Unique Elves

> check thread
> no mention of Dwemer or Dummer

You N'wahs.

sorry, neither dwarfs nor drow are really unique

Do Orsimer count as elves?

Please elaborate.

...

on PJ or on tolkien's elves in general?

Oh, who the fuck cares if your elves are original.

if they fit setting, they're fine.

aesthetically, Llorwyn had my favorite Elves. Also my favorite Faeries.

Who pissed in your cheerios this morning?

I prefer it when elves are still recognizable and share the same roots, but tend to branch off in some way to better fit the world.

In the setting I'm working on, for example, even culture begins more typical, but the harshness of the world result a in them using their innate magical skill to craft a hidden city to let them ignore the problems of the world. They're still elves, but they're so far removed from normal society that they're seen as Fae, terrifying and otherworldly

>I prefer it when elves are still recognizable and share the same roots, but tend to branch off in some way to better fit the world.
there's this obscure little-known setting you might like. look it up, it's called "Forgotten Realms"...

Are Orcs elves in this case?

I know Orsimer are and I think Tolkiens orcs were corrupted elves.

>Ever get tired of the same stereotypical elves?
Not really. They are more diversive than dwarf.

>Implying

>Metamorphosing savage isolationist elves in Symbaroum

I do like these. Also the fact that they're involved with Changelings to some capacity, which is some original elf shit.

The metamorphosis seems to take them through all the kinds of elves, actually. Faeries for 1st (Spring Elves), Wood Elves for 2nd (Summer), High Elves for 3rd (Autumn), and Dark Elves for 4th (Winter). Also Changelings as some kind of tangent we don't know about well enough, or for what reason human babies are kidnapped and replaced by Changelings.

Both, ideally.

Orc are corrupted elves in Tolkiens works
However it really depends on which universe you are whether or not Orcs are elves
IIRC they arent in Warhammer and WH40K

>i don't know what i'm talking about lul

they're considered elves in TES lore seeing as they're mer and not men, but it hardly counts

I love Lorwyn elves, too, and not just aesthetically. It's the only time I've seen a perfect marriage of "elves as sublime, perfect beings" and "elves as manifestations of and tenders to nature." And then you make them Nazi's on top of it all. Obsessed with physical perfection to the point that your beauty determines your official role in society. Love love love Lorwyn elves.

I guess using orcs as elves isn't really unique.

I do like the orc marriage system though with the Chiefs, it is kind of a wild animal thing Iike with lions or elephant seals that I don't see in other elves.

>making elves nazis
This is one of the most trite, uninspired things you can do by now.

Personally I have the feeling that dndesque races really, REALLY need a revamp.

Oddly enough while dwarves are too narrow, the problem with elves is exactly the contrary.

he simplified it, lorwyn elves arent really nazis

Why not make elves treants? Ancient, basically immortal and powerful, as close to nature as you can get. And beautiful in a way that's different from 'hot' beautiful.

I like Tolkien Elves.
They're really rare compared to DnD elves

>I just do Tolkien elves a la they were in the books
all they are in the books is a medival society indistiguishable from humans, especially in the Simarillion.
sure you get some inherent "magicness" in all their actions from a hobits perspective in hobit and Lotr but thats about it.

so, age of sigmar elves then?

Wait.

They did that?

google age of sigmar sylvaneth

TES has the best elves.

How would you expand on Dwarves? Possibly they take more after industry, and move around in caravans that follow their next hunt for resources, tech-gypsies selling their wares and plying their trade wherever they steam off to. It'd be bizarre to see a caravan, though, as the nature of the regional terrain might merit them making these caravans as much boat as they are horseless carriage and train car, each new terrain type they encounter results in a new extensive modification to their existing design which just makes it all the stranger.

Of course, now I'm just mixing WoW gnomes into it.

Goddamn do I love Dunmer. Best damn Dark Elves, or Elves in general for that matter.

>SoS's
?

Song of Swords, i think

I'm a lazy weeaboo, so in most of my settings (fantasy, sci-fi or otherwise) I've just replaced japanese/chinese people with elves and given them the near exact same cultural elements of the prementioned people.

