[HQ Ignorance] Elvishness and rootlessness

[Nic Hughes]

I have always seen them as a balancing act - they are both Man and 
Plant. Initially - back in RQ days when I actually role-played an 
Aldryami elf - I approached them as being physically mostly Man and 
spiritually mostly Plant. Nowadays I'd mix it up more.

In a similar way a dwarf is both Man and Machine. They might claim to 
have no individuality or feelings but its just not so - they have them 
but they need to keep them within acceptable bounds or be declared 
heretic. Beyond even the limits of acceptable heresy they are declared 
broken and recycled.

So, in terms of the whole Brown Elf problem have you considered tying it 
back to the seasonal personality idea where the personality for Dark 
Season is Sleepy (or something similar). I think setting the rating for 
the personality to be equal to their rating in Elfsense works quite well 
on a few levels. This is probably a negative augment for anything other 
than sleeping but at least the character would function.

I have to confess the more I think about it the more I personally might 
do something a bit more radical and play the "true elf" as a secondary 
character who kinda wafts around in a wierd alien way whilst the 
narratively important character would be the spokesperson/bodyguard. 
That way the elf can be as inhuman as you like while the character you 
spend most of your time writing about has an easier time functioning and 
interacting with the rest of the world. So for example you could play a 
centaur character who happens to be taking orders from a "follower" who 
is actually his boss within the game world. Remember that the game 
mechanic of leader/follower is not about their actual relationship it is 
about who is most active in the story - and hence most often takes the 
active role in any contests.

I think it all comes down to the usual problems of trying to find the 
right balance between having an interesting character and having one 
that is useful and makes a positive contribution to the game.

If all else fails and you get really stuck I would be willing to swap 
slots with you, Arrolians are pretty easy to get to grips with by 
comparison with Aldryami for whom we have almost no published HQ materials.

Nic


Sam Elliot wrote:
> Okay, thanks.
> I don´t mean to whinge so, but I´d not really looked at elves much 
> before. I like the whole idea that they are plants and so on but I 
> think a bit of a trick was missed in not making them more plant-like. 
> I´d rather they were predominantly monoecious (hermaphrodite), had a 
> genuine reason to produce flowers and seeds, produced many many seeds 
> of which only a few would survive to become other elves, had masting 
> years where they were absolutely laden with fruits, produced runners 
> and suckers, rhizomes, had mycorrhizae and endophytic fungi. 
> Just....more like plants.
> Sam.
>
> */Lev Lafayette <lev_lafayette at yahoo.com.au>/* wrote:
>
>
>     I'd rule that they'd be sleepy, but not asleep for the
>     entire period. Deciduous trees still need tending even
>     in the depth of winter.
>
>     --- Sam Elliot wrote:
>
>     > ...and I´d really rather a deciduous (brown) elf but
>     > they go to sleep for half the year!
>     >
>     > Sheesh...monoecious by all means, makes them quite
>     > alien (I don´t like the fact that they are male or
>     > female, makes them much less planty to me) but
>     > asleep?
>     >
>     > Harrumph!
>     >
>     > Sam.
>     >
>     > Sam Elliot wrote:
>     > Thanks very much for this Nic, very helpful. I
>     > had forgotten about the released fetish business.
>     >
>     > Re [1], I assume you mean hsunchen rather than
>     > beastman, or has a beastman slipped in without my
>     > noticing? I´m actually thinking a centaur could make
>     > a lot of sense, although it distort the character
>     > somewhat (mostly in terms of who gets addressed
>     > first - the big one). I like Mike Dawson´s take:
>     >
>     http://glorantha.temppeli.org/digest/nbelldigest/1991.01/0223.html
>     >
>     > Sam.
>     > p.s. Inspiration is yet to strike and have me sort
>     > this properly. apologies for that. I have now seen
>     > some elvish keywords which helps.
>     >
>     >
>     > Nic Hughes wrote:
>     > the un-penalised spirit abilities when outside
>     > woodland, then have a non-elf[1] follower to look
>     > after her more mundane problems whilst traveling.
>     > [1] We could even sneak another beast-man in through
>     > the back door! More practically I would think the
>     > Aldryami would have some human allies/hirelings.
>     >
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