Balyano
2014-01-09, 02:40 PM
A while back I came up with a setting in which dwarves and elves are the same thing. Ended up using the names alf and svartalf instead of elf and dwarf. It wasn't a setting for an rpg. But now I find myself thinking about what the racial traits would be if it were for a game. If it were for a 3.5 game where standard dwarves and elves didn't exist I could just plug in their stats if I wanted to be lazy. But it makes more sense to me to just keep them separate so I can plug them in without disrupting anything. The question is what traits to give them. I figure the alf would always have speak language as a class skill. Any suggestions.
Below is a thrown together explanation of the race.
The dwarf like svartalfr grow up in the maze of caverns beneath the earth, learning trades and working for the family. Each warren is a single big family. They are boring, nose to the grind stone, rules obsessed, work work work, make things the same way over and over because thats the right way until someone can show a better way to do it, types.
Then when they grow big and old enough, their backs split open and a full grown alf crawls out of the dead husk. Like a cycada.
The grown alfr are whisical, creative, tend to be wanderers, travel the world types. They go out, mate, make cool stuff, use cool stuff to show off, use showing off to mate more. They are less about planning long term and more about short term solutions, since you probably wont be in this area next year.
Reproduction
When an alf has a baby instinct sends her back to the warren where she was raised. She leaves the baby at the mouth of the cave for the svartalfr to retreive. Of course they have to smell right, if they dont have the right scent the dark elves wont take them. If the mother can tell they smell wrong, or if she is too far from her warren she will instead steal a human baby and replace it with her own, hoping no one will know the difference. Since the adult alfr dont raise children, they have little real parental instinct, their life is focused on producing large numbers of children and sending them back to the warren. It's their child form, svartalfr, that have the instinctual desire or resources to raise children. The svartalfr lifestyle is focused on feeding large numbers of children. The svartalfr are raised like a big litter of dogs, all of them in a warren are related through their female line.
Changelings
When the ones that get switched at birth go undiscovered you might end up with instances of a svartalf changeling living in a community for twenty to thirty years. One day someone comes by to buy some of their wares, finds the body, split open, emptied out, think to themselves ''who ever did this is a sick twisted psychopath'' and look theres a new guy in town, and look whoes clothes hes got. So a couple of people are like ''yeah, no one liked the weirdo, but he made nice things and he was one of our own'' and the lynch mob forms.
Halfalfr
If an alf breeds with a human the half-alf gets a kind of intermediate life cycle. They are the ugly duckling, ugly, bland personality, keeps to themselves, terrible with people, then puberty hits in their late teens and suddenly their beautiful, outgoing, social butterflies.
As a svartalf things are very structured and dont exist to be changed much. You make something, use it till its no use, reuse the material to make something else. Once you make something you dont do much alteration beyond matainance, time is better spent being productive than artistic. Your pants rip, you patch them and move on.
As an alf appearance is key. If an alf isn't a wanderer and has a home, then expect every bit of exposed wood to end up intricately carved, every bush to be in the shape of some animal or something, every wall painted with intricate designs or scenes that are changed often.
The svartalfr need to raise a surplus of children. Productivity is key.
The alfr need to atract mates and show off their fitness and displays, like birds building nests, collecting pretty stuff, dancing, singing. They have no responsibilities except to themselves. Once the child is there, they are passed off to the family.
For a look into how an alf deals with needs.
Lets say you have a alf woman.
Winter is coming on, she buys a new dress.
Spring comes and that dress is too warm for the weather. So she cuts the sleaves off, trims the dress down to a knee length skirt, uses some of the left over fabric to decorate a wide brim hat to keep the sun off.
Then fall comes and winter is setting in, its getting cold. So she adds long wool stockings to cover her legs, adds wool coat, trims off half the brim on the hat, bends the remaining brim down, lines the inside with fur. Now her wardrobe is ready for winter.