It's an overused thing and really unimaginative, but hey it works for me.

>half-tree

Fuck that, I mean full tree. Just, legit talking, walking trees.

Both the elves and the fairies lived near each other and fucking loved to get wasted and party hard. Then the elves picked up the nasty habit of cannibalism and the fae buggered off cause they aren't messing with that shit. Elves took this as an insult and invaded their magic groves and shit and live there out of spite. They developed a good sense of magic by living in these fairy groves but they're all fucking useless drunkards and just fuck about.

Orsimer are the best.

How otherworldly can elves get before they're considered Fae?

How treelike and nature-y can they get before they're considered elementals?

How much like mortal races can they get before they're considered stereotypical elves?

How much of all this is behavior and how much is aesthetic?

Personally, I prefer my elves more as the Fae Gentry than anything else. Pic related.

Well, elves and Sidhe are nearly the same thing. So the more fae they are the better. At least in my opinion.

But there doesn't seem to be a lot of settings where fae elves are a major thing.

Mah dark skinned brethren. Elves in my setting are inspired by the Mignolaverse elves,both from the movie and comics. They're the real deal,you see; truly weird,inhuman,otherwordly creatures (though not strange to empathy). That and some things I ripped off from HoMaM Academy faction,the little bits I liked.

Non-human, you say?

Not that user. I think the closest thing to what you're talking about are the Aldryami,from Glorantha.

Re-read the part where the fellowship visits Lorien and loses track of the better part of a month and get back to me.

Well, my idea is pretty deep overhaul of the DND races. I don't think everyone would like it, but I think it is workable

Basically, I'd not really use elves, dwarves and halflings, though their archetypes would be still there - they would be exactly the same thing.

You see, the problem I see with elves is that they just too many things. One better than the other.
Living with nature? Check.
Too beautiful/noble for man? Check.
Magical, because why not? Check.
Pacifist, because god forbids that they have some issues? Check.

(yes, I realize the high elves/wood elves thing is kinda of an answer, but it's not sufficient in my eyes in the slightest)

Dwarves: ugly, monotematic, too "male" for not becoming a walking stereotype. Yes, I do love them -they're the down-to-earth guys after all- but... it's really too narrow.

I think oddly enough halflings are still the concept you can play with the most, without them being too good to be true, but I have plans for them as well.

Still with me? Good.

Elves are elves, not sidhe.

get you pansy-ass divining shits outta here. this is non-human.

They share enough traits that you could argue they're basically the same. The difference is that Sidhe come from the Celts while elves come from the Norse. And considering the proximity of the two it isn't unreasonable that they influenced one another.

It is like saying Nosferatu and Asanbosam aren't vampires.

For a campaign at my FLGS our elves were cannibalistic death lords who,for fear of showing weakness and other "human" feelings,always wore porcelain masks.The feed on the fear of lesser races and rule their shadow woods to the east.dread lord elves

I like time lord elves. They live so long because of their ability to reincarnate, but each reincarnation leaves them with a different face and a bit different personality.
They are also innate diviners. They can see the future, but it's always in flux and spelled in riddles.

>Other-worldly spectral projection conquering elves also in the Witcher

one of the better elven portrayals.
(pic, Geralt bargaining his soul to save his waifu)

Problem, night-kin fleshling?

Marneus Calgar doesn't permit his bitches to speak. You shut your whore mouth.

>cont.

