Why Do Fantasy Races Live So Long?

[@RiotKurhein]

One of my favorite excerpts is of an unscrupulous dwarven merchant chuckling to himself about selling a subpar shovel to a human, mentioning how it'll only last a single lifetime.

[@Wolf-oc6tx]

For most costumers that is long enough for them to get good value so the human family may still feel they won out in the end.

[@potatolord9715]

@@Wolf-oc6txthat’s the joke

[@Wolf-oc6tx]

@@potatolord9715 🤣

[@TPixelAdventures]

"Hehehe! Idiot! That shovel will only last 30 years! And he bought it like it was a masterpiece!"

[@Wolf-oc6tx]

@@TPixelAdventures The joke may also be on the Dwarf when accounting for life span.🤣

[@robertbeisert3315]

I have this idea that, being borderline immortal, elves just don't act like we do. They go with what interests them, and they can be profoundly focused, but they may lack in other areas. Like, imagine you have this Elven tracker who has been doing woodcraft for 200 years, mastered all manner of weaponry, but still can't read. They figure they'll get around to it someday. Or another elf who promises to come by soon, but doesn't return for 50 years because he got into a lovely chat with an Ent and figured a few years wouldn't matter.

[@indulgencerofindulgence5970]

That see m like idiocy.

[@samuellinn]

@@indulgencerofindulgence5970 seems like you've experienced it

[@thalmoragent9344]

​@@juangil9130 Yeah, Elves most likely know how to read

[@hellzonefirebrigade3056]

​@@indulgencerofindulgence5970your entire name is a grammatical error. That in itself is pretty idiotic. 🤔

[@thalmoragent9344]

@@juangil9130 Yeah, the very words and letters themselves have power, similar to how runes work as a concept, so I can agree with the basis of what you're saying. As for Immortality, it all depends on the user. All the evil undead people wanted the Immortality at all costs. There are some who are simply immortal through means that don't require such moral implications. In the Elder Scrolls, Dyvathe Fyr has lived for thousands of years, wouldn't exactly say he's any sort of lich or demon, just an astute practicer of the magic arts. Knight Paladin Gelebor is THE oldest character we ever meet in the games, aside from the Gods themselves of course, and it seems his worship to the Time God is the reason for it. Which is fascinating to consider, because he's the only worshipper of the Time God who's ever been granted such a long life, supposedly from the diety himself. Gelebor himself is basically a Saint, and has done his religious duties best he could, even as the last of his kind. So, the amount of people trying to attain Immortality shows thay there are some who will go to any lengths to achieve it, and there are some who don't mind doing it in a less morally questionable manner. People who want extravagant wealth may sometimes turn towards crime, but others chose hard work or master their political intrigue. Different methods, different kinds of people

[@juke9674]

I like the DnD idea of goblins being essentially the opposite - they reproduce very fast, live relatively short and change constantly, so they can adapt to any enviroment easily

[@SleeperAgent101]

I really like that idea too, and it somewhat explains why elves live so long. Both species came from the feywild, and time works in funky ways there, so it felt like an average lifespan for them, when really they lived very short or very long. This also could have lead to a lot of confusion when they both came to the material plane.

[@cavareenvius7886]

And there are the lizardfolk who didn't change since they popped out into existence and witnessed the shit show the other races are going through and just said: "Bingo, Bango I don't want to leave the jungle. Civilization, I will stay right here."

[@fatjellyfish9478]

​@@cavareenvius7886the winning strategy to surviving and having kids is spreading out and not trying to hard

[@adisca2k]

Skaven Yes-Yes!

[@InternetHydra]

In my setting, the human origin is half elves half goblins from eras past.

[@nLinggod]

Back in AD&D, in one of the race books, elves work on projects, personal and professional, sporadically as they feel like it. So an elf could work on a painting for a year, decide to visit an aunt for 'a short while' ie 30 years, get interested in gardening for a while, come back and continue painting when inspiration hits them. For elves, "I'll do it later" takes on a WHOLE new meaning.

[@particularplaypaint5384]

Procastrination is the way to long life. I always knew I was doing something right. 😂😂

[@klaykid117]

I love the way Brennan Lee Mulligan runs his high elves. I don't think I'll ever forget that offhanded mention of that elven dancer that's been dancing under an archway for 30 or 40 years just because she felt like it. They really do just put everything off cuz they never feel like there ever running out of time

[@LittleCrowYT]

The anime Frieren: Beyond Journeys End showcases the time "dilation" of an Elf pretty spectacularly. After her party's mission ends, they all go their separate ways, and Frieren (the elf in question) only visits them again decades later, to the point that her allies thought she'd never come around again. It's pretty beautiful and there's one point where the sudden realioof gow long lived she is hits her pretty hard. It's mostly a pretty gentle anime. Borderline iyashikei, like Flying Witch or Aria

[@casualsleepingdragon8501]

Sso my version of I'll do it later

[@robertaylor9218]

Never put off ‘til tomorrow what you can put off to the next day.

[@darthpotato3566]

I like settings where that last point about 3 people knowing all of England's history is actually the reason elves are often so reclusive. Humans repeat their mistakes, and if an old person tries to warn a young person, it just makes the young person do it faster with even less consideration of safety. If you can actually remember the last big war or economic depression and someone starts walking that road again without listening to you, all you can do is give up and live somewhere else

[@kennethwoody5897]

All I can hear is Elrond in the back of my mind.

[@Ruiseal]

I don quite think thats right, i think states that listened to their elven advisors would out compete any nation that did not, in a form of natural selection

[@Praetor_Jeep3r]

@@kennethwoody5897 I was there, 3000 years ago

[@danwebber9494]

I’m fond of the idea that elves occasionally start a new career/stage in life and everyone accepts that they will totally forget their old life. Very few elves would choose to continue with the same path for 400 years, and they would be subject to both admiration and pity.

[@yuvalgabay1023]

So the eldari way of living in 40k.

[@luclin92]

That is pretty much what I like about the craftworld eldars from 40k. They basically focus on one profession or interest at a time. Moving from one to another throughout their life. At the same time they do this not to get too focused on one thing, because they can just as easily become too obsessed with one thing and that could be very bad (I won't go too much into why because then i would end up ranting😂)

[@gyrrakavian]

Certainly brings an interesting light to 'Jack of all trades, master of none, but better than a master of one.'

[@comradewarners]

This is actually really interesting to think about because in my dnd campaign my PC’s dad is a dark Elf that has been a miner his whole life and he’s about 400 years old. It makes his life seem so rough and it’s pretty interesting to think about 😂

[@mc.builder8267]

@@comradewarnersthat man is a god of mining.

[@HappyAspid]

Very good example of unnaturally old wizard was present in Russian series "Max Frei". There was an old wizard who was almost all the time in a good mood, who can find common tongue with almost anyone. Often laughing and cracking jokes. Untill one time in the series one of the characters manages to get a sneak peek on the real Wizard. Absolutely cold, emotionless, calculating and far more powerful than he shows. And happy and upbeat attitude - the mask, that he wears in order to not completely creep out those who around him.

[@bonefetcherbrimley7740]

Cool:D

[@HappyAspid]

@@juangil9130 In book, all old wizards sooner or later felt the urge to create their own magic order. So this one created something akin to secret police service in one of the biggest countries.

[@liwojenkins]

My fav is Fizban from the Dragonlance novels. An actual God disguising themselves as a powerful old human wizard with a touch of dementia. Keeps the guy from ever having to explain anything thoroughly and a reason to not even really know the why anyway.

[@TheMentorOfMomos]

i love this so much

[@bonkercube8974]

@@juangil9130 Apprentices be like "set my master free he aint do nothing wrong" and he's a necromancer.

[@Frescko]

I like the idea that few Elves and long lived species rarely die of old age, when you think about it only a percentage of long lived animals die of old age, and even then they’re usually carrying scars of various degrees.

[@absolstoryoffiction6615]

True... Long lived animals mainly die from complications such as cancer or hard exo skeletons being too sturdy, environmental hazards, and predation etc. Death by old age is extremely rare.

[@NerdAlert42]

..... and then you have the drow. Iirc, about half of em don't even reach 20, and most are lucky to hit 200 😅

[@demoulius1529]

@@NerdAlert42 thats mostly because of their society who worships Lloth and is exceptionally cuththroat. Even to their own people.

[@jasonreed7522]

Technically no human dies of old age, which would be the result of running out of telemeres (junk dna caps on your chromosomes that protect your important DNA) which is expected to happen around 150. "Natural Causes" is technically a better description of the various events that kill old people like heart attacks, strokes, cancer, various "minor" pathogens, falls, ect. We just group them together as "old age" because its not always worth diagnosing what the last straw was that killed a 92 year old person with deteriorating health. Either way, the longer you live the more likely you are to die in a "freak accident" just because more chances for them to occur. When you add in the fact that most fantasy worlds are rife with tragedy & violence to justify the adventures, and being long lived suddenly becomes a death sentence to die in some horrific way rather than a hospital bed.

[@diablo.the.cheater]

I like when elves actually don't really age but they still have a lifespan because there is a point where even the luckiest of elfs eventually dies from random accidents. even if you don't age every day you are waging a bet against being unlucky and dying in an accident, you only need to lose that wage once and given enough time you are going to eventually get unlucky and die. Basically there is some kind of event horizon where the chances of surviving in an accident collapse to 100%

[@Firecell777]

I think something unexplored is also the idea of memory. If you live for up to 1000 or even 500 years you would either need a far better memory that what we humans have or you'd have a far shorter one, and building on those two ideas is always fun for me. Elves that are quite literally incapable of forgetting even if they wanted to is my personal favourite.

[@Maethendias]

at a certain point youd also simply be unable to make new memories without overriding old ones simply by virtue of the brain running out of room

[@Eowar]

This makes me think of Thousand-Year-Old Vampire's memory mechanic. It also reminds me of the MMO Mabinogi where elves had a Memory Tower that involuntarily stored and shared all the community's memories because a curse doomed them to forget.

[@Eowar]

I've also read some versions of the fae where much of their weirdness is explained by them discarding most of the context for their memories. If you cross one of their obscure rules, they can't explain why that's a rule just that they always enforce it.

[@Firecell777]

@@Maethendias really depends on how far you want to take it. Running out of space in your brain is far less fantastical imo than living for 700 years or dragons

[@markusbarten455]

@@Maethendias A brain can hold a ridiculous large amount of memory. The problem is not running out of space for more memory but newer memories failling to leave a deep enough imprint and your older memories becoming rather foggy. An interesting concept would be that the longer lived races are so obsessed with culture, heirlooms, rituals and artefacts is that they serve as a memory aid.

[@benji45645]

While a totally different genre, the game Kenshi takes an interesting perspective on long lived races. It's a post-post-apocalyptic world with no magic and a tech level similar to feudal japan, and the race of robotic "skeletons" come from before both apocalypses, though even they barely remember the world after the first apocalypse. They are immortal creatures, but they have to wipe their CPUs every now and then to avoid insanity. This results in them being the smartest race, but also the most depressed and cynical because everything people worry about is just so insignificant in their grand scheme of things. They're also not omniscient, as they only have their own observations/memories to go on, so it's like having an ignorant character who is just able to see a longer duration of a very limited perspective. Also, by being machines, they do not feel pain or fear or anything (in fact, they're safest in a secret city plagued by constant acid rain), instead they just feel the burden of time and the internal anguish of knowing too much. Also, they don't reproduce at all because the tech to build them is long forgotten. Instead, they are kind of like Theseus' ship, where limbs and components are replaced and repaired over time by mechanics who are generally skeletons themselves. In a way they're an extinct race that is keeping its remaining members alive for millennia. There's a lot of lore around the apocalypses and why almost all other races fear them; it's like if a race of robots from pre-butlerian jihad times showed up in a dune universe where the jihad was long forgotten, holding way more knowledge, but very obviously not to be trusted.

