Psychology of Sacrifice

Rather than other settings were an old elf just fades away after being old enough, an elf that feels they've lingered in this stage of life for too long offers themselves up.

Being sacrificed is considered an honor for both the sacrifice and the priest doing the ritual. The sacrifice gets to aid their people and the world, pass on to the next stage of the life cycle, and the priest gets to aid the sacrifice in being able to move to this next stage.

Sacrifice of heinous criminals is a bit contradictory. It is still an honor to serve the world in this manner, but they get sent on before their time in the world is done. Elves also use the previously mentioned WHIRLPOOL OF DEATH to execute them rather than being cut open on the altars. Giant spinny pool of water that drags you down to the bottom, crushes you on the rocks, and drowns you while you are paralyzed from the crushing.

It may be an honor.. but they aren't making it painless.

(more to come still)

>>4696772

Elves are perfect and pretty... because they are descendants of magicaly transformed humans who wanted to be perfect and pretty (and immortal).

That's IMO very logical, if bit transhumanist, way to explain why elves are perfect and pretty.

arabic/eastern inspired elves.

I disapprove of the lack of following:

- BURN CHILDREN BECAUSE THEIR FALLING TEARS IS MUSIC TO TLALOC'S EARS
- Ritual fights to death. We'll kill you, but we're kind enough to give you a stick to defend yourself with. Yes, we will be using spears.
- Skin wearan, heart eatan.

Elf Life Span

They can still get into the OLD AS SHIT territory, but this is uncommon. SUPER ELVES that have spent a thousand years learning everything there is to learn doesn't happen often. You gain what you feel you need from the world and allow yourself to pass on and make way for others to keep the cycle going. Elves still mature slower than humans.. but not at the ridiculous rate common in fantasy. Only slightly slower than humans. Or whatever you feel you can get away with.

Weapons and Armor

Elves don't usually work with metal. Blades are made of obsidian or glass. Armor is what seems to be mere cloth. The elves have mastered working with the fragile but sharp obsidian. They can make full length swords of toughness and sharpness of normal metal blades. The blade itself being "glass" with the hilt being more normal. Armor is cloth.. but made of spider silk. Strong as steel or stronger. They've mastered harvesting and weaving it. The only issue is the thickness and density needed for protection makes it as cumbersome and limiting as their metal counterparts. Both are non magical.. the actual process being 'mundane' but a closely guarded secret. (mechanically it would be be the same.. just different materials used and fluff change)

(still more)

>>4696878
Elves and the Woods.

Yeah, they live deep in the forest. Don't call them treehuggers, though. They are just willing to use what the forest provides to their full advantage. They've no interesting in the health or preservation of the woods beyond that they wouldn't be able to rape it for benefits if it were all cut down. Knowledge of survival is no different than a desert dweller. Of course you know a lot if you live there. It doesn't mean you particularly care for the sand beneath your feet.

They need a totem.. like their inspiration. I'm not sure what to make their main animal though. It needs to be something that says, "well be nice if you're nice to us, but cross us and we stick or obsidian longsword up your ass."

They aren't warlike.. but they are no nonsense when it comes to dealing with other races.

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round:
And here were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.

But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted
Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!
A savage place! as holy and enchanted
As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon-lover!
And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,
As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,
A mighty fountain momently was forced:
Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst
Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,
Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher's flail:
And 'mid these dancing rocks at once and ever
It flung up momently the sacred river.
Five miles meandering with a mazy motion
Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,
Then reached the caverns measureless to man,
And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean:
And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
Ancestral voices prophesying war!

The shadow of the dome of pleasure
Floated midway on the waves;
Where was heard the mingled measure
From the fountain and the caves.
It was a miracle of rare-device,
A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!

>>4696907
A damsel with a dulcimer
In a vision once I saw:
It was an Abyssinian maid,
And on her dulcimer she played,
Singing of Mount Abora.
Could I revive within me
Her symphony and song,
To such a deep delight, 'twould win me,
That with music loud and long,
I would build that dome in air,
That sunny dome! those caves of ice!
And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread,
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise.

See: Dresden Files.

>>4696864
>BURN CHILDREN BECAUSE THEIR FALLING TEARS IS MUSIC TO TLALOC'S EARS

Thats good if you want to make them a BBEG non player race.

That was not the goal here. This is supposed to create a stable fantasy setting. Not one where every elf is an enemy of all that lives.

Maybe you could turn drow into their EXTREMIST counterparts.

>>4696864
>Ritual fights to death. We'll kill you, but we're kind enough to give you a stick to defend yourself with. Yes, we will be using spears.

I like it. Criminals sentenced to death get a chance to save themselves. Not much of one.. but..

>Skin wearan, heart eatan.

...No.

Maybe for their extremist drow OH LOOK THEY ARE SO HARD CORE SO COOOOOOOOOL only 13 year old boys like them counterparts..

But not the regular ones.

In my setting, Elves are fucking douches. The live on the edge of known civilization and are pirates. Elves outside of the known civilization are freaking savage cannibals.

>>4696929
Drow

Worship one of the (now fallen) star deities. They took a more.. extremist approach in blood sacrifices. They'll wear the skin of their enemy and eat the heart. Kidnap children to throw into the sacrificial whirlpool.