My idea is basically having 5 races connected each to the chinese elements*, in spirit at least. Humanoid races, unquestionably. Using placeholder names, you'd have something like:
1) woodland sylphs. Savages, noble or not. REALLY connected with nature: think something on the lines of "they go to sleep in winter" or "they are born from trees". A thing that I really don't want them to be is pacifist, if anything thematically they're connected with the brashness of youth.
On their appearance: slender, not tall, probably with leaves in their hair or something.
2) Fire djinns. They fucking fly, or at least they're connected to the sky (floating cities). Also to the desert, possibly. Pros: civilized, tall, beautiful, learned. Cons: a shadow of what they once were. Arrogant, hotheads (ahem...), moody to a fault. Possibly easy to corrupt.
3) a slightly cuter/more fairy-tale version of halflings. Basically, furry brownies+halflings. They mostly live underground with the other races. The idea is that while "child-like" they're your underdog race: maybe even enslaved.
4) (the best name I came up with is gnomes, and it sucks) they live underground, they are crafters, but they're not xenofobic nor mostly male. Not even militaristic. Actually my first idea was a cosmopolitan people on the rise, if often melanchonic.
For appereance: actually my idea is more or the less that they CAN look like dwarves but they don't HAVE to. So squat, beards for the males if you like them. I'd like them to have wolverine-like claws.
5) watery beings, let's call them undine. They're the magical/telepatic race, basically, and yep, still humanoid, want tthem to be playable normally.

*for no particular reasons other than they work, especially with

Glorantha's plant Elves were always cool.

Where does the concept of the elf originate from? Does it technically start with the nymphs in Greco-Roman mythology, or am I making a faulty connection there?

I always understood nymphs as representing aspects of the world, and always being female because of how the Greeks felt themselves in relation to the world — the world was alluring and elusive, like a young woman. Do elves represent something overall?

I always really liked the little tidbit in the PF core rulebook that says that elves slowly change physically depending on their environment, since they can't do it over generations due to the low birth rate and long life.
From this, I like having shit like Drow being bioluminescent and kind of blind because after generations and generations of living underground they've adapted to the point where they don't even look like the elves they were originally from. Same goes for shaggy-furred yeti elves in the high mountains or web-fingered clear-eyelid fish elves on islands.

It's a nordic concept. The Alfar were PROBABLY the spirits of the dead/ancestors, at least what we can surmise seems to point in that direction.

Nymphs aren't totally uncorrelated if you ask me, but they were the greek evolution of the "spirit of the water" idea more than anything, akin to, I dunno, the russian rusalkas.

My nigga.

Also, his one-shot, "War of the Flowers". If you haven't read it, I recommend it highly.

D&D elves come from tolkien, who based them of elves from folklore, so mostly the norse Alf, but also european nature-spirits in general i'd say.

Funny thing, for my "new races", I'd probably propose the players something on the lines of "people have children of race X based on where they live" (statistically speaking, at least).
(I don't think I'd use immortality/very longer lifespans, unless some races would have LESSER lifespans for once. I'd propose that for the sylphs, I think)

This always got me. It really seems like there is a wider 'base' for things like vampires than elves. People accept a wide range of vampires just fine but unless an elf is a slim, pointy eared human they aren't elves.

Dresden Files have vampires ranging from souldrinking succubi to bat-like monsters to blood drinking corpses and they're all classified as vampires.

VtM has dozens of vampire appearances, from kiasyd who look like aliens to nosferatu who look like rats to salubri who have an eye in their foreheads.

I wish elves were a bit more diverse in appearance than what we normally get.

Eternally the best.

Well, to be fair vampires are literally humans that got changed by (un)death.

The problem is that most of the times fantasy races aren't nothing more than a quicker way for a stereotype. In this sense, I don't think VTM was really that different, they had more "races" but in this sense a Toreador is (mostly) a quick sterotype like a dwarf.

Scion's light elves and dark elves look perfectly human, they don't even have pointy ears. They used to be worshipped as lesser deities of nature/sun/fertility and are divinely beautiful., supermodel tier.

They also hate being called "elves", prefering álfar. Scion often use the word to refer to a single individual. Which might trigger Norwegians, Swedes and Icelanders, since "'álfar" is used in plural form, the correct term for a single elf being álf.

Scion is terrible about bastardizing and misusing languages anyway.

