder, plotting methodically to destroy whatever they see as ugly or defective in the world and rationalizing that all they do is for the greater good. Most dhahelx withdraw from intimate associations entirely, but those that do not are the most feared for they long hide their affliction. Superficially charming and professing much that seems wise and benevolent, the dhalelx are masterful liars for they have no emotions to disguise.
Even more so that dwarves, elves are defined by their limited reproductive rates. With dwarves it is a problem mostly of fertility. With elves the problem is the slowness with which they reach maturity. Not only do elves live nine times longer than humans, but they age nine times as slowly so that by some reckoning elves do not reach maturity until about there 150th year, and have an infancy measured in decades. An elfish pregnancy lasts nearly seven years. Therefore elves cannot afford to lose any of their number, and for this reason over the last few millennia are a dwindling people. The need to avoid death in order to continue their race colors virtually every aspect of elfish culture. They almost always engage enemies with missile weapons, and rarely come to close blows by choice. Indeed, they rarely come near or interact with other races at all if they can help it, as it is simply not worth the danger. Unlike dwarves, elves are relatively frail and prone to illness, and as such they maintain often strict isolation from other races to avoid contagions. They likewise seldom build large cities, as the risk of plague and contagion in such a confined place is too great. Instead, they prefer to live in tapestry of small isolated communities spread out over a large area and impacting the natural world as little as possible. In areas in which they are dominate, it is extremely dangerous to wander in elf lands, for elves are prone to shooting first and ambush on the assumption that it is simply not worth the risk to discover what the trespassers might want. And for this reason, elves are feared and often reviled by their neighbors and only rarely enjoy mutually friendly relations.
Where dwarves hide their children much like treasures in a vault, elves find the burden of rearing a child that requires decades to come to maturity to be eventually nearly too burdensome to bear. This is especially true because elfish children soon come to chafe at every feeling of confinement and restriction. At some point, the typical elfish mother eventually decides that she’s had enough and pushes her offspring out of the house. Elfish children are encouraged as soon as they can run and talk well, to live feral in the wilderness for long periods, relying on their wits and their communion with animals to survive. These excursions initially last overnight, but eventually can last as long as years. Elves believe this degree of independence and emersion in the wild is necessary to raise an elf with the proper skills and understanding of life. An elf without these experiences is considered more than a bit strange, and is called ‘tamed’ or ‘gentled’. During this time elfish children often band together for mutual defense and companionship, and bands of elfish children armed with bows and looking for mischief can be a quite dangerous to travelers. A few children so raised end up remaining feral creatures living like hermits on the fringes of elf society, but eventually maturity brings with it a longing for greater society and learning opportunities and most elves leave their feral period some time after their first century where upon they usually take up a craft to try to master and begin the very long courtship that leads to elfish marriage.
Elves do not take government particularly seriously, and see it at best as a necessary evil. Their inclinations push them to more democratic models, but they would think it strange for the majority to impose their wishes on the minority. In most cases, they prefer to just talk, and if differences cannot be ironed out to separate. They have few nobles and few titles, and rely mostly on the guidance of priests and shamans to provide some leadership. Elfish kings and other lords are expected to show their gifts of leadership by leading as little as possible and never having to issue commands. About the only thing that they agree upon is the need to make some effort to defend themselves from and deter invasion by their enemies, and to this end they employ the profession or rank of ‘Warden’ and in larger communities ‘Lord Wardens’ and ‘Lord High Wardens’. These ranks roughly correspond to military ranks among other races. The purpose of a warden is to maintain the defensive perimeter around a community, both by patrolling and often by the placement of traps and magical wards (hence the name). However necessary the calling of warden may be to the elfish community, it is often a calling strangely without honor within it. Not only must wardens shed blood, but they often in their need hunt and eat animals. Additionally, at times they are called to interact with members of other races, or even travel beyond their borders. For these reasons, the wardens are often composed of outcasts and misfits from their own communities; elves that are too feral, or too violent, or too passionate, or simply too different to fit in anywhere else.
