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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Edena_of_Neith" data-source="post: 3564057" data-attributes="member: 2020">I'm surprised in me too, that I couldn't find a way.    When I was younger those I knew asked the question, gave up on the question - or provided an answer of their own - and we played and had fun.  Which is how it should have been.  Now, I look for a creative way, a way this disbelievable race (elves) could exist in a given fantasy setting (Krynn, Oerth, Toril, etc.)  other than the obvious reason (fantasy races exist in fantasy settings!)  One answer was presented in Dragon Magazine 155 (or thereabouts.)  The elves could be allowed to retreat into the Realm of Faerie by Rhiannon/Titania.  And return to the Prime Material as they pleased thereafter.  (the article didn't state that ... I extrapolated from the article ... of course the elves wouldn't want to return, nobody wants to return, and so finis the elves!)  This is the course taken by the Vanyar, Noldor, and Teleri in the Simarillion.  Had the Valar not intervened, the Numenorians under Ar-Pharazon would have killed or enslaved them all.  In other words, there ain't no place so deep or dark They can't find you.  If elves can go to Faerie and return, the others (humans, illithid, phaerimm (!), dwarves) will find the way too.  It makes a point.  If life and living is a game of chess, the elves cannot get up and walk away from the table.  They can choose to play poorly, but they must play, and there are consequences for losing.  That's life.    Feanor could not escape the thralldom of the Valar, as he put it ('If thralldom it is, thou can'st escape it, for Manwe is Lord of Arda, not Valinor only.')  Well, the elves cannot escape Life.  If life is a game of chess as an analogy, then consider that.  In chess, he who plays better typically wins.  How does one play better at chess?  Practice, learning, dedication, and actually trying to play well, right?  When you are singing and dancing, frolicking and frivolous, merry and nonchalant, and you waste time in bucketloads in idle contemplation, you are not studying how to play a better chess game.  Or *are* you?  Because if you *were*, then you would be an *elf*, and you would be competitive with humans and dwarves and all the other races.  Here is a conception given in FOR5 Elves of Evermeet, which if taken to it's logical extreme, would provide the elves with the strength to endure in a harsh world:  the concept that elves love the world so much they can eschew Arvandor and become baelnorn (liches, and even remain in the elven community!) and nymphs (2nd edition nymphs were devastasting:  a single nymph on the walls of Minas Tirith would have stopped the whole Morgul Host) and other powerful beings.  If a majority of elves made the decision to eschew Arvandor, and they were somehow able to use High Magic to do it, and thus they became powerful beings like baelnorn and nymphs, and these stayed as part of the elven community and defended it, I think the elves would compete quite well in the harsh fantasy settings.    My praises to the creators of FOR5 Elves of Evermeet.  Because what they did was creative and neat.  You know why the elves could use High Magic to eschew death and Arvandor?  Love.  Love for their families, people, and world.  And that's an elven enough concept to be truly new and different.  With love, the elves defer death and Arvandor, and stay in the world to protect their own.  Let the humans and dwarves and illithid and phaerimm and others match that!  There's one concept for elves, and how elves might compete, that keeps elves elves and still lets them compete in the fantasy world.</blockquote>

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