Elven Subraces: Siblings? or Cousins....

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When playing an elf, what do you call other elves of different subraces?

All elves regardless of subrace are brothers/sisters. Half-elves are Cousins
22
18%
All elves regardless of subrace are cousins. Half-elves included.
4
3%
All elves regardless of subrace are cousins. Screw the half-elves, those mixed-blooded snuggies.
14
11%
Elves of similar subraces are brothers/sisters, while differing subraces and half-elves are cousins.
12
10%
Elves of similar subraces are brothers/sisters, while differing subraces are cousins. Half-elves are nothing to me.
10
8%
Only surface elves are brothers/sisters, while non-surface elves *coughdrowcough* are cousins.
3
2%
Only surface elves are cousins. Drow are monsters, just kill them.
29
23%
Something not listed above (please specify below)
6
5%
I am drow, and will kill you for participating in this poll.
24
19%
 
Total votes: 124

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The GrumpyCat
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Re: Elven Subraces: Siblings? or Cousins....

Post by The GrumpyCat » Sun Sep 15, 2019 9:23 am

However, having played for a few days now, it seems to me there's very little in terms of racial tension. Only once has my half-elf been insulted on account of his mixed heritage, and therefore I'm wondering if my toon's reasoning for trying to pass himself off as human is unwarranted and doesn't fit greater DnD lore. I'm just wondering what people who are more familiar than I am with this stuff think about all this...
I've not noticed a huge amount of halfelf tension in Arelith (though others are free to correct me if I'm wrong) but it certainly exists in other parts of Fearun.

One idea that comes to mind immedatly is that your character could be from a place called Hillsfar in the Moonseas (look it up!). That's a very pro-human approach and I imagine being a halfelf would cause major issues there. It would explain where your elven parent went too. Try a little research on it, and maybe you can make a good backstory out of it, and a reason for your character to be so wary about revealing their half-elf nature. which might make good character development/plot.
This too shall pass.

(I now have a DM Discord (I hope) It's DM GrumpyCat#7185 but please keep in mind I'm very busy IRL so I can't promise how quick I'll get back to you.)

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lmoen
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Re: Elven Subraces: Siblings? or Cousins....

Post by lmoen » Sun Sep 15, 2019 12:47 pm

My elves call half-elves humans. They refuse to acknowledge their elf heritage either because they can't tell or because they are a snobbish gold elf and half-elves are abominations to them, which is followed by an insult. It's a little harder to play though as such tension is typically criminalized or condemned IC for better or worse, so the tension can't be played up as much as I would like.

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aergnist
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Re: Elven Subraces: Siblings? or Cousins....

Post by aergnist » Sun Sep 15, 2019 6:39 pm

One pet peeve of mine is precisely how swimmingly well half-elves and elves tend to get along on Arelith. Like I think I've voiced on Discord servers here and there when playing a half-elf, I've often been surprised/let down by the lovey-dovey and universally accepting attitude I meet when interacting with elves, even when I try to push buttons. I've wished for and tended to fish for opportunities to play more on more controversial attitudes that my character as a half-elf had, but there wasn't a lot of room for in the midst of the all-encompassing happy-go-huggy cousin-fest.

That said, I don't actually think it's a big problem; if I absolutely needed those interactions I could have just gone harder into getting them.

Arelith has many very weird quirks that do not fit well with the actual lore and most of them (I think) are pretty harmless, the awkwardly tolerant elves being one such mostly harmless thing. And trying to fit a comparatively extreme attitude into that environment, even if totally appropriate according to lore, is probably always gonna have to buckle against what all the other players wanna do anyway.

It seems way more feasible to me to just accept the reality we have on the server, dictated by the actual players, and try to mold that rather than force something (especially since it always feels so extremely awkward when the OOC desire to make things CORRECT is showing), and rejoice at the times the representation is awesome.

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Re: Elven Subraces: Siblings? or Cousins....

Post by R0GUE » Mon Sep 16, 2019 1:25 am

I feel like people who play surface elves will most of the time, skew toward playing "good guys" and that usually means being fairly tolerant of other races and even half elves. It's also easier to find a group to RP with if you aren't going around being a racist jerk (even if it's all in good faith RP). I've definitely run into more intolerant RP from humans than elves, with my half-elf, despite the reputation of elves as haughty.

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Rockstar1984
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Re: Elven Subraces: Siblings? or Cousins....

Post by Rockstar1984 » Wed Sep 18, 2019 7:49 am

Subutai wrote:
Sun Sep 15, 2019 1:25 am
I think the real message here is that with all these cousins and siblings, Myon is basically just Arelith's Alabama.
YEE (and I cannot stress this enough) HAW
Legit though came here to say this because I remember when there was a gay elf couple that referred to each other as brothers and WHEW-WEE was I confused. And I'll add, that this was before I even knew that the brother/sister/cousin thing was a thing.

Oh the year was 1778...


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