The deity, long ago, decided they wanted this done. Wanted more power. More blood for more power. The other elf deities threw him/her down and her followers with him.

And yeah. The elves aren't crazy. Their deities really DO need blood for power and keeping the stars burning.

>>4696929
You do realize that skin wearing and heart eating (at the same time) were a part of Aztec religious ceremonies?

>>4696929
Then those aren't really Aztec elves. Because ritualistic skin wearing/cannibalism and child sacrifices were just what Aztecs did (and effectively got away with) and it doesn't exactly make them pure evil.

>>4696960
Yeah, but this isn't a direct translation.

Only using parts of the cultures as inspiration. If the elves were made as you described then everyone on the planet would have a big interest in trying to wipe out every last elf ever.

This way? Everyone thinks they are off.. but.. not coming and taking the children means "you stay in your corner and I stay in mine" is the best policy.

>>4696979
They use their own children. Which, if the elves are very long-living, explains why they haven't overpopulated yet. Child sacrifices keep the birth/death ratio constant.

>>4696997
But then you are sending the children on before their time. I don't see how a child would go "hey, I've only been alive for 10 years. I think I've seen enough."

And it's an inspiration. Not a direct translation of.

HOWEVER, IF YOU CAN THINK OF A PLAUSIBLE REASON WHY THEY WOULD THINK IT OKAY THEN I'M ALL FOR IT.

>>4697020
Hell, it would further their ELVES BE SO CRAH-ZAH image.

But I can't see how the kids would want to be sacrificed or why the parents would allow it.

Maybe, given elf life span and breeding rate, you get so many kids and members of the family you can afford to lose a few? That is, some children are marked and raised FROM BIRTH for the specific purpose of being sacrificed. They are lavished with attention and everything they could want for their short lives. Taught their purpose and indoctrinated.

Then stabbed on the altar come.. 15 years of age?

>>4697037
Deity impersonation. Some children aren't children, they're earthly manifestations of the stars. They're given due respect for a time, and then sent back home.

Hell, there's a myth exactly like that with bears. I'll be damned if I remember where it was from though.

Obsidian longsword? I don't think so. Meet the Tepoztopilli, an Aztec weapon, wood club with razor sharp obsidian glass lodged in the edges. It cut like a sword or you could club your enemy over the head in war so they can be taken later for sacrifice.

>>4696929
>That was not the goal here. This is supposed to create a stable fantasy setting. Not one where every elf is an enemy of all that lives.

In my fantasy setting, one of major superpowers ruling caste consist of soul devouring mutated wizards (sickly pale people with claws, glowing irises and black whites) who have "soul factories" which are giant slave pens, where they breed slaves like dutch breed da pigs to extract their souls later. Their civilisation consume souls like we consume oil...

...they are meant to be PCs.

>>4697037
Yeah.. I like the feel of that.

They would be the equivalent of elven royalty. They are the rich spoiled brats of elven society. Their word is law.. to a certain extent anyway. If they see something they want in a shop and say GIVE you give. They are performing a great service, after all. Sacrificing their immortal life span so others can have room to live and stars to look at during the night.

THANK YOU ANON.

THAT WAS A GREAT IDEA YOU HAD.

KEEP EM COMING BABY!

I like my elves TERRIFYING.

>>4697049
Thats just a spiked club though. Which could still be a weapon. So yes. OBSIDIAN SWORD. THE ENTIRE BLADE IS OBSIDIAN. Not just shards stuffed into wood.

My reasoning for this is so they can compete with.. well... the iron age. They need the ability to make weapons that can keep up with both pure metal weapons of the other races AND bypass armor. The weapons available to mayans and aztecs would do fuckall to any sort of armor.

Thats the same reason I gave them spider silk armor. It worked for their inspiration fine because it was in a vacuum. No one had steel weapons or armor. There is no counterpart.. but it was a needed change.

>>4697037

I think that some IRL culture worked this way...

>>4697054
>...soul devouring mutated wizards...

Eeeeehhhh uuuuuummm..

Fair enough. I'm not making this ORIGINAL IDEA DO NOT STEAL.

Steal what I post and alter it all you want. I'm never going to use it in a game myself. I'm not one for world building. So someone might as well use it.

>>4697112
>I think that some IRL culture worked this way...

Heh.

And thus for the entire inspiration for this. I figured out something. You don't need to make some retarded half baked fantasy race to replace the usual ones to make them interesting.

Just use real world FREAKY ASS CULTURES. Earth has a shitload of cultures both current and past that you would never see any sane fantasy author come up with. Thats what makes it so good though. You get ideas you'd never come up with in the limited perspective of your own world.

Anything else?

Thoughts? Additions? I'll try to revise this and post again at a future date in a more complete form based on feedback.

Or if you all think its shit I can put it in the box I keep all my dumb ideas safe in.

>>4697047
Found it. Turns out to be an Ainu practice.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iomante

>>4697117

I don't think I aa stealing there, because this idea was stolen over and over again, so no one knows where it originated from. You know, it's everywhere, from Jade Empire (lol, spoilers) to Fullmetal Alchemist to vampires from eastern-slavic mythology (and all vampires in general, they weren't drinking blood because it was only thing they can digest, you know).