[@potassium2807]

From what I remember, the skeletons don’t actually wipe their CPU’s, it was just something they made up, although I maybe remembering that incorrectly

[@benji45645]

@@potassium2807 I think they mentioned that they often just tell people that to stop them asking questions, but there are skeletons who have gone insane, like Cat Lon. Also iirc some skeletons talk about the massive toll that memories have on them, as a reason to why they're depressed all the time. I'd assume many actually do wipe their CPUs to deal with the depression, while others just say they did. Maybe they also wiped their memories only once after the 2nd empire collapse because of the guilt of what they did to humans, but honestly idk either. The lore is very spotty

[@potassium2807]

@@benji45645 true and besides most of the lore can be left up to interpretation

[@InsanestFoxOfAll]

@@benji45645 I've always interpreted that insanity as a result of the emotional duress of events they are directly responsible for with resetting being a temporary coping mechanism for when that stress becomes too great. If you play as a skeleton, there is also one line of dialogue in particular that you can receive from a particular skeleton that implies you still know what happened, and you still know what you did.

[@benji45645]

@@InsanestFoxOfAll that makes sense to me. I'm not sure I've seen that dialogue line, though. I'm assuming it's while accompanied by the very knowledgeable skeleton who lives in a specific tower, but I'm not sure if you have to be a solo skeleton to see that line. I played as a greenlander with skeletons in my party, and they've commented about the past but not about personal involvement in it.

[@MrBleuskyz]

The moment you mentioned how in this context humans are like dogs and will die way before elves do, I thought to myself. It’s likely that like humans relationship to dogs, some take many years before accepting their human friends death, and some others may mourn for a couple months before going out to find a new human friend again. Which I think is a way more interesting philosophy and concept to talk about in media instead of the very practiced “all my friends will die before me” idea

[@spacedinosaur8733]

Interesting, what if their Elvish friends introduce them to a new human, to help them get on with their lives. "Yes it's sad Rhonda died, but see here, this is Johnny, and he needs someone to help with his quest."

[@MrBleuskyz]

@@spacedinosaur8733 lol, omg, yes exactly

[@whiskeyhound]

@@spacedinosaur8733 Pretty sure that was a plot point in one of the drizzt novels, female elf had to work out that it was his first time that he'd outlived his friends and offer advice on dealing with the other 200-600 (edition dependent) years of his life without them.

[@balazszsigmond826]

Did a character around this concept. Elvish baby brought up in a human village. By the time she was an adult, her parents were the grandkids of the original parents. Her childhood friends all died of old age. So... She just learned that all things are temporary, and what really matters, is living a full life. She "adventured" in human lands and I played her as if she was a benevolent god among men. Infinitely wise (wiser than me) and infinitely kind. She was what. 200 years old? Already packing 3-4 generations worth of human experience. Her next goal in life was to become a protector of the realm, by becoming a royal mage. It was an exceptional experience, playing her. What would a being, comparably immortal, become if brought up in a loving community? Infinitely good and wise. What else? Playing edgelords and spouting trauma is good and well. But playing a character, who has been there and done that is even better.

[@fetzjorgensen601]

Consider the Doctor, from Dr Who. They always has a traveling companion. Sometimes the companion dies, and the Doctor is devastated. But they always finds another. The show only sometimes, focuses on the people he misses. The majority of episodes are them having fun with their current companion.

[@vazk-thret]

I always thought that Elves were so snobby because they thought they were naturally good at everything, but in reality they just forgot all the training they've done since their memory is only thrice as good as a humans. while dwarfs are similar, but their friends never let them live it down so they never forget what they had to go through, at least in comparison to elves...

[@theapexsurvivor9538]

Plus, Dwarves generally have a culture of personal and/or familial honour in most settings, so they'll also generally view their own training as a source of pride: "I was born into the noble house of Blacksmithfamilyname, born son of Renownedblacksmith [...], son of Proudblacksmith [...], son of [...]. And I trained under Master Suchandsuch for 30 years and Master Soandso for 40 more, and since graduating 5th in my class, behind only Aye, Bie, Cei, and Dee, have crafted 3206 swords, 2073 axes, [...], and even 342 boomsticks of the highest calibre, having made flawed products 852 times. You've only trained under, what was his name for not even 10 years, and this is only your third failed craft of 30 passable ones, don't get too down on y'self. You learn from this one, listen to what the metal says you did wrong and try to get it right next time, or you can throw down your tools and never come near the forge again cause you haven't the beard to be a blacksmith. Choice is yours." Hell, knowing dwarves in most fantasy settings, they probably have a wall in their house dedicated to engravings listing the training of every member of their family back to the dawn of time...

[@DegenerateAssassin]

​@@theapexsurvivor9538😅This is so accurate.

[@adrianaslund8605]

Huge difference between a human with good and bad memory. Some elves might have exceptional eidetic memory. Even for elves. But yeah. Elves are like overly educated but also sensation seeking. Which makes them think of others as boorish basic bitches. They tend towards INTP and INFP personalities sort of. They pay alot of attention to experience and are highly intelligent. Dwarves tend to be more conservative and materialistic. And more communitarian and conforming. With individual differences present ofcourse. Dwarves like solidly built foundations. Elves like going with the flow of things.

[@Vaeldarg]

@@adrianaslund8605 Elves might really love human art, though. Especially when art tends to rise in value after the original producer has died. An elf might see in human art a dynamism and ephemerality that mirrors the life of the artist themselves, that an elf artist can simply never replicate with their longer lifespan. "I knew this [famous human bard] personally. Such unique works matched their unique life that was a wonder for me to witness, as dazzlingly brief as lightning."

[@Nell_Hell]

​@theapexsurvivor9538 to be honest I would love to live in a dwarfen city rather than an elf city, dwarfs just sound soo much more fun

[@Drudenfusz]

The elven historian idea has the flaw that it assumes that elves have better memories than other ancestries. But imagine their memories are just as flawed as that of humans, maybe even worse, an suddenly you do not gain anything from their longevity amidst shorter live beings. But otherwise I think the video has some interesting thoughts.

[@Grungeon_Master]

You're right, of course. While this issue can be partly mitigated by regular note-taking, it's important to remember that even notes can miss things, especially events which are only important in retrospect. Even with the memory issues possible, oral history is still incredibly valuable, although it's only recently that academia has started to take notice of that value. I'd hope that elves have some ability to stave off degenerative mental diseases, which can start to hit us in our 50's, because a world where every elf suffers severe memory loss for 2/3 of their life at least sounds torturous. Although, it sounds like a great foundation for a dark fantasy world to me!

[@NoSympathyGiven]

Honestly given the fact that modern Elves are based entirely on Tolkien’s Elves, which in themselves are based on the idea of angels, which in many ways are the best, most perfect version of a being, ive always assumed they have a better memory than other races.

[@Drudenfusz]

@@NoSympathyGiven I would agree that there was some inspiration then, but only very loosely. The elves in Tolkien's work are basically ageless, but in D&D and any other fictions world they do age and die from old age. That alone tells me they have to deal with the frailties of their body, and thus also worry about their brain. And well, the authors and players how run them are humans, and thus some flawed memories will sneak in that way. Elves simple are not robots, and of all the long eared beings we have in media, who also have longevity, I would say the Vulcans from Star Trek might be the ones I trust the most to have good memories, but even there I would not expect perfect memories. Since that would probably mean such entities could not overcome trauma or any suffering they ever witnessed.

[@BrendanKOD]

@@NoSympathyGiven Well early D&D did mostly just copy Elves from tolkein, just making a few tiny changes to keep from being sued (Like renaming Hobbits to Halflings in the books) but from there all the writers have been trying to find ways to modify the elves so they can fit the game world better. One of the best direct Tolkein elf analog I've ever seen was Lorien from Babylon 5 "We were the first created, and our creation did not include a limit to our lifespan. We can grow sick and die, we can become injured and die, but otherwise we continue. And after our creation, all later creations were born with the gift of limited days." Plus Tolkien's elves were not based on angels, they were instead supposed to be 'An unfallen version of Man' Basically like humans who never earned gods wrath and were cast out of the garden of eden. Not that they were all good, a lot of elves did some really messed up things, with the main group of elves opposing Morgoth committing mass murder of other elves twice during their crusade.

[@nobody4248]

​@@Grungeon_Mastereven if they are imune to neural degeneration, there is a limit to how much memory can a brain store, so a specie with unlimitted lifespan would still lose memories over time.

[@snipa298]

Here's an idea. If you have a world with reincarnation, you could have a long-lived character view the deaths of their shorter lived compatriots as a temporary fare well. For these shorter lived folk, it's not entirely unheard of to have an elf (or similar) approach you and claim to be an old friend from a previous lifetime.

[@vecipheragain]

interesting ah

[@MasumiSeike]

And that is now a thing in my world :D I love that

[@timexyemerald6290]

But that will only really work if the world size is that small. Even if that elf was intentionally looking for it. It would be like looking for a special grain of sand from a desert. World is too huge. Elf can't possible live that long. 1000 years is too small to find somebody in a whole planet. Not to mention they have no idea WHEN will you gonna even reincarnate 😅.

[@God_Delibird]

This actually happens in Danmachi, where gods on earth can directly see the souls of the members of their Familia (basically guilds) so some of them actively look for reincarnated members to recruit them again.

[@hadarc01]

Imagine the toxicity! You half remember a friendship from your previous life, like the dream you had yesterday. And now this person wants their friend back. Something you just cant give. Both of you wants you to be a person that you no longer are. For example I never understood how was it okay and respectfull for people to adress Aang in the presence of Korra.

[@CJLloyd]

The problem is much simpler, IMO, and is one much more core to fantasy races/species: species are presented as a single culture. So that when elves have a lot of cultures, we can't help but see them as different species. And then some writers write them as having markedly different physical abilities, rather than simply having different skillsets and outlooks that could be better explained by cultural differences. I'm far more interested in having very few species, and each species having very many cultures.

[@KevinWarburton-tv2iy]

Yes, I took that further ...some of my in-world perceived different Species are actually just Sub-Species/Caste Variants of the Same Species. Elves, Orcs, Goblins, Ogres & Gnomes are all descended from a Common Ancestor /Created originally as Worker Castes.

[@rafibausk7071]

The idea that Dwarven Cells and DNA are incredibly sturdy and difficult to damage. Could be considered to be backed up in older editions. Back in 2nd edition. Dwarves gained +1 to saving throws related to Magic for every 3.5 Points of Constitution they had. Said dwarf had 14 Constitution. He would have a + 4 to all saves vs spells.

[@Gnome-kc7pr]

@@juangil9130lol the egyptian thoth

[@absolstoryoffiction6615]

@@juangil9130 Me as a robot: "You call this magic?... We designed Magic eons ago."

[@fltfathin]

@@juangil9130 welp IMO magic is external thing that can mutate or preserve something. in mahouka's perspective on magic, when the magic is "just" altering the eidos/ idea/ data of the world to your liking, dwarves' body being short and unwieldly can be also the result of dna preventing them to "grow up" and their cells decays and bad at regen which is aging itself

[@Kingneo0053]

It's probably because of Tolkien and all future fantasy works being heavily inspired by his words. Within his universe all the fantasy races lived longer than humans. The Elves, themselves, were immortal. It was only humanity that lived such a short life. All of this was due to the ultimate deity within Tolkien's universe. This deity was responsible for creating the vast majority of things within that universe. This universe was literally sung into existence by him and his other creations. This deity gifted his creations with different things. His "gift" to humanity was a short life and not revealing to them what happened to them after death. This was supposed to make them more motivated compared to everyone else. I didn't really like this idea myself, but that's what Tolkien went with.

