Hmm. Could I pick peoples' brains about elves for a bit?

I've got a setting dominated by elves that I'm designing, and I'm trying to avoid the main pitfalls of elfdom that makes them flat, but I want to keep a certain je ne sais elf feeling about them.

So, what are some traits which feel distinctly elf-y to you guys?

Graceful, long-lived, artistic.

Willowy.

@BESW Required read, by our fellow citizen Afroakuma: giantitp.com/forums/…

works better if you have at least one other race

one which thinks and does things faster

Mm. I'm familiar with that take on elves, and I think it's a bit extreme and flattening.

It's a good attempt at reconciling the weird dichotomies of 3.5 elves, but I'm free to throw out the stuff that doesn't make sense, rather than trying to come up with a way to cram all the 3.5 authors' different notions into one logical container.

@BESW ::High-five:: Gut the D&D canon!

For starters, in my setting elves are the only sapient humanoids (or were, until a very recent discovery on a remote island).

Second, I don't want elves to be ridiculously long-lived, because it makes them so alien as to be nigh un-relatable--or at least, it puts the focus on a part of the role-play that I don't want to hog the limelight.

Have you seen how Dragon Age treats elves? It might be more to your liking.

Although, hmm, here is a way you can game that: what if you keep the undying-ness of elves, and part of their Egyptomania gig is they've run into the ruins of a culture that has this HUGE concept of death and funerary practices and such.

They're a lot more humanlike, and they aren't long-lived.

Whereas maybe elves don't do that somehow.

Maybe they just turn into sparkle-motes and fly up to the sky or something.

@AlexP this is not the spoiler lair

@Zachiel "This is how elves work in the setting where one of the PCs is an elf" is hardly a spoiler. :P

Hmmm.

I don't want them to be undying, but redefining death might be on the table.

Maybe draw on the Temple of the Albedo from The Death Gate Cycle.

The Shadow of Yesterday had an appealingly weird take on elves

I'm unfamiliar with both Dragon Age and the Shadow of Yesterday.

I've got the Ruby Tower as a major player in the city's politics. Its goddess is dedicated to making sure people die when they're supposed to--she is opposed to both shortening and lengthening life unnaturally.

I'd recently decided that the magic of her wizard-priests is based on ancestral wisdom, drawn from old mages who chose, at their death, to forsake the afterlife in order to share their wisdom with future generations of Ruby Mages.

The Ruby Tower has rooms lined with preserved corpses of the talented dead, who will --when the proper rites are performed-- converse with the worthy and pass on their knowledge.

That is a visual and a concept I'd like to not sacrifice entirely.

hmm

I was mostly looking for a way to make the elves recognizably "elves" thematically.

But you're right, that's not gonna work as much.

There must be something about elves other than their longevity which I can leverage.

Longevity brings up too many changes in culture, society, and basic attitude toward life and risk.

Their arts. Their "nature" connection.

(I do kinda like the sparkly-death thing, I'll think on that.)

@AlexP I've not been following the lair, so I suppose this egypt thing is already known to the players

In TSOY, elves are solipsists. The core of their identity is the belief that the lower world is ephemeral. A dream and they are the dreamers.

@Zachiel It's a major part of the setting: the elf city is built on the ruins of a recently-but-mysteriously destroyed city they call Serpentis. The city is obsessed with studying Serpentis, owning its artifacts, building in its style, holding seances to converse with its ghosts.

This gives them strange magic based on rejecting the illusion.

Serpentis is in style.

It also makes them scary self-obsessed scumbuckets.

I like the last bit.

The primary culture of this city is one that values self-advancement at the expense of others. You're respected for your ability to turn a profit, to attract followers, and to take advantage of every opportunity to advance yourself.

Elves don't really care about death because they just, erm, "respawn" in a sense. Not as themselves anymore. But most don't regard the change of identity as a big deal.

(in TSOY)

That's not quite so useful to me, but interesting. I had a catfolk tribe who worked like that once.

Yeah, I certainly assume you won't lift it wholesale.

@AlexP Arts, I can work with that.

I think one thing about elves in fiction is that everything has, like, a story.

Nature... hrm. Tree-hugging doesn't seem useful.

