Thyrwyn
Explorer
Only if Rosewood keeps flipping a gold piece and it always comes up heads...
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NOW LIVE! Into the Woods--new character species, eerie monsters, and haunting villains to populate the woodlands of your D&D games.
D&D 5E Need help for wood elf society
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The Grassy Gnoll
Explorer
They're both a barrel of laughs, though.
Greenstone.Walker
Adventurer
Except that Elves spend a 100 years before they are considered adults. Imagine all the teenage dramas from shows like 90210, but spread out over a century. What effect would that have on their society?
steeldragons
Steeliest of the dragons
That's a huge assumption on the rate of maturity of a fictional race.
A being that looks like a teenager for a hundred years does not engage in human-level teen antics for 100 years. Drama happens. They learn. They move on and grow out of it in the first 20-50 years or so, same as we do (and don't get me started on the number of human 20-40 y.o., sometimes older, that are most definitely still adolescent).
And even if you want to work on the assumption that their mentality is human-teen level, their "effect" on the society is no different than how we'd view it...elvin adults would just look at their childish "drama", shrug their shoulders, teach them lessons, and roll their eyes. That's just life...at a decades slower/longer pace.
A being that looks like a teenager for a hundred years does not engage in human-level teen antics for 100 years. Drama happens. They learn. They move on and grow out of it in the first 20-50 years or so, same as we do (and don't get me started on the number of human 20-40 y.o., sometimes older, that are most definitely still adolescent).
And even if you want to work on the assumption that their mentality is human-teen level, their "effect" on the society is no different than how we'd view it...elvin adults would just look at their childish "drama", shrug their shoulders, teach them lessons, and roll their eyes. That's just life...at a decades slower/longer pace.
My wood elves are the druidic remnants of what was once an Empire of Elves, their clans living within, and in harmony with, the slumbering groves which were once the One Wood, stretching across the land.
Humanity, in the form of a viking-like raiding culture, broke the spine of the empire and turned Woodland to farmland. Wood elves are those who chose to embrace the remains of the Wood and make their home there; their culture places a high importance on being able to communicate with the dormant Wood.
So! For the most part their houses are simple, portable and quickly assembled. There are a very few large wood elven cities that are more permanent settlements, in citadels which never fell to Humanity, stone and glass and wood woven together and old as mountains. These city-states house colleges of lore and skill, while the wandering tribes raise hunters and Wood-spirited to defend the grove. An easy communication between these two modes of life accounts for the tendency of elves to be classed adventurers.
Let's talk a Woods clan's intrigues first, since an outsider is more likely to deal with them.
The First Mark is their chief in all things. They must defend the Wood first, and the elves in their charge second. This suicidal priority enables conflict with the party and provides an easy foil, but once they can prove their good intentions, it also ensures an easy ally and source of quests. The tension between these duties is also a source of drama: perhaps a First Mark decides that some duty outweighs the needs of The Wood, or is unwilling to risk a conflict between their needs, their clan, and The Wood?
If the clan has a spiritual leader, it is likely to be the forestal. These druidic oracles know much, but less than others think. They are the keepers of secrets and lore, and are easily given to hubris: as they are the speakers for the Wood, and continue to enjoy their powers beyond the Wood, it is tending and preserving this mental communion which holds their highest priority. So, they might send the hunters of the clan to investigate a ruin on the premise that what they learn there could aid the wakening of the Wood, or leave a battle (triggering a swift retreat!) due to personal danger.
Forestal keep apprentices, who are only very loosely beholden to their master, and frequently part company. There is no sharp dividing line between those who claim the title and those who claim to be mere apprentices, though in any group the eldest (and therefore wisest?) is accorded the title. One may only be forestal to the clan when confirmed by previous forestal or popular assent. Perhaps an apprentice begrudges newly-installed forestal or clan for being passed over; perhaps a forestal is playing multiple apprentices against each other with the promise of some private revelation of wood-sense.
The forestall is likely the spiritual leader of a clan, and selects the First Mark from among the Marks, hunters who have been recognized by the fellowship of other Marks for their skill and bravery.
Thus, a group with a forestal creates tension between the First Mark and the Forestal; the Mark likely believes the forestal to be a loose ballista and a risk to clan and Wood; the forestal believes the Mark shortsighted and (ultimately) dispensable.
One final member of the clan pecking order is the totem and its support staff. Not every tribe, but many, have relations with fey or magical beasts. The creatures and their handlers, servants or riders (often one elf fulfills all three roles!) are the stewards. These are selected by the creature (blink dog, unicorn, cooshee, giant eagles, giant owls, old-school eladrin; I also use oni, hags, and will-o-wisps) as lifelong companion, and those elves who choose to present themselves as steward treat it as a holy calling.
A tribe with a body of stewards multiplies its politics, since an inhuman (unelven?) intelligence now has a dramatic voice in running the clan. The First Mark heeds the counsel of their stewards to avoid voiding a fey compact and losing an alliance for the entire race.
Cities only if you want: too many words already
Humanity, in the form of a viking-like raiding culture, broke the spine of the empire and turned Woodland to farmland. Wood elves are those who chose to embrace the remains of the Wood and make their home there; their culture places a high importance on being able to communicate with the dormant Wood.
So! For the most part their houses are simple, portable and quickly assembled. There are a very few large wood elven cities that are more permanent settlements, in citadels which never fell to Humanity, stone and glass and wood woven together and old as mountains. These city-states house colleges of lore and skill, while the wandering tribes raise hunters and Wood-spirited to defend the grove. An easy communication between these two modes of life accounts for the tendency of elves to be classed adventurers.