[@maaderllin]

It's a good start, but there are more reasons when studying Tolkien that appears, especially while keeping in mind that he was a fervent catholic. Elves are tied to Arda. They are between the spiritual and physical world, but their whole existence is tied to the physical world. So they are immortal as long as the physical world exists. But as soon as Arda disappears, they will be lost forever. Men die, but their soul goes somewhere nobody knows except Eru Illuvatar. And when Arda comes to an end, men will remain. As for Ainur, among which are the Valar and Maiar, they can be compared to angels. Dwarves are the creation of Aulë the smith, who created the dwarves because he was too eager to see Illuvatar's children (elves and men) come into the world, so he fashioned some according to his own idea of what they would look like. Their long lifespan comes from the ideas of Aulë and the permission that was granted to keep them when Eru saw that the dwarves had their own will and were not just servants of Aulë. The same goes for Ent, as it is strongly implied that Yavanna created them after a conversation with Aulë about how the Children of Illuvatar will need wood to make fire and will therefore cut her forests. As for orcs, they were not created but were the result of corruption of elves or men (depending of the period in which Tolkien was writing and according to his mythology. ) by Morgoth.

[@alphaundpinsel2431]

damn, he really said "git gud"

[@Kingneo0053]

@@alphaundpinsel2431 Honestly, I knew most of that. What I didn't know was the Elves being physically tied to Arda and the Ent thing. The Ent thing is actually really cool and something I want to further look up. My point though was that humans short lifespans in RPGs, when compared to everyone else's lifespan, is probably just a carry on from Tolkien's work on the matter.

[@haidner]

Elves of Tolkien are based on those from legend, which really were immortal, well ageless, beings that would live forever, barring a violent death. Tolkien was also a pioneer in writing it, as "elves", since prior to him it was written either "elfs" or "ælfs".

[@hugofontes5708]

Maybe when this short life is all they perceive themselves and their loved ones to have, they were supposed to go all in. But I can understand you don't find it appealing

[@arankenrick7175]

The reason Greenland sharks are so long lived is similar to the reason you gave for jellyfish and sponges, they “hardly exist” which is to say they have more simple bodies with very low metabolisms because they are ectotherms and they live in incredibly cold waters. Their metabolism is almost constantly as close to being off as it can be, hence the long lives.

[@gabethepaper3916]

So basically, their lives are long but it sucks.

[@delfinenteddyson9865]

@@gabethepaper3916 most small mamals do live shorter lives as well and have fast metabolism

[@RockiestRock]

Came here to say this - hopefully he reads this comment!

[@secretname2670]

What about whales? Some whales live up to 200 and I doubt they "hardly exist" and this mere fact disproves your claim of the source of long life.

[@johndoe-mo3zy]

​@@secretname2670well there can be more than one solution. Having simple biology would definitely make it easier for a jellyfish or something to stave off aging but it makes them basically not even alive. Look at plants, they can basically live forever but aren't alive in the way animals are. Whales and big animals reap other benefits from their size, bigger animals tend to have better metabolism. That's why they evolved to be so damn massive in the first place. It's just a combination of a lot of things that can make something long lived

[@Suavek69]

I've had a game where the BBEG turned out to be a human man who thought that the length of human life is unfair, so he sought to make all of them live equally long. This would average the lifespan, however since there were few members of long lived races, everyone would "only" get to be 150 or so. The party was one half orc, one human and one dwarf. In the end, the BBEG had a talk with a party before the final fight, he pleaded his case, he explained to the dwarf how his friends are going to wither and die in front of his very eyes, and in the end, everybody including the dwarf decided to help him out. I'm now planning a new campaign, where I'm going to attempt to present the effects of the ritual that took place. The devastation of elven culture for example. I think it's great, I'm very excited

[@InternetMadnez]

Hahaha. Nice!

[@plantinapot9169]

I think the solution in this case is the creation of a difficult ritual that elves and such can use to share their lifespan with others if they truly desire it, rather than doing it to everyone nonconsensually

[@TheLegoLord100]

One of the things I played with regarding labor laws and weekends for a dwarf PC I played, the laws regarding those were put in place for their own safety. But not because of the hazardous environment that they work in, but because working on their craft is simply addicting to a dwarf and it needs to be regulated. In a Tenday they would only be allowed to work on their craft in 2 3-day periods, with proper breaks in there as well. The 2 "mini-weekends" in between are meant to connect with your family and friends and to keep your mind away from work. Stories of crazed workaholic dwarves that shut themselves off for many years continuously working are met with a mix of fear and "gods I wish that were me" energy, and the biggest reason it has ro be regulated is because a workaddicted dwarf will do the unspeakable: in their haste to do more and more, they create shoddy work. They smith brittle armor that won't last a war, they mine unstable tunnels, they open pockets to poisonous or flammable gas that go unnoticed to them, or they create architecture that will crack and fall apart with the slightest tremor. And the biggest reason this is so regulated? It doesn't just put the crazed dwarf themselves in danger, it endangers the entire clan. Side note, this was also why my dwarf PC hated entering human mines when we played, because to him the entire mine felt even less stable compared to one a workaholic dwarf would have carved in their mania, and he genuinely feared for his life in there

[@Exoc3tBOOM]

One trend I never understood was the worshipping of the forest to the point of killing those that harm it...but them being vegetarian...I always thought it made more sense for them to be purely carnivorous as the plant life is worshiped. Like the sacred Cow...but a tree and everything else.

[@alexshingleton]

It's usually worshipping the natural cycle and nature. The reason vegetarian works is cause they can eat berries and fruit and the organism is still there. Chopping down trees and animals means that the organism is dead.

[@stm7810]

10 pounds of grain makes 1 pound of murdered animal, why do carnists know less about thermodynamics and biology than people from thousands of years ago?

[@Exoc3tBOOM]

@@stm7810 Depends on the process, but you are still 'murdering things' in the process of harvesting so...shrug. But not exactly sure how thermodynamics comes into play when contemplating the cost/benefit ratio between harm of animals and plants. But to what I was imagining wasn't the Elves farming meat...but hunting it. A deer...or a human is going to eat regardless of the elves input...but them taking them out would potentially be seen as a moral good for protecting plants/the forest. This is an argument of perspective not rational benevolence.

[@Exoc3tBOOM]

@zooker7938 Wasn't actually aware of that, but yes...that is pretty much what I was thinking xD haha.

[@stm7810]

@@Exoc3tBOOM hunting isn't sustainable for anything close to a village worth of people, they'd have little need for language or tools, they'd be bipedal lions with as little society, culture and such, not exactly playable material. if you made them better at hunting for social needs then you'd have the problem of them putting a large toll on the ecosystem wiping out the species they murder and then starving out. if you wanna pact with nature there's fruitarianism which doesn't harm the plants and still allows cultivation of something nutrient dense, or go full magic and have them feed on sunlight and magic laylines.

[@dalucke8907]

I created a setting where elves have structural problems with their long life span. Their society is extremely conservative due to the fact that the older generation rules and "young" elves often tend to migrate into human societies where they count as experienced workforce rather than as youngsters.

[@TobiExoria]

So basically Japan

[@doctorlucasp9113]

​@@TobiExorialol

[@awesomeswifter1138]

This is why Frieren beyond journey's end has become of of my favorite series, while it doesn't explain the physiology of Elves, it does just explore the idea that we play Elves wrong, 10 years to an elf barely feels like 10 months or 10 days, because their life is so long that mortality doesn't even effect them, if a human or a dwarf dies they wouldn't be phased that much, they only knew them by about a small fraction of their life. Frieren is a great story to give your elf flair if you would check it out. It's used in the thumbnail. The whole story is about an elf learning that despite her friends lifespan, they still meant something to her, as she embarks on a long journey with a new set of companions related to her old party, sometimes months or years passing between page turns because it just happens like that to an elf

[@asako7488]

If you like the mc to be an elf while also feeling like a legitimate one (took 150 years before finally being tired of a monotone lifestyle), well then there is "Enough with This Slow Life! I Was Reincarnated as a High Elf and Now I’m Bored: Volume 1" ( the mc is actually an ex-human reincarnated, but this isn’t the main focus). I need to say this isn’t a manga but a light novel, and while there isn’t a lot of actions, the book just feels like the journal of a long lived specie with a minimum of a 1000 years life expectancy. It also go into how the spirits are akin to friends for high elf… well it’s just a nice book i recommend. It’s available as an ebook on kindle, but not on paper, which is sad… but still worth it. I highly recommend it. PS: forgor to mention that while the mc is indeed strong for the majority of people, it’s not a cheat at all (well in a way maybe it is, but morality refrain himself from using it most of time since it come from spirits and like i said he consider like a friend, so he would feel guilty if he abused it) and isn’t even relevant most of the time. He is more like self defense. Even monster he try not to kill if he can refrain from… I'm rambling again ´scuse me. Long story short: all the creativity that usually go into creating a deep lore and backstory for character, go into just describing a casual elf living in society, making friends, having a job, and passions, with occasional disturbances. PSS: the first book cover about 20 years.

[@asako7488]

I'm reading your comment again and I'm sure you gonna like it.

[@awesomeswifter1138]

@asako7488 sounds really cool. I'll give it a look over, i actually love LN sometimes just hard to read them

[@poutineausyropderable7108]

Idk about for them, it feels like a few days. That's kinda contering the benefit of long life if you are mentally slow. I feel like it's our human brain trying to cope with that timescale being too long and just nerfing elves so that they only gain experience at 1/10 of the speed. And if they do gain experience and knowldege, then time wouldn't pass 20 times longer.

[@awesomeswifter1138]

@poutineausyropderable7108 well mentally slow, and time passing slowly is different. Elves are usually often gifted in skilled things that take a long time to master such as archery or magic, and so we run into this idea once they master something they dont have much left to live for, frieren goes on a journey to find weird magic spells because shes already learmed everything else, and the way she teaches a human apprentice is unique to that scenario too, giving her what feels like a little bit if time to master blasting a hole through a rock. To frieren it was just a few days, but to the human she went from being like 9 to 16, training for alot of her life to just be able to be accepted by an elf mage

[@JKDavitz]

Arcane does a pretty good job at showing how a long-living race of people would struggle to relate to their single-century human counterparts

[@aksel7177]

Viktor won't last even half a century 😢😂

[@kb-ww1uw]

Reminds me of the Zora on BOTW. While all the other races have moved on and are used to the post-apocalyptic Hyrule as the status quo, the Zora still are in mourning and are well aware of the past and the apocalypse that came about

[@Shaso-xv3tw]

I’m sort of attached to the idea of wood elves being the default elf, and that all other species of elves are a result of an ancient empire that dabbled in magic eugenics and ended up dooming their race to catastrophe. Sort of like the Eldar of 40k it makes a helpful explanation for why elves only exist in small alcoves and allows me to have one species of elves (wood elves) that have more human like life spans.

[@nihilvox]

I'll add my own spin on this- Everyone all the time is tying elves and orcs together. "Orcs, oh, corrupted elves" or what have you. Put that in reverse. Orcs get lost in spooky magic fey woods for generations. Wood elves come out - prettier, probably better manners from having to work so hard not to offend the fey. Not that anyone alive knows this. And then, yeah, the other elven species all branch off.

[@Biotear]

I mean... I wouldn't exactly call what the Eldar got up to eugenics as much as I'd call it a case study in why kinkshaming can be a good thing, but point taken.

[@Aevum13th]

@@nihilvox I believe World of Warcraft does something similar. Night Elves were initially Trolls that changed after constant exposure to a certain thing. Then a number of Night Elves left to go to a different continent, and became a different type of elf.

[@Z.gawk-gawk]

Elf Quest had lore exactly like that and it was amazing! That idea is so cool.

