Elves

These are some elves

Let's start with the elves shall we? I think they should be weirder you know? Less straight up post-Jackson Tolkien, and more crazy faerie-realm ancient laws and oaths, bizarre features that mark them out as being Not-Like-Us and work crazy elf-magic that they don't call magic because it's just something they do.

"What? Why are you freaked out? I can turn myself invisible to the eyes of all mortals what's the big deal? I also have blonde hair and can play the flute?"

But the issue is if I say "elf" to one of my players they go "post-Jackson Tolkien" or "WoW" or, very, horribly occasionally "Santa"... Likewise if I say "pixie" or "faerie" they go "Tinkerbell". To be fair, so do I, but I have the lack of life  interest and inclination to think about shit like "how can I bring the folk tale depictions of the Fair Folk into line with the pop cultural understandings of my peers?"

Fucking elaborate series of charts.

So first off I wanted a bunch of different types of elves but no way was I about to go into a bunch of fucking elf subraces. It gets too fiddly in both fluff and crunch, but I wanted to get those stereotypes represented you know?

So where's the difference? Well you know that nursery rhyme that's all about how when you were born influences your character? All "Wednesday's child is full of woe"? That deal. That's how it is.

Another elf (not the rube with the gun)

THE APPEARENCE, DEMEANOUR AND CHARACTER OF AN ELF ARE AFFECTED BY WHEN THEY WERE BORN

By season specifically.

Many elf-clans (you can make anything more mystical by adding elf- to it. Elf-bread, elf-coat, elf-blade, elf-hill, elf-night, elf-weasel) MANY ELF-CLANS deliberately time their highly ritualized breeding seasons so that all their kids end up being born around the same time, but others, hey! Anything goes.

Probably a Summer elf

The appearance stuff is more or less A Rule, take demeanour and character as guidelines and ultimately down to the player.

So the first table:

ROLL D4 OR PICK
1. Spring
2. Summer
3. Autumn
4. Winter



SPRING ELVES are of the most rural folkloric type. These are your guys in your pointy elf hats. They mostly chill out in secluded gently wooded valleys and glades. Sometimes they are bound to rivers and streams. These guys are your nymphs and your glaistigs and your lamiak (the Basque river-spirit kind, not the demon).

So physically they tend to be the shortest of the elves and have something of a youthful, androgynous charm. They dance and they sing and skip about in stupid fields and are New Life given shape. They fuck each other on ancient phallic fertility hills and go from laughter to tears and back to mirth again in a matter of seconds, as changeable and fickle as April weather.

Example time. We have a spring-born elf in the party. The player is the sweetest girl you'd ever meet, so I kinda assumed that's how her character is. I assumed wrong. These are some things are resident spring-elf has come out with that illustrate the darker side of the elven psyche:

"I want to make a necklace out of the orcs testicles."

Or the one that really freaked me out. 

Also an elf

"Can we eat the goblins?"

That's how elves are.

RANDOM SPRING ELF TRAITS (roll d3 times)
1. The ears of a cat
2. Swan feathers instead of hair
3. The tail of a cow
4. Cloven hooves
5. Vestigial gossamer wings
6. Green hair (or feathers)
7. Skin resembling fish scales
8. Flowers bloom wherever they step
9. Goat horns and legs
10. Animal eyes (roll d3, 1. cat 2. goat 3. fish)
11. UNEARTHLY BEAUTY (see t'other table)
12. MAGIC (see T'OTHER t'other table)


SUMMER ELVES. Let's have a looksee.

So the spring elves cover the folklore type elves, the Summer elves are the conceptual decedents of the High Elves from Warhammer, the Eladrin from Type IV and the Grey Elves that came before them. Elves are the People Before You, the Tuatha de Danann, that cruel race of decadents from Melnibone, the ancient lore-masters from Atlantis.

Why summer? Summer is campaigning season, when armies march out. So summer elves tend to be of a more straightforward, military mind set. They are aloof, powerful, each in form a petty deity and they KNOW it.

