Wood Elves 8th Edition Pdf

[Shane Rouse]

Elvesare a magical people of otherworldly grace, living in places of ethereal beauty, in the midst of ancient forests or in silvery spires glittering with faerie light, where soft music drifts through the air and gentle fragrances waft on the breeze. Elves love nature and magic, art and artistry, music and poetry.

Descended from an earlier subrace of dark-skinned elves, the drow were banished from the surface world for following the goddess Lolth down the path to evil and corruption. Now they have built their own civilization in the depths of the Underdark, patterned after the Way of Lolth. Also called dark elves. The drow have black skin that resembles polished obsidian and stark white or pale yellow hair. They commonly have very pale eyes (so pale as to be mistaken for white) in shades of lilac, silver, pink, red, and blue. They lend to be smaller and thinner than most elves.

As a high elf, you have a keen mind and a mastery of at least the basics of magic. In many of the worlds of D&D, there are two kinds of high elves. One type (which includes the gray elves and valley elves of Greyhawk, the Silvanesti of Dragonlance, and the sun elves of the Forgotten Realms) is haughty and reclusive, believing themselves to be superior to non-elves and even other elves. The other type (including the high elves of Greyhawk. the Qualinesti of Dragonlance, and the moon elves of the Forgotten Realms) are more common and more friendly, and often encountered among humans and other races.

The sun elves of Faerun (also called gold elves or sunrise elves) have bronze skin and hair of copper, black, or golden blood. Their eyes are golden, silver, or black. Moon elves (also called silver elves or gray elves) are much paler, with alabaster skin sometimes tinged with blue. They often have hair of silver-while, black, or blue, but various shades of blond, brown, and red are not uncommon. Their eyes are blue or green and flecked with gold.

As a wood elf, you have keen senses and intuition, and your fleet feet carry you quickly and stealthily through your native forests. This category includes the wild elves (grugach) of Greyhawk and the Kagonesti of Dragonlance, as well as the races called wood elves in Greyhawk and the Forgotten Realms. In Faerun, wood elves (also called wild elves. green elves, or forest elves) are reclusive and distrusting of non-elves.

Wood elves' skin tends to be copperish in hue, sometimes with traces of green. Their hair tends toward browns and blacks, but it is occasionally blond or copper-colored. Their eyes are green, brown, or hazel.

The pallid elves are a mystical and insightful people with skin as pale as the surface of Exandria's largest moon. They emerged from the Pallid Grove this century and wander the world with childlike curiosity.

Long ago, groups of elves ventured from the Feywild to the Astral Plane to be closer to their gods. Life in the Silver Void has imbued their souls with a spark of divine light. That light manifests as a starry gleam in an astral elf's eyes.

Because nothing ages on the Astral Plane, astral elves who inhabit that plane can be very old, and their longevity gives them an unusual perspective on the passage of time. Some are prone to melancholy, while others might display an absence of feeling. Many look for creative ways to occupy themselves. Whether they choose to live in quiet contemplation or strike out to explore the reaches of the multiverse, astral elves tend to see things through the lens of time as having little or no meaning to them. Astral elves who don't dwell in the Astral Plane can live to be more than 750 years old.

Elves who forsake technology entirely are called the Tirahar. Some elves with Tirahar sympathies live within cities or farms, but most simply withdraw to the wilder areas of Kaladesh. No more than one in a hundred elves is counted among the Tirahar, and many members of other races are unaware that these reclusive elves even exist.

The Vahadar are elves who dwell in the cities of Kaladesh. They are comfortable with technology, and work as planners, architects, aether-seers, or inventors. Some of them use the techniques of Bishtahar cultivators to grow food on rooftops, towers, and greenways. The Vahadar are generally integrated into the rest of society on Kaladesh, living in cities dominated by the other races (though, as in Ghirapur, many of them live in specific garden-like neighborhoods) and engaging in trade.

Elves are strongly associated with nature, the magic that flows through their forest homes. Their shamans and druids channel this magic of life and growth, communing with the land or the spirits of the departed. Striving to live in harmony with nature, they celebrate the ties between their communities and their connection with the broader world around them.

The Tajuru nation is the largest of the three main elven nations, concentrated in Murasa and spread across other parts of Zendikar as hundreds of far-flung clans. Tajuru elves are the most open to people of other races, seeing their skills and perspectives as valuable new tools for survival. The Tajuru are also more open to new lifestyles, be it living in a mountaintop citadel or roaming grassy plains.