Taken as a whole, the relationship of elves to the other races is quite complicated. On the one hand, they are the most isolationist of the free peoples and form the fewest relationships outside their own kind. While often seen as racists, in truth the elves are no more – or less – likely than any of the free peoples to see themselves as being the superior race. Indeed, for the elves the issue that tends to be mistaken for racism is less that the elf sees his race as a whole as being superior to another race as a whole, but rather this individual elf sees himself as being superior to the individual of another race he happens to be encountering. Because elves live for centuries longer than other races, this judgment that he is more skillful, knowledgeable, and experienced than the person he is dealing with often has some basis in fact. After a while, it requires a fairly wise elf to not leap to this immediate conclusion without first testing it. Deep down however, only the most foolish or most ill-bred elf sees his race as superior, and it is actually far more common among the elfin peoples to feel their race has failed, that their time has past, and on the whole they are tragically flawed design suited perhaps to an ideal world but poorly suited for the rough and dangerous world that is. It cannot be denied that the elves are and have been a dwindling race, outnumbered now by all other free peoples save perhaps the Idreth. This leads elves to sometimes romanticize the other more successful races - particularly humans - sometimes at the same time as they disparage them, in a complex tension between arrogance and shame.
For their own part, the other races are likely to do the same, holding elves on the one hand in awe, and on the other hand disdain and hatred. Elves are envied for their natural abilities, beauty, and long lives. In stories told by non-elves, elves are portrayed as if they were a superior race and gifted in every area without flaw and traits and gifts are often attributed to them that have no basis in fact. The greatest gifts of the most talented members of their race are treated as the common skills of every elf. So many such tall tales, legends and myths have grown up around elves amongst the other races that often the real thing proves to be something of a let down once close acquaintance demystifies them. In areas where elves are almost unknown, they are often believed to be quite tall, each an arch-mage and as knowledgeable as seers, able to sing like the celestial hosts, and gifted surpassing a master in every craft. The idea that elves are of a generally unimposing stature, often merely passable singers, are probably not more graceful than the most graceful person you know, have basically average looks, and may not be able to perform more than a cantrip simply never occurs in such stories. Yet, where elves border on the lands of other races, there is often also hatred, for the elves do not make easy neighbors. Those that stray into their lands are often killed especially if they cut wood or hunt or other ‘normal’ rural activities, and if not killed then at least frightened and treated inhospitably. They seldom trade, seldom speak, and are not always the most diplomatic when they do. They have even less respect for the laws and authority of other races than they do for their own. Because of this, there is often ancient enmity between elves and their neighbors, and many valid reasons on both sides to hold grudges.
For all this xenophobia and penchant for isolationism, elves sometimes individually form fast friendships with other races. Although elves tend to act haughty and superior at first, there are many things about most of the other races which they have sufficiently in common to form the basis of a friendship. Elves have a strong kinship with the fairy folk. With orines they share the love of beauty and song. With idreth they share the prizing of knowledge over material possession, and the memory of things long past. With humans elves share versatility and adaptability, and humans fascinate elves almost as often as they repulse them for they see in some humans a drive and a passion for change that they themselves often lack. Indeed, relationships with and even marriages between humans and elves are not completely unknown, though they are strongly discouraged by the elfish community as they cannot but end in heartbreak. Pregnancies between the two races frequently lead to complications and death, and even if the marriage lasts one spouse is doomed to what appears to the elf to be rapid dotage and an all too quick death.
Elves hybridize freely with fey and humans, but generally not with the other races. At any time in the world there are a few dozen half-elves, born from relationships between humans and elves. A few of these are the products of a loving relationship, but more often they are the product of the rape of an elfin female by a human male. Half-elves tend to unhappy creatures, being not of either world and outcasts within both. They are subject to fear or open derision and in human community often outright persecution. They are too long lived to fully enjoy the company of humans and too short lived to fully enjoy the company of elves. Suicide is a not uncommon fate. Still, for all the troubles it brings, it has happened enough, and the half-elfin line bred back into one of its root stocks often enough, that fairly sizable portions of both races bear traces of the other races lineage. Kinships between elf and human families are usually not discussed with outsiders, but often long celebrated quietly within and between the families – becoming a source of strength and hope to both lines and a means to bridge that gap of trust and misunderstanding that so often clouds relationships between the races.
Elves rarely get along with either dwarves or goblins. Yet in the oldest records there is evidence of close associations between these races in the past. At one time at the dawn of time, it is said that elves and goblins danced together in fairy rings before the estrangement of the two races made them bitter enemies. Likewise, the enmity between elves and dwarves has old roots, but it occasionally breached by their mutual love of craftsmanship, the esteem with which they hold each others works, and their mutual opposition to evil.
