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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Michael Morris" data-source="post: 1688050" data-attributes="member: 87">“So much is made of the passage of life, but why? Waters which reach the sea one day return to the mountains, and so do we.” – Trishdare.Elves have a highly spiritual view of the nature of life and death. With their long lifespans they view the coming and going of countless creatures of other races and few, if any, endure throughout the elves’ lifetime. As a result elves tend to regard non-elves in the same light as we do our pets. They rarely mourn at the passing of a human since they expect it to eventually occur. Many find this facet of the elves a little off putting.Elves still defend their own lives and the lives of their kindred jealously. While in a given lifetime an elven female may bear as many children as a human counterpart, those children will be decades apart due to her very nature so repopulating after a war is a very daunting prospect for the race. As a result, elves prefer parley to conflict almost instinctually, but they will fight foes with whom parley has proven to be ineffectual in the past.Low birth rates aside, elves rarely lose children who are successfully born, due both to magic and to their immunity to disease. This immunity doesn’t fully develop until the child is five; and for this reason elves will not suffer to allow members of any other race around their children.  In larger settlements a house is often set aside specifically for mothers with very yound children which is completely quarantined from any foreigners the elves may do business with.Whilst the bonds elves make outside their race are weak, bonds between elves are especially strong, and none are stronger than those between mother and child. Fathers are a different matter – elven females tend to be quite promiscuous so tracing an exact father is difficult without magical divination; which is used in the case of elven nobility and royalty. That said, elves are more pragmatic in such matters and rarely pass down titles through family lines. Indeed, elves make very few attempts to bond families beyond immediate kindred, hence their family structure is closer to modern man’s than it is to their medieval counterparts.Death does occur, even for elves. Unlike humans and most races, elves have the ability to die by their will alone and indeed that is the only natural way they can die. As an elf gets older, his memories take longer and longer to sort out and as a result his reveries must last longer and longer in order to maintain his sanity. After awhile simply departing this life is preferable to prolonging it and elves have no reason to fear death – they know for certain what will happen in the beyond for their bonds with their gods are kept much tighter.</blockquote>

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