[World building] Elves, the rise of civilisation, and lost history

[Albions_Angel]

Hi all

Wanted some advice. I tend to go a little overboard with my world building, and create history as well as geography and politics, often very detailed. But I am running consistently into a problem with Elves.

At max, an elf will live 750 years in 3.5e. On average, purely on dice roll, they will live 550 years (give or take), but we can assume that elves live so long that the vast majority actually have access to things that prolong their lives in some way, probably pushing them to 650 or so years commonly.

That means they form part of living history, and if I want some mystery to a civilisation that came before, I cant just stick it 1000 or 2000 years ago because there will be elves who remember their grandparents talking about it DIRECTLY. But if I push the time frame back beyond that, then I run into questions of "Well, sure, magic is great, but why is everyone still beating each other up with pointy sticks instead of gunpowder?". Even if you say that civilisation doesnt progress because of magic taking away the need for steam or electricity, you are still left asking why a society is mostly agrarian rather than urban.

Basically, either I have to kill off my elves with plagues every few hundred years, have no historical mysteries within the last 5000 years, or segregate the elves somehow, and frankly, its just not easy to do that.

Does anyone have any advice? I can get more specific if people want on my particular problem, but this is more of a general thing too.

[TorsteinTheRed]

Elves live a very long time, therefore they take a long time to develop something new. This ranges from whatever arts happen to be in fashion at the time, to new applications for a particular spell that they've discovered. They'll absolutely master the craft of creating a wattle and daub hut, but it takes a once-in-a-century genius(like a PC?) to think of using Plant Growth and Warp Wood spells to speed up the process of wooden home construction.

[Palanan]

The simplest solution is to have the elves living at a very low population density, in small and widely scattered communities. This would reduce the opportunity for any one community to have heard of a “mystery” or other obscure historical event—especially if it’s in human history, which the elves might not be as interested in following in any case.

Tolkien’s elves, at least in the Third Age, tended to view humans as not far from mayflies, and I think it might have been Glorfindel who commented he couldn’t always tell them apart. This, combined with their rarity and secretive ways, easily makes them insular enough that they’re poorly informed about current events in human realms, to say nothing of human dealings thousands of years ago.

[Grim Reader]

I've considered the same problem. I ended up consolidating the issue with another one that's been nagging me when worldbuilding: I lean a bit towards the simulationist side when worldbuilding, and as science has progressed its become more and more obvious that the half-elf is a very bad simulation of a hybrid.

What I ended up doing was push everything up one generation. The Elves have, as Tolkien put it, all gone into the west.

The half-elves are left, a dying race. The last notes of an immortal song, walking a mortal earth. Mechanically, they are the elves. Filed off the serial numbers and traded some penalties on social skills for bonuses to physical ones.

The previous half-elves became the Elfkind, humans with elven blood. Children of the half-elves or the occasional atavism born to parents with traces of Elfblood. They are the last echoes of the blood of the outmost west.

[Bakkan]

Your point about society developing towards a more urban environment given the basic assumptions of the system is a good one. The Tippyverse, as explained by Emperor Tippy on these forums, is one attempt at reasonably extrapolating the actual effects of magic on society. In that setting, the vast majority of people live in massive cites that connect to each other via teleportation circles.

The point is, if you want to have a setting that doesn't develop into something like that but still stands up to scrutiny, you need some external constraints. Either the gods limit the development of mortals somehow, or there are periodic plagues that regress society, or there is so much war that no one has time to build.

[daremetoidareyo]

Elves live in perfect natural balance with their environment and there for don't value progress, preferring stability of self sufficiency. Obviously, this would put their society as a communistic one cuz capitalism eats up geography and us very bad at balance.

[Jack_McSnatch]

So the gunpowder thing is fairly easy to explain. You have to remember, while black powder was invented in the 9th century, it wasn't used to great effect until the 12th, 13th centuries. There was lots going on before that. All these centuries are AD, humans were running around being obnoxious long before that.

Elves being long lived doesn't automatically clue them in to ancient mysteries based on countries. While they may know more than most people do about the lost, ancient kingdom of Hamallamadingdong, they've always lived in the forests of Abudjaba. They don't know that the king of Hama was working on a demon gate and worshipped Demogorgon, all they know is there was this kingdom with a long, stupid name, the people who lived there were all kinda dickish, and they kept trying to cut down the elves' trees.

[Tiktakkat]

Basically, either I have to kill off my elves with plagues every few hundred years, have no historical mysteries within the last 5000 years, or segregate the elves somehow, and frankly, its just not easy to do that.

Does anyone have any advice? I can get more specific if people want on my particular problem, but this is more of a general thing too.

Actually, it is quite easy to segregate the elves somehow:
Give them a historical mystery reason not to want to talk about many things in the past.

