Tell me about elves in your world.

[Carpe DM]

There's so much to tell, but I'll just do one aspect. This is how an elven character might begin in my world:

"You wake up, dressed in white, lying on a stone funereal slab. At the edge of the clearing, you see a beautiful woman, dressed in deep forest green and sunlit gold, her face ravaged with tears. She turns away from you and vanishes into the forest. Far away, you hear unearthly voices raised in lament and celebration."

Elven society in my campaign is extraordinarily complex, but the most interesting part is how Elven society avoids stagnation.

Elves are so long-lived that humans consider them effectively immortal. Although this permits elves to reach unprecedented heights of power, it also threatens society as a whole: imagine a King who would not die -- would he adopt new policies and tactics? Make allies out of old enemies? Stagnation threatens the entire species.

The Ahashtic Ritual is therefore the centerpiece of Elven life. Every so often (usually every 150 years or so), an elf becomes an Ahashtyn. In so doing, he dies to himself: all memories of his previous lives are lost. He is mourned as dead. All contact with family, all alliances, all friendships are forgotten. All enemies, all crimes, all mistakes are forgotten. He is born anew.

This permits the elf to learn new things, new ways of being, new ideas, to invest in new knowledge, and to undertake new things. As he grows in power, though, he begins to remember, and the new personality begins to become one of many. This is why the human races consider elves preternaturally strange and chaotic, speaking with first one voice, then another.

There's lots more, but I'll do one thing at a time.

 

[was]

We only use high elves, aquatic elves and drow.

 

[Varianor Abroad]

I didn't talk about Drow because I don't think of them as dark elves. In my Terminus campaign, they don't exist. But in the other campaign with elves in skyships, there are elves who live under the surface.

They are called the Avari.

And they've got trains.

They went underground at the same time that their cousins the sky elves (Alvyar) left and went into space. Over the millenia, they developed a form of technologiy. Now there's a vast culture around the Silver Cities. The noble families own and operate the steam dragons (trains), which are typically crewed by this short, grey-skinned beings who are extremely adept at maintaining them. They hate their surface cousins, but are indifferent toward humans, who they sometimes trade with.

 

[Psion]

Do you have subraces of elves?

I use all the ones in the MM, minus the wild elf, plus I split the high elves into two subraces, with different racial options. Two new subraces: farisae or "planes" elves and vanir or "frost" elves. And the drey subrace of drow (from Plot & Poison)

I also use the elemental elves from Green Ronin's Bow & Blade. They have no established kingdoms. They are something of a lost race and a few PCs that have shown up have been explained away as planar refugees. One of these days I am going to have to figure out what they are/do.

(Side note: one perverse theory I have been working from is that elves were once more powerful. Perhaps they were once Leshay even. Now they have faded from that long ago glory. However, I was figuring that the Bow & Blade elves still had a larger fragment of that former glory and power, and thus the +3 LA. But if LA is a measure of closeness to elven heritage, that might imply that the drow elves were precursors or otherwise higher in the chain that LA +0 elves were...)

What kind of society do they have?

Pretty classic. Grey are aloof. Sun elves (high elves) are somewhat paternal and manipulative. Sea Elf (high elves, not aquatic elves) are gregarious. Wood elves are somewhat frivolous. I also have a splinter of the Grey elves, vale elves, that only has a few fleeting members left and are practiced at psionics (racial favored class is Psion instead of Wizard, otherwise uses grey elf stats.)

My only major departure from the classical image of elves is that they are NOT a dying race. They aren't what they once were, but they still remain, alongside humans and gnolls, one of the most vibrant races on the continent.

I've not bothered to defind aquatic elf kingdoms, but they are there.

Dark elves: I use MM 3.5 stats for Drow, but primarily use Plot & Poison for history and culture. I shed the FR deities aside from "the spider queen" in favor of the pantheon in P&P.

What is their culture like? What form of government do they have?

High elves are largely renassaince level aristocracy/monarchy. Grey elves are led by a council of elders (though one of the sun elf nations uses a model like this.) Ever since I got quint elf, I've felt free to make them a bit less chaotic than their MM descriptions imply.

Plains elves are nomadic, and as a society somewhat pragmatic. Less benign than other elves, they have been known to engage in banditry.

Vanir are also a hardened race. Not as hostile as the plains elves, but generally very xenophobic.

What relationship do they have with the other races?

Sun and Sea elves are slightly and very friendly with humans, respectively. Sun elves are the most actively engaged in hostilities with gnolls and orcs.

