Where do elves get their livestock and produce from? They can't have a hunter-gatherer lifestyle if their civilization is supposed to be reasonably advanced.
Do they have human plantation workers?
>>44510435
MAGIC.
Gay faggotry
>>44510435
>They can't have a hunter-gatherer lifestyle if their civilization is supposed to be reasonably advanced.
Depends on the elves.
High elves and other kinds with an advanced civilization for a setting could might have used magic, the blessing of a deity, or something else to take care of resource production.
Wood elves and other kinds that don't have an advanced civilization for a setting could still be hunter-gatherers. If their native environment had abundant plants and animals to eat and very rarely had disasters and other ecological threats, it could work. Given the long life and low breeding rate of typical elves, they would not use up all of the available resources and have centuries old elders who keep information.
This is assuming no 'hard' anthropology or ecology, and just providing enough of an explanation for verisimilitude.
What the fuck are you even talking about? Do you think being an advanced civilization that does not use hunter-gatherer survival tactics means nobody grows food or herds things, either? I'm trying to follow your train of though, here, and I don't know where you're beginning, where you're going, or how you're getting there.
>>44510435
>Where do elves get their livestock and produce from?
They don't, they are sustained purely by magic.
In most areas there is more than enough mana flowing freely in the air around them that they just kinda filter feed that shit, gets soaked through their skin like Vitamin D from the sun for humans or some other bullshit science you want to use.
When there isn't nearly enough in the air, such as in cursed lands or there's an antimagic barrier put up, they can always replenish themselves using alternate sources like potions, enchanted items, pixie dust, etc.
For example: Sea Elves and Deep Drow usually stalk and hunt down mermaids, selkies, and cecaelia for their blood because it's heavily dense with magical energies. Although natural water is already laced with free-flowing mana the blood is useful for excursions on land as they are unable to gather any mana when out of the water.
Their reliance on mana as sustenance also means that using too much mana on spellcasting can be fatal. An Elf without mana is like a tree without soil, it'll just keel over and slowly rot. This does have certain advantages though, as it makes killing Elves via mana-draining effects slow and painful, akin to intense dehydration, which is good when you have to torture them for information. It also means that normal food and drink is almost entirely unnecessary in their lives, and most elves never eat until later in their lives.
Elves have one last advantage and that is spell absorption. As they are able to absorb air/seaborne mana so too are they able to do the same to magic spells depending on the level cast. A little kiddie fireball will just fizzle out if you try to use it on them, but most Elves would take full damage from a bigass fireball.
This is why Elves are usually focused on high-tier magic, because when they want to beat the crap outta each other they have to use the biggest spells obtainable to actually hurt each other.
>>44510435
Thousands of years of magical altering of plants have allowed the Elves to grow enough food for their cities and villages in a very small area and with little manpower. An Elder Mage and a few apprentices can supply enough food for over a thousand Elves easily.
Elves are also mostly vegetarian, as their crops have been magically altered to supply all the nutrients they need. Meat is only eaten on special occasions.
They work. What else would they do?
Elves have agriculture, they just don't leave much of a footprint.You wouldn't be able to tell a wild place from an elves garden or orchard.
>>44511665
>shotacon image
>"Do they have human plantation workers?"
I think OP's trying to make a poorly thought out magical realm/bait thread.
>>44510435
>They can't have a hunter-gatherer lifestyle if their civilization is supposed to be reasonably advanced.
You got it backwards. Hoomans have a very limited sense of the cycles of nature; they take from it without giving anything back.
In the wild if a hooman needs meat, he picks up a spear and kills the first large animal he sees; in his consumption habits, he acts like any other irrational animal, except a tad more lethal for his understanding of tools and traps and weapons. Over time he finds once proud animals and corrupt them through dysgenics, having the weaker and coward ones reproduce while getting rid of the more proud and powerful ones until they can pen them up safely and keep with his natural tendencies - slaughtering one whenever he gets hungry. They consider a lone or small group of humans in the wilderness unnatural, dangerous.
Elves on the other hand will investigate the whole ecosystem of an area; they'll take only what nature can spare. If the elf gets hungry he'll eat fruits and vegetables, taking care of replanting the best in every batch. He'll make strong selective pressure on all animals on the forest, giving chase to herbivores and giving carnivores a hard time; he'll eat the weaker, exhausted ones that fall behind. He'll make his house with wood from dead trees, will name the healthiest trees and rid them of parasites so they can grow to their fullest potential. A forest inhabitted by elves will have the fastest herbivores, the most dangerous carnivores, the tallest trees, the best crops; when the elves build a city, every building will take wildlife into account - every house will aim not only to be self sufficient but to give more than it takes, having bird nests and small pens for wild animals to hide, beehives and silk moths; the entire city might blend in so well with the surrounding forest that it isn't even recognizable as a city when sighted from above. The elf alone or in small groups in the wilderness is at home.