[@demoulius1529]

All dnd elves are offshoots. The 'original' elves dont excist in the setting anymore, to my knowledge. High elves, wood elves and drow were all the same people until Lloth tried to overthrow the pantheon and kill her (then) husband. It failed and she and her followers were cast down to the underdark and their skin and connection to the sun severed. Hence why Drow look the way they do. It was divine punishment. All elves had a deep connection and love for the sun before that time, hence casting them below ground and making them weak to the sun was an exceptionally harsh punishment. The high elves and wood elves then went their seperate ways as time moved on. I have no clue where all the other elves originated from. But the wood elves, high elves and drow were originally the same people. Over time their surroundings and their different socities changed them all to what we see in dnd. The elven pantheon from dnd is an interesting read. Read up on it for a dnd campaign as im a DM and wanted to use part of it for a story. Can recommend if you got some time to read it :)

[@PyroMancer2k]

One issue that people don't really take into account with long lived races is memory. How many people in their 30-40s actually remember grade school? All the teachers they had, the classes, the students, and etc. I've seen parents trying to help their kids with homework going, oh it's been so long since I did that I don't remember. Now what about high school in your 50-60s? How much of it do you actually remember. People tend to remember key events but not the day to day. Their memory of events can also be clouded of what happen. As I've gotten older I've talked with friends about going back and watching older movies and shows we liked back in our college days where some were better than remembered and others were worse. We also found sometimes whole scenes or episodes we don't recall. None of us our at the age where mental decline is a concern or showing any signs but it is normal to forget things given enough time, and once you start digging through your past you may start finding things you didn't even realize you had forgotten. For races that live hundreds of years if not thousands the question is how much would they truly recall. To them recalling something that happen a thousand years ago would be like an 80 year old trying to recall their 10th birthday assuming it wasn't unusually memorable. The mind can only hold so much information and the more it has the more it has to sort which means potentially taking longer to access it the same way running a search through a 100 files takes a lot less time than running a search through 10,000 files. Thus the mental capacity to retain that much information and parse it at a reasonable rate would put them in the genius level. This slowly forgetting as your mind can't retain it all would also go a long way to explain why long lived races are not masters at everything. Just like us short lived races if you change professions given enough time you'll be very rusty at your old job even if you do recall some basics. But it could also lead to broader implications with traditions, much like some people keep photo albums to help them remember special events so to might long live races have items they use to remind them and symbolize their time with something or someone.

[@Kalashee]

Unless they, like almost every other fictional humanoid race ever created, are just exponentially smarter/superior to humans, to the extent that we don’t or can’t fully understand how their brains work or their capacity, given that we still don’t fully understand the human mind either.

[@yuin3320]

As far as I'm concerned this should definitely be the standard when it comes to d&d style elves and the like. At the same time, you mentioning the caveat of "unless it was unusually memorable" made me realize, if your long lived races are more mystical/spiritual in origin, their memories may not function the same as humans'. Our memory is dependent largely on stimuli as a result of our need to adapt for survival, but who knows how memories could be recorded and retained by beings of such drastically different origins.

[@lincolndunford6693]

It would certainly stress the importance of written historical accounts. A 700 year old historian that wrote down everything of mild importance that happened as his life went on would have a massive amount of recorded information.

[@An_Ian]

I know the Tech priests in Warhammer (Basically cyborgs who worship tech) Do controlled deleting and archiving of memory similar to how you or I might delete or transfer files from our computers to make room for new stuff.

[@andritsiry]

@@yuin3320 as dnd elf, you could run elf from Fey wild differently. Like a forest, the memory grow and distord over time, the thing is they remember it instead of fading memory but not perfectly and they can't recall it at will, it's literally finding a tree in a forest. Elf from outside the Fey wild would have same memory as with human. Now they need library to recall thing and not learn

[@DragonBoi3789]

There's a quote from Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magic Obscura that I think applies here. A dwarven elder opines that humans are so short lived that they rarely see the consequences of their actions. He says that when a human looks at something, its first thought is, "What can this thing do for me?" He says the human should have taken a dwarven mindset and instead asked, "What will be the cost of using this?"

[@obviouswarrior5460]

Quote from the game: When a man see the steam engine, he wonders what he will be able to achieve with it. When the dwarf create the steam engine, he wonders how much forest it will cost to nature and denies his destructive creation. I think it's from the mouth of the dwarf NPC who invented the steam engine and who had these plans stolen by a human who pretends to be the inventor. Who now sends human expeditions to cut forests to the door of the elven city of the game. Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magic = a masterpice ^^

[@DragonBoi3789]

@@obviouswarrior5460 You are correct, though I was attempting to be vague and avoid spoilers with my slightly altered quote.

[@obviouswarrior5460]

@@DragonBoi3789 ​ I have fear that nobody gonna play this game nowday, so i choose to spoil the "moral" the the history ^^. I am French and I played the French version of the game, but I think I retained the essence of the speech more than the exact words. ^^ Je suis Français et j'ait jouer a la version française du jeux, mais je pense avoir retenu l'essence du discours plus que les mots exactes .^^

[@kingslushie1018]

I like that idea

[@bensoncheung2801]

@@obviouswarrior5460 Do it.

[@ates423]

That’s why frieren is a fantastic manga about the life of a young elf who has to learn to accept the loss of her used to be legendary party of adventurers. Those who have conquered and accomplished great feats passed from time. She spends the arc learning about the meaning of life and setting out on a journey to fulfill all of her old companions’ dying wishes. They actually explore the unasked question of what elves experience since they live for a much longer time

[@Asa_exmachina1665]

Aged like wine 👏🏽

[@Grevnor]

As for Gnomes, Pathfinder's depiction makes a lot of sense - Gnomes used to be Fey, but migrated from the First World (Feywild) many generations ago, and have adapted to their new home. Up to a point. They still have very Fey-like personalities (and Fey-like appearance, including strange hair and eye colours), being wild and mercurial, and they will keep going as long as they find their lives meaningful and entertaining, and Gnomes can literally die out of boredom.

[@Z1gguratVert1go]

From what I've seen so can humans in the real world.

[@solarus2120]

Once again, we can thank Grandaddy Tolkein for the idea of functionally immortal elves. And the elves of middle earth do show a number of the things of which you speak. Elrond's weary remembrance of the end of the second age and the self imposed isolation of both Rivendell and Lorien show this. The connection to a dynasty also shows up, Numenor was founded by Elrond's brother and Aragorn is his very distant descendant.

[@brandonbernard1570]

Interestingly, immortality was the default for sentient beings in Tolkien’s story, and mortality was a gift specially granted to humans. The idea was that mortality gave humanity a greater motivation and ability to shape their own destinies, and it also made them less worldly. The immortality of elves was a gift in many ways, but in some ways it was a curse.

[@Khagrim]

Also note that Tolkien's Elves don't like change and eventually become weary and have to go to Valinor which is unchanging

[@BeratLjumani]

@@brandonbernard1570their souls also weren’t tied to Arda, even if the elves, the gods, the whole world were destroyed Men whose souls aren’t tied to the world are free of that fate. They can go anywhere beyond the world.

[@DavidMacDowellBlue]

Very interesting. Tolkien actually in his later writings wrote of what Elves must be like as an immortal species. For example, he concluded his Elves are naturally monogomous, and never lose the childlike glee in actions or things again and again and again and again. Otherwise they would go mad.

[@jbark678]

That's funny considering that Warhammer 40k's Eldar did go mad, resulting in the birth of Slaanesh.

[@Altmer353]

"naturally monogomous" That is all depends on biology. If elves can have same carnal desires and experience pleasure same as human. Then i would not label them as such. Living for hundreds of years in a full monogamous relationship would be... tiresome. For most relations. I would say that their culture most likely would favor monogamy, but otherwise it would depend on individual's personality and their circumstances. For example 2 elves could be married and often be separate from each other for tens of years. I would imagine that in this sort of situation having an agreement with your spouse that during yours long separation open relationship is allowed would not be something egregious. Elves could be monogamous in love, platonic. Actual sex could be seen as a regular entertainment, something you do to elevate your mood. Only with your actual loved one it could be something special emotionally. Also, in literature, you can often meet promiscuous elves. This is explained by their biology. Long life span, difficult to get pregnant. high carnal desires as a resulted mechanism. You feel depressed, alone your loved one died with whom you have been for hundred of years? Why not get a quick fuck, that would elevate your mood.(and mb you will find a replacement) Hard to get pregnant? Big sex drive will help you with that too. Sex as a mechanism for cooping with hardships of long life and difficulties to get pregnant...doesnt matter that nature created that problem in the first place... So...yeah... this is all depends on biology of the long lived specie. And the author themselves :D

[@DavidMacDowellBlue]

@@Altmer353 In Tolkien, elves are monogomous. He said so. After writing LOTR he literally spent decades fleshing out what was even then a spectacularly detailed "secondary world." Among other things he was very clear that elves are naturally monogomous, that they do not sleep, that they never ever lose that child-like delight in the same thing over and over and over again (which is presumably one reason they don't all go mad), etc. More, it takes a lot more out of them to make children. Thus very few Elves have more than two children, and most of those were in the very far past. Elrond has three, which is somewhat startling. Thus after a certain amount of time, Elves also naturally lose the desire to make children. Otherwise the world would be full of them, to overflowing. Other people's elves are different. I was entirely referring to Tolkien's creations.

[@Altmer353]

@@DavidMacDowellBlue Tolkien doesn't really have a say so in that matter. In HIS books yeah, the probably are. But elves in other fiction? Thats why i said that in depends on the writer and how they describe their elves. I meant to enter this discussion as "what if there were actual elves". How their biology would've affected their mindset and so.

[@DavidMacDowellBlue]

@@Altmer353 Okay, I've read both my posts very carefully. I made it absolutely clear, TWICE, that I was referring to Tolkien's elves ONLY. That was my point, and offered as an example of how he designed his elves very carefully to make them make sense as immortals. But--again--I explicitly said this was about Tolkien's elves. I honestly do not know how you missed that.

[@Zuginator]

A few things I like about Warhammer & Pathfinder. In Warhammer all Elves are 1 species. High, Dark, and Wood. Their differences are all cultural. In Pathfinder elves are literally space aliens, and they have literally that magical adaptation. They have a feat where if you picked certain heritages you can alter your bonus with meditation (to adapt to underground, woods, desert, arctic) In Pathfinder Gnomes are actually possible (rarely) immortal (lower case i) because they are Fae who left the Fae Wilds, but if they aren't constantly having new experiences they Bleach. Turn white, either way and die.

[@zephyrwyman7034]

in pathfinder the elves lived on earth and then left when earthfall happened while a few stayed. unless im super wrong I think that elves are native to Galarion as are Humans.

[@matheusmterra]

This was absolutely amazing, specially the dwarven society part with safety laws and the militaristic structure they would adopt, the very good physicians and healers they would have, I never thought portraying dwarves as this clean safety-obsessed society would work well in a fantasy setting but as a matter of fact it makes total and complete sense. Another point about long lived races is that when living in human societies, they would amass incredible amounts of wealth.

[@billlee3851]

I would recommend the manga Dungeon Meshi (or Delicious in dungeon), in which the difference of life span between races is brought up and explored pretty well, even though it's not the main focus of the plot (which is just cooking in the dungeon). The elf calvaries in this world always take it upon themselves to intervene and handle magic-related problems around the world with little regard to other races' stance on the matter, as they deem it a responsibility of the long living race, sort of like how an adult treats a kid. This is even funnier when you realise their combat skills are, though better than your typical adventurers, nowhere enough for the task at hand. In the main party, one of the members is a half-elf, her human dad died before she was mentally mature enough to process it, so her motivation (or rather her dream) in the story is to essentially erase the life expectancy difference between the races, as her biggest fear is having to watch her dear ones pass away. This is one of the few fantasy series that care about different races more than just their stereotypes.

[@arthurgraton7165]

I like the idea of elf magically mirroring the world and adapting that way. I could see a crazy wizard experiment on elves to try to replicate that ability.

