Elves (Action)

Heroic Action Role-Play

Alternate Names: Fey folk, High ones, Old ones, Wild ones.

Attributes and Schticks

Body: 3-7
Mind: 6-10
Reflexes: 6-12
Move: 7

Grace

Basic Action

Grace is a variant of Sneak where you become supernaturally light and can move in places where you normally could not. You do not actually need to Sneak in order to use Grace, but you still move only at normal pace and cannot take other actions. You can walk along any surface, even one that could not carry your weight, a distance equal to your Move. You are not deterred by vertical surfaces, narrow ledges, slack ropes and can even walk along a thin thread, spider web, or on soft snow. You still need to use Free Running, but ignore difficulties based on the narrowness of your path, the weight your path can support, and the inclination of the surface. You cannot walk on inverted or liquid surfaces. This can be used to make you hard to spot because you are in positions where nobody would think to look for you, so you are assumed to have concealment enough to Sneak as long as you can stay above your prey or otherwise in a blind spot they would not normally look. After this action, you can stand still in a position that could not normally support you for the rest of the round, but must use Grace again if you wish to continue moving in such terrain.

Long Life

Trigger Action (Combo)

You have lived a very long time. For each schtick you take in Long Life, you have lived about about a hundred years more than a typical character. You have great experience and have lived through many things, so whenever you are unsatisfied with a knowledge roll, you may roll again to represent things learnt during your long life. The GM should slant such information based on the time it is from. You can make a number of rerolls equal to your number of Long Life schtick picks.

Long Life has a drawback; you are less energetic and driven, causing you to do less in downtime.

Elves can pick Long Life any number of times, and are thus immortal. Some even go so far as to let go of other skills and abilities in order to pay the cost to keep on living.

Mystic Form

Inherent

You have an association with a Form of power. Using powers of this form is natural to you. Your use of this power cannot be affected by Metapowers used by others. This means that powers of your Mystic Form can be detected and dispelled based on their Form, but not because they are powers or because of your power origin. You can use powers of this form, even if you lack a power tradition. You never lose these powers as a result of your Methods or Power Loss limitations.

Almost all elves choose to learn a perception power from their mystic form, giving credence to the notion of sharp elven senses.

Elves are bound to the form of their tribe. Forlorn elves can be bound to almost any form, tough the metaforms are exceedingly rare.

Description

Elves are fey creatures, thing and otherworldly, never fully of the material plane. While they have many things in common with other Folk, they are magical and lead enchanted lives.

Appearance

Elves are shorter and slighter than men, usually about 150 cm (5') tall. They resemble human adolescents, and facial or body hair is quite unusual. Head hair is fine, and often plentiful. All elves are considered good-looking, but seem fragile and otherworldly by human standards. Some elves have strange physical features, such as extremely long hair, horns, vestigial fur, fangs, webbed hands and feet, claws or unusual colors. Such peculiarities are often associated with particular bloodlines or clans. Unlike humans, elven appearance can change over time depending on location and interest. Some elves mimic the appearance of nearby creatures related to their Form, other adapt based on the setting. As a result, all elves look perfectly fitted to where they live.

Role

Elves are quite leisurely, and don't really enjoy hard work or physical labor. They cherish arts and fine crafts, but tend to regard them as diversions. A typical elf knows a little of many professions, being a master of none and changing profession as whims or markets dictate. Most have at least some experience as traders, artists, entertainers or performers. Sometimes, an elf becomes obsessed with a particular occupation or task, seeking absolute excellence in it to the exclusion of all else, but this is seen as quite unhealthy by other elves.

Politics

Elven kingdoms are collections of individuals living together, often led by a charismatic leader with a cult of personality as the guiding force of the realm. There is no real sense of civic duty. Shared ideals and the initiative of charismatic individuals can get things done, but outsiders usually see nothing in the way of government.

