Atlantic Roleplay Community Boards

Adin Blackwind · Sage Joined: 11 Jan 2004 Posts: 683

ELVES

1. Elves are elegant and beautiful creatures. They are always well-dressed, well-groomed, neat, and clean. Some elves are more taken with their own good looks than others. Elves are fair to medium skinned and do not have facial hair.

2. Elves have lifespans that cover many centuries. Some elves may even be immune to disease and death by natural means. Note however, that if your elf character is 3000 years old, you as the player need to do your research in order to make your character seem believable... simply putting it in your profile does not accomplish this!

3. Elvish culture is refined and sophisticated. In general, elves look down upon all other races as having lesser, soemwhat barbaric cultures. This attitude can range from amusement, to easy tolerance, to outright disdain and arrogance. Elves live in a variety of places, from trees to caves to cities, but always their dewllings are of surpassing beauty and posess a strong element of naturalistic design, as if the buildings grew into their shape rather than having been built.

4. All elves are spiritual beings and are deeply contected to the natural world. When they die, they remain a part of the world, perhaps to be reborn again. Humans, by contrast, pass beyond the world with their deaths and into the realm of the gods. Elves take love and other emotions very seriously. Also, elves believe in equality of genders within their own race.

5. All elves possess an innate potential for a spiritual connection with nature and magic. An elf's actual profficiency at such skills depends upon their education and training.

6. As they are a part of the world, elves feel they are caretakers of the world. How the individual elf expresses this depends upon their specific culture and upbringing. Because of this, they do not kill for fun or enjoyment and typcially abhor evil beings that are not part of the natural world (daemons, undead, orcs, drow, etc.).

7. Elves have great respect for their deities, however, deities are rarely seen acting on the material world. You may invoke the name of your god or goddess to give you strength/valor/courage, but invoking the god itself is rarely if ever seen. Gods and goddesses have to deliberate and discuss the matter of altering anything in the material world, so as you can see, its almost impossible to summon a god.

Arcana · Posted: Wed Jan 28, 2004 1:31 am Post subject:

If everyone is cool with these drow and elf guidelines (and someone corrects my typos with the spell checker...) perhaps they should now be posted on the Lycaeum forum?

Grig'nag da Mojo · Posted: Wed Jan 28, 2004 3:33 am Post subject:

Hey!! Orcs are plenty natural. They eat meat and squat in the woods. How much more natural can you be?
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Arcana · Posted: Wed Jan 28, 2004 11:08 am Post subject:

Ha ha!

Cassiopea · Seasoned Veteran Joined: 29 Dec 2003 Posts: 318

What do you mean Elves look down at other races? I would have a hard time roleplaying Sarah if that is the case.

Cassiopea/Sarah

Arcana · Posted: Thu Jan 29, 2004 12:02 am Post subject:

I doesn't say they look down on other races in that sense. Reading on, it says that elves look down upon other races' culture as being less sophisticated than theirs. I could have worded that better, now that I read it again it is misleading. An elf may or may not be arrogant about this or even mention it, but elves do consider their cultural superiority to be a fact.

Cassiopea · Seasoned Veteran Joined: 29 Dec 2003 Posts: 318

Thanks for clearing that up for me. I think what's posted is agreeable shard wide as long as what's not mentioned isn't acceptable. The list really doesnt address some of the magical powers some elves have on game. Alot used elven magic to do some heavy godmoding stuff. I do agree elves are in tuned with nature and have magical powers (similar to druids in that its good magic based upon nature) but limitations need to be made on how far those powers can go.

Half elf issue also hasnt been fully developed. As it stands now the next empress of Nujelm will be a half elf (unless Sarah and Rufus divorce..)and as a ruller it would be hard pressed if shunned by their kind. From what I've read it seems the binding of elf to human is not desirable but on individual cases accepted.

Cass/Sarah

Adin Blackwind · Sage Joined: 11 Jan 2004 Posts: 683

Spells were a touchy subject that I wasn't going to dive into. As for Half elves, I would honestly believe they would have the elven traits as their full blooded kin. Only exception would be maybe their behavior and life span. As human qualities would also be a major part in their upbringing.

Arcana · Posted: Fri Jan 30, 2004 12:34 am Post subject:

I agree with Kotare about the magic thing.... I tried to put in a few hints that people shouldn't godmode and act like morons... like them needing to research elves to be believable as a centuries old elf, and that an elf's actual ability at magic/nature stuff depends on their education and training.

I really didn't want to touch half-elves because there's so little written down for the shard about them. I know some people who play very human half-elves and RP that they look human except for pointy ears. I also know some half-elves that are RPed to be much more elf-like. Cassiopea, perhaps if you wanted to start a list of their characteristics, we could work with that and make a list of generic standards for half-elves.