[@soninhodev7851]

when you pointed out elves magically adapting, i was reminded of the pokemon eevee, the way eevee works is that, it has a base form, and then when its subject to extreme enviroments, such as the arctic, it will magically turn into a variant called an eeveelution (assuming there is a variant for that enviroment, and it survives long enough), so with the artic example, it would turn glaceon, but then that tranformation is irreversable, so if it is thrown into say the deep sea, it cant turn into vaporeon to save its life because its already a glaceon, if it were still a child, it could, however, if the glaceon would breed, the child would be the unspecialised eevee, which would need to do that magical process as a rite of passage, to turn into a glaceon (the process is obviouly way easier with the help of its parents), now if you are intrigued go search "eeveelutions", you will see there are 8 variants plus the unspecialized child, for a total of 9

[@awkwardcapgun6131]

My greatest DND campaigns main villian centered around a wood elf who kinda... "woke up" one day and realized that he and his people lifespans meant they could literally outlive generations of human rulers and academics, thus they had the potential of becoming superior to all lesser lifespans by virtue of applying themselves and advancing magic and technology over the course of centuries. His main goal was to enslave all other lesser lifepspans, teraform the planet, and explore/expand into the heavens and beyond. The reason I created this antagonist was due to the (imo) ridiculous notion that elves weren't all geniuses and masters of every craft due to how long they live, so I just kinda made that happen. It was a great campaign lol

[@majesticgothitelle1802]

The only problem is intelligent low lifespan races able to adapt, improve and teach each generation and increase a population. Looks at human war makes humans adapt and evolve their technology, techniques, and military knowledge much faster. Each generation can pass down, improve and give a much better understanding for each 10 to 40 years a new change occur

[@chongwillson972]

@awkwardcapgun6131 "His main goal was to enslave all other lesser lifepspans" i wonder why that was one of his goals, what purpose would he seek in enslaving them , and what kind of slaves would they be like, how would he try to "tame" them, how would he treat them, how would present it? how would he try to convince an elf PC who friends of the other races?

[@majesticgothitelle1802]

@@chongwillson972 if anything he might just let human form a treaty with other races to fight against the evil force of the elves empire. With human technology and the military with the might of the ogres and trolls. The cunningness of goblins and Gremlins. natural ability of beastfolk and the human alchemist Kingdom with the resource of potions elixirs with the endless number of the alchemist Kingdom homopoli soldiers

[@awkwardcapgun6131]

@@chongwillson972 great questions! Obviously there's a lot of homebrew lore/gameplay involved that gave more context but ill try and summarize. His ultimate goal was space travel and populating the heavens, elves were the most "viable" species for long term space travel in his eyes so that was why lesser lifespans were just stepping stones for him to harvest all the resources and get off the planet. He never got super far into his plans (cuz my players were badasses) but I assume it would have been 'you do as you're told and live, or you die' kinda totalitarianism. He wasn't outwardly malicious but anything that got in his way or slowed him down was cut from the picture. As for convincing other elves/clans to join, that was also kinda secondary to him. He had convinced all his clan to follow him (anyone who didn't was killed or left behind) and they were far more advanced and powerful than any other elves (they already eliminated another elvish culture early in the campaign as like, smoke signals to the party that something big was coming) and he also had a "blessing of will" from a powerful angel in our pantheon that basically meant that over time, the universe would physically start bending to his will and making his dreams and aspirations come true. If the party failed to stop him, he was have turned the multiverse into a singularity, with the universe completely under his control and no possibility for other timelines to exist, it was a crazy cool campaign!

[@tomarnocu1075]

Good hero. I still waiting you to describe the villain tho

[@falloutfreek1992]

What you mentioned about elves and them being more magically adaptive based on their environment is exactly how Pathfinder does it. Elves on Golarion grow up more closely resembling the place where they grew up than they do their parents. Even says in the Inner Sea Races that the child of two elves won’t necessarily look like their parents

[@weylins]

I always loved that about elves in Golarion. While it's unlikely to occur in a given campaign, they even stated that over decades, an elf's appearance changes depending on where they live. An elf who grew up in Kyonin but then lived in Nidal for 50 years would look very different to anyone who knew them in Kyonin. Before they were cut from the setting and game for Pathfinder Remastered, that adaptability was part of what bit the drow in the ass... exposed to the weird energies of the Darklands (Underdark) is partly responsible for their physical and some mystical changes.

[@falloutfreek1992]

@@weylins that and demon-worship

[@FauulaBoy]

There is great manga about about an elf who goes on a journey. There is constant time skip and unlike in some stories where hero trains or stays in the town for a few months the elf would spend 5-10 years training and staying in a town and you see everyone around him age and when he returns to some towns they have totally changed. You kinda feel sorry for the elf cause every time he forms a bond that is a future friend he is gonna lose. It's called "Growing Tired Of The Lazy High Elf Life After 120 Years"

[@TKDB13]

The "elves (magically) mirror their environment" approach is what I do in my setting, with further implications stemming from that. Elves, being fae creatures at root, are metaphysically tied to the land, and so take on features tied to the land that they are born and raised in. This not only leads to the formation of various elven subraces, but also means that the elves are barred from returning to the realms of Faerie where their ancestors came from. The true fae deem the elves to be corrupted and fallen, tainted by the material plane, and so refuse them entry. This caused problems when the elves sought refuge in Faerie to escape a magical cataclysm that was ravaging the material, but were turned away and had to suffer it with the rest. The elves are still bitter about this.

[@ChainedFei]

Excellent reflection on the disparities of long lived races. One problem I have often noticed is that everyone plays their elf characters the same as they do their human characters, and they would be... quite fundamentally different.

[@dngerouds]

Elven diversity can increase. In your setting these changes should atleast take 100-1000x amount the time, than a human needs. Elven in most media are rather NOTORIOUS for actually sticking to old habits, old rituals and old traditions. The rebelic and newer elves that see issues in old habits, rituals and traditions are usually the ones to go off (alone or in a group) to find a place to settle, WITHOUT these "nonsensical traditions and rituals". Old elves sticking to old traditions and rituals can be seen very often. Usually with the sentiment that: "new ways" are too radical or too disruptive of old traditions. ON TOP OF THAT: What race do you THINK should spread and form newer variations? If not THE ELVES? Sure, humans can spread and grow up in an entirely different area, than their parents and absolutely change with their surrounding. Resulting in a different kind of human. But humans are also vastly adaptable, so this wouldnt give reasons for a new "human variant". Because thats just what humans do. An elf, that lived 1/8th of their life in one place and then move to another, to slowly adapt there and have new traditions? This absolutely makes a new elf variant. Because elves arent as adabtable. But IF they adapt, it usually results in a vastly different personality. Because its alot more work for an elf to change their old ways, than it is for a human.

[@Wolf-oc6tx]

On top of that it makes a massive amount of sense when allowing for the tendency(in both Tolkien's and other fantasy works) to form self governing settlements because it gives a plot-hole removing motive for the differences between elven groups.

[@supremecaffeine2633]

I think you're mixing tradition with race.

[@Wolf-oc6tx]

@@supremecaffeine2633 I was saying that the idea of elf groups with a lot of genetic and cultural divergence between each other fits perfectly with the idea of them building self governing settlements and that the desire to do things a specific way gives plot hole removing motives for the cultural differences.

[@JMObyx]

@@Wolf-oc6tx So in other words: It's natural for a nation of Elves to exist as a Confederacy or League?

[@Wolf-oc6tx]

@@JMObyx Yep.

[@zenunity98]

1) in pathfinder the elves work the way you described all of the environmental subraces of elves can change theyre subrace when moving to a different enviroment, a desert elf can become a forest elf 2) wow I actually really love your ideas for dwarves and now I want to play a character thats a dwarven doctor

[@Galastan]

In my setting, the reason that elves have so many different varieties comes down to their history - they were one of the first races made by the two progenitor gods after their war, and were basically made to be magical sponges, absorbing the excess magic generated by said ancient conflict. They absorbed the endemic magic to all sorts of different biomes, times of day, or even concepts, which created their different subspecies. This "original elf" species was the eladrin. Eladrin lineages that have stayed in the Feywild are able to maintain their original form (i.e. the feylike, seasonal-shifting version that we see in 5e. If an eladrin migrates to the material word, even to this day, they'll end up slowly transforming over time (taking hundreds of years to complete) to adapt to their environment. Eladrin children born in the material world will be born as a type of elf that would be native to the place they were conceived in (i.e. an area of high ambient arcane magic - like the underdark - would produce a dark elf, long hot seasons a sun elf, long winter seasons a moon elf, a forest a wood elf, in or around the ocean a sea elf, etc. etc. etc. And like you mentioned, an elf who is made to live in a place incongruent to their internal magic are known to become depressed - elves living in the "wrong" place who have managed to keep a good grip on their mental health would be known as badasses of the highest order to their kin. For example, there's a sea elf living in the middle of one of the harshests desert in my homebrew setting - and is very high up in a powerful criminal enterprise - who is actively feared by her kin. Their extended lifespans are twofold - one, the gods made them that way in order to be able to efficiently absorb excess magic that would be toxic to other species they wanted to re-introduce, and two, "normal" elves can routinely go into a decades-long trance if they think there isn't anything that they actively need to do for awhile or want to go on a sort of "spiritual journey" of reconnecting with the Elven Dream, a liminal place where they can connect with their ancestors' lived experience. There are elves, such as powerful adventurers and rulers, who choose to forego this experience in order to shepherd their people towards progress or otherwise maintain an active presence in the world. You're bang-on about the longevity of other races like dwarves and gnomes, though - especially dwarven bureaucracy.

[@Emyroth]

Funny and sad piece of trivia, Forgotten Realms Elves (and consequently most of the canon elves of D&D 5e) are not long lived because they are gifted by nature, but because they are basically demigods degenerating into mortals. Their leaders remained in Faerun to protect these weaker and not completely immortals by becoming their pantheon, and all the elven subspecies were kinda already there (although they further differentiated with time and some major curses), as they are descendants of elves with particular inclinations to certain aspects of what an elf is supposed to be(in fact, mixed subspecies results in full subspecies originally, and there isn't a dominant subspecies, so it is more akin to a blood inheritance than proper dna). the pantheon leader is a god of chaos and magic, known to be everchanging in appearance. So yes. They existed in a whole other timescale before even arriving in the D&D timeline, and they are also prone to variety due to the chaotic/feeric nature, even changing gender and sex cannonically from a time before transgender was being discussed in the big media. It's honestly safer to assume that elves are not 100% living beings, and are actually partially conceptual, like fey, elementals and other things that exist for a purpose other than being the herd of a god. Dwarves and gnomes on the other hand are clearly the creation of their respective gods, shaping them from stones and gems and etc. they were made to be durable by their creators, although some might have mutaded themselves through magic or psionic manipulations.

[@absolstoryoffiction6615]

Warforged are the odd ones with greater potential... If only there was more books about them beyond the war.

[@shadowdroid776]

Corellon: * accidentally makes the elven race with his blood * Also Corellon: "the fuck you mean you want set forms? I thought I raised you better than this. Get the fuck out of my house, you're mortal now." And so the elves have been grounded for eons since.

[@NerdAlert42]

​@@shadowdroid776 And then lolth proceeded to make everything worse 😅

[@demoulius1529]

Older versions of DND also had elve souls constantly reincarnating. Meaning that for spells that required a soul (like raise dead spells) the spells would fizzle if cast on a dead elf. I started in 3.5 ed so only heard about if from older players but you basicly couldnt revive an elf character. Or do anything else that required a soul portion really. As soon as he died his soul was whisked away to be reincarnated in some different place. Kind of a bummer if one of your partymembers dies and you cant resurrect him/her. Probably a reason it was changed. Or it could be fairy tale. I dont know tbh, I wasent playing during those editions, lol. Part of this lore is still in the game though. The trance that elves go into let them vieuw memories. I think also from their past lives or parts of it.

[@shadowdroid776]

@@NerdAlert42 New headcanon: Lolth and Corellon are shitty parents in a never ending battle for custody rights over the elves and their two traumatized children LOL

[@char6102]

I imagine the snootiest of High Elves practicing manners and gestures for decades and centuries. Putting the same dedication of time to all skills. So they would have the perfect handshake, perfect walking, dancing, all their luxurious crafting is near perfect. It’s their contrast to Dwarves who dedicate their time to practical useful skills and equipment.

[@naldormight6420]

I like the idea that elves are not less likely to die young or have horrific accidents then humans. Arguably makes them prime material for edge, drama and trauma. I also advocate to leaning into an almost “cosmic horror” treatment of such long live spans. Imagine the elf villains returning after 50 years to our elderly hero and just going: “You have gotten awfully wrinkly.” 😙👌🏻

[@Biotear]

I've been doing something similar with a setting I've been working. Basically you have an immortal race of demons who, due to their long lives and some other factors (the most powerful are basically gods, they have a very violent culture due to a large part of their history consisting of warlords beating the shit out of each other, ect.) tend to be very aggressive to each other. The sad part being that, even if they interact with humans without violent intent, they're bound to get hurt emotionally due to outliving anyone they grow attached to. Because of that, you see things like demons who've lived with humans for centuries wind up going insane because everyone they know dies and they keep living.