Then spring comes, and this year she has arranged some work as a fisherman. Wet cloths are a problem. So she ditches the wool stockings and jacket, cuts the middrift from the dress, hems up the edges, cuts the skirt shorter and sows it shut, removes the fur from the hat, raises the brim again, turns it around so the brim is keeping the sun from her eyes, adds a stuffed bird and some glued on bird seed to the brim of the hat. Now she has shorts and a tank top, and a hat that keeps the sun out of her eyes, she is ready to work around the water.
Soon winter comes again, this time she buys some pants, a fur coat with a hood, and works with that next spring.
Alfr in this are not long veiw, they are short term thinkers, since they will be moving on soon. They are modify on the fly types. The svartalfr would have just packed their winter clothes away and waited to use them agian. The alfr on the other hand live and travel light. They get really good at making pretty stuff that they can sell when they dont need it anymore. They live in a constant state of change.
They are typically friendly and playful, good with people, after all it wouldnt work out for them if they had bad people skills since they travel so much. Of course they do make enemies. Humans see them as harlots and cuckolders, if they know about them, still not sure about how obviously differnt they are from humans.
A svartalfs beards is important because the length shows how old they are. Senior svartaelfr have higher authority, so beard length is a quick easy way for the svartaelfr to figure out whos in charge. An alf on the other hand has no need of this and they dont grow beards, so to them a beard is a sign of physical imaturity. Of course this means that svartalf girls do have beards and alf men do not. Do not cut a svartalfrs beard, it will impact their rank in the warren.
Svartalfr are greedy and their greed is due to being focused on securing resources for the warren. Svartalfr live in a communist type society but with less structured government and more gerontocracy. They are somewhat paranoid of outsiders, after all they have to protect the warren. The alfr are more anarchist, not that they go out of their way to oppose governments or anything, they just live outside of normal societal order, not suprising for semi-solitary semi-nomads.
In someways they are like some fey from myth. They sometimes steal babies, switching them with their own. As for what happens to the stolen baby...lets just hope they sold the kid to pay for a boat ticket and didnt just leave them in the woods, would depend on the alf. Like helpful brownies they make all kinds of cool stuff, or do menial labor, just for food. Like traditional faries they sometimes steal horses. Both habits make sense for a travelling alf.
Below is a thrown together explanation of the race.
The dwarf like svartalfr grow up in the maze of caverns beneath the earth, learning trades and working for the family. Each warren is a single big family. They are boring, nose to the grind stone, rules obsessed, work work work, make things the same way over and over because thats the right way until someone can show a better way to do it, types.
Then when they grow big and old enough, their backs split open and a full grown alf crawls out of the dead husk. Like a cycada.
The grown alfr are whisical, creative, tend to be wanderers, travel the world types. They go out, mate, make cool stuff, use cool stuff to show off, use showing off to mate more. They are less about planning long term and more about short term solutions, since you probably wont be in this area next year.
Reproduction
When an alf has a baby instinct sends her back to the warren where she was raised. She leaves the baby at the mouth of the cave for the svartalfr to retreive. Of course they have to smell right, if they dont have the right scent the dark elves wont take them. If the mother can tell they smell wrong, or if she is too far from her warren she will instead steal a human baby and replace it with her own, hoping no one will know the difference. Since the adult alfr dont raise children, they have little real parental instinct, their life is focused on producing large numbers of children and sending them back to the warren. It's their child form, svartalfr, that have the instinctual desire or resources to raise children. The svartalfr lifestyle is focused on feeding large numbers of children. The svartalfr are raised like a big litter of dogs, all of them in a warren are related through their female line.
Changelings
When the ones that get switched at birth go undiscovered you might end up with instances of a svartalf changeling living in a community for twenty to thirty years. One day someone comes by to buy some of their wares, finds the body, split open, emptied out, think to themselves ''who ever did this is a sick twisted psychopath'' and look theres a new guy in town, and look whoes clothes hes got. So a couple of people are like ''yeah, no one liked the weirdo, but he made nice things and he was one of our own'' and the lynch mob forms.
