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How to make Elves interesting?

Peat

Sage
I find elves straight up interesting and feel that they're even almost kinda underused in modern fantasy literature, weird as that might seem. They're in every game, but in actual books? Not so much.

The problem with elves, half the time, is that people write elves and not characters. Which sucks.

And the other half, they write radically different elves and we do this that's different and cool and woah and... not characters.

I've kicked around various ideas for elves, not all of which are radically different to what's out there. Such as elves that are only immortal because they're all practising serious life extending magic, taking it from the trees and giving it to themselves. Most elves take just a little, but there's all sorts of things that you can do with life magic, so some live in groves of withered trees...

Or elves where all the males are short and stout and serious, craftsmen and warriors, and all the females are tall and ethereal - so basically dwarves and elves as one race.

I like GW's Eldar - the idea of Elves as terrifyingly passionate and fighting to find ways to keep their soul from going to the Great Enemy, and the many ways the race found to confront that. Heavily ritualised roles and all that.


What I'd like to see from someone's elves - mine if they get there first - is a return to them as semi-divine beings. The more human flavour of elf is all well and good but it doesn't interest me as much, I don't feel like there's as much scope for something interest. Being semi-divine doesn't make you flawless (so much evidence for that in mythology) or unbeatable; but it does make you very different.

Do you get a race that tries to puppet master all the others in the belief they have the divine plan?
Or are they nomads, finding the worthy and secretly answering their prayers?
Or maybe they are jealous of the gods they nearly are but are so far from, and plot war with heaven?

Or maybe, like Tolkien's, they rebelled in their pride and are now diminishing echoes... but there's got to be plenty of things you can do with that other than what Tolkien did.

Maybe if you go down this route the easiest thing is to not call them elves. They do come with a lot of connotations after all.

Ah! Maybe they're a new race, created to replace humanity on account of them being a bunch of dicks...

The world is a mollusc of your choice. Just remember all that culture, all that alienness... it has to make good characters and stories.
 

Queshire

Auror
Elllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllves.

That's pretty much all I have to say.

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Ok, well since that it's very interesting I've said this before probably already in this thread, but I love doing my own twists on fantasy races. I've thought up several things with Elves, though I haven't really actually written a story with them yet. My personal pet take on Elves has them as genetic engineers. Numerous monsters were originally created by them along with some other races, and naturally they favor bio-tech. Originally they had a caste system with each caste slightly genetically altered to be visually distinct and be able to better preform in their area of expertise. Unfortunately the destruction of their homeland has lost them the majority of their ancient knowledge, in many cases including how to control the monsters they made. The remains of the previous castes went their own way and eventually became distinct tribes resulting in the sort of dark elves, wood elves and high elves common in fiction.

Another take on Elves aren't actually elves at all, or at least they're Elves in name only. After an apocalyptic war a galactic empire fell into ruins and for one planetary colony left all on its own with the fall regressed. Magic spells are programs run on an ancient super computer, horrible dangers left over from the war lurk in the dark corners of the planet, ancient artifacts of sufficiently advanced tech shape the course of entire countries. The Elves are the only ones who remember the truth. They're a squad of space marines stationed on an ancient space station above the planet. Thanks to actually knowing what they hell they're doing their tech and "magic" is impossibly advanced compared to those on the ground. Normally they don't interact with those on the ground much. They generally only show up when something suitably horrible from the war wakes up and threatens all life and such. Elf is actually a mistranslation. It went from Alph from the name of their company to Alf and then Elf.

A third take on Elves that I've done makes a distinction between Elves based more on Norse mythology and more modern day Elves. The first are the ancestors of the second. They're spirits or minor gods of light and are suitably mysterious and unknowable in their actions and goals as a result. Though they're spirits the modern day elves are decidedly more physical. They're suitably respectful and to a point frightened of their older cousins, but frankly the older Elves are just as alien to them as they are to anyone else. As an Elf ages they take on more and more qualities of the spirit elves, but despite the rumors there's never been a confirmed case of a modern elf ascending to become a spirit elf or a spirit elf falling to become mortal. There's a similar divide for other such "Spirit Folk" such as Dwarves, but that's another story.
 

Svrtnsse

Staff
Article Team
The elves in my setting were originally "angels" (companions/servants to a great celestial being of unspecific generalness) in a parallel universe. Their universe was invaded by demons and some of them escaped by opening a portal to "my" universe and dropping their entire city through it. (yes, I stole that from somewhere)

These original elves are very powerful beings, but there aren't that many of them. With each generation the elves grow a little weaker and a little shorter. The first ones were easily ten to twelve feet tall, whereas the most recent generation don't reach six feet. The elves' magic also grows weaker with each generation, but they still don't seem to be able to die of old age.

The elves that came through the portal were mono-gendered and could mate with anything to produce offspring (elven half-breeds). However, only through mating with each other could they produce live offspring ("regular" elves) that was be able to procreate independently.

While the elven half-breeds can't give birth to live offspring on their own they can do it through divine intervention. Many of the original elves have joined up with minor gods to create groups of half-breeds (polar elves, elphines). The original elf creates the first batch of the half-breeds and the god gives the spark of life to any offspring born within the tribe.
 
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