Humans and Elves switch roles

That's how it is in my world. Humans are one of the oldest races, claiming to have been the first "proper" race created after the kobolds appeared, though the lizard folk dispute this.
Elves are the youngest race, the latest and last race created by the gods as a last ditch measure to counter the orcs and their creator from completing his plan to kill the gods and steal their power.
The elves incorporate virtually all of the secrets and abilities of the earlier races (minus the kobolds' echo location and other abilities; their creator's not a community-minded sort of guy) and are built for fanatical loyalty, extreme dedication, and military prowess. The rogue elves that aren't found guarding old holy sites in armed camps around the world tend to get weird and obsessive with no-one to give them orders.

That's how the it is in Legend of Galactic Heroes.
Elves(they aren't called elves though but they are long lived, have pointy ears and are better than humans) are genetically modified humans used as slaves who freed themselves and founded their own empire that overtook the human one.

>How would you do it?

Sure, gimmie a minute.

Part 1.

>Few dozen gods are given a pocket-world by their Father-God and make all sorts of creatures, plants, etc- Some bitch keeps making fetish monsters, but everything balances out.

>Gods slowly start exhausting their funds making shit and daddy won't send more so they figure they'll just chill out and discuss making some people to worship them and-

>God of wind -whom hadn't been paying attention to anyone or anything beyond just chilling out- proceeds to make Humans without consulting anyone.
>Humans 'breath' fire into their world and nothing is ever the same again. Wind God becomes horrendously powerful overnight.

>Goddess of Monsters -who had at this point almost lost all her power from constantly creating monsters- LOVES humans; she scoops up a bunch so she can watch them have have sex with her monsters and so she can have sex with a few of them herself.

>Goddess+Human=Dragons, Monster+Human=Beastmen. Goddess of Monsters power fluctuates wildly due to getting overwhelmed with prayer, but also constantly spending it on more monsters- Most other gods ostracize her for weird sexual habits.

>World infested with Savage Men, Monsters, and Dragons. God of Wind thinks this place is pretty fun to watch, Goddess of Monsters has never been happier.

One day a bunch of human ate a particular kind of flower and became elves.

Then they got fat from eating too many flowers. Humans don't eat those flowers anymore cause fat elves keep stealing them.

Either the humans are all dead from having killed themselves off long ago allowing the elves to come into being, or the elves are all wiped out because humans would never allow or respect another intelligent race that they cannot control.

Actually, that's one of the ideas of my own setting. Humans and Dwarves have apparently been in existence since the beginning of the world. Elves came into existence later on. According to common myth they were brought into being as guardians of nature (sort of like Ents in LotR).

It never came up and the game has been on hiatus since January after I ran two sessions of nonsense and I never told my players about it anyway so it really only exists in my head, just like every other idea I have.

I did something SORTA like it in my setting. Humans are ONE of the oldest races, the other being the Drow. The humans mostly became the Yuan-Ti and they and the Drow killed each other a lot, and the Drow won, and in the modern era of said setting, humans have long since recovered from that. Drow society fell apart because of how backstabby it tended to be, and humans still have a civilization, so they're the oldest CIVILIZED race.

The High Elves are actually off-shoots of the Drow, and the Orcs are as well, but the orcs were created during the time of the Drow/Snek conflict, so technically the "high" elves are younger as a race than even orcs. They HATE being reminded of this.

Drow society as it turned out worked a lot better in tribes, where they can keep the natural urge for infighting at bay. They're as a result a hell of a lot more chill in the setting.

Part 2.

>Gods finally begin making people to catch up with the other gods.

>God of Earth makes Dwarves, Gnomes, and Halflings. Literally just bare minimum dirt-themed-humans before getting back to Earth-stuff.
>His Races inherited their creators dirt-autism; end up being apathetic towards all non-dirt-related activities.

>Goddess of Darkness (Earth's little sister, whom is frail and week- "held by Earth") politely requests if she may share her big brother's races. God of Earth obliges without question.
>She makes very slight edits that remain respectful to source material: Dark Dwarves, before quietly going back to her own little world underground.

>God of Light (Daddies favorite) FINALLY makes HIS 'perfect' race: the Elves; they're literally just humans, but "better" in every possible way: immortal, polite, proud, environmentally-friendly, devout, etc.
>Elves are given LIGHT- a purer, peaceful, form of fire. Light illuminates them with intelligence, grace, skill at art, technology, etc..

>World infested with massive towering Elvish metropolises, Dwarven earthen-cities, Dragon Kingdoms, and nomadic hordes of humans inbetween.

