I tend to see them acting as panethnic native americans.
>hunter and gatherer society
>eat meat, but dont waste any part if animal or overhunt it
>magic is probably shamanic/spirit based
>live in treehouses on high trees.
>bows and arrows.
>much taller and leaner than high elves.
>>47590950
Last time we did this, some anon said he thought wood elves would probably be vegetarians. I liked the response of another anon who put forth theh are probably carnioveres if they have the skinny/tall appearence we normally assign to them, and if they are herbivores they probably look like gorillas.
>>47591046
I've always liked the Elder Scrolls version of wood elves for just that reason
>>47591046
So are dwarves vegetarians?
>>47591420
By the reasoning the anon putforth, yes. Predators are typically lean, herbivores are typically more bulk to accomodate mass of vegetables etc
>>47590950
>Act like a bunch of stoners
>Probably are a bunch of stoners
>As a result, eat anything
>Competent fighters/mages, but not the best
>Generally friendly and avoid conflict
>Live in the fuck-off-fey-forest so no one bothers them
>Kinda short
>>47590950
Yes Iwood.
>>47593371
>generally friendly
See, i tend to seem them as being very standoffish outside the tribe. I think high elfs are more "friendly"
>>47593407
My setting doesn't really have high elves. Either they grew up in the cities as a second class citizen in the human kingdom, immigrated to another kingdom to be treated like a real person, or grew up in the woods and lived a relatively safe and free life.
>>47590950
>>live in treehouses on high trees.
>Not following multiple herds across the land with simple/light equipment for comfort and lodging in their travels
Only cannibalistic nations stuck around in one place
>>47594482
>only cannabalistic nations stayed in one place
Is this a real thing? Were all major civilizations cannibals at some point?
>>47590950
>eat meat, but dont waste any part if animal or overhunt it
Technically, native americans overhunt animals (more or less)
>>47590950
CG
>>47590950
Hardy amazonian race. Weak male elves are subservient to their superior female overlords, and are frequently used as labor and breeding units; though only the strongest ones get the right to breed with a female wood elf.
>>47590950
>>47591046
I've always pictured wood elves as predatory, eschewing metals and comfortable city life for the hunt, they represent how nature is predatory, disdaining the weak and consuming them, outsmarting the strong and eradicating them. They use nature and magic to make themselves more in tune with nature and heighten their senses. Fiercely territorial and arrogant to those who don't share their way of life. But thats just my wood elf head cannon.
Wood Elves are Earthly with greater connection to nature and beasts and are, ironically, closer to humanity then their Heavenly kin.
The big difference aside from the physical aspect is the fact that they sleep which enables them to wonder into the Dream Lands were the spirits of Nature reside
>>47593119
So what the fuck is up with deer?
>>47598270
>Weak male elves are are frequently used as labor
your made up society is retarded
>>47591420
Well, consider they live in a subterranean environment, they probably eat a lot of roots and fungus.
What if Dwarves turned out to be dependant on insect life for their protein? Dwarven "Ranchers" maintaining large amounts of burrowing insects within special chambers filled with fertile soil, but set up in limestone tunnels to prevent the insects from burrowing too far away. When the critters reach hit their mating season, a large portion of the crop is fried in oil with all the fixins, while the rest lay enough eggs for the next crop.
I'm of the opinion that Wood Elves would be swift carnivores, while High Elves would be snooty Better Than You vegans. Drow are omnivores, and that omni includes you.
>>47603121
I don't see why they all just can't be omnivores. An entire race of vegans/carnivores seems weird if they're not biologically specialized for it
Wood elves are the elves who typically live off the grid. There are many "wood" elves whom are not in the woods. They are slaves, freed slaves, lost, adopted, or left on their own accord, etc. In my setting it is almost impossible to find an authentic wood elf. They don't only live in woods. The wood elf term is a kinder version of a "savage" elf. They are not even a specific type of elf by race or attribute. Hell, an elf of any origin can say "fuck off I'm outta here" and live the life of a savage. Elves arent the only exception. Wood men are the same thin they are all "____" of the Wood.
>>47603284
Fungus, Potatoes, Bugs and a shitload of Vodka qualify Dwarves as Omnivores in my book.In my setting all the various elven subraces were eugenically engineered by the Original Immortal Elven Race, mostly by introducing human genetic donors into the mix at specific points in the bloodline to water down their lifespan. There are maybe ten of those original Elves left in the world (one Magic Induced Extinction Event later) and they're either hiding in the ancient ruins of their race or being worshipped as gods by remote cultures.
>>47591420
Nah, Dwarves are powered almost exclusively by Lager.
>>47603916
That would technically be vegetarian by itself, wouldn't it, since grain is a plant?
