Elves in Eberron

[EggKookoo]

I'm starting up an Eberron campaign, and one of my players is planning to play an elf. She really likes how they're obsessed with immortality and wants to use that as a driving element to her PC's background. I thought, sure, I'll just dig up some bits of info about why the elves are into living forever and help her work it all out. Except... I'm not really finding much in RftLW.

Do older-edition Eberron sources explain this situation better? Is it just thought of as a kind of side effect of them living so long in the first place? Do the Tairnadal share that interest, or is it mostly an Aereni thing? I'm happy to come up with something on my own, but I just want to make sure I'm not missing something somewhere...

[HappyDaze]

The elves of Valenar don't seek to be immortal in the same way as the elves of Aerenal. Instead, they choose an ancestor and emulate them, in effect become immortalized by becoming part of that ancestor's continuing story.

[Fable Wright]

There is a lot out there. There were 5 articles for 3.5e:

The Elves of Aerenal Part 1 (http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/ebds/20050530a)
The Elves of Aerenal Part 2 (http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/ebds/20050613a)
The Elves of Valenar Part 1 (http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/ebds/20041004a)
The Elves of Valenar Part 2 (http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/ebds/20041011a)
And a bit of a history lesson in House Phiarlan. (http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/ebds/20050124a)

And the author's thoughts here (http://keith-baker.com/sidebar-elves-of-eberron/) for a deeper dive, which includes links to the above and a few more non canon sources.

The long and short of it is, imagine that for the entire history of your people, Aristotle was around. You could ask him questions, and he continued a golden age of enlightenment for centuries... and then he died, and it's like all his works were lost.

This was traumatizing enough to the elf race that the Aereni decided that no more of the greats would ever vanish from history. They would be around to guide us. Forever.

Later material tied this into the genesis of the elf race, that the Eladrin who the giants enslaved and turned into elves were initially living in a magnificent spire dedicated to Dollurh. A rest station for lost souls, to record their life stories and let them pass on in peace, at the end. Thus, they already had a natural link to death and undeath, which the (extinct) Qabalrin weaponized to become necromancers of power enough to cow the Giants. So it was already in their ancestral memory, so to speak, and the tragedy of losing the greats catalyzed it to paths of immortality.

[EggKookoo]

Ok, cool, thanks.

The eladrin themselves weren't immortal, were they? Looking at the UA that allows them to be selected as an elf subrace would indicate not, but I'm not sure how that applies to Eberron.

[HappyDaze]

Ok, cool, thanks.

The eladrin themselves weren't immortal, were they? Looking at the UA that allows them to be selected as an elf subrace would indicate not, but I'm not sure how that applies to Eberron.

As written, most of the Elf stuff from Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes--including Eladrin--doesn't fit smoothly into Eberron. You could wedge some it in there, but it'll take some effort, and it might not mesh well with what Eberron provides.

[Fable Wright]

In 4th edition, Eladrin were a core player race along with the elves, so an explanation for those immortal beings as a separate wandering in Eberron had to be shoehorned in.

The lore explanation was that there were 13 Feyspires thay would occasionally shift into Eberron and back to Thelanis. Well, 12 in recent memory. The giants crashed one of those Feyspires, enslaved the Eladrin inside, and turned them into elves to serve them. The Feyspires were a thing, but didn't usually stick around long enough to influence history.

And then after the Mourning, suddenly the Feyspires could no longer return to Thelanis. Bam, instant plot hook for PC Eladrin to go adventuring, a reason they hadn't been changing the setting beforehand, and a reason these immortal beings don't really have a perfect grasp of Eberron's past, what with living in a story and all.

Do throw out MToF elf lore, though. It very much does not apply to Eberron.

[JackPhoenix]

The eladrin themselves weren't immortal, were they? Looking at the UA that allows them to be selected as an elf subrace would indicate not, but I'm not sure how that applies to Eberron.

When Eberron was created back in 3.5, they were. They weren't playable humanoid race, they were immortal CG outsiders, celestials in today's terms, then changed into fey in 4e and the merge of Thelanis and Feywild. The creature type shouldn't matter, they were still the same thing, immortal, powerful magical beings from Thelanis.

4e had 2 kinds of eladrin: the playable race, and the more powerful, immortal archfey. Both types should still exist in 5e... Keith mentioned the later when he was talking about Thelanis, and the former are playable race, though from a non-Eberron supplement.

[EggKookoo]

So it's not outrageous to say the Aereni yearn for immortality out of some genetic or even cultural memory of a time when they actually were? Less that they simply don't like the idea of dying (I mean, who does?) and more along the lines of reclaiming a birthright?

[Sigreid]

I always liked the idea of a mortal achieving immortality and then not knowing how to cope with it.

[MaxWilson]

I always liked the idea of a mortal achieving immortality and then not knowing how to cope with it.

Like Twilight Jack!


His real name wasn't Jack, that was just the name the Storyteller gave him. Even Jack himself had forgotten his real name.

Twilight Jack had lived for over seven thousand years.

He was a normal human, perfectly ordinary in every way except one: he couldn't seem to die. In his seventeenth year he had simply stopped aging. Physically, anyway.

