I know that a lot of thing about some species depends on the setting but I think that my questions are kinda general for everybody.
1.How are Elves immortal exactly ? Is it that they have something magical in them or is their biological system really special
2. How the hell dont elves overpopulate any setting they are in since they are immortal and reproduce sexually ? is it because they only have x time of being fertile or is something else ?
3. Why dont elves get bored after living for so long ?
1. slow metabolism
2. see 1
3. they do
>>46457579
1: Usually semi-magical.
2: Low birthrates.
3: Because their minds don't work like ours.
>>46457579
Oh look.
Another fucking elf thread.
>>46457579
>How are Elves immortal exactly ? Is it that they have something magical in them or is their biological system really special
In most settings, the Elves are the descendants of gods or the creation of incredibly powerful beings. As such, they posses either an innate affinity for magic or an actual blessing from a divine being. This doesn't necessarily make them immortal but it can make them incredibly long lived.
>How the hell dont elves overpopulate any setting they are in since they are immortal and reproduce sexually ? is it because they only have x time of being fertile or is something else ?
Elven reproduction is usually incredibly slow or difficult. Either an Elf can can take years to gestate or the Elves have already passed the the phase in their civilization where they bred like rabbits and now their reproductive system is shot to shit. Also they probably got stomped hard by another race or fought some great war at some point, cutting their numbers.
>Why dont elves get bored after living for so long ?
Elves want to attain true understanding of the world which can take a long long time. Though they're certainly effected by age. Older Elves care little for younger races and tend to view great evil as a passing threat that they can simply outlive.
Ability to regenerate the Telomerase. It's decay is potentially responsible for aging.
>>46457579
>1. How are Elves immortal exactly
Elves in mythology are usually some sort of demigod or fae
>2. How the hell dont elves overpopulate
They fuck like pandas in captivity and take a hundred years to reach puberty.
>3. Why dont elves get bored after living for so long ?
They do, that's why they leave their immaculate forest city paradise to get raped by orcs
>>46457579
Depends on setting. You have to understand the trend-setter here.
Most elves are tolkienesque... in LoTR elves...
1. Because they're divine creatures, not animal. Like how Gandalf is actually an immortal angel.
2. Because they don't create new elves as much as recycle the dead one's souls.
3. That's actually how they died of old age. At some point, they either got so bored out of their mind that they either die to be reincarnated as anew as a brand new person able to re-experience life, or just exile themselve to either die, or come back when they're done being bored and want to do something again. (In fact, some elven "birth" were literally just old people coming back from exile coming back and being adopted. It's kinda fucked up)
>>46457579
Well, for tolkien which is what most elves nowadays are based from:
>1.How are Elves immortal exactly ? Is it that they have something magical in them or is their biological system really special
Their souls are meant to stay in the world, so they never really grow old and don't really "die" in the way humans do, but they don't precisely like this.
>2. How the hell dont elves overpopulate any setting they are in since they are immortal and reproduce sexually ? is it because they only have x time of being fertile or is something else ?
Having children is enormously draining in many different ways. Usually only very powerful elf women have many children.
>3. Why dont elves get bored after living for so long ?
They do. By Lord of the Rings they have mostly accepted they stick out like a sore thumb in the world.
>>46457579
>1.How are Elves immortal exactly ? Is it that they have something magical in them or is their biological system really special
It's magic mostly. In some settings they're demigods, meaning a race with direct ancestry to gods. Others they're just very long lived. Fairy magic is said to warp space and time so it's not such a stretch is lengthens lifespan.
>2. How the hell dont elves overpopulate any setting they are in since they are immortal and reproduce sexually ? is it because they only have x time of being fertile or is something else ?
They mostly live in an Otherworld so the majority of the population isn't even in the main world. That said, it's not that they have low fertility rates, but they have very effective birth control.
>3. Why dont elves get bored after living for so long ?
They do, easily. They suffer from ennui all the time. A relationship between elves doesn't last a lifetime unlike many humans. Relationships come and go. Elven societies are full of half-siblings. They also don't spend the time to master things, as mastery requires commitment and life is too long to commit to any one thing. This decade they may be an artist, the next a warrior, the next a potter. This accounts for their hybridization of skills. Most elves combine martial and magical prowess. Few become actual wizards, or only warriors. Elves are also prone to wanderlust, and most elves interacted with in the main world is a wandering one.