The ruins that dot the land are the remains of ancient industrialized human cities. The reclusive tribes living within sometimes venture out to barter but rarely tolerate outsiders in their demesne.

The spaces between are inhabited by pastoral elves who live simple lives of agriculture and animal husbandry, mindful of their population so as not to burden the land.

There was someone in a "how do dragons work in your setting" thread that explained that humans were the result of the fey destroying dragons and trapping their essence in their old bodies, which creates humans. They fey start making elves to keep track of humans because they realize that they fucked up and humans can turn back into dragons if they gain too much magical power.

That's...actually a really neat idea. Hmm.

Well, Forgotten Realms is like that. Humans are native to Faerûn, one of the five original races, while elves were brought over tens of thousands of years ago (as were dwarves and orcs and possibly some of the others, probably from the Oerth of Greyhawk)

Simple, but I don't see anyone else pointing it out.
Elves are Human-Fey hybrids?

Part 3. Epilogue

>Everything is running pretty smoothly; everyone has a source of faith, gods go back to minding their own business.

>God(dess?) of Plants, older sister(brother) of Goddess of Monsters, had been hanging back. She(he) didn't need people since the sum of all plants gave her(him) ample power.
>Secretly the most powerful God(dess).

>God of Light makes a power play: claims Elves have domain over nature and they switch from ivory palaces to twisting trees into aesthetic dwellings, because Light > Plants.

>God(dess) of Plants takes offense to this and demonstrates just how powerful she(he) really is: introduces agriculture to all other races and curses elves so they'll only ever be able to forage for food, effortlessly weaves dryads, nymphs, treants out of her(his) plants to enforce her(his) curses- she(he) doesn't even NEED their prayers.

>God of Light tries to do the same and asks Daddy to cause an Eclipse- God(dess) of Plants just makes mushrooms, Elves renounce God of Light for, "being a big baby".

>When it's all over: Elves worship the God(dess) of plants and take after her(him), God of light is banned from creating any people and can only convert worshippers.

That's how I'd do it.
Longer than I thought it'd be, but I was having fun.
Thanks for readin'.

>humans were once the dominant life forms on the planet
>their over-reliance on technology eventually led to their destruction
>in an attempt to preserve the memory, they created Elves
>long lifespans, resistance to diseases, massive titties, natural grace and dexterity, and without humanity's innate burning desire to expand and grow and push further and further until everything breaks
>the last few humans live out their lives, guarding old technology and watching their genetically engineered children inherit the world
Literally Oryx and Crake.

The gods live in a lofty realm whose base is the tips of mountains and whose floor is the dome of the firmament and whose ceiling is the end of the universe. The gods have been living here just doing their gods thing forever. In the midst of the all the godliness, a great war - an all out deity deathmatch - breaks out and the leader of an opposing side flees the celestial realm to some unfashioned realm of darkness. With the heavens in ruin, the gods sire a race of children to carry on the legacy of the divines and send them out to seek the enemy who fled away, send them down, beyond the mountaintops, onto the Earth. On the Earth, a beauteous wilderness of savagery, the beautiful Elven race forged cities with song and weapons with light. And then, one day, they meet an incomparably ancient race who dwelled in beetling cities of fire, steel and rock, whose flesh resembles ochre and ash, born of clay, whose hard, large bodies, towering frames, wild manes of hair and harsh tongues stroke awe and fear into the supple forms of the pale blue and green Elves.

>humans are a mix of day awy from retirement and too old for this shit
>elves are those young pompous assholes who make fun of their elders

Shadowrun.

I like this kind of idea, that elves are a recent offshoot of humans because of SCIENCE/natural selection/SPAAAACE.

Every race the gods make is better than what came before. Mankind proved superior to the less industrious dwarves, who proved superior to the the less organized orcs, who beat some kind of lizardmen who are only rarely seen on this world anymore.

Mankind thus is justifiably terrified of the recently emerged Elves, who will almost certainly unseat them. The age of men is ending, and the age of Elvenkind dawns. Attempts to exterminate the Elves before they can propagate have failed, and failed spectacularly. Its unclear if the Elves are simply just that much better than us that our numbers are worthless, or if fate itself is on their side and there is nothing we can actually do to stop them in the first place.

Humanity is divided on whether we should throw everything we have to stopping the Elvish civilization while we still can, becoming their hated enemy if we fail and dooming our race (being the foe of the current reigning bestguys is not an enviable position, just ask the orcs or the dwarves) or if we should bow out gracefully and try to save ourselves a comfortable position on the sidelines rather than die trying to hold a hill we have already lost.