[@joaocisne556]

in my lore, the "cells mutating differently" is the reason I gave to why my werewolves average lifespan is of around 500 years, that and the curse's healing factor

[@ADMICKEY]

In my AU, mycannon is that no one can die to old age, so instead theirs a lot more war, to the point that people enjoy it plus the Americas are actually civilised outside of Peru, Mexico, n Arizona. Right now in 1215, the Wyoming kanate is the most powerful nation on earth, bordering with Pima, Navajo, Zunis kanate (this realm's Cali), Louisiana, many small city- states, and Arstroska ( this realm's Florida). Sparta remains independent from the Latin empire. Other than that things are going how things went IRL but just more war deaths. Some humans and Neanderthals have fire, electric, or healing related powers, helping them out in war, or jobs. My character, ( my username) is not a leader of a nation, he just wanted a cool nickname, his home is the Navajo kingdom, allied with Pima, and rivals with the Zunis, he used to trade bronze for spices from Byzantium and he's been in a few wars as a mercenary. PS:, Venus and Mars have civilized life at the same time

[@porterhansen1510]

I agree I've been trying to tell so many people this, I always want to ban elves not because they are Uber powerful but because the world building part can be tricky to work with especially when you want something in the near past that was a big deal but then you have a 400 year old elf that would have been alive at the time ruining the mystery

[@Nerdsammich]

Easy fix: they're not from around there, so all they know about the thing is vague rumors.

[@VMSelvaggio]

To be fair, the early versions of AD&D and 2nd Edition AD&D proposed that although Long-lived, Elves could not be Resurrected, as they did not possess a soul in the same manner that a Human did. (I usually overlooked this, as many probably did, but the Elves subsection of the Second Edition Player's Handbook I know was clear that Elves could only be Reincarnated, not Raised from the Dead. Meaning, your Elf had a better chance of coming back as the Paladin's Horse than as their former self.

[@theguileraven7014]

Well no, because they wouldn’t reincarnate as another species, they’d reincarnate as themselves. That’s why their population is so small, because it’s actually just a set number of elves, who are constantly looped in reincarnation.

[@tacticaltoad1104]

​@@theguileraven7014but the horse idea is funnier though

[@demoulius1529]

@@theguileraven7014 to my knowledge they only saw parts of their formers lives. The things they saw while in their trance-like sleep. So in a way each newborn Elf was their own individual. But with a sort of racial memory aspect to it.

[@PyroMancer2k]

"Building things to last, as humans we understand this." ... Have you been paying attention to modern day? There is a thing called built in obsolescence which is the norm in a lot of industries these days in order to encourage more sales by making things that wear out faster. There was a sort of documentary called 200 years after humans where they showed that pretty much nothing we make would last. Pretty much only the ancient stuff made of stone that is still around today would be around as modern buildings actually require a lot of maintenance so they don't deteriorate. What would be a bigger point of contention would be the changed in leadership. Like as seen in some fantasy worlds Humans are seen as violent, untrustworthy, and expansionist. Because treaties are made and a few human generations past where the new leaders feel the treaty doesn't favor them enough so they push for war. Mean while the long live races may remember what happen in the original war and people they lost in that war. Because for this they are constantly having to deal with the changing whims of these short lived races. As for the short lived races using longer lived ones as advisors is another thing that's been done. It's also been done where the arrogant heir to the throne disregards the advice. Having access to great knowledge and guidance is not the same as actually making use of it.

[@Iruka1991]

He wasn't saying that we would be at peace and kingdoms would be all perfect because each king had an inmortal adviser. He is just implying that good monarchs would be hundred times better. Like, Image a Carlo Magno with Merlin on the side.

[@demoulius1529]

Built in obsolescence or planned absolescence mostly applies to products. Its part of 'consumer society' and buildings dont fall under it. Or rather where im from they dont.... Things needing maintenance also isent a point for planned absolescence. Its natural that things that see alot of use need some degree of maintenance. Specially things with moving parts like bridges.

[@Envy_May]

i mean, most humans DO understand this, or at least they can, it's just that it's not incentivised for those in charge to act on it and so they knowingly do not

[@haidner]

I also see the longer lived species as having a very different attitude towards life and learning, more along the lines of doing things as necessary, rather than working so hard and learning with such purpose as humans do. If your family is around for centuries, then they've had time to build up security, and this continues through generations. So, play and pleasure become a much higher part of life in general. Thus, it might take an elf 200 years to gain the same skill level that a human might in their 20 years of schooling and apprenticeship.

[@Zach124869]

I personally like the idea elf’s are partly sustained by mana and are fairly sluggish. The different types of elf’s could also be simply the effects of their preferred magic affecting their bodies.

[@joaosolreis3004]

It's amazing to see how Tolkien, the forerunner of the fantasy genre, created a world more realistic and concise than all the others who have been inspired by his works since forever. A true genius ahead of his time

[@halion4487]

Tolkien wasn’t really ahead of his time. That implies that things have improved generally which, with worldbuilding, I don’t think will ever be the case. It’s all about creativity, and there’s no reason that it would be getting better as time passes. Tolkien was obsessed with his world, to the fullest extent of the word, and that’s not something all writers need to be

[@Hunterdog]

definitely going to add an elven NPC that is getting happier by the day because his 25 year sabbatical is only a few months away, and he's looking forward to all the personal plans he set up

[@spacedinosaur8733]

"I've been beat cop in this neighborhood for almost 500 years. Hey Johnny, how's your great grandmother doing? Good, good. I remember when she was yay tall jumping in puddles on the way home from school. Anyway, as I was saying, I'm only 5 days from retirement."

[@Revanshard4501]

I think alot of people here are forgetting a little detail regarding memory from what might be considered the progenitor race of all elves, the Eladrin. Part of their Trance feature mentions that there is a shared Elvish Memory that they can draw on through extended meditation ie long resting. Edit: After additional research I have realized that this is something all of the most recent Elvish subraces have access to, so I think it can be assumed that it is applicable to all elves.

[@sharksam8583]

If I'm remember correctly. I think DnD elves have basically. perfect photographic memories.

[@sirgideonofnir6840]

The thing with D&D is that all elfs originate from the Fae, a trully chaotic but very magical place. So all these variety of elves make sense. But once they settle in a place they no specialize. Also elfs are truly ancient. Some of the first races in most settings.

[@thecactusman17]

One other thing you've not mentioned is that long lived races would have drastically different beliefs about both romantic and platonic relationships compared to their shorter lived neighbors. At 750 years average lifespan a 70 year old would be seen as barely an adolescent in even society. In the video game series Mass Effect, fan favorite character Liara T'soni is "only" 120 years old - barely out of college as one of the youngest Asari graduates in her class and roughly the same mental maturity as a 21 year old. A big part of her character development is that she's experiencing most of the wider galaxy for the first time while many of the human characters a 5th her age are hardened military veterans.

[@Shy--Tsunami]

The adaptability of elves mirroring their environment actually makes a ton of sense when you consider if elves were originally from the eladrin line they carry that same trait of eladrin shifting with the seasons. Running a world with night, dawn, day, and dusk eladrin as well

[@NoRegs30]

It’s interesting how some stories take this into account when designing characters, one of the best examples is one work I read where Elves where extinct with all that remains being “half-elves” who lives at maximum 300 years, with their bodies just aging slower, one of the protagonists being a half elf in her 50s, which makes her basically 19 to 24 in human terms, and she even complained about puberty taking longer for her than any humans It was an interesting way to address this situation

[@regencyrow1867]

That sounds like Dungeon Meshi.

[@NoRegs30]

@@regencyrow1867 I actually wasn't refering to that one but now that you mention it, that did happen in Two stories I've read now, nice to see (was talking about The Wandering Inn btw, a very good web novel, with audibooks)

[@Nerthos]

Warcraft elves are actually incredibly consistent and their variation and lifespan is openly explained in the games, including their origin. Unlike other races, which need food and water to survive, elves also need magic. Their lifespan is tied to how strong and pure their source of everyday magic is. There's no real genetic difference between their varieties, just a difference in their magic sources, like a flower changing colour depending on the water it drinks. Not only there are distinct "races" of elves that have one or two generations at most between them (the high elves relocated as adults, and were distinct from the night elves before their first king died) there are also differences in appearance within a few years as shown when they lose access to the Sunwell and start consuming magic from fell crystals, causing a clear split in blue eyed and green eyed elves. Then there's the wretched, elf junkies that have changed physically to the point of barely resembling their family members in just a few months or years due to magic addiction and withdrawal. And that's without going into all the late WoW varieties. The fall of the well of eternity, creation of the world tree and its destruction also explains their mortality. Within a single generation, night elves become mortal, then immortal, then mortal again due to their supply of magic coming and going. They're probably the best explained elves out there, and they're technically weird trolls, as they were originally trolls that started drinking absurd amounts of magic water and changed as a race. The only thing that isn't explained is their ability to have offspring with humans.

[@Khagrim]

I wanted to make this comment 😆

[@killasvids]

Thanks for this rundown, I rolled my eyes a little when he mentioned World of Warcraft because I knew where he was going and that he was totally wrong about it. Warcraft honestly has some of the coolest and most unique lore for all its races. Elves? Actually Trolls that got addicted to magic. Humans, Gnomes, and Dwarves? Originally created out of stone and iron by Titans in order to help protect Azeroth, but the old gods cursed them with flesh, making them mortal. Orcs? Literal Aliens. They are refugees that had their home planet destroyed by space demons. And they aren't evil like most fantasy orcs, far from it infact. They are just trying their best to establish a life in a foreign and unwelcoming land. I think out of the OG player races, the only ones actually native to Azeroth are Trolls and Tauren. It's a neat break from typical fantasy where humans are the main force in the world.

[@shadowdroid776]

I like the concept of the races that are more based in fae lore having that one weird subrace in each race that is considered the black sheep of the group. It makes all the Fae-like races have a similarity that they can't quite understand, and it fits pretty well. Hill dwarves being more nice and willing to work with different races, loving to travel, it's so bizarre to mountain dwarves! And I love how the dark elves, the subrace the other elves don't understand and don't like, have a lot of dwarvish traits in their personality and mindset: they're goal oriented, they perfect their craft, they're materialistic, and they hate sun elves so it's kind of a done deal. That and Eilistraee is friends with some dwarven gods and her brother's followers trade all the time with dwarves. They're the dwarves of the elven race, and it adds a cool idea to how different subraces would act to one another or perceive each other. * No one likes the sun elves because they're VERY much the stereotype and racist assholes. * Moon elves are awesome. That's it, everyone likes those weird hippies. Humans have kids with them all the time. * Wood elves are a mixed bag and more cautious if you go by Tolkein lore. * Drow is distrusted by most races, but might have more of an okay relationship with mountain dwarves in regards to trade.

[@crazyscotsman9327]

I have to say the wide variety of elves always made me roll my eyes. In my homebrew dnd world all elves look similar, some might be more tan because they live in a hot desert, but mostly the way you tell a difference between an elf in this world is what clothes are they wearing, and what if any tats they have.

[@mc0014]

The greatest crime about elves are these weird anime-ears that stand out to the side of their heads. Not only are these ears very susceptible to frostbite, they are also very easy targets in any kind of melee fight. And since they need some kind of solid core to support their own weight, elves would break their ears if they ever turn over while lying down. Though the last point could be explained with Anime-Boob-Magic.

[@HOLDENPOPE]

that's why my elves have ears thay lay relatively flat against their heads, that and they just look cooler that way to me.