>>46458017
>>46457952
>>46457839
You guys just made it more complicated for me when answering second question ? How exactly does their reincarnation works ?Like do they spawn as baby or a grown up ? Do they need living carrier or do they spawn out of thin air? Does that make them immune to total annihilation ?
Also if they get effective birth control is it because they dont have sex often, female elves need to allow fetus in their body, they have some otherworldly sex protection or something else ?
>>46458211
For elves, living is a choice. I think this extends to birth, where an elf only becomes pregnant if it wants to.
They ARE able to half-breed, but once they reach adulthood they have to make the conscious choice of either being an elf and being immortal, or being just a really healthy human and age.
The thing with immortality though, is that they stop being actors of their fate, but instead follow a set destiny...
>Destiny
That's the kicker here. Elves and other immortal creatures in LOTR follows the God Song, their destiny is written and thats why they can see their future.
Mortals are free to do whatever they want during their short lives.
Hence, HUMANS/Mortals do stuff. HUMANS/Mortals break the status quo.
>>46458341
You should mention that half elves live far more than other mortals, and that since their birth is "special" in the first place they're both incredibly rare and always historically significant. They're much like Tolkien's demigods
>>46458211
>Also if they get effective birth control is it because they dont have sex often, female elves need to allow fetus in their body, they have some otherworldly sex protection or something else ?
Probably magical birth control in the form of herbs from enchanted gardens brewed in tea. Something to the effect of naturalist and aristocratic.
Reincarnation when it comes to elves is just a natural friendly way of resurrecting the dead.
>white hair
>black eyebrows
This annoys me to no end.
>>46458211
>Like do they spawn as baby or a grown up ? Do they need living carrier or do they spawn out of thin air? Does that make them immune to total annihilation ?
Other beings reincarnating into elves is an idea that's in mythology. Bsaically after death, you're born as an elf in their Otherworld.
Elfin children are born like any other child and grow as a human child would until they reach physical maturity around young adulthood. From that point on aging is slow.
Well, in the pathfinder setting of Golarion, Elves are literally aliens from another planet. So, I blame all of those 3 questions on alien Elven biology.
I'm not the GM, but since I'm playing a High Elf my GM gave me free reign to design what kind of elves they are. I kept them pretty simple, minor cultural variance across subraces that is more noticeable to an Elf than an outsider.
1. Elves are not immortal, just long lived. They originally were not of the mortal realm but migrated over through ancient portals. In losing their direct connection to their home plane, they lost their immortality, but it was a small price to pay when faced with extinction.
2. Elves are actually about as sexually active as most other races, there's a lot of people to bone when you live for hundreds of years and haven't found a soul mate yet. Impregnation only occurs when the female herself desires it, usually on account of great love for her partner or a desire for motherhood. Elves naturally have a biological birth control when doing it for pleasure only.
3. Perfectionists, they enjoy not just learning a craft but mastering it. While humans may master through dangerous and repeated failures, an Elven way of mastering a skill is through extreme repetition, ever so slightly changing their method until they achieve their perfect state. This applies to artisanship, magical studies, physical activities like dancing or music, or even martial combat in my character's case.
So nothing original or radical, but honestly why bother calling them Elves if you plan on changing everything about them.
>>46458527
Dying your eyebrows always looks terrible.
>>46458676
>3
I assume you have no actual artistic talent to assume this to be something that make an ounce of sense?
>>46458676
I never liked the idea of biological birth control or the idea that elves are perfectionists.
They live too long to commit to any thing for too long. They're a softly chaotic people, so ennui should be setting in whenever they do something for too long.
>>46458676
>Impregnation only occurs when the female herself desires it, usually on account of great love for her partner or a desire for motherhood.
What? But then how do I make her my mindless breeding sow?
>>46458859
You don't.
If anything you become a mindless lover, because mythological elves have stories of bewitching and abducting people to be lovers. Some even are total rapists.
>>46458859
Don't make her mindless you dingus, you make her love being a breeding sow.
>>46457579
I'm assuming that you'd want to know about the Tolkien Elves since you posted a picture of one, so here's the answers:
> How are Elves immortal?
They were created by the gods, and often claim direct descendence from various gods(valar) and angels(maiar). All Elves are innately tied to the magic in the world, and it is notable that there is only a finite amount of magic in the world, which decays over time. Illuvatar created the elves as a guardian of the setting, so that humanity(His chosen and favoured race) could grow and one day succeed them.