He never learned why it happened. He consulted mage after mage, but he wasn't under any ensorcelment they could discover. He sought out priests of half a hundred deities; they told him he wasn't cursed. He spoke to scientists of fifty different races; even the gnomes told him it wasn't a physiological condition. He wasn't possessed by some strange outerplanar entity; he hadn't been exposed to some unknown substance with youthful side effects; he hadn't passed through a wild magic zone; he hadn't offended any gods; he hadn't stepped in something. In short, he hadn't done anything to gain immortality. It had just happened.

Perhaps most people would have regarded immortality as the ultimate gift. And, for a time (the first few millennia or so) it wasn't too bad.

But eventually the novelty died. Jack was human, after all, and there are some things the human mind just isn't meant to cope with. Like immortality.

[Fable Wright]

So it's not outrageous to say the Aereni yearn for immortality out of some genetic or even cultural memory of a time when they actually were? Less that they simply don't like the idea of dying (I mean, who does?) and more along the lines of reclaiming a birthright?

Nope, that would be a valid interpretation! I'd mention, though, that even before they were immortal, they had strong ties with death. The City of Silver and Bone was the nicest part of Eberron's afterlife... before the Giants broke it. Or you could say that the Aereni yearn for their immortal birthright, while the Valenar yearn for the lost Eladrin's old roles: to record the stories of the dead, and ensure that they were never forgotten. Note that the two aren't mutually exclusive! Many elves cross from Valenar to Aereni or back in their lifetimes. Just remember that they were tied to death long before they became mortals and you're golden.

[Anderlith]

Someone should also mention the elven Dragonmarked House of Death & the Blood of Vol. I’m not an expert on it or I’d go into detail

[Fable Wright]

Someone should also mention the elven Dragonmarked House of Death & the Blood of Vol. I’m not an expert on it or I’d go into detail

The Line of Vol was massacred, and would not really tie into any cultures that still exist, but sure, I'll bite.

There are two types of necromancy. Positive, Irian necromancy that which heals via Cure spells and Resurrection, and negative Mabaran energy. Giving life, versus taking it. The Undying Court achieved immortality through positive necromancy—through the combination of the freely-given devotion of the elves of Aerenal, and the power flowing through Irian manifest zones, they achieve life in immortality. There's a couple catches, of course. If the Aereni population ever substantially decreases, the amount of faith sustaining the Deathless would wane, and in turn the number of Deathless that could be sustained would shrink. Were it bad enough, weaker members of the Court might just turn to dust. Additionally, they cannot move outside a manifest zone of Irian, or they would turn to dust. To travel, they have invented magical devices carried by their attendants that create temporary manifest zones around them. They're nearly artifact level, incredibly rare and expensive, and are vulnerable to destruction, so they are very rarely employed.

Then there's the negative necromancy, pioneered by the Qabalrin elves. Magic Jar immortality. Cloning. Lichdom. Vampirehood. Death Knights. Notice that all of these things are notable for being incredibly difficult to kill, as opposed to vanishing the moment their sustaining energy goes away. The Qabalrin, and the line of Vol who inherited their traditions, believed that their heroes had to stick around, no matter what. Even should the last of the elves fall, their heroes would live on, and take energy from the world if necessary, instead of living on a ration of energy collected as a universal tax. Whether collected by blood (Vampire), living bodies (Magic Jar), magic-filled and powerful reagents (Cloning), or simply drawing energy from the world around them on a constant, passive basis (Death Knight, Lich*), they would not die.

Ironically, this tradition died out. Not because necromancy, surprisingly**, but because some of the brass were getting it on with dragons, and then both Argonnessen and the Aereni agreed to kill them all with fire. FOR GOOD.

Some fragmented remains of the line of Vol still live in the religion of the Blood of Vol. All of us are born immortal, and the gods, if they exist, took it for us. We will become true immortals once more, together, supported and guided by the martyrs who sacrifice the true, perfect immortality of the future for the flawed, torturous existence of undeath in the now, so that they may guide us to the point where we live in utopia. But it's notably a religion and culture that is very distanced from the elves proper. The line of Vol is dead, its teachings heretical, and it's just, well. Now a predominantly human religion.

*Yes, in the 5e monster manual, it claims that liches need to eat souls to stay alive. Eberron was designed far before this lore when liches could simply freely exist after they made their step to lichdom, without need of any sustenance ever.

**Though the Aereni propagandists will tell you that Mabaran necromancy is inherently evil, as it reduces the total life energy in the universe and causes deleterious effects to everyone around yourself. Whether that's true or not, it's the propaganda of the winning side.

[Evaar]

Everyone’s given good info about the Aerenei and Tairnadal. Just to give a little more context to the Eladrin, I think of it like this - humanity has always envisioned diminutive, Fey creatures and how they would do tasks to help us out. To the Giants, that’s what Elves are. Giants just had the arcane might to pull them out of Thelanis and actually enslave them.

This intentionally implies, in my mind, that Thelanis reflects the stories and fantasies of sentient creatures on Eberron. So if Giants were smaller, Elves would have been too.

The Eladrin are the ones who were never dragged out of Thelanis. At not, not until recently.

[xen]

http://keith-baker.com/sidebar-elves-of-eberron/

Here's some newer 5e elven lore from Keith Baker.

Edit: Oh guess this link was in the post above. My bad yo