They burn from within as the great midsummer festival fires do. In ages past they built great cities, spires of stained glass and opal. Some say they drove out the dragons, some say they tamed them. Some say the race of firey elves fashioned the goblin-folk from mud to serve them. Some say they never truly gave up their power and rule all the world still from their hidden communes and elf-towns where they sit, debating politics and ancient lore, guarding the secrets of the millennia.

SUMMER ELF TRAITS (d3)

And another

1. Eyes glow with an eldritch bioluminescence
2. Heart glows with an inner light. When shirtless the heart and lungs are visible under the skin.  (I think that's an idea I'm pinching from someone... I'm very sorry someone, that's a really fucking good idea and I love you).
3. Hair is a mane (toss a coin. Heads lion, tails, horse)
4. Snake-eyes
5. Snake-like skin or tail
6. Constantly accompanied by small local insects
7. Eagle-eyes
8. Eagle-talons! (fuck it, +1 dmg on unarmed attacks)
9. Horny crown made from oak branches
10. ACTUALLY A CENTAUR (no I don't have them statted up yet...)
11. UNEARTHLY BEAUTY (same drill as before)
12. MAGIC (still the same drill as before, jeeze)

AUTUMN ELVES - are my favourites. I like the crazy death-cult elves from Eberron and I like Warhammer's grimfaced Wood Elves. These guys are wolfish, forest dwelling fatalists, with sad, fanged grins and tearful berserker rages. Whilst all elves lead long, long lives Autumn-born are acutely aware of the inevitable end of all things and understand the futility of existence. As such they tend to either be given to self-destruction - hedonism and hard-drinking, eking out as much experience as they can - or throw themselves into their causes and beliefs, violently forcing a truth of some form onto a fickle and indifferent reality.

The exact belief system the elf ascribes to is liable to change fairly regularly, your standard elf being an inherently fickle and whimsical beast.

AUTUMN ELF TRAITS (d3)

1. Owl-eyes

2. Wolf-fangs
3. A foxes tail
4. Antlers
5. Cloven hooves
6. Wolf-ears
7. Skin flakes off in leaf shapes
8. Flesh becomes see-through at dawn and dusk, appears skeletal
9. Ever present tiny spiders
10. Claws/talons
11. UNEARTHLY BEAUTY
12. MAGIC

WINTER ELVES -  Fuck it. The Others from A Song of Ice and Fire (AKA the White Walkers from Game of Thrones I READ THE FUCKING BOOKS). I didn't want to look to Warhammer again, because although Witch Elves are fun... I dunno... meh. And I'm in about six different minds about the Drow. So from out of the godhaunted forests of the North come the Winter Elves, sweeping into human settlements on the backs of albino elk to bring slaughter to the petty humans and offer their souls up to their baleful and blasphemous gods...

... Oh you want to PLAY one.

I think with all these descriptions it's not set in stone. As funny  as it seems an happy spring-born couple that have a child in Winter aren't suddenly raising a psychopath. Unless they are. No, they get a kid who is cold and kind of aloof (even amongst elves), or given to of enduring melancholies. A winter-elf born amidst the stately hidden manses of the philosopher summer elves probably does a bunch of outsider poetry. In the old days of the really big elf-cities there might have been a rudimentary, Planet of the Apes style cast system forming, with the halls of state being populated by calculating winters and summers, whilst the autumns, suicidal in their dedication, gravitate towards the military, then with the fertile spring-elf majority making up the artisans, fine confectioners and party planners. That almost answers the question of how a civilization of layabout aristocrats function, a spring-fertility goddess, immaculate as she carries a sheaf of wheat, seems only to natural.

Whatever. I'll make it up as I go along.

FUCK! TRAITS! WINTER ELVES

1. Spider silk for hair

2. Deathly pale
3. Elaborate red or blue patterns/tattoos on skin (Celtic whorls or spider webs)
4. Weep blood
5. Thorn-like growths
6. Claws
7. Fangs/sharp teeth
8. No shadow
9. Silent/laconic/mute - uses sign language OR ice-blue eyes
10. Cold to the touch
11. UNEARTHLY BEAUTY
12. MAGIC
 
T'OTHER TABLE - UNEARTHLY BEAUTY

So people tend to make elves hot. Fair enough. That's fine for some elves, but some elves should have UNEARTHLY BEAUTY. This is a beauty that defies all human understanding, a beauty that HURTS to look at too long. A beauty that tugs at the soul. Farm boys jump into ponds to try and catch another glimpse of the UNEARTHLY BEAUTIFUL, poets put out their eyes rather then look upon anything lesser, painters bite off their fingers and drink their paint knowing they can never create anything so beautiful.