> Why do the elves not overpopulate the setting
See the point in 1., Magic is a finite resource that decays over time. Every time an elf is born, they reduce the amount of magic in the world, so most elves rarely if ever reproduce. Usually they marry once, and have only a single child. When all the magic is gone, the elves die out. See the end of the lord of the rings novels, when the One Ring is destroyed, the 3 rings that were given to the elves stop preserving magic, and it just runs out.
> Why don't elves get bored
They do, but usually they don't live that long, considering that their whole job is to fight evil. Many of them forget this. Galadriel is probably the only exception in the whole setting, as she's the one elf that lived from the initial creation of the universe, to see the events of the lord of the rings novels. Pretty much only Gandalf is older than her.
>>46458829
You would be correct, I'm a programmer not an artist. That being said it's not really important to the game so I don't give it much thought.
>>46458843
Chaotic, flighty elves could be interesting too, but part of making Elves feel like Elves is that they're very alien, and dont necessarily think the way humans do and suffer the same sense of ennui or boredom. That's just my opinion though.
>>46458859
I mean, if you're going full magical realm, there's probably gonna be magical aphrodisiacs as well.
>>46458859
>>46458889
And this thread is official shit now.
But this anon >>46458877 is a cool anon for actually knowing shit about elves that doesn't come straight out of a doujin.
>>46458792
Not really. A lot of people here in Sweden have blonde body hair.
>>46458945
Dōjin elves are perfectly valid
>>46458859
>anon thinks he'll be doing the raping
pinnacle zuz
>>46458985
Nothing about them makes them elves except pointy ears. Otherwise they're just victimized damsels.
>>46459011
I'm going to need to see your Elf Inspection License, officer.
>>46457579
At least in the setting my group uses, we made it like this.
1: Powered by pride. Literally immortal as long as they can keep being proud about stuff. If they stop being all proud, they start to age. If they start being self-deprecating, they age super duper fast.
2: Low birthrate combined with nearly being genocided in prehistory by bad times.
3: They do, so they occasionally go out and rape/pillage/laugh at the lesser races.
Yeeeeah, elves in our setting are pretty LE in all honesty.
>>46458943
>Chaotic, flighty elves could be interesting too, but part of making Elves feel like Elves is that they're very alien, and dont necessarily think the way humans do and suffer the same sense of ennui or boredom. That's just my opinion though.
I find it's more effective to express this strangeness in more subtle ways, rather than trying to create some idea of what an alien thinks like. That usually results in some terrible pastiche.
Something people take for granted, if you're using D&D elves. They don't sleep. They meditate. You have any idea how weird that actually is?
>>46459043
Really, just telling how it is in your setting is the best course for this thread. "Elves" can mean a hundred of different things and it's always interesting to hear about others' interpretationseven though i never reply because i'm a huge faggot.
>>46459163
Yeah, the elves in our setting really came out of a late night worldbuilding/map-drawing session where we came up with two ideas.
1) A section of the ocean called the 'shark zone' that bermuda triangles EVERYTHING.
2)We gave the player who was playing an elf free reign to draw of map of elfland. He made it an island, with some little floaty magic islands.
Basing on these two things, we made the elves xenophobic bastards who magic ships to death that get near their island if they don't have some sort of elf-signal, and it spiraled out from there.
We also took the piece of fluff from 3.5 and Pathfinder that elves adapt visually to their environment and turned it up to eleven. High Elves have horns, look kind of like trees, and are super tall and spindly. Drow are basically underground bio-luminescent angler fish people who left after the high elves were being extra dicks one day.
>>46457826
>They fuck like pandas in captivity and take a hundred years to reach puberty.
I think D&D elves work differently, they mature physically as fast as humans, but they're not considered adults by the society until very much later.
>>46459304
That's the same for most things; they grow at a normal pace, but aging is a completely different thing.
1: No genetic artificial degredation. The only reason most animals grow old and die is because it's advantageous for their species to not compete with their offspring and continue to be effected by natural selection. Intelligent species can overcome this through selective breeding or genetic engineering.
2. Cultural reasons, trial + error. The more immortal beings in a society, the more complicated and unpredictable that society is. This is not the case with goblins/orcs who are immortal depending on the setting and reproduce like rabbits.
3. They do.
>>46458676
Oh those are nice ways to make it work. With some minor changes I can make it work in my setting.