That makes me think of Tolkien elves a bit. They also have a respawn mechanism when they die.

Everything is "bespoke."

@AlexP Yes, that's good.

@BESW It's not so much tree-hugging as, like, favored by nature. Able to just hang around in the world without struggle, somehow. The way Legolas just walks on the snow.

@AlexP Maybe I'll make that something they've lost.

Like, holy men can do it, but the days when it was a common occurrence are nearly legend.

@BESW That makes sense.

I can tie it into the Lightning Kings, the old dynasty of divinely-ordained priest-kings.

← 59 messages moved from RPG General Chat

Rawr

So, elves make everything custom-by-hand. Their association with nature is mostly lost, a part of the "old days."

They have pointy ears, naturally.

Gracefulness... I think they value it, but have no particular natural ability.

Like, their favoured performing arts emphasise grace and poise.

@BESW I feel like they say they are the Firstborn, made of starlight when the world was new and all that. And maybe they feel like they have spent too long in the flesh, and have become decadent, but as a society it's largely a "Oh, we're so decadent and lost as a culture! Now pass the cognac and have the band play another ironic song about it."

That seems about right.

I think that's the part of the elf shtick that's pretty interesting but doesn't involve some kinda ugly aristocratic stuff.

The days of the Lightning Kings make for great stories and give them a sense of cultural pride, but it'd be damned awkward to have to actually follow those old-fashioned morals and beliefs.

I mean, it is aristocratic, but self-evidently so, and not especially flattering.

As opposed to the way they're kinda weirdly the natural ubermenschen in fiction.

yeah, I don't want to go down that road.

@BESW Almost sounds like Victorians and Arthuriana.

@AlexP yes, that's a good comparison!

Heh. This whole thing is getting more and more Victorian. Egyptomania, Arthuriana...

I guess it makes sense that there are several comparisons to Victorians because it's a society that feels like it's at its apex. Something changed, a generation or two ago, and now people feel like they can reinvent themselves.

My wife says the key to understanding Victorians is that they're idealistic, not nostalgic.

Their ideals include traditionalism by way of romantic nationalism.

But they're basically profoundly naive because they feel like they are entitled to be. Because the industrial revolution (and some of the stuff before it) is such a profound break with history.

I intended to draw more on Victorian-contemporary Persia, actually.

@JonathanHobbs [wave]

@BESW Hi!

To play on the "old link to nature now lost" theme and make them more elf-y, Houses will be named for nature things.

We already have the Lightning Kings, for example.

The House of the lady who runs the finishing school will be the House of New Leaves.

@BESW Sounds lovely!

I'm thinking Lady Donna of the House of New Leaves.

That or Lady Adelia.

Lady Adelia is a lovely name.

If it suits, lovely. If it doesn't, excellent.

I think that's enough on her for now. Leave Empty Spaces.

@BESW Yus.

I really want to make this guy an NPC:

@BESW he's your villain & hooded man & etc

Actually, first one last thing for Lady Adelia.

I need a visual.

I've got two ideas.

@BESW I recognise this actor from a few roles. She plays someone who's strict, but sweet in the right moments.

Judi Dench (as Q in the recent James Bond movies, specifically), and Helen Mirren (as Prospero in the recent Tempest film).

She's played in at least one detective show I've seen, I think...

(other than James Bond)

They're both very good at being tired but not weak.

(the last one is apparently her as Cleopatra..?)

the others are as Elizabeth and then from A Midsummer Night's Dream, playing Titania

(I figured Judi Dench in a very proper, regal sort of gown would be fitting)

Well, Adelia is still a schoolmistress from a lesser noble House.

She may certainly think she should wear something like that, but it would be Improper and Putting On Airs to do so prematurely.

She'll get her chance to wear the outlandishly fancy stuff once she's achieved her rightful rôle as trend-setter.

(And you know that you can hear her put the circumflex in the word.)

@BESW I can. :D

Hmm. Okay, Judi Dench's voice, Helen Mirren's face and body.

That way Dench pinches her lips before she talks will be a quirk of Adelia.

hm?

Oh, so the second photo you provided?

Yeah.