>>47603842Your setting sucks
>>47603027
Deer are skinny-fat, fampai
>>47603027
It's not really "herbivores are fat, carnivores skinny", as much as plants being more energy-poor and often harder to digest than meat, necessitating longer intestines and often also a bigger, more complex stomach. Deer have long, skinny legs and quite light build, but they still have a fairly barrel-like body to contain their guts.
Not really sure how that would work on a humanoid build. Fully herbivorous wood elves might look kind of like they're pregnant, with the standard lithe elven build but with a large abdomen.
>>47604497
>>47603042
In a game I ran, I had all of the "wood elves" actually be the descendants of the high elves who ruled the land thousands of years ago, before their kingdom was more or less destroyed by whatever I had come up with at the time, and all the survivers moved into the great plains to eventually become a society of not!Mongols.
>>47590950
Gangly little creatures with dark beady eyes that can crawl up the forest as easily as a man walks on the ground. They appear to be easily frightened but that's just a tactic to separate their prey, which when alone they kill with great malice.
Nobody is quite sure if they're fully sentient creatures, and the clicking chirps they seem to communicate doesn't seem to be a language, though that's still under debate by those scholars which concern themselves with the royal woods.
My wood elf is pretty garden variety.heh.
But for real, I find them more like the conservationist type. I also like the Sadida from Wakfu a great deal and sort of bleed that into your standard Navi from Avatar fare.
>>47590950
>implying native americans didn't overhunt
Tribes in the plains had a belief that the buffalo they hunted would just respawn at the beginning of each year if they were killed by native americans. They hunted those things with reckless abandon because they didn't think there would be any consequences to chasing hundreds of them off of cliffs all at once.
So to spin this into an elvish angle, maybe wood elves believe that they are the only ones allowed to hunt game animals, and will react violently towards anyone else who does it on their turf, believing that any animal killed by humans or what-have-you would mean one less animal for the elves to kill on their own terms.
That would go a long way towards explaining elf isolationism, xenophobia, and other issues of prejudice and racial conflict--they don't want to deal with others, and no one else wants to get involved with the crazy wood elves who destroy entire settlements over a single stag.
Like a crazy redneck.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=riHEocUuAdU
>>47590950
A huge collection of tribes that all fucking hate each other over minute differences that outsiders cannot easily distinguish.
>>47606681
I mean you hunt in owned woodland (all woodland was owned, if you didn't know by who it was the king) back in the day without permission and you were bound to lose a limb (your bow eye, or a few important fingers/hand were the most common (though if you yourself were important enough you'd just get slapped with a fine).
>>47590950
In my setting they're mostly semi-nomadic (ie. they might live in some place for soem time, then relocate) and primarily live as hunter-gatherers, although they practice some agriculture (clearing small areas of forest to grow food in, then letting the forest regrow when they move to another location). Their primary food source are small game and plants. Hunting large game is rare, but considered an important rite of passage. They have a shamanistic/animistic religion and magic, worshiping and callion on the powers of nature spirits and ancestors. They're also the "generic" elves in the setting, and the only ones most people are aware of, as high elves are extremely isolationistic (they have one city and don't let any non-elves anywhere near it).
>>47606426
LOL fucking need the sauce on that.
I see wood elf like this.
Barbaric savages who are only elven in name, universally despised by every other race, and the feeling is mutual. In need of civillization
I like to think of them as the traditionalists, at least in comparison to the rest of the elven archetypes. Where as the rest may have gone on to build their cities, farms, and regimented lifestyles, wood elves prefer to embrace the wild and chaotic aspects of what it means to be an elf. To be a true fae folk, and not just a human with pointy ears and a superiority complex. These are the elves that you see reveling in the forest, drinking wine that'd turn a man's perception of the world into a steaming pile of multi-colored mush; dancing in fairy circles until the dawn breaks. These are the ones that you'd see contorting themselves into monstrous forms during their Wild Hunts, laughing and hollering all the way as they ran some majestic beast (or person) into the ground. Any experience shared with them ought to be paranormally wonderful, mortally terrific, or both, all their famously mercurial temperaments demand.
I'd model them after real-world temperate forest dwellers such as Iroquois or Celts and Germanics of the Roman era.
>men and women with distinct roles, but equal status
>shamanism and druidism are commonplace
>mix of agriculture and hunting and gathering
>spears, arrows, throwing axes, swords for noblemen
>very little access to metals in general
Welsh, fairy-worshiping super-nazis siting on tremendous magical power and living in beautiful cities built around their gigantic trees which grant extended lifespans to those in tune with them.
They also interbreed genasi, tieflings, and aasimar for the purposes of making them look like prettied-up fawns/satyrs.