I once thought of something similar to OP. It was a Norse based civilization of very beautiful, flawless Mary Sue elves good at everything they did, be it fighting, art, or magic. This however had an ugly side- their society was solely maintained by raiding and enslaving the local humans, who were put to work helot style, used as rape slaves and hunting animals in a form of Elven combat sport. They were also sacrificed to the Elven Elder Gods, through burning on a longship pyre.

The Elves will eventually overrun by an intolerant monotheistic human empire from across the sea, armed with gunpowder and superior magic, who were essentially Middle Eastern and based on the Byzantines, Islamic Conquest Arabs, Ottomans and Mughal Indians.

>>4697186
Thats...

Strange.

So add on "every child is divined at birth" and the ones found to be stars made flesh are given the royal treatment until their sacrifice?

I like it.

I don't get what's with all the elf hate. They seem just fine as a race along with dorfs, hobitts/halflings, and gnomes.

I like the classics.

It seems to me that the hate come from the fact that when someone was 13 years old he played as a mary sue elf and it left a bad taste in everyone's mouth since with the advention of the interwebs, everyone got to hear about his obnoxious character.

Face it, most of you never saw a mary sue wannabe character actually being played for real. And if you did, it was probably played by a teenager.

If he wasn't a teen, why were you playing with him anyways?

>>4697188
heh, true enough.

I didn't come up with it. Merely altered the real civilization to suit high fantasy elves.

Hm.. weapon idea incoming. Give me a moment in MS Paint.

I like this idea. Going to hold on to it as an alternate elf setting. So next is nippon dorfs amirite?

TO THE GUY WORRIED ABOUT THE ELVEN WEAPONS.

How is this for a compromise?

Black is the obsidian. Brown is the wood. Could also do double sided with a wood core..? Kind of using wood as the "bendy metal used for the sword core" instead of a softer metal..

>>4697227
>Thats... Strange.

Welcome to the world! That's why I love mythology.

At any rate, might as well bring back my old remake of elves.

Elves are evolved from parasites and scavengers on Ymir's skin. Throw all the myths about them being beautiful humanoids down the window. This means they don't have mouths, they have mandibles. They have wings, though incapable of flight by themselves, they use the support of air magic to leap great distances, their most skilled magicians being capable of flying almost indefinitely. They work charms to not look hideous to what they consider the "lesser races" and kidnap them en masse, as they lay their eggs beneath the skin and their larva-children eat their host inside out. They are few in number - only one egg is laid inside per host - but immortal except by violence. They have their own realm, Alfheim, from which they launch their assaults and vanish back to without a trace. They're thin, tall and wiry with both an endoskeleton (with hollow bones to support flight) and exoskeleton. They are weak in physical combat, their numerous extremities breaking easily, but very skilled magicians nonetheless. So feared are they that the common men have taken to calling them "the fair folk" to not incur their wrath - as if that would help.

>>4697088
A pure obsidian weapon would fare worse than an obsidian edged one, due to its brittleness.

>Aztec elves
Dammit, I already came up with Aztec Drow.

>>4697335
>hurr we can't have a fantasy race that figured out how to specially treat unusual materials!

And an ancient civilization figuring out how to make spider silk armor is impossible as well. Whats your point?

But fine. i was trying to keep the PRIMITIVE LOOKING BUT SURPRISINGLY ADVANCED asthetic.. but we can just put them in stereotypical fantasy armor and metal fantasy weapons.

I'm sure that won't clash with their mayan/aztec theme at all.

>>4697360
>hurr i can bend geology to my very whim

>>4697327
>They have wings, though incapable of flight by themselves, they use the support of air magic to leap great distances, their most skilled magicians being capable of flying almost indefinitely. They work charms to not look hideous to what they consider the "lesser races" and kidnap them en masse, as they lay their eggs beneath the skin and their larva-children eat their host inside out

I think that's a tad extreme. Is this still fantasy or are we going to make "elfs" to simply be the name of a random star wars alien race?

>>4697380
They're humanoid blowflies. Their size disallows them from flying by physical means, hence magic. They lay their eggs inside human hosts because that's what some flies (and wasps, and some beetles etc. ) do. They only lay one because not enough flesh.

>>4697243
I'm guessing you play elves?

Tolkien elves aren't bad.
It's the elves modeled after them that are snooty without reason that people hate. Elves have become synonymous with baseless racism, claiming they are superior just because they live longer and have been around longer as a race.
Add to this the many stories where they do nothing but give vague, unclear warnings about something the humans are doing, and then say I told you so in the end.
Or the times when they are flat out wrong, but the writer presents them as being right. People tire of that shit.

You know, as much as this is all very interesting, I don't think anyone is ever going to use it unless it's as the designated antagonists for someone's campaign setting.

Myabe I'm thinking too much on RPGs, but shouldn't we make this whole thing more... Roleplayable by players?

>>4697378
Something tells me you really don't get the idea of 'fantasy.'

Wood Elves are the only elves I like.

>>4697360

Obsidian isn't unusual at all. What it is essentially is volcanic glass. GLASS.

As well my ultra advanced fantasy race can fashion weapons from heat fired dung bricks.

>>4697378
>I shall bring realism into a setting full of made up fantasy nonsense.