Let's talk a Woods clan's intrigues first, since an outsider is more likely to deal with them.
The First Mark is their chief in all things. They must defend the Wood first, and the elves in their charge second. This suicidal priority enables conflict with the party and provides an easy foil, but once they can prove their good intentions, it also ensures an easy ally and source of quests. The tension between these duties is also a source of drama: perhaps a First Mark decides that some duty outweighs the needs of The Wood, or is unwilling to risk a conflict between their needs, their clan, and The Wood?
If the clan has a spiritual leader, it is likely to be the forestal. These druidic oracles know much, but less than others think. They are the keepers of secrets and lore, and are easily given to hubris: as they are the speakers for the Wood, and continue to enjoy their powers beyond the Wood, it is tending and preserving this mental communion which holds their highest priority. So, they might send the hunters of the clan to investigate a ruin on the premise that what they learn there could aid the wakening of the Wood, or leave a battle (triggering a swift retreat!) due to personal danger.
Forestal keep apprentices, who are only very loosely beholden to their master, and frequently part company. There is no sharp dividing line between those who claim the title and those who claim to be mere apprentices, though in any group the eldest (and therefore wisest?) is accorded the title. One may only be forestal to the clan when confirmed by previous forestal or popular assent. Perhaps an apprentice begrudges newly-installed forestal or clan for being passed over; perhaps a forestal is playing multiple apprentices against each other with the promise of some private revelation of wood-sense.
The forestall is likely the spiritual leader of a clan, and selects the First Mark from among the Marks, hunters who have been recognized by the fellowship of other Marks for their skill and bravery.
Thus, a group with a forestal creates tension between the First Mark and the Forestal; the Mark likely believes the forestal to be a loose ballista and a risk to clan and Wood; the forestal believes the Mark shortsighted and (ultimately) dispensable.
One final member of the clan pecking order is the totem and its support staff. Not every tribe, but many, have relations with fey or magical beasts. The creatures and their handlers, servants or riders (often one elf fulfills all three roles!) are the stewards. These are selected by the creature (blink dog, unicorn, cooshee, giant eagles, giant owls, old-school eladrin; I also use oni, hags, and will-o-wisps) as lifelong companion, and those elves who choose to present themselves as steward treat it as a holy calling.
A tribe with a body of stewards multiplies its politics, since an inhuman (unelven?) intelligence now has a dramatic voice in running the clan. The First Mark heeds the counsel of their stewards to avoid voiding a fey compact and losing an alliance for the entire race.
Cities only if you want: too many words already
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Hriston
Dungeon Master of Middle-earth (He/him)
The Silmarillion doesn't have much information about Wood Elves, at least not as Tolkien defines them. I suppose the original Quenya, living by the Waters of Awakening could be characterized as having a way of life similar to that retained by the Avari after the sundering of the Eldar, but little is revealed about them. They lived in the original home-land of the Elves in the Ages of Starlight and were hunted by the agents of Morgoth, who took the form of Black Riders. Those who were captured became his slaves and may have been bred into the first Orcs. Their non-Eldar descendants were afraid to heed the summons of the Valar and stayed behind, so presumably they had a woodland culture like that of the Wood Elves presented in greater detail in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.
The people of Beleriand, where most of The Silmarillion takes place, were not Wood Elves, but were Eldar of the Grey Elf, Green Elf, and Deep Elf varieties, all of whom I would equate, in D&D terms, with High Elves. The tale is set in a time in which the Dark Elves, or Avari, from which the stock of Wood Elves is derived, have not yet journeyed as far west as Beleriand, and so do not come in to the tale. At least, they are not mentioned. The Grey Elves of Doriath and Beleriand in general, and the Green Elves of Ossiriand are the closest to being Wood Elves in that they have a woodland culture, but their culture has benefitted from having leaders who have been in contact with the Valar.
The Woodland Realm of King Thranduil in The Hobbit is populated by Wood Elves. Their king, however is a foreigner, a kinsman of King Thingol of Doriath, and so is more properly a Grey Elf or Sinda. For intrigue in the court of King Thingol, cf. the sub-plot of Peter Jackson's Hobbit in which Legolas, the son of the king, is in love with a common elf-maiden. This is unacceptable to his father because she is not of the Eldar, but is rather one of the Avari, a Wood Elf. Interestingly, Thranduil himself most likely gained the throne of Mirkwood by marrying into its Wood Elf dynasty, which would make Legolas half-Wood Elf.
The elves of Lothlorien, in The Lord of the Rings are probably the best detailed Wood Elves in Tolkien's works. They live in tree-platforms, called flets, and guard their realm jealously from outsiders, to the point where men see the wood as perilous. Their rulers, Galadriel and Celeborn, however, are not Wood Elves. Galadriel is one of the Noldor, or Deep Elves, and Celeborn is another kinsman of Thingol. By some accounts he is one of the Sea Elves from Alqualonde, a branch of the Teleri, and so related to the Grey Elves. Both are High Elves, or Eldar, once again bringing a higher culture to the Wood Elves over which they rule. Galadriel in particular seems to hold the elves of Lothlorien under a kind of spell, preserving and guarding their land by use of the ring of power she wields. A bewitched, elven woodland might be a good location for an intrigue campaign.
