Level Up (A5E) Level Up Playtest 1: Elves

[tetrasodium]

Perhaps the giants taught the Fey eladrin elves to weild giant magic, namely elemental magic of earth fire, air water, and ether. Previously the eladrin were more about mind magic (fate, charm, illusion), and life magic (healing, animals, and plants).

In any case, these eladrin elves already have an innate "talent for arcane arts", that the giants themselves were not responsible for.

No, they captured the local eladrin & razed their feyspire before magebreeding them into a more suitable slave race that couldn't just escape to another plane. They did so because the eladrin were useful with the arcane. The reason why the eladrin were able to develop in those feyspires was because it allowed them to avoid the age of demons war between The Dragons & Demon Overlords(Native not extraplanar). but they were massively outclassed when the giants anchored the feyspire & destroyed it.

Eberron is not a setting where the elves simply appeared. Neither is darksun

Spoiler: excerpt from thri kreen of athas

The greyhawk/FR elves appeared comes with so much setting specific lore & baseline baggage that it makes trying to run those settings difficult. This discussion where you seem to be trying to prove that eberron's elves could be lacking in an origin story after people discuss with you how their actual known origin of a race magebred as slaves by the giant empire of xendrik from captured eldar is evidence to just how problematic that lore & baggage is.

 

[Haldrik]

No, they captured the local eladrin & razed their feyspire before magebreeding them into a more suitable slave race that couldn't just escape to another plane. They did so because the eladrin were useful with the arcane. The reason why the eladrin were able to develop in those feyspires was because it allowed them to avoid the age of demons war between The Dragons & Demon Overlords(Native not extraplanar). but they were massively outclassed when the giants anchored the feyspire & destroyed it.

Eberron is not a setting where the elves simply appeared.

This discussion where you seem to be trying to prove that eberron's elves could be lacking in an origin story after people discuss with you how their actual known origin of a race magebred as slaves by the giant empire of xendrik from captured eldar is evidence to just how problematic that lore & baggage is.

Are you saying, in Eberron, the arcane eladrin arrived from the Feywild into the Material Plane?

The giants captured some of them and planar-anchored them, and transformed them into magic-using slaves?

 

[tetrasodium]

Are you saying, in Eberron, the arcane eladrin arrived from the Feywild into the Material Plane?

The giants captured some of them and planar-anchored them, and transformed them into magic-using slaves?

Technically It's Thelanis. 4e did a lot of screwy stuff in the eberron books trying to build lore for other settings (FR/greyhawk/mystara & plaescape especially) in order to support the asmodeous tiefling metaplot as is rather than adapting it even slightly for eberron. It was received extremely poorly by eberron's fans & wotc backed off from that misguided attempt.

Spoiler: Thelanis in 3.5

Spoiler: in 5e

In a nutshell, eberron has a different planar structure that is more conceptual than planescape's alignment/elemental. The specific group of eladrin were from the city of silver & bone involving illusion & necromancy-ish stuff. There are a few other feyspires scattered around for different things but a generic shellacking from FR& the like damages all of them because FR lore is FR specific not setting neutral or something.

The giants anchored & destroyed the city. The eladrin themselves made poor slaves for various reasons but the newly magebred race of elves were great

 

[Haldrik]

@tetrasodium

Nice quote!

I am guessing this is the most recent Eberron book, that isnt WotC, but is in DMsGuild?



Thelanis equates to the Feywild. This book emphasizes Thelanis as a realm of fairytales. The book suggests four different kinds of spirits within Thelanis. 1) The archfey who write the stories. 2) The barons who are central characters. 3) The "supporting staff" who magically appear because a story mentions them, and might be anyone from a giant, to a sprite, to a bird, to a tree.

Notably, the archfey seem to be the only ones of the three, who have freewill and are immortal. The supporting cast lack freewill. While they lack freewill, they are immortal, in the sense of reliving the same story again and again. But if one can pull them out of their story (by encouraging them to behave in a way that contradicts the story?), they gain free will (thereby become "humanoid" in the new sense of an individual with freewill), thus become a "mortal", who can exit the recurring story.

Note Thelanis resembles the Dreaming well enough, if each story is understood as a separate dream.



The eladrin elves of Thelanis seem to be their own kind of creature, separate from this storytelling hierarchy. The eladrin are "mortals" ... sorta. The text mentions that there are immortal eladrin archfey who live among these eladrin in the feyspire cities. So at least some eladrin are immortals. Moreover, when the eladrin enter the Material Plane, they become "more mortal" (whatever that means), implying that every eladrin elf is "more immortal" while in the Feywild.