>>4697407
Good for you? Nice ceramic dung or something?

>>4697418
>>My reasoning for this is so they can compete with.. well... the iron age.

>>reasoning

>>4697400
>I'm guessing you play elves?
Most of the time I play dorfs, (I play waaay too much dorf fortress).

>It's the elves modeled after them that are snooty without reason that people hate. Elves have become synonymous with baseless racism, claiming they are superior just because they live longer and have been around longer as a race.

See, that's the problem. People hate them because authors who write bad fantasy don't write well. It's like hating humans because so many mary sue characters are human.

Also, this leads to another problem. Since everyone hates the elves, everytime someone tries to remake them, they have to be this ultra evil race that can only be NPCs, and would never mix well with other races.

Just make the obsidian MAGIC obsidian. There, all problems solved, can we move on?

>>4697435
I've not ONCE seen an example of the kind of elves /tg/ hates.

>>4697403
I'm full of USELESS IDEAS.

I got used to it after a while. I'm happy to be able to do anything.. even if it isn't constructive in the least.

>>4697430
Such weapons would also be a crapload (hurr) more effective than an obsidian knife (not the Aztec kind, one with a blade solely obsidian.)

The first blow of such a blade, meeting any sort of metal armor or a parry from a harder weapon (even a wooden club), would cause it to shatter. One well placed hit from my shit brick and its all over.

>>4697447
Thats what I've done.

But apparently MAGIC isn't good enough.

So lets just say they picked up metal weapon making from others. They can keep the spider silk armor since no one seems to hate that.

>>4697461
Eragon. Full stop.

But I've never seen anyone PLAY as one of the elves /tg hates, that's for sure.

>>4697472
Never read that.

But that aside.. I've not once seen that kind of elf played either. If no one actually plays it.. and the game doesn't actually present elves that way...

What is the problem?

Obsidian would be perfectly fine against anyone who doesn't wear armor or has discovered metallurgy. Provided their enemies (if any) are still in the stone age, or subscribe to highly ritualistic warfare, they should be able to dominate anyone in the area with their springy silk armor and pointy igneous based weapons.

Scoffing at the actual weapons designed by the Aztecs, deriding them as primitive, is what gets my goat. They used obsidian shards in their wooden clubs, and not pure obsidian blades, because they were well aware of the limitations of the material- they even had trouble with breaking against their fellow Mesoamerican opponents.

BUT NO YOU FUCKING KNOW BETTER THAN THOSE PRIMITIVE SHITFACES SO YOU MUST HAVE YOUR MAGICALLY ENHANCED OBSIDIAN LONGSWORDS

>>4697465
>I am pretending that the other poster doesn't exist, except for the post that details their realistically untenable proposal, despite this being about a race that doesn't even exist, in a world filled to the fucking brim with magic and gods, and where people can pull shit totally out of their ass for any reason, in order to make a good story. Nuh-uh, none of this 'obsidian that's oddly strong.' Nosireebob, that's completely fucking impossible!

Really, just ignore the fucker already Fuuka. He's just going to say the same stupid bottom line over and over again.

>>4697500
YOU!

You look like you know stuff. Why do people hate MARY SUE elves despite them never being present in RPG fluff nor played by anyone like that?

>>4697435

You know what's funny is that one of the better examples of elf-likes I can think of are actually almost the embodiment of the shit parts. Ian Irvine has the Aachim, a race of long-lived people who are intelligent, almost fetishistic for making everything the make artsy, are extremely talented at making things and are also very strong magic users. They have the traditional psychology of utter confidence in their superiority. That strength is in fact a crippling weakness in them, because their utter faith in their righteousness leads them to make catastrophic mistake after mistake, and their complete inability to do a fucking thing about it when their leaders decide to do stupid shit because they are the leaders does too.

Better are probably the woodelf-likes. They loathe technology utterly to the point it physically hurts to use machines, are incredibly skilled illusionists, and again think they're always right and that they're more important than anyone else. They are, and are seen within the setting as, such sociopathic monsters that when it turns out their leader accidentally obliterated their entire civilisation and regressed them into gibbering retards and then walks into a fire and burns to death ending her species all you can say is TAKE THAT YOU FUCKING BITCH.

>>4697485
There is no problem. Hating elves is an internet thing. Someone started and it got ingrained in the minds of everyone.

It's like those baseless urban myths. No one knows how they started, but everyone believes they are true.

And when you do your research to it, you realise that there it's actually not.

>>4697472
Oh.

Such...pure innocence. This flower must not be spoiled.

>>4697500
Fuckers. There's at least two of us. There's the original Tepoztopilli chap, who may or may not be Mr. Shit-Brick. I'm >>4697433

>>4697500
>TOO MUCH FUCKING GREENTEXT MAKES ME SICK

I think it was /tg/ where I read the idea of elves losing their memories as they gain new ones. That's a concept that could be worked off. Maybe make them biologically immortal and give them some sort of regenerative ability that progresses/regresses their body to the state it was in when they hit maturity. So say they lose a limb or recieve some crippling injury, in 20-30 years it'll be gone without a trace, in 200-300 years they won't even know it even remember it. Same with memories, physical training and other forms of "character growth", sure as long as they keep in condition they're strong, but if they don't do it constantly then in time (not sure how much time, but probably quite a long time) they shrivel back to their original size.