[@samfish2550]

Ok, I will low key say that DnD elves would be more interesting if they actually had slightly shorter lives than people, it would really bring in the idea of reincarnation. All elves get visions of their past lives in trance, and in that they can recall and relive the defining moments of all their previous lives, so then how would a culture with simultaneously short lives and quasi immortality view death, or the threat of something that could potentially inhibit said reincarnation. It even plays into Corellion Being a god of change in DnD lore and weaves it into his race directly. They will live forever but they will constantly cycle through growth and death.

[@Geminosity]

One thing I liked in the series, Frieren, (which is in the thumbnail) is that because elves basically live forever and rarely reproduce, they're inherently not all that socially inclined. They don't stick together and seem to treat meeting one of their own kind as ships passing. Because time is limitless to them they can also be inclined to fritter away several years at a time doing nothing of particular note as well and not feel like it was wasted as there's plenty more years still to come. In many ways, their perception of time is almost entirely anchored in the shorter-lived races around them and without that reference they can lose track of time's passage. I also think it's take on demons is quite unique too.

[@adamlatosinski5475]

The magical adaptation of elves is similar to how Pathfinder elves are described. Regardless of where they were born, an elf living for decades in one environment gains traits related to that environment and adapt physically, without the need for natural selection.

[@hartthorn]

One concept I've discussed with my friends and have used with characters is the innate horror/comedy of what elven puberty must be. Your two options are the existential horror of "being a teenager, all hormonal and moody" for the span of DECADES ~or~ the body horror of all those changes and feelings taking course over the span of, for human perspective, 6 months. For the body horror perspective, boys can gain as much about 12 inches in height over 4 years of puberty. Imagine how your PHYSICAL BODY would feel growing 2 inches a MONTH. And the amount of spite, regrets, and general cringe half a century of teenage bullshit an elf would accrue would be absolutely staggering. Wouldn't be surprised if elves pulled some "Lost Boys" type thing where they just send them away to special enclaves with minimal supervision from the MOST STALWART elders in their society just to save everyone the headache. As for the diversity of elves, in one campaign world I worked on, I had the idea of borrowing a bit from fae stories, specifically the ideas of the Seelie and Unseelie Courts. And part of the idea is that elves are not BORN into these groups, but that they are material factions that are largely aware of each other and in community with each other to a degree. The act of choosing your Court or House is seen as a major life milestone and a tradition of adulthood. But it also then becomes a social group with internal politics and potential grudges and rivalries. "NO child of mine is going to be some elitist high elf!" type stuff. As is natural, a lot of elves are going to likely pick from their family lines, so there would be majority continuity of peoples. But the occasional switch opens up lots of spicy story ideas and politics. And maybe you have one faction that is the "cast-off" bin, where those elves that have some how fallen through the cracks get picked up by this group. In this same world, I also had the idea that dwarves and gnomes were creatures particularly accustomed to large phenotypic expressions. The ideas of "Hill Dwarf" and "Mountain Dwarf" were less different lines, and more physiological responses to environment. Two Hill Dwarf parents, who had spent the majority of their lives doing more civil work and dealing with the surface might have a kid who was naturally attracted to the more subterranean tasks and as they grew developed as a Mountain Dwarf. And on the age aspect, one of my ideas was that elves tend to be... incredibly fickle as a GROUP. So the idea of getting a large, solid commitment from a whole community to a given task is nearly impossible. This is why they aren't massively expansionistic or influential to degrees that would make them a culture of world emperors. You might have ONE elf that is 100% IN for aiding your kingdom. But you'll never get the WHOLE enclave to commit to support. And part of this is explained by the experiential time dilation. The idea of intense dedication over short periods of time with constant changing needs and demands is just straight up IRRITATING to them. So it's hard to get buy in at all, and even when they buy in they will attrit at a higher rate than shorter lived peoples.

[@curtisthornsberry4236]

I always like the idea of elves’s matabolism using magic to some degree. Like if you cut the world off from magic they would essentially “starve”.

[@brendantuthill6491]

Something to point out, too, is that the og fantasy elves (LotR) "subspecies" we're not at all subspecies. Wood elves just lived in a big forest, but were otherwise just like other elves. This is why I really like the worldbuilding in Pathfinder, where elves are 1, extremely alien, and 2, separated by cultural history moreso than speciation.

[@faxmine]

This is incredibly well done. Even though I know nothing about actual genetics or stuff relating to all biology, this is good! This helps a lot with my own world building and also gives me a good idea to how my characters see life and death.

[@theguileraven7014]

Eh, I find it odd that he compares elves to sharks, then says it’s contradicted by how many types of elves there are; when there’s hundreds upon hundreds of species of shark. lol

[@leegaul2161]

Elder Scrolls does a pretty good job at explaining the variations of elves (in the game known as Mer). Different sects of elven communities worshiped different deities (Aedra or Daedra) and underwent physiological changes caused by those deities. All stemming from the original group of Aldmer.

[@dbelow_1556]

Also the difference between man and mer simply being who was nomadic for longer than the other as the world was forming into what we now know as Nirn.

[@popularopinion1]

1. "crafted by the elves of the first age... You could not wish for a better blade!" Gandalf the grey, late into the 3rd age 2. The idea of dwarves developing OSHA is hilarious to me. 3. It's often said that a dwarf or an elf will not consider a given human as a friend, but rather a family, but only after at least a century of trust and friendly interactions.

[@AncientSlugThrower]

I am really glad I found your channel. You ask some very interesting and challenging questions that makes these settings so immersive and enjoyable.

[@TheFoxofShadows]

You see, on the mention of elves magical adaptation being alien to human concepts of longevity and natural adaptation, I find it rather amusing that in Pathfinder's Golarion setting, Elves are quite literally aliens that came to the world from another planet and colonized it during the time when humans, for the most part, were banging rocks together.

[@GrandOldDwarf]

For my world building sanity, I am planning on reducing elves to about 150 years, dwarves to 200, and gnomes to about 125. Halflings are likely only going to get about 80. Obviously I'll have to adjust birth rates to compensate.

[@regencyrow1867]

What if you didn't adjust birth rates? What if ageless Elves had the same fertility rates as Humans? How would the other races deal with that? It's a very common trope that "Elves Are Dying Out", but what if there was a world where it was the opposite? That would certainly be interesting. Another idea on top of that: what if, instead of half-elves, any human who marries an elf will always end up with full-elf babies and thus forfeiting their lineage to another species? What racial tensions would emerge from this? I believe the Dragon Age franchise explored similar themes but the humans were the default in this case.

[@shinigami6312]

@@regencyrow1867 warhammer 40k did that They conquered the universe and eliminated all difficulties and problems from their lives Until they got super bored and started doing more and more extreme things for fun to the point where they did a planet size fuckfest and murderfucked a Chaos god of Excess into existence Then that chaos god killed 95% of the elven pantheon and 99% of the entire elven population

[@TheLaughingDove]

Me, sitting over here muttering to myself while making character timelines for long lived individuals that include markers where significant technological events occur: that's probably the wiser choice, but I choose pain instead

[@KateeAngel]

Realistically it is the child mortality rate that has to be adjusted

[@goggles8691]

This was a very interesting video (and impressively engaging). I never really thought about the implications of longevity in terms of superstitions and stereotypes, but the examples were pretty interesting. Additionally, the implications brought up about labor laws were super interesting to me, because a common trope in media (at least what I consume) is the long lived races having much slower social change, so I've never really bothered to consider what actually would be impeded by the much longer presence of the older generations. Although I never really thought about the other implications in the video directly, I think that I naturally picked up on them just through media consumption , but having them named feels really nice. My only real gripe with the video is the thumbnail because I, personally, feel that Frieren is a very good example of many of the world building implications brought up in regards to long lived species in fantasy, in addition to having a great portrayal of all of your dog friends dying (along with other very well done aspects of fantasy). There's surely worse examples of elves that are more generic and probably more well known that could've been used.

[@kacperkonieczny7333]

9:54 There is a thing in biology that if you clone a cat its spots won't be the same. It could be with elves that when exposed to different stimula as child they would demonstrate diffeerent quirks in adulthood while having almost identical DNA. E.i. the elves have one race but the environment that they are raised in alters how they look.

[@TheAlison1456]

I like that you keep looking around. It's a good break from the constant staring of other people's videos.

[@gordonmcinnes8328]

The diversity of elves comes largely from Tolkien who had 'kindreds' (the Sindar, Vanyar, Noldor, etc). He also made his elves immortal and so innately connected to the universe that we would percieve their powers as magical. Likewise his dwarves are largely influenced by Norse mythology (craftsmen) and whilst ho doesn't have gnomes from him we obviously get orcs and hobbits/halflings. Some games (e.g. runequest) challenge these tropes, e.g. their elves are plants. but D&D deliberately drew from a wide range of fantasy literary sources, and this continues to this day, e.g. Pathfinder's Golarion setting, the Forgotten Realms, etc. It's a cultural inheritance and each GM decides the rules for their setting.

[@-MacCloud-]

I imagine it being similar to how we forget things that happened in our youth, but we’ll occasionally see something or someone and remember fragments of it. Like en elven archer walks by a workshop and stands there watching them work as he’s gradually reminded of the 60years he spent as a carpenter. All those long forgotten scents of different types of sawdust and the feeling of warmth in muscles well adapted to sawing and hammering and planing wood. Now his muscles would become exhausted by the labour since he is adapted to drawing a bow and moving with speed. He’s lost that muscular endurance that a manual labourer has. But he remembers it. He remembers pieces about how to measure and cut, vague images of joints but no recollection of their purpose and no longer is he capable of putting it all together. The further away from the moment the more the memory fades and becomes vague. But still they would hold onto those small fragments of wisdom and their intuition would develop more complexly.

[@Mannimarco_King_of_Worms]

In "King of Elfland's daughter" by Lord Dunsany the King of Elfland just stopped time entirely in his kingdom. When the protagonist, human Noble Alveric came back from Elfland, 10 years have passes in the human world. He also came pack with elven Princess Lirasel, and i think if she stayed with Alveric a little bit longer she would age. I really love this magical explanation to elven immortallity. As a matter of fact, this novel basically invented modern fantasy elves before Tolkien and kinda insipred him to write Hobbit and later LotR. In his other works. And not only him, but also Lovecraft, Howard and Pratchet

[@davidweihe6052]

Lord Dunsany (being Irish) probably took his idea of Alveric's period in Elfland from the tales of Oisin the son of Finn MacCumhaill, who spent a century or so in Irish Elfland (the Sidhe, or Hidden Halls) until he visited his old home and made the mistake of alighting from his horse to the ground, and his aging caught up three or four generations to Saint Patrick's time.

[@Pengalen]

A few iffy concepts you covered here. In a pre-industrial world, people don't get time off, or work a job. Most work is directly tied to surviving. So an elf can't just "take off" for 25 years. The flip side of this is that, depending on how you conceive of elven culture, they probably work less because a lot of things are magically automated. If they live in a forest, they may still have to hunt a deer for supper, but it is likely the entire forest is jungle gardened and there are edible things around every tree, depending on the time of year. Depending also on how stratified society is, this may leave a lot of time for elves to do crafty pursuits and make the perfect pair of boots or whatever. But about those boots. Unless they are using magic enhancement, which they might be, mere long practice at a hand skill isn't necessarily going to make their products last ten times longer, because, sans magic, the final decider is the materials the objects are made of. So if you have shoes made of doe-skin that are in constant use, excellent craftsmanship might get you ten or twenty percent use out of them, but not ten or twenty times the use out of them. Longer lived races are also not going to be in a hurry, and their culture is going to change more slowly, and more by the gradual perfection of individuals than by the production of new ideas. They aren't going to be in a hurry to mass produce things, so you're likely to get a lot of bespoke created stuff and idiosyncratic and received ways of doing things, and less likely to have bustling cities with complex interdependent systems. If the one guy that knows how to do a thing took off for 25 years, someone else would just learn how to do it, probably the next person that needed that thing.

[@fitrahL]

👍 🙂 👍 🙂

[@ava2194]

I've been working on fleshing out my own version of Elves, and this has been rather helpful.