>>47611862
>Rosseau-esque naturalists
>Nazis
doesn't add up yo
There are several kinds in my setting. Wood elves are the remnants of elven society that up and migrated. The stubborn lot that stayed behind couldn't keep up their societal demands and things collapsed catastrophically. Because Elves are so long lived many skills and trades are self taught, so when the older elves left much of the knowledge went with it. Some turned on each other Mad Max style, cannibalizing the old world to meet survivalist needs. Others fled into the woods becoming shamanistic tribes or deep rooted hill people.
The Wood Elves are more xenophobic and sparsely populated. Rarely settling down into permanent settlements. Those that do are very territorial, and violent depending on how available resources are, and how close they are to other civilizations. Each tribe has its own culture and customs. Due to the harsh living conditions they tend to be very short lived in elven terms, though still retain their immortality.
Others That managed to form more lasting civilizations either got amalgamated into human empires, or became very woodsy hillbilly/ highland types. They tend to be more friendly to trade and exposure, but try to keep to their own. They still consider themslevs to be High Elves making the most of a bad situation.
>>47590950
I have them on a scale of elves who happen to like living in the forest but are basically normal elves, through elves who reacted to a previous social problem or disaster by going full innawoods and finishing up at full on NORMIES GET OUT REEEEEEEE elves.
Basically they're insular, clique driven and territorial but the exact level of dickishness depends on how far they've got into it. The majority are basically preppers with psychotic forest guardians and Rivendell style elves being at opposite ends.
>>47594821
That would be hella intense, but that's not the case.
Usually nomadic hunter-gatherer nations settle down and dive into agriculture.
I like my wood elves to be very primal and tribal. Generally pretty territorial and aggressive towards most intruders. Primarily hunter-gatherers, although many tribes do cultivate certain areas along their migratory paths. Furthermore, some tribes are fairly sedentary, including permanent settlements in some areas, and as such agriculture is more widely practiced.
Wood elf culture mimics that of many tribes, with the chief and the shaman at the top. What makes wood elves somewhat different is their focus on rights of passage. Anyone could become any position in the tribe, providing they can accomplish the rite of passage. In order to reach majority, all wood elf youths need to retrieve a shard of something which is similar to obsidian, but less likely to chip and even sharper, which are only found in the deepest parts of the forest. These shards they retrieve are then fashioned into a knives, which a wood elf would rather be caught dead than be parted with for any amount of time. For other positions, other feats are necessary. For example, in order to be considered one of the top warriors of the tribe, they need to slay what is essentially a panther-like version of the Nemean Lion, whose hide is nigh-on impenetrable. Those who survive and succeed then wear this hide as armor, and show themselves as warriors almost without peer.
In my setting elves were originally faires. However some gods came by and said"Want to take it to the next level" Some didn't feel like it and declined while others jumped on ship. The standard elf coming from the standard fairy, Midnight Fairies became Dark Elves, Snow Fairies became Cave Elves. The Standard elves became either wood elves or plains elves with the former being mostly vegetarian farmers gathered around small elven villages or towns. These elves follow a monarchy. The plains elves are more like Native Americans. Rather than one centralized ruler they have nomadic tribes with chiefs and shamans. Plains elves are more likely to trade with mortals while the wood elves prefer to trade with immortal species due to their fear of leaders changing every century or two. They don't like that a once great leader can be replaced with A) Weaker leader B) Warmonger C) Or someone incompetent. I'm currently coming up with a story. How does this sound?
>>47614879
I can fill in more stuff if asked.
>no I'LL DROP YOU LIKE A FUCKING ELK A FUCKING ELK post
>>47611907
What?
>>47590950
It's been a while, but I'd probably go with semi-nomadic and a mix of swiddeners, pastoralists, and river fishers.
Swiddeners burn a section of forest (selectively preserving or planting useful trees), plant for a year or two in the space fertilized by the ash, then let a given plot fallow for years at a time. They supplement their diet by hunting and gathering in secondary and tertiary growth. Staple crops are usually root vegetables IIRC.
The pastoralist routine for elves is probably elk driving or something similar, where you chase a large group of migrating herd animals towards a specific point for slaughter. IIRC this might be a seasonal only thing depending on the people, place or prey, so there'll be more atomized settlements in one season and more centralized settlements in another.
River fishers would mostly just build simple V-shaped stone structures in the water and spear fish in the resulting pond.
Tree-architecture is a combination between how Europe used to get timbers (cutting branches such that the tree has one thick trunk and like a million twigs coming out of that) and those Asian generation-spanning living bridges.
In general, I like giving wild elves something on the bleeding edge between foraging and agriculture as a subsistence method.
pic related
>>47603121
I like to think the underground type of Dwarf eats a diet composed mostly of farmed fungus, cave fish and beer. Probably mushroom beer.