I really want to work with this, but in the end I'm not sure they'd still be elves, regardless I like it.

>>4697527
The hatred for elves comes from the Fey.

THE FUCKING FEY.

I mean, fuck those guys were dicks. It was like every one was about 1% as dickish as Eldrad.

And that's worse than 40 Hitlers.


Also it comes from the hippie 'OMG LOL HUMANZ R EVAL AND STUF LOL' shit that gets bandied about. It's not so much that the Elves are perfect, but more like they're perfectly reasonable people while every single human is like an Ork. But dumber and less awesome.

That's what pisses people off.

>>4697551
They'd still be Elves.

They'd just be a bit more carefree, that's all.

>>4697516
Uhm...

Maybe because people perceive that Elves seem to be able to make perfect utopias without really breaking a sweat and always fight to protect it, never with other elves? There seems to never be a need for them to be angry, they're always on the high end of the arcane/religious pyramid than us, and they can be as naive as they want without suffering ill effect? That, and a bunch got much more magick mojos than we does (humans)? How come they get all that fucking racial grace? Maybe it's our way of sticking it to the metahuman version of 'The Man?'

¯\(°_o)/¯ I probably pulled a bunch of those, if not all, out of my ass...

>>4697551
>I think it was /tg/ where I read the idea of elves losing their memories as they gain new ones.

That was also me.

Though I stole it from a web comic first.

>>4697548
>Hurl, bitch.

>>4697555
>The hatred for elves comes from the Fey.
I disagree, being more like the Fey would make them awesome unlike most of them are now (there are some good elves though when they manage to tear themselves away from Tolkien).

>>4697523
What? I've never heard of those guys. And those two races are a perfect example of ba authors giveng elves a bad name. No one would play as them.

I mean, artsy elves? Elves are prefectionist, indeed, but not to the pointy (see what I did thar) of feitish. They can make simple things when they need to.


And wood elves being ludittes? Yeah, that's kind of clever, but not realy in line with how they are represented anywhere else.

>>4697527
In all seriousness, this. Though some are still dicks.

>>4697563
So strawman stuff? Angry at game fluff that doesn't actually exist?

>>4697575
Yeah, Fey are awesome.

Doesn't mean you'll like them, though. It's like they're the dickheads you love to hate.

>>4697567
Oh wait, is that you Fuuka? You keep changing names so I can't recognise you, not that that's a bad thing (no offense).

>>4697567
what comic?

>>4697528
Yeah, I'm talking about really playing. Not random shit teenagers come up with and post it in their blog.

Huh. In my setting, Some elves used to have a great big Mayan-like culture, but were downgraded to nomads when the Dragonborn expanded their empire into that territory.Some time later, their empire fell too and the elves have since been in an eternal land dispute with gnolls, goblins, goliaths, and gorc-er, orcs, as well as every other savage/primal race to crawl out of the woodwork.

I haven't actually given much thought into their culture yet, but something like this is very fitting.

>>4697595
http://egscomics.com/

Those little fairy things no one can see.

>Oh wait, is that you Fuuka?

.....I AM THE NIGHT!

SMOKEBOMB!

NINJA VANISH.

>>4697618
> egscomics

Fuuka, you are more of a faggot now than you have ever been before.

>>4697618
totally missed your username there fuuka. EGS, Why am I not surprised?

>>4697587
Or that appears to be, I guess?

I mean, they're always somewhere in the setting first, and they're always with shitloads of magic. Damn, man, they be stealin our thunder. That, and they really do seem to get to utopia stage fucking left and right real damn early, IIRC in a lot of fluff from different settings.

It's really a combination of that, and many people just randomly saying, "Elves suck," while believing it in generally good humor. It's fun to bash elves.

>>4697631
>>4697628

My input:

Make their silk armor lighter, but offer less protection. If they stay naturally dexterous, this could play to their advantage.

As for the blades, either have them carry several of the things, have them be so good with them that they can avoid them being broken in a fight due to their evolved style, have them magically enhanced to not so easily break(perhaps by being dipped in sacrificial blood before it's offered) or do all three.

In fact, center a dueling style around the use of the blades. The winner isn't determined by death or even first blood, it's determined by the first one to break the others blade(and thus demonstrate his superior skill with the weapon in question)

>>4697321
Congratulations, you've made an obsidian katana.

Personally, I'm fond of Tales of the Questor's Elves-they used to live for the 800 years or so that elves usually do-but they'd only have the normal amount of youth, so they'd spend much of their life being old.
One of the Elves didn't like this, so he went to go see a great Wyrm, and wished for the Elves to be eternally young.

Elves now die at 20, and their race is haphazardly raised by 18-20 year olds or other humans. Halflings (that is, half-elves) live to about 40 or so.

Thing is, the Wyrm was feeling a bit off about what was pretty much a dick move on his part, and made a goblet that would allow the Elves to live out their full span of years. Unfortunately, someone stole it-so now Quentyn Son of Quinn and his halfling sidekick are looking for it.

>>4697617
>I mean, they're always somewhere in the setting first, and they're always with shitloads of magic.