From what I have read in D&D information, elves look as half-elves and see humans, whereas humans look at half-elves and see elves. So the poor half-elf usually ends up being never fully accepted by either race. However, the Atlantic shard seems to have a history of being very accepting of human/elf marriages and half-elves. Well, except for Humanis Wink

As always with these standards, individual guilds should feel free to make them more specific as they wish to make their guild unique.

Dymm Crowley · Posted: Fri Jan 30, 2004 1:02 am Post subject:

Aren't half-elves, or half-anything for that matter, supposed to be sterile? And, if an elf is immune to disease, shouldn't it be impossible to contract vampirism? Or should an elf/drow/etc be a vampire, for that matter?

Nazralte · Lore Keeper Joined: 29 Dec 2003 Posts: 790

My biggest thing with the two Elf thing mostly revolves around Half elves.
And the living forever, reincarnation and being immune to everything...

See, with the ELF (or Tolkiens) way, there really arent half elves. Because when a elf marries a human, they become mortal, basically human.
And from what others have said, thier child chooses wether to be elf or human.
Whereas with D&D or most other books, Half-elves are truly half and half. They are a mix, living longer than humans, but not as long as elves. They look like elves, yet look like humans too, so any people that would hold prejudice against the other race, would never accept a half elf.
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Nazralte
Former Regent of Britannia

Alexander the Elf · Posted: Fri Jan 30, 2004 5:28 am Post subject:

I always went by the thing that elves couldn't be vampires but if they had human parts to them, the human part could become vampiric. Something like that. Sort of odd if you think about it too much so I suggest not thinking about it at all.

Adin Blackwind · Sage Joined: 11 Jan 2004 Posts: 683

I chose to avoid putting down information in regards to vampirism as an elf because this area is largely debated. Some elves, As odd as it would seem, have become Vampires in the past in UO. Vampirism isn't a desease, its a form of death.

Naturally, I will never play an elf as a vampire. The closest I would go is half elven, but even then, That is pushing it.

Arcana · Posted: Fri Jan 30, 2004 12:07 pm Post subject:

Yea, all those differences of opinion on half-elves are why I too chose not to try to reconcile all of them. I don't think we'd ever come up with anything that would please everyone.

I really don't know anything about RPing a vampire... but it does seem to me that an elf wouldn't become a vampire by choice, and that perhaps, vampirism might not take to elf-blood. I'd always thought that undeath only had an appeal for humans because of their short little lifespans. Banshees, I believe, are elven spirits - kind of undead - but the banshess become that way because of some great trauma in death, no by choice, I though. Basically and elf-ghost that's more potent than a run-of-the-mill human ghost.

Isilmea · Posted: Sun Feb 01, 2004 1:52 am Post subject:

One thing to remember here on Elves being vampires and why it would not be possible relates to the concept of it being an cause and effect of blood involved and also a mortal with a soul being taken over and here in lays the issue cos Elves have spirits and not souls... elves blood is different as well in that the issues or living a long life span over a human mortal is different too and it is suggested by the man who created the race of Elves, Toliken that if an elf marries a human and bounds with the human in a bounding of spirit that the elf freely does on his/her own that they give up thier Elven gifts that were gifted to them by the Valar/creators of the race. I belive this bascially would alllow the Elf to then -age- as a human would age and to loose some of thier magical connects to nature and such... this is why Elves take this soul bonding so serious and it is never down lightly. Soul bounding also does not involve the ritual of love making like a human couple would do... it is not a physical connection it is 100% a spirtuial bonding that takes place and has no physical bonding. I post this to help and not down anyways concept on how they wish to role-play thier charectors...

Kot, I like some of your concepts and have not fully read them all yet, taking a bit to catch up on 6 days worth of post, ideas and what-not...

I think we need to consider everyone's views and come to a happy medium that will support all types of -current- role-playing styles with Elves cos really there are not that many that it should be a bid deal and upset anyone to make them feel that they way they are doing it is wrong... we all need to bend a little and not think that anyone is pointing a fingure at how someone is playing thier char yet some basic guilde lines need to be followed in preserving aspects of each race that makes each different... I refer back to what Rhama posted a week ago as how Elf will role-play being Elves yet I will not allow anyone member of my guild to ooc or ic judge anyone's play style unless it is something that is totally off the wall...

Oh and for the record Elves do not look down on any race and see humans as -brothers and sisters- in a special way. The only aspect that an elf may not choose to get too close to a human is that humans have a shorter life-span then Elves and Elves being very caring beings it hurts deeply to loose a friend when they die... remember that Elves feel emotions much deeper then humans do.

also forgive any misspelled words cos I did not use spell check in this post...
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