Integration

Elves are physically similar to humans, can live in the same houses, and enjoy the same food and the same diversions. They rarely have their own section of human cities, and tend to move about quite a bit over the course of their lives. Most seek not to identify too closely with any group or location, preferring to keep options open. They are usually welcome in human lands, but not as trusted as a well-known human, dwarf or even ork. It is said that an elf becomes your friend in the evening and forgets you when the morning comes.

Family

With long life spans and few children, elves spend just a tiny part of their lives as parents. Most take to this unusual situation with sensual devotion, doting on both mother and child. Thus elves grow up pampered, which make them independent but somewhat emotionally vulnerable. Elves from isolated communities usually take to the children of other races, but after a while the novelty passes.

Vices

Elven self-confidence and demand for liberty easily gets bruised. Having had things go their way, elves can get sullen and rash when faced with opposition, unable to see the other side of an issue or have enough wherewithals to pursue a matter to the finish. They can also be vain and proud. Tough rarely evil, they can be antisocial to a catastrophic degree.

Elven Tribes

Elves are by nature magical, and form strong ties with the different Forms of magic. Groups of elves all with the same Mystic Form join together and become tribes. These tribes are based on both magical and blood ties in ways not fully understood by the elves themselves. A few elves develop unique Forms baffling even other elves, many of them having grown up outside elvish communities.

These are the most important elvish tribes, and the forms they are associated with.

	Tribe	Form	Habitat
	High Elves	Light	Civilization
	Sentry Elves	Space	Faery
	Fey Elves	Fey	Faery
	Wood Elves	Plant	Forest
	Wild Elves	Animal	Wilderness
	Drow	Darkness	Caverns
	Nerids	Water	Aquatic
	Ice Elves	Ice	Glaciers, Mountaintops
	Jann	Fire	Desert
	Jinn	Air	Clouds
	Jenn	Illusion	Mirage
	Teuflings	Gifts	Magical places
	Dis	Order	Sacred places
	Shadar-Kai	Death	Battlefields, Shadowlands
	Forlorn	Any form	Anywhere

High Elves

Civilized, enlightened, living in cities or villas seemingly grown from nature, high elves are the epitome of culture. They have their own settlements, and also mingle well with other elven tribes and even with outsiders. They often form the nobility among other elven tribes. In many worlds, high elves are in retreat or hiding, surviving only as the royal houses among other elven tribes. High elves skin colors similar to humans of the same clime and black, silver or gold hair. A few high elves have coppery hair; this is common among their heroes, but is considered a sign of an especially unruly character.

Sentry Elves

Variously called grey elves and eladrin, the Sentry Elves are otherworldly. They live in great citadel-cities in fairy, located in strategic locations to guard a planar boundary or to defend against some primordial evil. They come out of their cities to trade, explore, and mingle with high elves and occasionally other people. When seen in the mortal world, they live among and are often mistaken for High Elves. They share the High Elves human skin tones, with hair and eyes of metallic colors; silver, gold, dark iron, or even metallic blues and greens.

Fey Elves

The unruly cousins of sentry elves, fey are the rustic nobility of faerie. Wandering tribes or living in fairy glens, places where fairy and other worlds come together, fey elves see themselves as the nobility and law-keepers of fairy. To outsiders the laws they keep to seem very much their own whims. Fey elves are stately. From a distance of Mind meters they look large and regal, but up close they are similar to other elves. Some have human colors, others have saturated hues from the wild places they live.

Wood Elves

The most commonly seen type of elf, practical and civilized people living in tune with their forest homes. As a people they are very self-sufficient and elusive. An entire wood elven kingdom might escape the notice of an adjacent human nation. Wood elves have skins of pale earth tones such as greens or browns, sometimes changing complexion with the seasons. Their hair has similar colors in brighter patterns. They wear minimal clothing, instead adorning themselves with garlands and flowers, and often use body paint.

Wild Elves

Called Gruach in Greyhawk, wild elves are considered barbarians by other elves. They live rustic lives accompanied by the animals that taught them to survive in harsh environments. Wild elves are ruddy or swarthy of complexion with wild hair with colors from the environment or from beats. Many have the eyes, tails, ears, or other features of animals.