With regard to the Level Up playtest, even the Eberron eladrin elves have a lifespan that is often mortal (six hundred years) but some elves continue to live immortally. Eventually, the immortal elves might serve as eladrin archfey.



My personal preferences for the eladrin in Thelanis.

• The eladrin stories are different from the stories of other archfey. Each Fey elf story refers to the fate of an individual human.
• Each story describes a different timeline for a human life. A human might switch from one timeline to an other, to change their own fate.
• The Fey elves can also alter each others fates, in the same way.

• The "Moon Court" seems earthy, nocturnal among trees, more Celtic.
• I would like a "Sun Court" that is skyey, as daytime sunrays among sun corona and clouds, more Norse.

• The Sun Court should be a democratic parliament, comprising the different elven families. Each "adult" (100+ year old) member of a family has a vote.
• A jarl (elected prime minister) is called a Songster.
• There is also a Lawspeaker, who keeps track of the previous votes, rulings and laws, also voted in, and serves as a kind of supreme court judge.
• It seems like a bard-ocracy, but probably any mage can be elected, including druid.
• The stories of these elves reflect the politics of their parliament. Political intrigues among elven voters, can alter the timelines of human history.

 

[Haldrik]

Here is a picture of the solar corona. It gives a sense of what the "soft white light" of the luminous aura of an elf looks like. Possibly, the solar corona is the location of Alfheim, where the sun itself is called "elf radiation" (alfrodul), while also the elven sunbeams pervade and gleam across clouds.

 

[tetrasodium]

@tetrasodium

Nice quote!

I am guessing this is the most recent Eberron book, that isnt WotC, but is in DMsGuild?



Thelanis equates to the Feywild. This book emphasizes Thelanis as a realm of fairytales. The book suggests four different kinds of spirits within Thelanis. 1) The archfey who write the stories. 2) The barons who are central characters. 3) The "supporting staff" who magically appear because a story mentions them, and might be anyone from a giant, to a sprite, to a bird, to a tree.

Notably, the Feywild seem to be the only ones of the three who have freewill, and are immortal. The supporting cast lack freewill. While they lack freewill, they are immortal, in the sense of reliving the same story again and again. But if one can pull them out of their story (by encouraging them behave in a way that contrads the story?), they gain free will (thereby become "humanoid" in the new sense of an individual with freewill), thus become a "mortal", who can exit the recurring story.

Note Thelanis resembles the Dreaming well enough, if each story is understood as a separate dream.



The eladrin elves of Thelanis seem to be their own kind of creature, separate from this storytelling hierarchy. The eladrin are "mortals" ... sorta. The text mentions that there are immortal eladrin archfey who live among these eladrin in the feyspire cities. So at least some eladrin are immortals. Moreover, when the eladrin enter the Material Plane, they become "more mortal" (whatever that means), implying that every eladrin elf is "more immortal" while in the Feywild.

With regard to the Level Up playtest, even the Eberron eladrin elves have a lifespan that is often mortal (six hundred years) but some elves continue to live immortally. Eventually, the immortal elves might serve as eladrin archfey.



My personal preferences for the eladrin in Thelanis.

• The Fey elf stories are different from the stories of other archfey. The eladrin stories refer to the fates of individual humans.
• Each story describes a different timeline for a human life. A human might switch from one timeline to an other, to change their fate.
• The Fey elves can also alter each others fates, in the same way.

• The "Moon Court" seems earthy, among trees, more Celtic.
• I would like a "Sun Court" that is skyey, as sunbeams among sun and clouds, more Norse.

• The Sun Court should be a democratic parliament, comprising the members of each elven family, who each vote.
• A jarl (elected prime minister) is called a Songster.
• There is also a Lawspeaker, who keeps track of the previous votes, and serves as a kind of supreme court.
• It seems like a bard-ocracy, but probably any mage can be elected, including druid.
• The stories of the jarl reflect the politics of the parliament. Political intrigues among elven voters, can alter the course of human history.

Thelanis doesn't equate to it, there are some similarities but saying thelanis is eberron's feywild is like saying that chile's Atacama desert is earth's mars when it's really just that there are enough similarities for it to be useful enough for testing. It's also worth noting that darksun has it's own planar structure & 4e's inserting of the feywild into it to fit Mystara/FR elves as is there was a huge & bizarre conflicting mess in that setting too. With the planes, they really just need to bite the bullet & say that each crystal sphere has its own planes that may or may not cross or duplicate across spheres rather than adding & changing the planes of other settings with incompatible planar structures. The fact that it's always the great wheel/planescape planes of fr & mystara both invading other settings and lore always hooking onto that set of planar tropes but never the other way around makes it extra problematic.