>that image

I personally would like to try an idea of the different types of Elves having radically different cultures.
>High Elves are hyper imperialist and advanced, only thing keeping them from world conquest is the fact that they can never match the numbers of other races
>Wood Elves are dwarf fortress style hippy cannibals, they love trees and plants, eat what they kill sentient or otherwise, and are very aggressive about protecting their trees
>Dark Elves are like less civilized High Elves, instead of building empires they only seek to wage war often selling their services as mercenaries and assassins when their homeland won't fight wars
My idea was something like Wood Elves are "pure" elves behaving as elves should, High Elves are elves that have been corrupted by civilization trading their obsession with nature with a more cosmopolitan obsession, Dark Elves are like elves that have been corrupted by war, becoming too obsessed with the bellicose part of protecting nature until they pretty much fight for the sake of fighting.
Does this idea sound like it has merit or does it sound like edgy and/or retarded shit?

All TES elves are fucking amazing.
The entire concept is so fucking cool, they're basically mortal descendants of gods that over time have physically evolved according to not only to their environment but also their religion.
my personally favorite are the Bosmer, but there's love for all of them

>not having Dunmer as your favorite
>not wanting a little grey-skinned, red eyed qt

Incidentally all the elves are pretty fucking horrifying at their core, despite acting much the same as any other citizen of Tamriel. All Altmer could ascend to godhood upon the destruction of the world, all Dunmer carry the scars of horrible curses from their gods, and all Bosmer (presumably) have to potential to learn how to turn into chaos spawn.

They're weird fair folk who worship eldritch beings of all types and who's core religions are often fucking insane.

And yet I go into the local general goods and the Altmer behind the counter goes "EEEEVERYthing's for sale!" just the same as any other shmoe.

It's more or less how elves were described in Scion, and supposedly in Norse mythology/Scandinavian folklore as well.

Scion is terrible about many things, but it has a goofy charm.

Because "elf" is something specific and (usually) not a category. You can have vampires and dragons and "Eastern vampires" and "Eastern dragons" but you can't really have an "Eastern elf".

If you look at the folklore there are dozens of examples of elf-like beings across varying cultures. The idea of near mystic, hidden people isn't concept relegated to Europe.

There are a few fey beings in Eastern Europe with the same essence of elves. Romania has the Ieles, Poland has the wilas, psotniks and domovoi, Serbia, Croatia and Bulgaria have the samodivas, Ukraine has the leshays, Russia has the rusalkas, kikimoras, berehynias, mavkas, vodianoi, etc..

Sometimes, they even turn out to be real.

Why elves and fairies are so heavily associated with pointy ears? For what purpose this meme was created, and based in what?

>Chinks arn't Orcs

wew

>visits Lorien and loses track of the better part of a month
>inherent "magicness"

thats all there is. the part about lorien is exactly the same as the elves they come across when walking out of the shire. they are super magical and enchanting and thats as deep as it goes.

on Tolkien's elves:

Noldor are less like agile forest archers and more like mythical heroes from most mythologies. They are incredibly powerful, their royals are more like demigod-level, they are strong - only reason humans are stronger because Three Houses of Edain were in fact incredibly badass themselves and humankind sorta devolved since then, they are not as fragile as elves are normally portrayed to be - they are immune to diseases and can survive much worse injuries than humans, and their endurance is based more on their spirit, than on health. Meaning greatest of them were nigh-invincible. Took an army of Balrogs to kill Feanor. Fingolfin survived being smashed with Morgoth's shield three times, and each time he got back up. Plus they were craftsmen that exceeded the dwarfs, and even Aule - the Vala (sorta like an archangel or a lesser god) of crafting and science - couldn't hold a candle to Feanor, and probably to others, like Celebrimbor, too. Add to that what mortals would call magic, but what stemmed from deep understanding of the world, having studied under Valar themselves. The more powerful of Noldor were a match for Maiar (angels) - Finrod Felagund almost beaten Sauron at the peak of that one's power and in his domain in magic duel, others killed Balrogs one-on-one, and let's not get started on Feanor again. In LotR, we have Glorfindel, who died killing a Balrog in First Age, came back, and scared immortal Nazgul shitless, so they rushed into the river and sorta-drowned.

Sindar, the Grey-Elves, were lesser in power, but still knew "magic" and were rather exceptional. Legolas and Thranduil were Sindar, and so the ease with which they kick orc ass in Hobbit and LotR is pretty accurate (i'm not talking about defying the laws of physics though).

