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Message: <blockquote data-quote="F5" data-source="post: 3574670" data-attributes="member: 4607">First off, I've got to say that I really liked Edena's idea about the use of Permanent Magnificent Mansion spells to make Elven cities in the forests a little more plausible.  It plays to the idea that elves are capable of grat things because of their affinity for magic (and I justify saying they have an affinty for magic with the fact that they get Wizard as a favored class).  Even if they don't NEED an agrarian, farming lifestyle (because various forms of permaculture would be sufficeint), this option would still be available to them without disrupting the forest ecosystem around them.  A high-level wizard (and I think we can all agree that the elves would have some of these) casts Magnificent Mansion and makes it permanent.  A few tons of topsoil and a room full of everburning torches, and you have an extradimensional evlish garden, somewhere around 3000 square feet of arable land that doesn't have any impact on the forest ecosystem at all.  Where does the topsoil come from?  Piles of leaf litter and Polymorph Any Object, possibly...or gated in from the Plane of Earth by elvish Summoners.  Overkill?  It's a lot of magic to throw at the problem of making a garden plot, yes, but it seems to me like it's a very ELVISH way to tackle the problem.I think part of the problem here is that some terminology we're using needs to be better defined.  Edena_of_neith wants to address concerns about certain assumptions about elvish society without compromising the elvish identity.  What, precisely, does it mean when we say "the elvish identity"?  How do we actually define if the elves are "thriving" or "doomed" as a race?For my game, I define these terms as follows:The "elvish identity":  elves are carefree, introspective, and have a deep and abiding love of life.  They prefer to spend their considerable time on the planet in pursuit of the finer things, beauty and truth and etc, and have a deeper understanding of magic and its' role in the natural world.  They are reckless in the short-term, but extremely patient in the long-term.  Whatever else you do with elves, if you keep these things constant then they still feel like elves to me.  The elves on Athas/Dark Sun, for example...while interesting, to me they just aren't elves.How do I define "thriving" elves?  I think what I (as a human) think about "thriving" and what an elf thinks of as "thriving" are two seperate things.  Maybe a small population, cut off from the world in an unassailable forest fortress, with poor, stone age material posessions, but all the time in the world to laugh, sing, and practice their considerable magics seems like the ideal to an elf, while a human might see it as "the last vestige of a doomed, fading race".  It's fair to say that a race as different from humans as the elves are would have a very different perspective about the meaning of "success".</blockquote>

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