The snip from was eberron campaign setting, the two 5e pages were from exploring eberron. The whole free willed mortal/immortal lacking free will is more tied to their nature. If your familiar with the dresden files books It's a lot like the fey there & the author really gets into it there... but the concept in eberron also exteds to demons (fiends both devil & demon aren't differentiated) celestials &Demon Overlords. Whatever they are puts limits on their free will & they would become something else if they go too far outside those limits. Keith wrote a handful of short articles about thelanis/individuals within it/artifacts & curses from there/etc tagged thelanis here that might shed some light

WRT the even a druid yea probably but keep in mind that eberron's druid sects are nothing like standard FR druids* & many of them are deep on the blue & orange morality axis where they believe themselves to be standing against an apocalypse or similar that makes hood & evil or traditional captain planet style druidic protector of nature tropes somewhat beneath their concern (or some perversion of it is their concern).

The Eladrin>elves>khorivar(half elf) all consider themselves more distinct races than cousins/related for various reasons. like the elf<>half elf stuff dicussed earlier but elves kinda started as outsiders even in 3.5 more.

tryig to put dreams in thelanis is a huge mess that causes conflict within the setting itself though because Dal Quor is the...

Spoiler: Plane of Dreams

That kinda thing is why it was so problematic when 4e said $plane was eberron's $mystaraPlane. There are about 5-10 min of discussion on each of the planes here

.*omgomgomgomgpleasepleasepleasepleasedontjustbetreehuginghippiesinA5e

 

[Haldrik]

@tetrasodium

I tend to agree that each setting, especially its cosmology (world setting), needs to be allowed to be separate from each other.

If there is a table whose GM wants to combine two settings, have at it! And there should be conventional variant options for how to go about joining them.

But the default should be, let things be separate.



My main point is, the Level Up elf, corresponds moreorless to the Forgotten Realms cosmology. The immortality of the elf makes sense in that context, especially if 100-year-old or older tend to relocate to the Feywild.



Meanwhile, this model works for Eberron too, where an immortal elf might relocate to Thelanis. I get it, that the material elves evolved differently from the fey elves. That is fine with me. Thelanis can still be relevant to the material elves. Perhaps it is normal for Eberron elves who live long to relocate to Thelanis? It might even be, the high elves create the Deathless as a method that prevents an immortal elf from leaving the Material Plane. Meanwhile, the immortal wood elves become "spirits". Perhaps this means, these immortal wood elves no longer inhabit the Material Plane, but now instead inhabit the Plane of Thelanis as immaterial immortal elf spirits. Meanwhile, the wood elves back home in the material world, maintain a personal family connection with these immortal wood elves who are now in Thelanis. All in all, the immortality of elves seems doable in Eberron. And the eladrin in Thelanis explicitly include immortal members.



I havent looked too closely at Dark Sun elves, and we dont know yet how 5e will handle the Feywild. Note, Dark Sun seems to already have the Plane of Shadowfell, equivalent to The Gray. There might be a Plane of Feywild somehow too. Note, in 4e and 5e, the "Shadow Plane" of The Black folded into Shadowfell, the realm of the dead. So, there is no equivalent anymore for The Black. Perhaps now, the Black can serve as a bleak version of Feywild, a faint realm of illusion ... and dreaming.

You mention, the Dark Sun elves descend from halflings. Even so, Dark Sun includes various kinds of epic level beings, so immortals exist within Dark Sun setting too. The "avangions" are psion-wizard beings of light and life (vaguely reminiscent of solar elf themes). The "preserver" avangions metamorphose into something like butterflies, contra to the "defiler" sorcerer kings who metamorphose into something like dragons. Immortal elves might become avangions. Or perhaps there is a special kind of immortal being that the immortal elf tends to become. In any case, immortal elves make sense in Dark Sun too.

 

[tetrasodium]

@tetrasodium

I tend to agree that each setting, especially its cosmology (world setting), needs to be allowed to be separate from each other.

Then why are you not willing to let them be separate instead of repeatedly trying to shoehorn one world's lore into incompatible worlds rather than adjusting the thing you are moving to fit the world you are moving to?

If there is a table whose GM wants to combine two settings, have at it! And there should be conventional variant options for how to go about joining them.