Elves of the Mul Daya nation of Bala Ged are set apart from other elves by their relationship with the spirits of their elven ancestors. To the Mul Daya, the spirit world and the mortal realm are different only in terms of their tangibility. Death and the spirits of the dead are as much a part of the lives of the Mul Daya as is the natural world. This is not a macabre sentiment to the elves; they simply view it as the truest sense of the natural order.

Mul Daya elves can often be recognized by their face painting and tattooing. Many Mul Daya decorate their skins with an enwrapping vine motif, and make use of poisons and acids collected at great cost from strange creatures and plants in the depths of Kazandu.

The grugach of the world of Greyhawk shun contact with other folk, preferring the solace of the deepest forests and the companionship of wild animals. Even other elves draw their suspicion.

The grugach tend toward chaos and neutrality. They feel no special duty to anyone beyond their own folk and the forest that is their home. Troubles beyond their borders are best kept there. At the same time, they harbor little ambition beyond a peaceful coexistence with nature.

If anyone is fool enough to disturb a grugach realm, these elves take to arms and fight in earnest. Grugach master the basic weapons needed to hunt and forage in the wood. Every copse of trees becomes a sniper's nest, and each forest meadow is an ambush point. The grugach set pits filled with stakes, snares that leave an intruder helpless to grugach arrows, and other snares designed to kill rather than capture. The grugach fight to the death to preserve their realms.

Wood elves were easily identifiable by their coppery skin and green, brown, or hazel eyes. Wood elven hair was usually black or brown,[1] although hues such as blond or copper red were also found. Wood elves tended to dress in simple clothes, similar to those of the moon elves but with fewer bold colors and a greater number of earth tones that blended into their natural surroundings. Accustomed to a harsh, naturalistic lifestyle, wood elves loved to wear leather armor, even when they were not under immediate threat. Wood elves were roughly identical to other elves in height and build, with males larger than females.[5]

As a people, wood elves were largely seen as calm and level-headed. Arousing strong emotions in wood elves was not something that was easily done, although many did have a strong aversion for large cities, having lost the passion for urbanization after the fall of Earlann. To wood elves, the trappings of civilization, including the mightiest of fortresses or tallest walls, were transient and impermanent things that would eventually be overcome by the long processes of nature. To many, this attitude seemed condescending, weakening the bonds between wood elves and other races.[5] Additionally, wood elves could sometimes seem off-putting compared to other Tel-quessir, with a gruff manner that made them less charismatic, despite their avowed compassion and humility.[1]

Wood elven romantic and sexual relationships were often polyamorous in nature, members of the race freely engaging or ceasing relations with new partners. Feelings of jealousy and possessiveness were as a result viewed by the race as reasons for teasing or mockery. As a result of these perspectives on love, high elves often believed that any relationships engaged with wood elves would be destined to fail from the start.[6]

Wood elves considered themselves the heirs of the ancient elven empires established prior to the Crown Wars, but they shared few of the cultural characteristics that marked such early realms as Aryvandaar and Ilythiir. Although a proud people, wood elves felt that compassion was a greater virtue than strength and wood elven realms were less concerned with expansion than they were with maintaining amiable relations with their neighbors.[5] Wood elves were not nomadic, however, as was common amongst the wild elves and instead they were organized into scattered, carefully concealed villages united under a gerontocratic hierarchy composed of village councils consisting of the most distinguished families' eldest members. These councils were often advised by local druids, whose influence played no small part in wood elven politics and who frequently served as the webbing that bound any number of villages together as one realm.[5]

Wood elves commonly felt that they were in harmony with their natural surroundings and an examination of their art helped to justify this belief. While wood elves did not wander like wild animals as the wild elves did, wood elves did their best to have a minimal impact on their natural surroundings, a fact reflected in their architecture. Frequently, wood elven homes were made of natural fieldstone or carefully furnished wood, but on occasion wood elves were known to do without even these creature comforts, living in the limbs of mighty trees or sheltered caves, rejecting furniture or any possessions they couldn't carry with them. So close did wood elven villages resemble their surroundings that humans were occasionally known to wander through one without even noticing. Increased contact with other races since the end of the Retreat caused some of these cultural practices to come into question but for the large part the wood elves of the 14th century DR lived much the same as their ancestors did.[5]

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