The second group has, in their possession, a weapon that will change everything. An errant child that proves that man and elf can INTERBREED. Such a crossover is not seen in any of the other races, lending hope that while humanity is no longer the superior its time is not yet entirely over.

Yes Phantasy Star is a fun setting. Newmen are great.

That's Crest of the Stars and not LoGH.

I like it.

>knife ears
>good at anything
get out

Is that supposed to be africa and asia after getting shot up?

They're good at getting slaughtered by everyone.

I did that elves were fey spirits which took vital force from humans to experience life and death, as being fey amounted to stasis and submission to the Ent Narrative.

The difference between elf and dark elf is that the first acquired life energy by offering magic powers while the latter acted as a leannan sídhe.

After acquiring enough life force to have souls and bodies, the first elves then became another race among many.

Always hated how far apart characters eye's were in this show, made them all look autistic.

Avatar.

Humanity is the forefather race from which all other races emerged.

The most successful of Homo Sapien transcended and became Homo Deus. The rest were forcefully converted into the fantasy monsters of myth, for the entertainment of their new gods.

Have the Humans be like the Spanish Empire just before the Spanish-American War. Old and quickly losing relevance in an ever changing world, but too stubborn to just pass on. Even entering a losing war with the upstart nation of Elves is preferable to a slow death in obscurity.

Humans are the world's cockroaches. They have been there longer than any other race, and will far outlast any that come after them. They simply reproduce too quickly, they are too adaptable and will find a way to live in any environment.

The americans went to war agains Spain. And the spanish vision of their country at that time was depressive, they knew they had lost all chances to keep the colonies the country depended on, and the violent and repressive measures used to try to keep Cuba didn't help to it.

Anima.

Elves are an "upgrade" of humans, made by fey.
So are other demi-humans.
Who the fuck made goblins, though?

Wraeththu.

mass-produced humans

...

whoops wrong thread

>God of Wind
>Literally didn't give a single fuck about anything
>Suddenly decides to create something that changes everything while basically saying "Fuck forward thinking"
>After creation, goes back to not giving a single fuck
Yyyyep, sounds about right to me

This is how I did it in my settings.

>Humans are from another plane, they came to the world because they were bored of their old world (pretty much). They started shaping the earth with Arcane magic and creating colossus shit, until one day they simply abused too much of Arcane magic and shit went down.

>The world's connections to magic was severed, all but one human lost their magical powers, the world trembled. From that shake, ancient gods who were until then asleep deep within the world's core woke up. Full of anger and energy, these woken up gods started creating new creatures and filling the world with life. One type of such creates were the Elves, created by the Goddess of Harmony and shaped to be living spirits of the earth and nature.

So in a way, humans are so older than elves that they kind of accidentally triggered the creation of elves. As well as every other race. (yeah, its very human-oriented).

pic related: random image I found on google in 1 minute depicting how an original human would look like.

>A bunch of little bitches renounce their leader for being the biggest bitch of all.

In my setting, elves moved over from the Forgotten Realms after orcs did, with the humans in the setting being natural shapeshifters and sorcerors/mystics like mage ogres, only became human because they shapeshifted into a more relatable form that reminded elves of the humans from their world. After a cataclysm, most 'humans' lost their powers and became mostly identical to FR humans.

I like this idea op

Human civilization collapsed due to self-inflicted apocalypse. The environment was no longer capable of supporting them, so the survivors retreated to vaults (including orbital ones). Vast majority entered cryogenic stasis.

In the hundreds of thousands of years since, magic has grown stronger. Massive terraforming engines/mechanisms have slowly rendered the world's atmosphere and climate more hospitable. It's not the the point where humans can begin to spread en masse- they need breathing equipment+medicines and/or a measure of expensive cybernetic augmentation to not be poisoned by the air and food of this world. Nevertheless, they've always been around in small numbers, and those numbers have grown to the thousands. They'll say it's to shepherd the development of this world, cast themselves as benevolent caretakers minding a garden.

Don't be fooled. Remember who poisoned this world in the first place. There's a simple reason why humans would wake back up before the world was ready for them- to make sure other humans couldn't claim it before they did. If we're unlucky, they'll start taking us seriously too.

Does this mean is this theoretical timeline we're all elves in rl and "humans" are from our ancient folklore that have been watered down over the centuries into cookie chefs and toy makers?

Is there a Tolkien is this universe?