I took the "elves are not merely haughty about their superiority, but downright obnoxious about it" trope and ran with it.
The elves in the main campaign area are refugees who arrived about 5,000 years ago.
They were driven from their previous homelands by a divine curse because they became "offended" by animalistic humanoids and began "cleansing" them.
Not being ones to learn, they immediately began "cleansing" tauric humanoids in the new region, successfully driving out the vast majority of them.
"Unfortunately" for them, the local humans managed to develop a rather advanced civilization while the elves were occupied with "cleaning up the neighborhood", ending with the destruction of one of the new elven kingdoms and the reduced power of another.
Then more humans began migrating into the area, along with goblinoids and orcs, resulting in a second elven kingdom being effectively destroyed, while the last one had to turn its attention to combatting a threat from aboleth.

In the last thousand years of history humans have come to absolutely dominate the area.
Two of the ancient elven kingdoms are scattered remnants, struggling to survive. Only one of them preserves a bare shadow of their ancient lore.
One is lost in delusions of its ancient glory, issuing orders to its neighbors and being thoroughly ignored.
The fourth is caught up in its secret crusade to save the world, incidentally providing an actual chance at salvation for all elves for their past crimes.

The elves have very little desire to share any of the historical secrets they know.
"Why yes, we DID exterminate all those wemics and reduced the centaurs to scattered bands who serve us out of fear rather than a shared love of the forests."
"Oh that? Yes, that's a ruin of the humans who lived here first. Inside you are certain to find the magical secrets they used to utterly destroy our greatest kingdom. How can we help you recover them so you can use them against your enemies?"
"Hah! You pathetic, short-lived, pseudo-monkeys! How many times did we tell you to stop trying to rule yourselves and just be our serfs the way you were meant to be? What? How to defeat that unspeakable horror from times past? That is way above your level puny human. If we need you to serve as spear-fodder you will be given a pointy stick when the time comes. Now go and prepare my dinner. I am weary from chastising you for your foolish insolence!"

Just because the elves know "everything" doesn't mean they need to share.


But if I push the time frame back beyond that, then I run into questions of "Well, sure, magic is great, but why is everyone still beating each other up with pointy sticks instead of gunpowder?". Even if you say that civilisation doesnt progress because of magic taking away the need for steam or electricity, you are still left asking why a society is mostly agrarian rather than urban.

That depends on how you structure that history.
One thing people do is try and make their history too glorious for too long, and have everyone using plate armor and early Renaissance technology in the distant past, rather than leaving those for "modern" development.
What I did when coordinating the history for the setting I use is make a timeline of the scattered references, then put "real world" equivalents next to the in-game dating system dates. That gave me a perspective for how long ago stuff happened to the human mind, as well as a perspective for how much technological development could have occurred.
Say you set your "starting date" as the equivalent of 1500 AD. You can now trace back for how long plate armor has been about, how long mail was dominant, when your Bronze Age turned into the Iron Age, and some space to cover the transition from Stone Age to Bronze Age.
Of course that means you cannot place various relics in the too distant past because they simply wouldn't exist. That suit of magical full plate is simply not more than 100 years old, no matter what grandiose deeds were performed with it. A suit of mail however can get more of a history, and the Spear of Triumph can easily be older. (Provided the magic keeps the wood intact, or is just focused in the magically strengthened bronze head that just keeps getting attached to new hafts.)

Or . . .

You do go the full pulp path, like Robert E. Howard, and destroy the entire world, reducing everyone to barely human (or elven) savagery, requiring them to claw their way back from the Stone Age.
The elves will still have some advantage of remembering stuff from 1,000 years ago, but that is minor compared to all the secrets from 10,000 years ago that everyone has lost.

[Karl Aegis]

Your elves could have been dead for most of their lifespan. They're a warrior race. Plenty of them are going to die. They probably stayed dead for quite a while. It takes decades to train someone to be able to cast Resurrection and diamonds don't grow on trees. But, it takes so long to get a new warrior for your warrior race that you're better off recycling the old ones. Each individual could have memories from many eras, but very few of them have the complete picture. Those that do have the complete picture would probably die of old age sooner than the ones with only fragments since they were alive more continuously losing that piece of history entirely to books and letters.

[Afgncaap5]

There are lots of good solutions to this problem, but before trying to solve be sure where you want elves to sit on the continuum between "Mysterious Fairy Creatures" and "Basically Long-Lived Humans With Pointy Ears." Some of the answers will make more or less sense depending on where you are on that span.

On the gunpowder issue, for instance: necessity is the mother of invention, and elves generally have it pretty sweet in most settings. Weather through ancient civilizations that had a lot of prep time, inherent awesomeness of their own particular brand of magic, or a nigh-magical skill at swordplay and archery, it's possible that elves *did* discover gunpowder before, said "Well, yes, but why?", never developed it, and gradually forgot about it as more than a passing fad that the wizards and alchemists worked on for a bit. A solution like that could fit about anywhere on the spectrum, but would be flavored differently.

