Why do elves trance?

[Crothian]

Ah yes, Remathilis quotes from what we affectionately refer to as "The Complete Book of Elf Wanking." Look, I don't sleep! Look, I can fire a bow with my toes! Look, I can manifest and look all spoooky, just like Gandalf did!

You're just jealous.

 

[Crothian]

"Elf trance" and elves not sleeping are harder to explain than magic, and way too easy to forget about. When I'm the DM, elves sleep like everyone else.

How is it harder to explain then magic? They just do, and then it's explained just as well as magic.

 

[Ferret]

Vulcans do it (Me thinks), and so does Teal'c from SG-1. It completes the strange humanoid ensemble.

 

[Gez]

What I remove for elves is their immunity to sleep. The trance is something they can do, a learned technique that could, actually, be learned by non-elves as well. The natural rest of an elf is sleeping, like everybody else, from puppies to great wyrms.

However, the elves have very poor memories, and no real notion of time. They live in the present, the past is all blurry, and the future is just idle speculations. The discovery of the trance technique allowed them to overcome these racial limitations, by refreshing their memories in their mind; allowing them to build their own civilizations.

Elves need to trance at least once per month, otherwise they begin to lose memories, and eventually, levels above 1. Then they lose Int points until they reach the animal-like score of 2.

Elven education is so very lengthy because young elves need to be tamed as much as they need to be taught. Only once they master the trance can they really be educated.

 

[Greylock]

Dang. I forgot that bit about elves. Looks like my char is going to be recommending extra turns on the picket for our groups elf barbarian.

 

[LostSoul]

Gez, that's very cool. I like how it handles the level 1 at age 125 issue.

I'd go farther with the Trance idea and keep the immunity to sleep, but that doesn't mean changing much about your idea. Which I will steal!

 

[hong]

Why do elves trance? To get to the other side. Duh!

 

[Gez]

It's just a typo. It was supposed to read "prance".

 

[Bagpuss]

The first occurance I remember of elves not needing sleep (in D&D) was in the Birthright campaign, where they are only required to rest, instead of sleep, and could study spells during that time. Elves were also immortal in that campaign setting.

 

[Shallown]

Last Campaign I ran i had a reason based on the camaign for the Trance. Basically the races had thrown off the yoke of their demon/dviel slave masters and sealed most of them behind a gate that kept them in their home planes. Each race took on a burden that allowed this to remain stable. The elves would sleep once a year for two days and during thattime each elf would fight back the demons and strengthen the gate using dreams to transport them to the demons/devils planes. This experience would on occasion leave scars/kill elves etc. But for the most part the elves left behind the trauma of these war wounds behind in their dreams. So the elves learned not to dream but to instead gain the benefits of dreaming through the reverie. Also their are some other facets such as elves though always long lived compared to humans didn't always live as long as they do now. They started at living twice as long and the lengthening of thier lives is thought to be part of the dream world they live in once a year. They are not sure why. It made for some interesting reasons why elves are the way they are. For one they keep themselves seperate for the reason you don't want people to know your entire race falls asleep for two days and is defenseless. It also explains why the bond with animals as they usedand still use them as guardians while they sleep. The world at large knew this as a religious holiday but not how exposed/vulnerable the elves are. I basically used the previous enslavement to hard wire in certain fantasy assumptions of races. Dwarves have their own reason to be dwarf like based on this as well as halflings etc.

The two elves at the time of the soulless night (as the elves called it) sealed themselves off from the party during that time of the year not telling them why and readied themselves to do their otherworldly battle and of course it didn't happen which was a signal that the count down to the gate reopening had begun, of course I also had them in the underdark so they weren't sure if that had anything to do with it or not. Scared them pretty badly.

Later