[@jk2782]

My ideas based on this are: Elves are so involved in nature that they actually turn themselves into trees and grow from the seeds that are sprouted in something like a gourd. They age like humans but when they want to have babies, they turn into a type of tree that's nearby, explaining all the different types of elves and why they're so plentiful. Dwarves are given their age by their gods, which is why they're so devoted to their careers, the devotion is actually part of their religious ceremony. Also dwarves are known to very often be paladins. Gnomes are gnomes.

[@xeres6232]

The little guys don't need anything to be little fellas

[@flyingfoamtv2169]

your elf concept reminds me of the aliens from speaker for the dead.

[@dragonturtle2703]

I just made my elves adapt to their environment (not evolve, individuals adapting). You could easily explain the elven verity from epigenetic changes, so long as you say that elven populations (if not individuals) in the wrong environment will change to match it. Also made them able to better wrap their minds around the various details, angles, etc of a task, able to think about it from multiple perspective or on multiple levels at once, but having a good danger od getting obsessed with a task/job/role where they are always drawn back to it and never quite escape it. To counter that, many elves will never devote their time to one thing for too long at a time, leading to a society of generalist and masters (and often specialists at that), with not much in-between. They are biologically immortal, and the older one’s definitely have an almost alien mindset to humanity, but the younger ones are a bit more comparable/relatable. Dwarves (which also have the normal gnome tropes of engineers and scientists) are just a genetically augmented strain of humans distinct, but still not really seen as separate or wholly incomparable genetically). They are longer lived by a century or two, sometimes longer for exceptionally venerable individuals, can function anywhere from zero gravity to a few times earths without any difficulty, are remarkably tough physically, can withstand low oxygen content, low water supply,and bad nutrition for short periods of time just fine (and survive longer than humans on it long term), and are almost impossible to poison. They don’t even get drunk like humans do, getting a buzz but not being imparted, and are psychologically better suited to surviving hardship without trama or to much stress (seemingly at the cost of stubbornness). Just an idea though. Just found the channel and already subscribed.

[@ColourizeTheStreets]

I definitely agree with your points and that so many fantasy worlds gloss over these major issues that long lived to short lived species face when attempting to coexist. I always thought that the "diverse" town of fantasy races always makes it seem so happy and there everyone gets along fine. In reality if you had a town where dwarves, elves and humans lived together, I imagine that humans would occupy the lowest ranks in society. If the mayor was an elf he might not see the urgency in having certain public works completed within a single humans lifespan. A critical aqueduct that the current humans need might not be built in time because the elf mayor thinks that 60 years is relatively short time when in reality the humans that needed it will be dead before its completion. If you were a 20 year old human joining the merchants guild and the leader of the guild was a 200 year old elf, it would be reasonable to assume that you would never have an opportunity to become the guild leader. That 200 year old elf may live for hundreds of years before retiring, dying or moving on to a new career. Your family would have to spend generations working up the ranks to install a member at the higher echelons. If you were a young human craftsman starting a smithy, you would have to compete with master dwarven smiths who have been working longer than you have been alive and will continue to work long after you die. You might never earn any recognition in the higher ranks of society, relegated to be some back alley cheap smithy despite being a master among humans. You could argue that elves or dwarves dont live with the same urgency and that humans work faster and get more done, yet elves and dwarves seem to work just as well as humans and evlves especially are seen as quick and agile not slow or lethargic. I think the idea that humans learn faster is a good way to balance things out, a master dwarven smith could spend hundreds of years inventing a new form of smithing that is superior to any others, then he writes a book detailing his collective works and knowledge that a human smith reads and learns to do in a single year. You could have that longer lived races are actually poor teachers, as their offspring have more time to learn on their own, while humans have a greater sense of urgency when it comes to teaching the next generation. Humans would see passing on knowledge as a key part of human life and vitally important to survival. Elves might actually be poor record keepers as well, seeing less reason to document their experiences and knowledge as its not important to do so for the next generation since they assume they will be around to personally recount the information. This could make an untimely death of a major elven figure a monumental catastrophe as he was the primary source of certain knowledge. Humans may also have a greater sense of advancement and innovation than dwarves, elves and even gnomes. Elves especially might see the first hundred years of their lives as a human sees their late teens, like an explorative, figuring themselves out thing. A human might get more done in 60 years than an elf does in 200. Elves might also be more oblivious to the passing of time. An elf might be guiding a group of adventurers to a human town they visited 50 years ago insisting they know the place and can show them around, only to be dumbstruck as the once small town is now a bustling city full of unfamiliar streets. Elves may even struggle living in human dominated towns as they find they cant keep up with the pace of life that humans live. Constantly confused why humans demand that something be completed right away or how humans constantly have social gatherings and celebrations seemingly every other week, and feel exhausted by the constant flow of things to do and what feels like not enough time to do it. There is so much to think about when incorporating long lived and short lived species in the same world and especially the same town or city, that I think many fantasy worlds try to ignore or never even consider.

[@snowboundwhale6860]

There's a lot of interesting ideas here, on one hand the idea of elven red tape procedures sounds exceptionally excruciating, but on the other there's an angle here for humans being especially popular political candidates even among the longer lived races. If the elven governor makes office then things might get done in a century or so, but that human guy will have things set up within the decade, and while that pace might not be so necessary for elves or dwarves they'd likely be able to appreciate the convenience of short-lived humanities' "busy nature" getting things done so quickly. Like a "Hey can you get these reports done?" "They're on your desk already, I did them yesterday" style of interactions. It'd also give a real sense of prestige to any well-established craft/ merchant family; Often in fantasy these families of humans with a long history in the field get the "wealthy and powerful" treatment and sometimes the ego to go with it, typically seen in the current head of the household being somewhat arrogant or stuck up, but amongst a trade guild with dwarves, elves, and gnomes, having a respected family name would be a legitimately huge deal for humans. Just having "a foot in the door" would be commendable. You could be 5 generations deep and some of the guild members are reminiscing about how "it seems like just the other day your great great grandfather was making their start here".

[@andynonimuss6298]

It's a far better solution to make elves live only slightly longer than humans or even slightly less. It's a massive problem with any species living 400 years at a time. That species would easily dominate in every area of life.

[@Zed_Oud]

Asset, wealth, and land accumulation by long-lived individuals would be a really significant difference, and probably necessitate these communities have a sense of communal property to simplify the world building, otherwise the socioeconomic scene would be insanely complicated.

[@Montegoraon]

One way to explain elves would be to say that their longevity is dependent on complex biological systems that protect them from cellular damage and allow them to correct it, but that these systems are extremely sensitive to their environment during gestation. Even tiny amounts of toxic exposure could cause problems at this stage because the systems need to develop in an very precise way, or else they simply won't work. Elves forced to live outside of their preferred environment would therefore suffer from low fertility, and any offspring they did manage to have would live much shorter, faster lives. This would provide both a strong natural selective pressure and would shorten the length of a generation, thus allowing the wide range of elf subspecies that are observed. That could be why elves are often depicted as being so close to nature. They absolutely need their homelands to be as pollution-free as possible. It could also be the case that elves do have the genes they would need to deal with a wide range of environments, but only a few of them are expressed in any given type of elf because trying to express all of them would cause too much cellular stress, especially for a fetus.

[@briciusd.8478]

To be fair to some of the racial concepts, like in World Of Warcraft or some D&D settings that you mentioned, some race diversity is forced by outside forces to make a change happen. In World of Warcraft, the original elves they had are LONG gone not because so much time has passed with generational mutations separating them, but because magic forced the entire race to change in different settlements. The common elves we see in World of Warcraft called Night Elves were the product of an ancient races (not quite elves) that came in contact with an *extremely* potent magic source that forced their form into a base elf called a High Borne. From that race, others came to be, it wasnt a change over generations and slowly mutating from the presence of that power, it was instead almost immediate. As in, the changes only took 10-15 years or so for the entirety of that group of elves or effected individuals to be completely changed forever. old, young, or otherwise.

[@MadDogRyan]

Friren beyond journey's end was probably the best use of elves to tell a story that could only be told with an elf

[@Marcus-ki1en]

Building off your idea that Elven and Dwarven products are of higher quality, consider the apprenticeship requirements (length of time) to become an "expert". Also the longer lived races typically are much smaller in population size and recover much slower to wars and pestilence . I think much of this concept in RPGs can be traced to LOTR Elves as immortal.

[@LittleCrowYT]

I also love the idea of "a Dwarf may take 50 years to make you a pair of "simple" boots, but they'll last longer than your entire bloodline as a result". It would also make the artisans unbelievable. Imagine an elf spending 1000 years perfecting a painting of a human they saw once, and when they go to present it they realize that not only does that human no longer exist, but the city where the human lived doesn't even exist anymore.

[@elguerojusticiero]

Subbed. Great work man. Quality. Cant believe youtube hadnt sent you my way before.

[@unknownindividual210]

Variety actually does makes sense in elves, as evolution adapts to the environment the organism s found in, therefore rather than not changing at all, after continuous struggle it only makes sense that elves though look mostly the same, have these minor difference's depending on their place of origin

[@jameswanamingo8432]

Absoutely correct. The presenter's own argument using sharks is destroyed by the massive number of unique shark species available. A better real example against elven diversity would have been crocodiles, something so well evolved that it has thrived with little alteration for eons, but even they have regional variation.

[@scotthancock305]

Evolution proceeds as a function of reproduction and offspring. Evolution does not occur in a single individual. It is a change in a population of similar individuals over time, and it rarely happens quickly from one generation to the next. Evolution is a very weak piece of theoretical elven society.

[@rrose9161]

I always thought that fantasy races lived longer because of magic(ex:harry potter wizards live for 2-300 years without things like the philosopher's stone but 300 year old mages are rare)

[@thalmoragent9344]

It's interesting how the likes of Elves or Dwarves (sometimes essentially the same thing) live compared to humans in most fantasy worlds. Whether magically or just biologically masterful or attuned, they live so much longer that its anyones guess on how they view life. And with Elves, they seem to be able to properly adapt quickly because of these things; In the Elder Scrolls, the Aldmer (First Elves/Elder Folk as they're called) are similar to demigods in how they've come into the mortal world. Some adapted to have brown skin in the Jungles of Cyrodil, some had pale skin in the Tundra of Skyrim, either to best soak in the magic from the sun or to match the snow and ice around them. The Sea Elves in Pyandonia don't have gills but their fingers and all have some webbing, with sometimes scaly skin. So while long lived, their evolution is more magically attuned to their environment. The Aldmer biology is changed easily by their innate, near ethereal ability to quickly adapt and master their surroundings best suited for life. So, aside from the Dark Elves and Orcs, who have godly interference with their form, the Elves despite known to be static and unchanging by nature, still have an element of change that allows them to be "perfect" in their environment. Once they evolved from Aldmer however, you don't really ses any signs of the Elven races adapting much to new environments anymore, unless some magic is involved. The humans all look rather similar save for the dark skinned ones from the african-like continent and province, but those changes are small as well. Nords from the Tundra are more pale than Imperials from the Jungle, but the Elves in those places are very different as mentioned before. The Snow Elves being pale white or sometimes bluish, and the Ayleid Elves being tanned and often with darker hair. For Elves in life across franchises, they can master Arts and Crafts and be legendary at it after 100 years of constant practice. If practice makes perfect, and they have the time to do as they please, its no wonder their way of life seems perfected or so advanced. Everyone has their thing, and is done so well and researched relentlessly that their societies often function to a higher degree.

[@TT-pl5iw]

Probably one of the bigger ironies of the lore: the Anuic races adapt readily to their environment, while the Padomaic ones stay fairly constant in their appearance/biology.

[@xMissPegasusx]

These were some good points - some that came up for me with long lived races in the past was 1. Political change would be very hard. Imagine having the same leaders for centuries. Perhaps they would have systems in place to ensure people don't stay in power too long, but dictators could be disastrous. 2. All of them would likely grow up as "only children". If your fertile years stretched over centuries, you would probably have massive gaps between babies, probably decades.

[@ArtificialDjDAGX]

Elves are technically based on the Fae, as in, elves are literally just the fleshy version of Elementals, which is why there's so many variants, as they're of literally varying magics.