Netheril had better magic. But really, most of the time they get screwed by the setting and are always "fading" or some shit like that. Their great utopias always seem to colapse on their heads. And usually due to being stupid idiots. (picking a war against a race resistant to magic when your schtick is being all magicky counts as being stupid. Elves vs Dwarves.)

So really, elves usually are fucked the actual settings, (iron kingdoms= Our gods are DEAAAAD, tolkien: Dicked by melkor. Forgotten: Dicked by drow and demons. Eberron: Defeated by the goblinoid kingdom. 40k: Lol slanesh. Warhammer fantasy: Why did you pick a fight with the dwarves again? You IDIOTS). AND on top of that, the internet hate them. Elves are really getting dicked over by everyone. Also, since there are a lot of half elves, they seem to be raped a lot too.

You can totally have child sacrifices, cannibalism, torture rituals, skin-wearing and heart eating and not turn them into a race that everyone else has a vested interest in destroying.

Look at Carthage. Phonecian traders and merchants who built up an empire based on getting along well enough with a very large range of very different cultures. They had a few religious issues with some of the less tolerant lots, like the Jews, but they got along okay with most people for the most part.

Concepts of morality have less to do with starting wars than you might think. Territoriality, now that's a different story.

Bashing other faggots like fuuka helps me retain my masculinity while fapping to the idea of having tits.

>>4697654
Or you could say it's some specials sort of obsidian ( or just looks like obsidian ) that's extra hard.

Magic on the side wouldn't hurt, though.

A martial art based on disarming, or neutralizing the opponent with the most efficiency, in terms of speed and how badly you incapacitated their ability to fight, would be interesting.

>>4697669
Territoriality? In my fantasy? Wars are only started by evil overlords that seek to rule the world, or by some evil wizard scheming to make two good kingdoms fight, not by some random geopolitical thing.

>>4697685
A lot of martial arts are designed that way. Practical ones, at least.

>>4697685
Then again, isn't that what all martial arts are based on...

d'oh.

>>4697664
Quite true.

>>4697654
>As for the blades

slowpoke.jpg

They have normal metal weapons now. No magic obsidian.

>>4697693
As I've said, d'oh. Also, at least there's a point to it all now.

>>4697696
Well fuck that.

In a world of magic, any material makes sense.

In fact, if anyone was bitching about realism, let's talk about the fact that the concept of magic would have totally rendered the idea of metalworking obsolete, because you can just enchant a stone hammer to be just as effective.

>>4697664
>are always "fading" or some shit like that

THANK YOU FOR REMINDING ME OF WHAT I HATE MOST ABOUT ELVES.

You can't ever have elves just chilling along side the other races.. or still actively competing in the world. No no no.

You simply MUST have them as some dying old civilization. On their way out. Shadows of their former glory AND NEVER FUCKING SHUTTING UP ABOUT IT.

Why not being an equal and competing civilization?

>>4697692

The entirety of the Lord of the Rings can be read as a result of tribal territoriality that has been thrown out of whack by a colonial imperialist force.

The tribes put aside their grudges, SOMETIMES, if they think it can take out the invading, larger tribe. They also distrust each other immensely. Ghan-buri-ghan's people have a longstanding history of violence with the Rohirrim, who are a client tribe of Gondor, but they put it aside because their genocide-level enemies the Orcs are about. The Haradrim and Dunlendings and men of Rhun have no tribal quarrel with the Orcs, have benefitted from cultural and economic relations with Mordor, and have a long and painful history of inter-tribal warfare with the expansionist Gondorian tribe.

Bree and the Shire and much of Eriador, while ethnically still united with the Gondorians, have shed their cultural identity as such due to the collapse of their tribal leadership and bad communication; when push comes to shove, I think Barliman Butterbur's resentment of a king would overcome any romance old tales of kings might hold for him, and the tribes would balkanize.

>>4697726
As much as I give shit about the eberron elves, they got that part covered. Valenar elves come to eberron to kill the FUCK out of everyone else and take their ancestral lands back.

Also, the old 3.5 forgotten has stated that the elves are coming back.

I think this cliche is being subverted by more settings now, but those are the one I remember

>>4697726
And there we have it.

They're fucking pussies, always dying out and shit. And they don't fucking shut up about it.

>>4697763
And we finnaly reach the truth about the hatred. They aren't awesome like dorfs, who even though are also fading out (warhammer fantasy, forgotten realms... altough in forgotten they're back, what with the blessing of thunder. again, 3.5 forgotten is the best one, really.), they don't whine so much about it.

>>4697763
that works.

on a random note, my idea for a random homebrew, were I to seriously work on one was to have them just starting to come into the world by the time the campaign setting era that you're in is happening, as part of the fallout of the Gods creating a pocket universe for themselves from thousands of years ago. So, basically tribal, scared, somewhat socially primative people who just popped into existence with a little bit of magic on the side. Been around not much longer than a few thousand years, if that.

Of course, some get taken as slaves, etc etc.

So yeah.

End of thread, final results:

The hatred of Elves comes from how they won't shut up about how emo they are as their race slowly dies out. Unlike Dorfs, who even though they're in the same boat go out by killing and mining and OH GOD CARP

>>4697763
>I shall blame the race rather than the person responsible for writing the race like crap.