Now, there was a third kind of elves, Nandor, or Sylvan Elves, and those are closest to how D&D portrays them... except they are still immune to disease and can survive much worse than men.

cont.

Elf is a fantasy concept at this point. It's nice that people look at their mythological roots and try to spice things up with them, but pretty much what we are talking about here on Veeky Forums, what we play on the table, has not much to do with them anymore.

Now, PJ sorta screwed up in LotR, when that Lorien/Rivendell army in second movie (which shouldn't be there) is rather mediocre in combat and is getting its ass delivered to it by orcs, when by all logic they should be Sindar and should kill more than die. Sure, Legolas is prince and stuff, but they are on par.

Now, in Hobbit and in opening battle of LotR, the elves look like what a host of Sindar or even Noldor could've looked. Glittering, armoured, fighting outnumbered, yet kicking all sorts of ass, leaping into battle, etc.

cont.

On Dwarves:

PJ portrayed them as vaguely nordic (looking at you, Gimli, son of Gloin), alcoholic comic reliefs. And Thorin. Now, Gimli waaaas sorta like that in LotR - yet he was not as comic-reliefy, and he was a youngster by Dwarf measurements.
But if you take Hobbit or Silmarillion, the Dwarves are much, much different. They are more magical/fairy - in Hobbit, their eyes glittered in the twilight when they sang Misty Mountains Cold, Thorin was casually making smoke rings fly where he wanted, etc. And in Silmarillion Dwarves weren't nordic at all, they wore full-mask helms, that were "fearsome to behold", they were nearly immune to fire, thanks to those helmets and full armour, they surrounded Glaurung, the Father of Dragons (he couldn't fly, but was massive, radiated intense heat, could hypnotize at the very least, and most likely was an incarnated Maia - a fallen angel) and chopped at him with such force, he FLED in fear, trampling their king, who managed to stab Glaurung in the gut. Then the Dwarves picked up their king's body and carried him away. And in the middle of a raging battle, all the monsters gave them way, because the Dwarves were so wrathful, everyone felt that. And they wore full-face helmets, so that's not something you could see in their faces, mind you.

So they were more of Swartalfs (spelling?) than comic reliefs, with quite a measure of magical talent (remember their hidden doors and stuff), talking to ravens, creating enchanting music and artifacts - and not at all the boxy angular stuff PJ and D&D show us either, just read lyrics of Misty Mountains Cold.

And that's why I avoid Dwarfs in D&D/WHFB/Warcraft and hate Hobbit the Movie with a passion.

I like that you can't even play a "real" elf in Symbaroum. You can only play a kind-of-half elf.

I like another take on the "Elves are superior to humans" basis.
Elves as an also near-immortal race, but with adaptative capabilities far beyond anything else. When staying in any place for a sufficient amount of time, their body will slowly mutate (a matter of months) to perfectly fit their environments.
As such, any breed of elve can become any other breed given enough time.
City elves looks like attractive humans because it gives them an edge in social interactions. Marine elves have gills and palmed extremities, maybe a tail. ect, ect.

Wut?
Outside of their visual design being nice, what differentiates them from a dozen others "humans are destroying the earth so we'll kill them" variations out there?

Conceptually? That they're made of living wood and seem to have sap for blood. That they they fundamentally lack the emotion known as greed. That, except for Nuada, they seemed content to fade away as humanity overtook them.

To drive the point home.

That's for another setting altogether user

Fuck your pic, use this from now on.

The part under the green text sounds almost exactly like my homebrew, except the dark elves are more like Dark Eldar, and they were given full rights to the entire underdark by the half elf Emperor, which they enslave whatever they can grab, and they assume dwarves are in the underdark, not caring that the dwarves actually carve their homes, they don't live in caves

What about having Elves as this immortal fascistic militaristic society?

>Immortal King and Queen
>Immortal Nobility
>Immortal Commoners
>No hope for any societal movement as no one dies, its the same people for eternity
>Everyone is a soldier like in Sparta
>Wage wars of conquest all the time like Napolean against more populous kingdoms
>Ruthless to outsiders and utterly xenophobic