Grey elves and vanir are aloof. Vanir are VERY untrusting of humans due to a now vanished empire under which they were treated very poorly, and their long racial memory won't let them forget.

Wood elves are in a similar situation but more recent. An expanding human empire left them at odds with humans. But they had contact with a bit less hostile human society, so their views are probably a bit more balanced.

 

[The_Universe]

I have two kinds of elves - both of which who refer to themselves as "Alder."

The High Alder are fair elves, identical in the game to normal D&D elves. In my campaign, however, they consider themselves a shamed race because of their actions in a war that occurred nearly a millenium in the past. Refusing even to rule themselves, they are well integrated into human kingdoms, living under human government and nobles. A few high Alder have segregated themselves completely, remaining in the service of a trapped and powerful lich-king that they backed in the last great war.

The other race is the dark skinned True Alder. Essentially a cross between wood elves and dark elves, these members of the Alder race were once persecuted and hunted. Racially compatible with the True Alder, they nonetheless consider themselves a seperate people. This race chose the winning side of the last great war, and has, as a result, earned unprecedented prestige and freedom. They rule alongside human rulers, and the greatest warriors of their race are considered the greatest warriors of the land, hands down. They have a strong martial tradition, and the warrior culture that reflects it means that these creatures dominate the militia and militaries of the land.

 

[Benben]

I have 3 types of elves in my current home brew.

Heartland Elves: They live in the core culture n my home brew world. Thematically they are based more on the Elves of "Elfquest" by Wendy and Richard Pini. They ride large wolves and domesticated elk. They are comparatively primitive and use the same stats as the 3.0 version of wood elves. As a twist they are the newest races on the planet. They are descended from fey who were attracted to human and gnomish culture and gain souls by interacting with the mortal religions. Heartland Elves took the human and gnomish religion and changed it so that they worship two forces: The Parliament of the Green and the Congress of the Red. This is an abstraction of god and goddess worship to animus and anima.

Arkadian Elves: This is a cultural offshoot of the Heartland elves which instead of being fascinated by mortal religion became infatuated with human culture. They have evolved to a highly militaristic culture similar to historically romantic view of Sparta. These elves live on an Island way out of the way for most games and I only bring them in when I need a highly militaristic race as a thematic element.

The Get of Corwyndle: There is a small dracocracy that borders the elven lands. This evil dragon is capable of converting normal elves to D&D standard drow elves. This is done my being infected by the dragon's black bile. This dracocracy is where I've put all of the Underdark races: grimlocks, duergar, and svirfneblin as I have no equivalent of it in my homebrew. The culture is a slave culture where individual lives only to support the glory and life of the dragon ruler.

 

[der_kluge]

In my campaign, most NPC elves are of Chaotic Neutral alignment. My elves are quite manipulative, weilding humans as pawns in their own complicated political intrigues. Like Tolkien's elves, they are physically beautiful, but are quite bloodthirsty and possess a passion for debauchery that is missing from their namesakes on Middle Earth. The Elves are basically amoral, believing themselves to be above mortal standards of good and evil. Although they aren't quite as sinister as the drow, they are a long way from the dignified elves of most D&D campaigns. They definitely have a more 'earthy' feel to them.

I haven't read to the end of this thread yet, but I had to admit, that's one of the most interesting and different interpretations of elves I've seen yet. Elves who get bored with immortality and are basically chaotic in nature. That's pretty interesting.

Although, I'm leaning towards having elves live to be about 200 IMC. Still, that's a unique perspective.

 

[der_kluge]

The Baran'G society has divided itself into 3 main classes, the religious, the warrior, and the worker.

Can I infer that you have made elves into sort of an ant society?

Even if that's not the case, that would truly be a unique interpretation of one of the core races.

Unless Formians exist as a PC race in your world, that is.

 

[der_kluge]

I'm seeing references to some common words like Alder and Leshay, and Sidhe?

Where are you guys getting this from? I mean, I don't read any, but these words aren't familiar to me.

 

[Henrix]

In my latest homebrew all elves were what you'd normally call gray elves.

They all lived in isolated magical cities where other races generally were not allowed. They were cold, calculating beings, always taking the long view of anything and manipulating the lesser races to do what they thought best. Creatures that didn't even survive their own centennial were generally not taken into account.

The whole world was slowly turning to ice, but the elven cities were magical wonders with central heating, often still in the places were they had always been, high up in the mountains, or far off where the land was covered in thick ice.

They were rather inspired by Moorcock's eldren, but set in a world almost like Urlik Skarsol's.