D&D General Your Core Classes if The Core 4 Aren't Allowed

[Hriston]

That is fantastic. I mean anything inspired by Paracelsus is gonna get points from me, but that is just really good.

Thanks! I've included elves in Homo sapiens for a long time now, under Tolkien's influence, and, when I read Paracelsus' book describing undines, I recognized some of the folkloric elements Tolkien used to create his elves, such as their beauty, and how they of all the "spirit-men" most closely resemble humans with whom they intermarry at times, thereby gaining a soul, and how they're apt to suddenly disappear back into the water. I was reminded particularly of the tale of Mithrellas, the elven progenitrix of the line of the Princes of Dol Amroth, who suddenly disappeared after the birth of her second child with Imrazôr the Númenórean. Also, of Lúthien's sharing of her husband's "mortal" fate. Other resemblances are the sea-longing of the Eldar, how they travel west and "disappear" over the sea, and how many of the elves come from a land, Beleriand, which now lies drowned beneath the waves.

This association of the undines with Tolkien's elves was coupled with a recognition that his other non-human races have parallels in Paracelsus' book: dwarves with gnomes, ents with the wood-dwellers, and orcs/goblins with the vulcans. I was also aware that each of the greatest of the male Valar are associated with one of the classical elements: Manwë with Air, Ulmo with Water, and Aulë with Earth. This implies somewhat an association between Morgoth and Fire that, I think, the text bears out. Couple all this with these Valar each having an association with one of the races above, except for Ulmo who is said to love the Children of Ilúvatar, both men and elves, whom he is said to have never abandoned, and the strong association of Ulmo with the mission of Eärendil the Mariner to the west on behalf of both men and elves of whom, as a half-elf, he was a representative, and I was led back to seeing the two peoples as one and using Paracelsus' term undine, or wavelings, as an umbrella for both along with others possible variants such as water nymphs, selkies, etc.

 

[DammitVictor]

Thanks! I've included elves in Homo sapiens for a long time now [...]

Ironically, elves in my settings-- when I include elves in my settings-- aren't even humanoid, much less human. In Cosmic Rangers, the "Feywild" and the "Far Realms" are... both a spectrum and a matter of perspective... and the alufey are actually quite a lot closer to the aberration end of the spectrum than most humans realize.

The Tolkien influence that I wear on my sleeve is that the oroghai are former elves (or the descendants of former elves) who were captured and twisted by black magic into enemies of elvenkind. The twist is that they're victims of a secret civil war in elven society; when elves discovered that they can't actually participate in religion the way mortals understand it, the majority accepted it and a minority became obsessed with extreme genetic alteration, neurosurgery, and black magic to create artificial souls that can attach to their aberration physiology. Orcs are living weapons created by the "light elves" to eradicate and humiliate the "dark elves".

So the draugh elves are technically capable of becoming clerics, but the Celestials that invest priests with holy power want nothing to do with them; all of them are warlocks. Ironically, orcs after the first generation share the elves' attraction to the Holy Church, count as mortal humanoids, and their souls are tainted by what was done to them-- but not by their own sins. There are still more orcish warlocks than clerics, but orcs are the third-most common species in the priesthood of the (humanocentric) Holy Church, after humans and lizardfolk.