On the issue of being isolated, if you're leaning more toward the "fairy creatures" side of things then elves might not be isolated so much as they might lack a desire to go far. If every day you wake up in an awesome place of partying, dances, hunting, sports, arts, and all the kinds of leisure that don't lend themselves to boredom, then you can get elves who are perfectly happy with staying more or less where they've always been. Sure, every decade or so someone says "How about this for a lark: let's go and see what the humans and dwarves have gotten up to?", and a few probably think that sounds like a great time, but for the most part travel and exploration aren't really what they're all about. This, naturally, makes a lot less sense if they're on the "more or less pointy-eared humans" end of the spectrum.

(I would also recommend taking a look at the differences between kinds of elves in Warcraft 3 or World of Warcraft if you can get a chance to. They might not have as many different kinds of elf as Tolkien did, but unlike Tolkien they actually spend time showcasing the differences in culture and attitude between the different elf cultures. No matter which elves you look at, they're definitely *elves*, but they're still different in their reasons for how they operate and why they are the way they are.)

[Albions_Angel]

Maybe it would be useful to give a touch of context, as most of the suggestions, while good, are incomparable with my world as it currently stands.

In the far north or my world there exists a strange land. Some time ago, roughly x-thousand years, this land was colonized by a group of archdruids who saw the advance of civilization, and sought to protect the wilds somewhere out of most people reach. This region lies well within the arctic circle, but the druids, powerful and patient, carefully sculpted it into a land of temperate forests, driving the ice north beyond a vast range of mountains they threw up.

Some time after, a Cataclysm happened. It happened to several areas of the world, but not to everyone. One region of the world lost its gods, leaving the inhabitants without divine magic and blaming arcane (and subsequently turning to psionics). Another became connected to the elemental plane of fire, forming a vast ash desert. Civilizations fell, and an entire continent was sunk below the waves. And one race of people, previously separated by race and religion, were forced to band together under 9 great rulers, and flee their homeland.

Cast from one place to another, they eventually found the land of the druids in the north. They begged (and were granted) sanctuary, but that was not enough for the 9 lords, who sought to reclaim their lost power. They took more and more, until the druids fought back. But they had passed on too many of their secrets to these new comers, and using the very magic they had been taught, plus their own great strength, the 9 lords slaughtered the Druids in a bloody war, and exterminated the fey.

Unfortunately, this caused the spells holding back the ice to fail, and the lords struggled to contain it. Their efforts to protect their people granted them great power, but left the land partially frozen, not as bad as it would have been without the original interference, but still bitterly cold. The lords chose the path of ascension, creating a plane of their own from which they could better control the climate of their patch of the material world. They also created new fey to safeguard the changing of the seasons.

Being vain, they decreed a new history. There were no druids, but instead Ice Mages, evil and bitter. The war was to stop them covering the whole world in ice, and its their lingering magic that makes the land so hard to work. The people would have been slaughtered without the war.

And so thats what the people of Jarlheim believe. Its been too long to remember what truly happened. The hard land makes the people of Jarlheim hardy, but has stunted their development, leaving them in the dark ages somewhat.

The issues is, if I make the Cataclysm and the "Ice Wars" only a few thousand years ago, the local elves (remember, Jarlheim is a fairly mixed population due to the refugee nature of the people) will remember the wars directly. But, if I make them TOO far in the past, then its A) hard to believe that the lords/gods could have kept a lid on it AND stopped their development for so long, and B) other nations wouldnt have progressed to obscene levels.

The world is supposed to be fairly free to travel, with Jarlheim as a dark ages northern europe, some parts as native american desert or Mongolian steppes of the roughly 1400s, an area that is effectively Buddhist/Hindu India pre-British, late medieval Europe and Crusades era Middle East. There are other areas but the point is, theres only about 1000 years of development across different parts of the entire globe. The Cataclysm could have set things back a lot, but I need to get rid of the pesky elf problem when some cultures (like Jarlheim) have very mixed race populations and others, like Ivernia, have very segregated populations.

How far back should x-thousand be? When should the Cataclysm take place?

In its current form, the druids form their little stronghold about 10,000 years ago (fine by me, the druid anti aging capstone in my world also makes them immortal, but few ever reach it), and then the Jarlheim refugees turn up and have their little war about 4000 years ago. But 4000 years is a heck of a lot of time, and yet still only about 6 elf generations. Maybe I could say Jarlheim's elves dont live that long because of interbreeding? And that other nations just didnt give a damn about Jarlheim until the last 200 years or so when they began trading in a big way?

I dont know. It seems like a huge problem, both for this specific thing and for actually trying to sus out a world history. Its almost like my human perception of history just doesnt make sense in the context of a race that basically lives forever.