But the default should be, let things be separate.

It appears that you went from let the settings be separate to "give variant options to join the settings" without pausing to admit that options that fit each should exist or that joining should be done by making the thing being moved fit the setting it's moving to before moving.

My main point is, the Level Up elf, corresponds moreorless to the Forgotten Realms cosmology. The immortality of the elf makes sense in that context, especially if a 100-year-old tends to relocate to the Feywild.

Meanwhile, this model works for Eberron too, where an immortal elf might relocate to Thelanis. I get it, that the material elves evolved differently from the fey elves. That is fine with me.



Perhaps it is normal for Eberron elves who live long to relocate to Thelanis? It might even be, the high elves create the Deathless as a method that prevents an immortal elf from leaving the Material Plane. Meanwhile, the immortal wood elves become "spirits". Perhaps this means, these immortal wood elves no longer inhabit the Material Plane, but now instead inhabit the Plane of Thelanis as immaterial immortal elf spirits. Meanwhile, the wood elves back home in the material world, maintain a personal family connection with these immortal wood elves who are now in Thelanis. All in all, the immortality of elves seems doable in Eberron.



I havent looked too closely at Dark Sun elves, and we dont know yet how 5e will handle the Feywild. Note, Dark Sun seems to already have the Plane of Shadowfell, equivalent to The Gray. There might be a Plane of Feywild somehow too. Note, in 4e and 5e, the "Shadow Plane" of The Black folded into Shadowfell, the realm of the dead. So, there is no equivalent anymore for The Black. Perhaps now, the Black can serve as a bleak version of Feywild, a faint realm of illusion ... and dreaming.

You mention, the Dark Sun elves descend from halflings. Even so, Dark Sun includes various kinds of epic level beings, so immortals exist within Dark Sun setting too. The "avangion" as psion-wizard beings of light and life (vaguely reminiscent of solar elf themes), seem somewhat Fey metamorphosing to something like butterflies (contra sorcerer king dragons). Immortal elves might become avangions. Or perhaps there is a special kind of immortal being that the immortal elf tends to become. In any case, immortal elves make sense in Dark Sun too.

There's not really any reason for an eberron elf (aerenal or vaerenal) to relocate to theanis that does not apply equally to someone of any other species. The ties you cite are not significantly different between us & lucy, but outside of researchers the number of people moving to Ethiopia because of Lucy being discovered there is almost certainly a vanishingly small number.


The elves of darksun?... yea.... nothing like FR's tolkein with the serial numbers partially filed off & I got into where they came from earlier but that's less important for darksun because their origin has little to do with how they fit the darksun setting where they are completely reshaped by the fall of civilization during a period of mass genocides that reshaped everything else.

Spoiler: honest not similar

2e dark sun campaign setting

Elves are skilled warriors & outsiders in every setting but only tolkein inspired plot armor linked to the fey/feywild in a trio of clonestamp settings (greyhawk>fr>mystara). The plot armor does not cross settings

 

[Haldrik]

@tetrasodium

Are you advocating that elves should NOT have fey ancestry?

The reason being, not every setting has a Feywild?

I am fine with that.

At the same time, the "Feywild" doesnt have to be a "plane". It can be an area in the material world, whether in a remote forest, underground, or up in the sky.



That said, Eberron does have a Feywild/Thelanis, and the elves do ultimately come from there. Moreover, the wood elf ancestors are "spirits", where do these spirits exist if not in Thelanis? Even so, the islands and forests of the elves can likewise be considered "fey" territories.

In Dark Sun, the "fey ancestry" might refer to that branch of humanoids who evolved from halflings.

Options that fit each should exist.

In other words? Elf options should include salient options that are suitable for Dark Sun, such as long distance running? A running nomad would work well as an elven background, and in Level Up can even grant a Constitution score improvement.

I wouldnt mind seeing a Deathless option as a positivity undead lich. It seems cool and creepy.

 

[Haldrik]

Heh, the Athas elf is TALL! About 7 feet tall.

The Level Up elf needs a height range that allows for very tall elves.

Elves and humans are the same height, on average. But the height range of elves needs to be wider, something like 4 feet to 7.5 feet, compared to the human that is about 5 feet to 6.5 feet. Both the elf and the human average roughly 5 feet 9 inches. But elves are more likely to be taller or shorter.

Different elf communities tend to cluster around a particular height, but a wide variety of heights is possible, and individual elves might be much taller or shorter than is typical for their community.