>>4697804
>I shall blame the race rather than the person responsible for writing the race like crap. Since, you know, it's an overused stereotype used by almost fucking everyone and thus easier to wish that everyone would just forget the whole thing.
Fix'd

>>4697726

The funny thing is, in Tolkien, EVERYONE was a dying old civilization on their way out, shadows of their former glory AND NEVER FUCKING SHUTTING UP ABOUT IT.

GodDAMN, Faramir.
Hobbits used to have their own little kingdom with tithes of warriors who even went out to topple Angmar and now they're fading.
Men used to walk as Gods and sail upon the air itself and now they're lucky if they can build a goddamn house for themselves.
Almost all the houses in Gondor are empty and there are hardly any children left in Minas Tirith.
Sauron's mightiest hosts, all together, are a shade under a fraction of a percentage of his armies of the Second Age, his power has been broken with his body and even if he reclaims the ring he will never be as whole as he was before, an eternal cripple.
The Dwarven kindreds are all but spent, their families shrinking with every generation.
The Ents don't even have their women anymore. Sauron killed them all some time in the War of the Last Alliance.
The end of the Third Age was just that; a time of ENDING.
There is no reason for everyone to copy this for Elves but not for EVERYONE AND EVERYTHING ELSE.

Nazi elves

>>4696772
Its not that hard to build a pyramid, since most of the room is rock, it is hard to make it like the Luxor and hollow.

On topic, my elves are odd, I made them more like desert nomads who were the boundry between the "Origin Lands" where people lived and apparently came from (this was where a starship had crashed, but the Elves rescuded as many as they could, since new blood was badly needed), and the rest of the world, which is JUST getting to a level of tech circa 1880. A blimp was recently sighted floating lazly over the ocean, and natural gas is being processed slowly.

Elves tend to be wary, but they are the last of the planet's native civilization, and they were afraid the humans might try to make the same mistake they did, and reduce the planet back to the middle ages (when humans crashed there.).

>>4697818
Your words intrigue me. I wish to hear more.

>>4697810
>I shall blame the race rather than the person responsible for writing the race like crap. They should be written to suck human dick and have our babies and worship the ground we walk on by rubbing their tits on it.
>Fix'd

>>4697815
Exactly the point I was making >>4697763. Just, you know, much more eloquent.

Really, we have Dorfs being awesome, why can't we have awesome Elves?

>>4697826
See
>>4690101

>>4697815
I DID NOT KNOW ANY OF THIS.

That is depressing.

Fuck this. I prefer to play tieflings.. no civilization or land or stock culture. No bullshit to deal with. Just make an interesting character.

Or just play mutated humans.

>>4697830
Now that's just being immature.

>>4697818
Craftworld Biel-Tan.

>>4697852

>>4697866
You really should quit while you're ahead. Please do yourself a favour, before you embarass yourself... or is it too late for that?

>>4697866

>>4697878
>too late.. for everything...

>>4697866

>>4697905
I'm the best at what I do.

And what I do is be an idiot.

>>4697916
...Oh fuck.

I'm outta here.

>>4697908
You've just transcended the limits of fail.

Congrats, you've just singlehandedly spawned Milhouse, Chaos God of Epic Fail. Happy now?

>>4697927
You shouldn't misuse memes like that.

>>4697866
So.... sauce? Or am I a fag for asking?

>>4697938
>>4697924

>>4697927
Can the god of epic fail be a goddess?

>>4697933
But Milhouse isn't a meme.

>>4697927
Does this make Milhouse a meme?

>>4697959
Milhouse isn't a meme is a meme though.

>>4697963
No.

No it's not.

>>4697967
Milhouse isn't a meme is a meme isn't a meme is a meme.

>>4697981
So uh teacup... How you doin?

>>4697981
That...Just...Wha...

...

Forget it. You just suck, Fuuka. Lurk moar before posting again.

>>4697996
Yo dawg, I heard you like milhouse in your not meme. So we put a milhouse in your milhouse so you can not meme while you not meme.

>>4697993
I think I've officially lost it for today.

Manic moods are fun.

>>4698005
MANIC! .... why does that make me thing of taquitos?

>>4698018
I don't know what those are, but it makes me hungry.

>>4698024
Like a mini-burrito, skipping all the vegetable parts. It's meat and cheese in a corn flour tube.

>>4698030
They are tasty that's what they are!

>>4698005
question. How many of these do you get in a month?

>>4698043
Less than one? Usually once a month I guess? Maybe slightly less than that. Like nearly one.

I just pulled out of an unusually long depression. Now I want to tell the ass to kiss my world, and I don't give a fuck.

I know I suck and I don't care.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P562pCG0-Ho

>>4698082
I'll kiss your world.. or ass.. I don't mind either way...

ITT: Namefags circlejerking

>>4698101
Welcome to /tg/.

>>4698101
ITT: Fuck off.

>>4698111
Any reason you wanted to know >>4698082?

>>4697555

This man speaks truth- and here's what I believe.