Ok. :D

Aight, back to Dumas.

Whoever looks like that, I want him to be a forefront NPC, someone the players encounter regularly

I would say he's a governor or something, but anyone with political power here is probably politically powerless and not all that jolly

He's probably a mid-level bureaucrat or something.

He looks a little insincere, but genuinely happy with his lot in life.

So he's content with himself, but he jerks other people around.

With a smile.

The middle management version of Loki?

A merchant?

A merchant is probably someone with the real power to jerk someone around.

@BESW When I look at him, I see a fellow who doesn't exactly jerk people around - but he does what he wants, and speaks his mind, and he's brash, but content and honest and has no time for nonsense.

Or, at least, not for nonsense he isn't enjoying.

He's... impish.

Hmm.

He's either really well-entrenched in the system, or not significant enough for him to tick anyone important off.

He could be considered a holy madman, a dervish of sorts.

Or he could be one of the princes.

@BESW Not quite either: he's insignificant enough to tick nobody off and be fairly unnoticed, but he knows all too well how the system works.

So he plays it like a fiddle, and is quite content with his lot.

(Each of the Pale Lord emperors has dozens of kids, and they all worm their way into the government somehow.)

Or there's that!

So he'll be maybe one of the youngest sons of the previous emperor.

And... not in government. Let's give him a job that's a bit more freelance.

He looks like he could talk up a storm.

Tour guide?

Ah, he's the guy who knows a guy!

You'll give him a gift for his trouble, of course.

Thoughts?

@BESW That sounds like an extremely well paying job in a place where anything can be bought - you just have to know who's selling.

Indeed.

And the PCs will probably quickly be high on his "people to know" list.

Being, you know, PCs.

Okay, so he spends his days sitting at "his table" in a local neutral bar, when he's not shuffling around the city making and maintaining contacts.

He probably has a rabble of street urchins who he pays to do errands.

@BESW sounds about right!

This makes me wish I could bring back Ricky.

Who's Ricky?

In my original version, Ricky ran the neutral-territory underground bar where the criminals of the city met and socialised.

He was probably the only one who knew about Zagreus's plot but wasn't in on it. He couldn't do much to stop Zagreus on his own, but he could be a very helpful source of information and resources if the party figured it out.

He was also a musteval.

C:

Why can't you bring him back?

Well, first off mustevals are out of the question.

It would break the elf-only setting.

Make him an elf!

Hmm.

Okay, so I liked him largely because of the tension of having a divine emissary posing as a bartender for the low-life.

Mustevals are informants, spies, for the Powers which actually do things.

So who's he working for, what's his motive now?

What's a good guy doing running a bar for bad guys?

@BESW finding out what the bad guys are up to so people can do things about it

So who's he gonna tell before the PCs show up?

Not sure. Maybe some sort of counter-operative group?

More importantly, why can't the PCs pass the responsibility off to them?

All good questions @_@

Ok, you can leave the bartender as someone to work out later. But they might be up to something.

Maybe there was some group that had figured out Zagreus's plan but then got taken out by Zagreus, and Ricky's the only one left.

Oh dear. @_@

That sounds decent.

And he's still got, y'know, stuff hidden here and there. Hidey-holes. Secret passages. Supplies.

Of course.

Just that he's the only one now, and he's not sure what to do with it, and not keen on suicide missions.

Ooh, wait, I know exactly who to base him on, for looks and sound.

I just need to track down a good YT video...

A shifty sneak who hides a surprisingly tough core behind a decidedly effeminate and cowardly exterior.

I'll make him a bit more honourable in the middle, but the face he presents to his clientele is just that: a coward willing to sell his mother to save himself.

@BESW Lovely

Aaand let's have a mute flautist with a trained bear as the bar's entertainment.

They're also the bouncers.

I'll let their backstory develop as needed.

They'll be loyal to Ricky for reasons not yet defined.

Lovely

just thought of an aspect, but possibly not for Ricky:

The front lines are the best seats

or uh... The front lines make the best seats

Hmm.

I like it.

Dinnermaking time! ttfn

A thought occurs.

Is there some more traditional monster that Zagreus could be?

Vampire, etc.