How could we re-vamp Sea Elves, Veeky Forums? Make them more look more alien without making them full-blown extraterrestrials? Also, any ideas for customs, mythologies, etc?
I'd like the ones in my setting to be more than just blue Elves with webbed hands who wear armor and clothes made out of coral/seaweed. That in itself is neat, but I think it's been done nearly to death by now.
Well first step, add gills
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Remove them, expand merfolk.
There is a point when it's too much elf. I mean, why do these need to be elves? We get normal sea creatures for that.
I recently watched the Alien Planet documentary from years back, and the "Amoebic Sea" sounds like it might be a cool idea for a sea elf environment rather than a normal ocean. Maybe make their bodies gelatinous or something.
You see this is the greatest problem:it's rather "too much elfs" or it's a furshit.
This.
Pretty much. Average fantasy merfolk alreayd fulfill pretty much the same niche as average fantays elves, except living in the sea instead of living in the forest. Sea elves don't really add anything merfolk don't already do, except fulfilling DnD writers' obsession with creating elf subraces for every conceivable biome, and providing a race for people who really want to play merfolk but without the penalty to land movement speed.
In my setting, Elves aren't categorized by race, by rather their cliques. Being spirits who've taken a physical form, they tend to represent aspects of different things or concepts that they've come to fancy and gather around other Elves who have similar interests. Elves of the Wild who take bestial aspects like feathered hair, antlers or so on, Elves of Civilization who mingle with humans and seem like exquisite marble statues.. and Elves associated with swamps, oceans, rivers and so on.
Deep-Sea Elves are typically monstrous-looking to mortals, with sharp, long and jagged teeth, huge, luminescent eyes, fin-like ears and all that. Their feet are webbed and some may have tentacles for hair or something, as no two Elves look alike. Elves who live in more shallow waters have different kinds of features, and those who inhabit reefs may have prismatic or colour-changing hair or skin. River dwellers are typically more mercurial and playful and look much more like ideal humans due to the proximity they share with mortals.
How cliques act towards humans and whether they're evil or whatever depends entirely on the individual and their court. Some merrows (as Elves of the sea are called, while sweet-water Elves are known as necks) are happy to help people in need, others actively seek to capsize ships or drown mortals, others for fun, some for treasure or land-dweller goods.
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Those are some... thick mermaids, sir.
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>furshit
Doesn't have to be.
what are those seal girls from Irish folklore?
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Selkies! They can also take their sealskin off to assume human form, and then suffer the generic, semi-universal stories associated with non-human babes hooking up with simple human men.
Bigger eyes, smaller noses, pointy teets, backswept gill-ears.
Cetacean traits, makes them different from the fish-like Mermen.
I kind of did something like them in my homebrew, but they're like... deep sea cephalopod people. What I decided was to have them develop along very different paths magically and technologically. Technically speaking, they never really left the stone age, but through mystic rites and alchemy, have turned obsidian, animal bone, and coral into materials on par with surface advancements. They worship the ultimate monster known as 'Leviathan', but this devotion is expressed in a way I thought was rather novel: they honor their god, by hunting and ritualistically eating the Great Beasts of the deep.
I mean, this is my interpretation of an underwater civilization, and not specifically elves, but I think I came to an interesting result.
I do believe that adding more piscine/amphibian features would do much in setting them apart from the whole 'blue elves' thing OP wishes to avoid.
>arctic merpeople
Their nipples must be hard enough to cut diamond.
t h i c
Maybe they're inverted untill (k)needed to prevent frostbite.
Well, like I said, no two of them are alike, and their appearance is dependent on their individual environment and how they perceive it. Some are more human, another may have octopi-like lower half, or whatever you can imagine. They're far from "blue elves", and more like representations of concepts and things.
Came here to say this. Don't fall for the elf meme OP it isn't worth it.
Where do your sea elves live, Veeky Forums?
Do they only make their cities underwater, like Gungans? Do they live closer to the surface, or deep down in ocean trenches?
Do they live on isolated island chains like the Maomer? Or on rocks floating near/above bodies of water, like those mountains in Avatar?
>they're literally blue elves with webbed hands who wear armor and clothes made out of coral and seaweed
Talk about a lack of inspiration
You're standard Aquatic Elves, known usually as Sea Elves, live in underwater cities not too far out, both so that they can enjoy a day/night rotation to some degree and to create a greater ease of trade with surface-dwelling races, so that they can get the many above-water supplies they need to expand their society and culture. Abyssal Elves, however, are a breed of Aquatic Elf dwelling much deeper, in oceanic trenches and other areas far from the surface. More similar to Aquatic Drow, these Aquatic Elves mostly interact with other deep-dwelling races, and their main trade is in warfare. They are unable to craft much without the aid of magic, and therefore prize personal strength more than technological advance.
No I aren't.
Typed all that up and didn't even proof-read the first word. Good job, me.
These sound pretty cool.
>fish tits
go on...
The Elves live in floating habitrails of water. Their cities cling to mountainsides like an antfarm.
Add gills to their necks, and fins to their forearms and legs. Web their toes and some of their fingers
Short hair if they have it, but use head tentacles/tendrils like twi'leks instead. Or do both.
Give them an extra set of arms. Make them amphibious to justify the legs since no one likes mermaids.
Also give the women air bladders inside their boobs to justify potential busties.
I had a similar idea for my homebrew campaign setting. Elves have a ton of subraces because they're naturally adaptible, gaining traits to match their environment. You stick a bunch of wood elves in the tundra and in a few generations you've got snow elves.
Sea elves are elves that have become adapted to living in an aquatic environment, and merfolk are actually just an offshoot of sea elves that's diverged so far that they've actually become a completely different race.
Nami is cute!
>fish tits
>fish
You are stupid, aren't you?
See But also merfolk having boobs is so ubiquitous, even MTG of all games does it. And yes, the old lore thread referred to Kiora as "fish tits" because of it.
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It's hard to find mermen who aren't bishi.
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Try searching for tritons.
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Man, the Barraki were cool as fuck.
>[variety] elves
Boring, add crab people
Good idea, they probably taste better.
Nah, they make me crabby.
Make them like Argonians, but with coral or something instead of the Hist.
Man-eaters > fap bait
this
Why not both?
I'm getting a WoW vibe from these pics.