Now lets arbitrarily stat that shit up.

 

Add d3 to your Charisma (unless you're winter-born)

 SPRING ELF - you are as bright and fair as a cherry tree in blossom. People are drawn towards you as a vessel of hope (+2 to charisma checks or whatever with neutral or better disposed NPCs) and with you at their side your allies find it hard to believe ALL is lost whilst you still stand with them (grant an ally +2 to a saving throw vs. fear level/day). To use these abilities you have to do a short inspiring speech ("Folk in those stories Mr Frodo...")

Snakey elf

SUMMER ELF - FUCKING CLARK KENT. You are tall and beautiful if proud. Your righteousness and virtue shines through you. People WANT to do better by your example (+2 to an allies attack bonus level/day). You are also very effective at demoralising the enemy (-2 to enemy saving throws vs. fear, level/day). To use these abilities you need to be on form. If you've fucked up recently then you can't use them for a while or until you do something impressive again. If you do something REALLY impressive, like, John Williams Superman score cues up impressive, even bigger bonuses maybe?

 

AUTUMN ELF - You have the sad beauty of the lily, of the old songs of home and what we've lost. If the summer elves are the Superman score you're like that bit in Bioshock Infinite with the guitar. Your allies are profoundly affected by your death or injury and will fight all the harder to defend your life, for it flickers like a candle in the wind (if you are reduced to a half hp, an ally gains +2 to damage against the last enemy that attacked you. If you are reduced to quarter hp it's +3. If you are reduced to 0 +4.)

WINTER ELF - You are beautiful and terrible to behold. Death incarnate. With a baleful glance you can freeze the blood of mortals (force a fear save in an enemy with less HD then you, or equal HD but they get a +2 bonus, level/day). You can only use this ability if you haven't fucked up lately (DM ruling). As death incarnate you remind your allies of how good it is to be alive (grant an ally +2 to save vs. death, level/day). BUT your icy presence makes people uncomfortable around you (you don't get the standard UNEARTHLY BEAUTY cha bonus).

 T'OTHER t'other table... ELF MAGIC

Elves with inherent magic get a random magic spell according to their season. This is not the same as the magic-user equivalent. It does not occupy a spell slot or cost mana points (I use mana points). It does however require a casting roll. These spells are inherent abilities, just stuff the elf can do you know? Instead they can use them a number of times equal to their level per day.

 SPRING ELF

1. Charm Person
2. Cure Light Wounds
3. Purify Food & Drink
4. Protection From Evil
5. Going Hooded
6. Levitate (if the elf already has wings this counts as Fly)

SUMMER ELF (if the summer elf has any serpentine traits they may choose Snake Charm instead)

1. Light
2. Shield
3. Comprehend Languages

Grudgingly a 4th Edition Elf..

4. RESIST FIRE (-4 dmg from fire)
5. Agency of Far Dispatch
6. Mantle of Influence
7. Arrows Aflame
8. Blistering Taunts

AUTUMN ELF

1. Sleep
2. ELFSHOT (like magic missile. The elf makes a standard missile attack but uses a casting roll to determine its success. If successful the missile attack automatically hits its target and does weapon dmg+d6)
3. Comprehend Languages
4. Detect Magic 
5. Hold Portal
6. Cause Light Wounds
7. Going Hooded
8. Hunting Hound

WINTER ELF

1. Detect Magic
2. Cause Fear
3. Aura of Protection
4. Terrifying Visage
5. FROST (touch spells. Does d4 cold damage. Damage die increases every 2 lvls)
6. Cause darkness
7. Web
8. You know how to make a Ghost Knife.