As always, depends on the setting. For mine, something like what this guy said:
>>44517013
they exist in harmony above what humans tend to do, understanding what plants can exist in synergy with others and are edible, and merely supplement this with hunting. Of course, in my presonal setting it's helped that the ice age ended about 300 years ago.
>>44517484
>Hunting the first thing the human sees is un-natural
Wait, if he's acting on instinct, like an 'irrational animal' then doesn't that make him every bit as fucking natural as anything else in the god-damn forest?! If anything, the human is BETTER at it, because we actually increase the carrying capacity of a region! Don't get on your fucking high horse about this shit: Humans are PACK animals! A lone fucking WOLF is just as un-natural as a lone human! As for us building homes and the like, don't fucking BIRDS or even GORILLAS make nests out of materials they harvest from nature?! If any of the fucking predators could reason, you're god damn RIGHT that they'd weed out the natural leaders and strongest of their prey, to make the future generations easier to hunt! And for your information, when humans DO hunt, we follow the same lines as any other fucking animal - take the easiest prey! WE hunt the weak and the young and the small just as much as any fucking elf or wolf or lion. You know why? Because that takes a whole lot less fucking calories and energy than hunting the big proud macho ones!
You know what the first animal we domesticated was? WOLVES! We used them as hunting companions, so you're god-damn RIGHT we bred them to be big and strong, just like they always were, because the weak ones were no fucking GOOD to us! Second animal? GOATS! We bred THEM to be big and strong because we took them on the fucking MOVE for new pasture and bigger goats = more damn MEAT! You're just WRONG on every fucking level, aren't you?!
WHAT exactly is so FUCKING un-natural about survival by any means?! You know what - THIS is why elven populations are so small: Their own fucking actions are detrimental to their survival as a species, at least in your fucked-up world! Your elves and your whole idea of humans MAKES NO SENSE!
>>44510435
DEPENDS
ON
THE
SETTING
>>44519318
No shit, sherlock. These kinds of questions aren't asking for objective truths, they're fishing for ideas on often unaddressed setting elements.
>>44519793
>No shit, sherlock. These kinds of questions aren't asking for objective truths, they're fishing for ideas on often unaddressed setting elements.
Then they should propose something instead of throwing out trashy one lines.
>>44519849
There's no need to cater to autists
Elves regularly eat things most humans would find foul.
Carrion, decayed grain, poisoned food, etc.
They can therefore have little food waste, and can subsist with far less ground coverage.
It's also why they view humans as so wasteful. When they look at a butcher shop, they see so many rich cuts of offal being thrown out or given to dogs.
>>44519793
Yet they start by assuming there's only one kind of Elf that every setting uses, and that this standard Elf has a flaw that's never been addressed in any setting, which is nonsense.
>>44519937
>There's no need to cater to autists
Wanting to have a thread with actual substance is autism?
>>44510435
First you have to divide them by sub races.
High elves have their few city-states and use magic in order to boost agricultural yields.
Wood elves live in villages hidden in deep forests.
They mainly grow fruit trees, beans and herd goats and pigs and hunting is their main occupation when they aren't tending to their herds and gardens.
Dark elves eat earthworm paste and insectoid produce.
>>44510435
>Do they have human plantation workers?
No they make orcs do all the heavy work
>>44510435
>They can't have a hunter-gatherer lifestyle if their civilization is supposed to be reasonably advanced.
Says you.
>>44517484
>A forest inhabitted by elves will have the fastest herbivores, the most dangerous carnivores, the tallest trees
So basically, as difficult as possible to survive off of?
Do they also cull their own young when they're too weak?
>>44519301
All that caps lock makes you sound really fucking angry.
>>44524877
I AM really fucking angry! Maybe not with this, but 4chan is a great outlet for me to shout at someone about meaningless crap!
>>44524863
>So basically, as difficult as possible to survive off of?
Yes, discourages other races from settling at or near it.
For the elves it is trivial.
>Do they also cull their own young when they're too weak?
Yes, for the greater good of the species.
>>44519301
>we bred them to be big and strong