Halfalfr
If an alf breeds with a human the half-alf gets a kind of intermediate life cycle. They are the ugly duckling, ugly, bland personality, keeps to themselves, terrible with people, then puberty hits in their late teens and suddenly their beautiful, outgoing, social butterflies.
As a svartalf things are very structured and dont exist to be changed much. You make something, use it till its no use, reuse the material to make something else. Once you make something you dont do much alteration beyond matainance, time is better spent being productive than artistic. Your pants rip, you patch them and move on.
As an alf appearance is key. If an alf isn't a wanderer and has a home, then expect every bit of exposed wood to end up intricately carved, every bush to be in the shape of some animal or something, every wall painted with intricate designs or scenes that are changed often.
The svartalfr need to raise a surplus of children. Productivity is key.
The alfr need to atract mates and show off their fitness and displays, like birds building nests, collecting pretty stuff, dancing, singing. They have no responsibilities except to themselves. Once the child is there, they are passed off to the family.
For a look into how an alf deals with needs.
Lets say you have a alf woman.
Winter is coming on, she buys a new dress.
Spring comes and that dress is too warm for the weather. So she cuts the sleaves off, trims the dress down to a knee length skirt, uses some of the left over fabric to decorate a wide brim hat to keep the sun off.
Then fall comes and winter is setting in, its getting cold. So she adds long wool stockings to cover her legs, adds wool coat, trims off half the brim on the hat, bends the remaining brim down, lines the inside with fur. Now her wardrobe is ready for winter.
Then spring comes, and this year she has arranged some work as a fisherman. Wet cloths are a problem. So she ditches the wool stockings and jacket, cuts the middrift from the dress, hems up the edges, cuts the skirt shorter and sows it shut, removes the fur from the hat, raises the brim again, turns it around so the brim is keeping the sun from her eyes, adds a stuffed bird and some glued on bird seed to the brim of the hat. Now she has shorts and a tank top, and a hat that keeps the sun out of her eyes, she is ready to work around the water.
Soon winter comes again, this time she buys some pants, a fur coat with a hood, and works with that next spring.
Alfr in this are not long veiw, they are short term thinkers, since they will be moving on soon. They are modify on the fly types. The svartalfr would have just packed their winter clothes away and waited to use them agian. The alfr on the other hand live and travel light. They get really good at making pretty stuff that they can sell when they dont need it anymore. They live in a constant state of change.
They are typically friendly and playful, good with people, after all it wouldnt work out for them if they had bad people skills since they travel so much. Of course they do make enemies. Humans see them as harlots and cuckolders, if they know about them, still not sure about how obviously differnt they are from humans.
A svartalfs beards is important because the length shows how old they are. Senior svartaelfr have higher authority, so beard length is a quick easy way for the svartaelfr to figure out whos in charge. An alf on the other hand has no need of this and they dont grow beards, so to them a beard is a sign of physical imaturity. Of course this means that svartalf girls do have beards and alf men do not. Do not cut a svartalfrs beard, it will impact their rank in the warren.
Svartalfr are greedy and their greed is due to being focused on securing resources for the warren. Svartalfr live in a communist type society but with less structured government and more gerontocracy. They are somewhat paranoid of outsiders, after all they have to protect the warren. The alfr are more anarchist, not that they go out of their way to oppose governments or anything, they just live outside of normal societal order, not suprising for semi-solitary semi-nomads.
In someways they are like some fey from myth. They sometimes steal babies, switching them with their own. As for what happens to the stolen baby...lets just hope they sold the kid to pay for a boat ticket and didnt just leave them in the woods, would depend on the alf. Like helpful brownies they make all kinds of cool stuff, or do menial labor, just for food. Like traditional faries they sometimes steal horses. Both habits make sense for a travelling alf.