Elves have been in our lives for thousands of years. There's old Irish shitscribbles on walls, BC, about... the Sidhe. Think of them as underwater elves. The Sidhe lived for a very long time, and got very, very bored. So they liked to play a game. It was rather like trading cards. Whenever they noticed a ship on the sea, they would do their utter best, from summoning a storm or physically, many of them, grabbing the ship and trying to pull it to the depths. Then they would hang on the heels of any floating Irishmen in the water until they drowned. The Sidhe got to keep the souls of these drowned sailors though. And if some souls seemed more appealing for whatever unspeakable purpose they thought, be it one that was innocent, or one that had only committed certain crimes, they would trade between each other for appealing souls.

The rarest soul that they could get was that of an unborn child.

If there was a pregnant woman on board, the Sidhe would be crawling over each other to be the one who claimed the souls of the mother and child. Twins were such a bounty to them. And children in general were collectors items, rare on the seas. But an unborn child? Now that was an almost unheard of thing.

>>4696772

Shit. Not another "HURR HURR LET'S MAKE ELVES COOL WITH ANOTHER HUMAN CULTURE"

>>4698168

I believe that there's tales like this in general for magic users- my polish/russian grandpappy told me some real terrors about an old witch named Baba Yaga, you would not SLEEP- but for elves in particular. There's something in us I think, that makes us remember "Elves will fuck our shit up." And we hate what we fear. My "favorite" scary story came from my grandmother on my fathers side, who's mom told her, et cetera et infinitum. I still have it written down from when I posted this like a year ago. Multi-post affair coming up folks.

>>3732829
>>3732759

I'm this guy back again from a few hours of TV tropes. Goddamn do they keep me sucked in.

I don't think elves can be killed in the traditional sense.I know elves/fairies do NOT like cold iron, or really iron at all as a weakness. Terry Pratchett does a MAGNIFICENT job of tying that all together. SPOILER ALERT: As a minor plot thing, Elves are like pigeons- they can see the world magnetically or some shit. That explains their perfect fucking poise (plus the additional glamour). They always know where they are. They always know where everywhere is. Humans do NOT know where everywhere is intrinsically. Elves are supremely fucked up by iron. Magnetic iron is used as the material for standing stones to keep the elves out of the Discworld universe. When they're around iron, they're really like us in terms of what they can sense, but it seems much worse to them because they're not used to it. I think the quote is something like "It's like being buried alive!" when an elf is about to be put in a suit of armor- which is scarier than the threat of chopping off his arms so his struggling wouldn't matter nearly as much. He gets chained to a wall anyways- with an iron chain.

As far as I understand, elves can not die. Period. One of the weirder stories I heard as a baby child was of an elf going batshit fucking insane and rampaging across Ireland like a damned giant. Here's the deal:

An elf finds a human girl, and keeps her, playing with her for a month and not letting her leave. Creepy point one! She goes mad from being away from her mother and father, and ends up dying even though the elf brings her food and water. She stopped eating and the elf was only paying attention to the fact that she needed to eat when she said she was hungry. CREEPY POINTS TWO AND THREE. The next one is pretty bad: The elf keeps playing with her corpse, thinking the little girl wanted to play dolly (which the elf considered her as already and the human girl mentioned to her when they talked together) and positions her like a freakin' barbie. Creepy point four SCOOORED! When the girl starts rotting, the elf tries bathing her. Doesn't help. Girl bits floating down a river into a decent sized village. (Creepy point five!) The elf continues on, utterly nonplussed as to what is going on until some humans from the town, wondering where all that rotting flesh (and the little GIRL HAND) came from, trot into the forest and find the elf and the now very disgusting putrid mass of girl. The elf only pays attention to them when they freak out. The elf asks why she's not beautiful anymore. They run. The elf magics them all back to him and asks again. They tell the elf she's dead. He doesn't get it. He asks what that means. They explain it like they would to a child.

The elf, egocentric as always, immediately imagines himself dead. Which can't happen. But he considers it. He goes stark raving mad, butchering the party thinking they wanted to kill him- which they did, thinking it was some nasty as critter that wasn't -quite- as nasty and all-damned-powerful as an elf. He runs, screaming all the way, into the town, sees more people he thinks are going to kill him, and kills them all. Dead. Dead. Dead. He sees death everywhere. The house could fall in on him. He could catch consumption. He could trip on a rock and break his skull open. A tree could fall on him and splat him. He runs into the forest, crying pathetically, utterly terrified for his life, scared of everything he sees and everything he doesn't see.

The elf is still in the forests of Ireland, crying away, utterly terrified, utterly mad.

This is the shit I grew up on.

>>4698168
>>4698211
>>4698215
>>4698219
Okay.

You've made elves cool again.

>>4698215
>>4698219

>>4698219
Fuck yeah, elf stories.

And according to some sources, fairies, elves and such aren't even fairies. They're fallen angels stranded on Earth instead of falling straight down to Hell. Demons aren't pleased with their own kin having fun on Earth while they're burning, so they come up once in a while to collect fairy souls. This is unless they can offer humans in their place. This is why they kidnap humans, their souls are offered as the fair folk's tithe to hell.

>How do you like your elves

A couple warring kingdoms with knights, castles and other assorted shit. They eat little and can sustain themselves by hunting, and don't need direct sunlight to see well, so their lands are completely forested. There is some philosophy about purity of nature and things like that, but majority of elves prefer full bellies and safe homes for their families.

Okay. Archivan nao just to preserve awesome dath-crazy Fey shennanigans.