Drow

The dark elves or drow are the antithesis of the high elves. Civilized yet cruel and depraved, they live in isolated communities far from the light of the sun, most often at war with other elves. Drow have shiny black or dark purple skins and long white hair. They are even lither than other elves, almost spidery.

Nerids

Nerids love water and live in shallow seas, marshes, rivers, and lakes. Some tribes are amphibian, others mariners. Nerids have pearly complexions with brown, green, or pale gray hair and dark eyes that shift towards blue or sea green in bright light.

Ice Elves

At homes on snow-shrouded mountain tops and glaciers, Ice Elves are elusive creatures living in forbidding environments where few others could survive. They depend on their remote location for protection. Ice elves are pale, with black or ice blue hair and eyes of different shades of blue.

Jann

Elves of the desert, Jann thrive on heat and dance in the midday desert when no other things move. They have brick-colored skin, black hair and deep red, amber, or yellow eyes. Some rare Jann have matching hair and eye color.

Jinn

Creatures of the air, living on clouds, Jinn are rarely seen except when their clouds come down to earth as mist. Jinn have flashing eyes of bright primary colors but are otherwise pale to the point of translucence.

Jenn

Elves of desolate places, deserts, steppes, and far islands, the jenn live of and by illusion and mirage.

Teuflings

Often the result of influence from other planes, the chaotic teuflings often show demonic traits; horns, pointed tails, tiny hooves. They are the least trusted of a whimsical breed and many settlements might flat-out refuse to admit teuflings. In turn, many teuflings take their demonic reputation to heart and become rogues or tricksters.

Dis

Perhaps the most enigmatic of all elves, and also the most human-looking, the Dis are creatures of physical perfection, slim and stately. They have the slim build of other elves but are otherwise indistinguishable from humans. They live reclusive lives at spiritual places; even others who live there might only have perceived them trough the choral music they love to sing. When about in the world, it is to experience fate at work; they accompany heroes who live out a great destiny, good or bad. For all their vaunted love of spirituality, Dis go through the motions of religion and mistake ritual for spirituality and tend to act out religion without having actual faith.

Shadar-Kai

These morbid creatures have pale skin and contrasting, dark or strongly colored physical details like hair, eyes, eye sockets, lips, and nails. They favor piercing, tattoos, wild hair and rich dark clothes, often torn or tattered. They are the elves of death and frequent old battlefields, graveyards and the shadowy forecourt of the land of death. Sometimes they can be met along the road, traveling from one such spot to another. Much like Dis, Shadar-Kai are fascinated by death, but do not really grasp its meaning.

Forlorn

Not all elves fit neatly into the tribes. Variously refereed to as lost, forlorn, orphans, or prodigies, these elves either rebelled against their tribal traditions to grow into an unusual Form, or were brought up outside elven society and had the magic find them. Always regarded as outsiders, the prodigies are usually welcome among other elves but not fully trusted until they prove themselves. Their lack of facility for the tribe's magic often means they are unable to share in the subtler aspects of tribal culture. On the other hand, their unusual gifts can make them very valuable and praised members of a tribe. Sometimes forlorn elves of the same Form band together in small groups, which could potentially grow into tribes over the centuries.

Forlorn elves are almost never related to metaforms (Chi, Fey, Gifts, Magic, Psi, Spiritual, or Technology). They can have the same forms as an existing tribe, as long as they were not part of that tribe—if they were they would not be forlorn.

Forlorn elves all have unique physical oddities such as weird color or patterns on the body or additional, variant, or dislocated body parts (an extra nose, horns, overlong arms, inverted right and left limbs, and similar weirdness). Some are less blatant, but unless disguised the oddity is perceptible to a creature within Mind meters of the forlorn elf. These oddities follow no set pattern, that one Space prodigy has checkered skin does not mean they all do.