src="http://www.tentonhammer.com/image/view/254594">

src="http://www.tentonhammer.com/image/view/254595">

Race: Elf

Identifying Characteristics:

Pointed ears

Slim build

Overwhelming sense of self-importance



Strengths:

Generally gifted with bows, magic, the arts

Highly attuned with nature

Extreme longevity

Super-model looks

Weaknesses:

Physically frail

Are often either mopey and emo or aggressively upbeat - annoying

either way

either way A tendency towards extreme racism

Description:

Elves occur in one form or another in nearly every fantasy game ever

made. Indeed, along with magic, swords and goblins, elves more or less

define the high-fantasy genre. You can thank Tolkien for that. He was not

the very first to write about them, but his ancient warrior-poet elves,

abstracted from Norse and Western European folklore, were so thoroughly

detailed and richly portrayed that they continue to be "borrowed" by

fantasy writers to this day. But each writer seems to take them further

and further away from their roots, narrowing in on some aspect or other of

Tolkien's originals and then being "that guy."

One aspect is their close ties to nature. Tolkien's elves weren't the

tree-hugging, whale-saving hippies that some might make them out to be.

They hunted game and rode horses just like the grubby men from the less

awesome places of Middle-Earth. They made stuff out of metal and stone.

They were fierce warriors. Incidentally, they grew magical trees in

Lothlorien and lived in them, but they also built the Last Homely House in

Rivendell and a bunch of old buildings in Hollin that fell to ruin. They

weren't just tree-huggers - they were badasses with vaguely supernatural

powers.

That doesn't stop some writers from depicting them as perpetual

tree-huggers, though. Some even take it to extremes. We all recognize that

the Sylvari in Guild Wars 2 are not Elves. But let's be honest with each

other here: they totally are and we all know it. They're the epitome of

the tree-hugger aspect, taken to the extreme and then made creepy. The

Sylvari are not entirely opposed to violence - that simply wouldn't work

in a video game; peacenik pacifism is usually limited to literature - but

there's no denying that they do indeed love their flora. Perhaps they are

more closely-related to Dryads or Wood Nymphs, but those various fey all

fall under the umbrella category of tree-hugging elves.

At the other end of this spectrum, but equally extreme, are the Bosmer of

the Elder Scrolls games. They are so tree-hug-alicious that their official

state religion requires them to harm no plants or even to eat them.

Instead, they are pure carnivores and use only animal products to make

stuff. They make booze out of milk, wear only leather clothing and

cannibalize their own dead. That's not something Elves did in

Middle-Earth.

Of course, Tolkien's elves also exemplify two very negative

characteristics of elves: self-obsessed moodiness and terrible racism.

The navel-gazing male model is another fantasy staple that has a very

strong appeal to the young female audience who haven't yet outgrown the

"bad boy" phase - damaged and "fixable," but also safe. He will talk about

his feelings - sorrow, mostly, because that's how elves roll - and he's

amazing and graceful and dangerous with his weapons, but he won't steal

your stereo or get drunk and punch holes in your walls. He'll write poems

about loss and sorrow and the moon, and then kill some Orcs,

Legolas-style.

Elves wear their sorrow like a fashion statement, the same as the emo

kids from a few years ago. And just like the emo scene, that moodiness

gets real old real fast, and then it's no longer interesting. It's just

aggravating. Go to the Grey Havens and shut up already.

On the other end of that scale are the overly-capricious manic fey -

Elves so aggressively cheerful, all the time, that it's unlikely such a

species would survive for very long in a world with Dwarves and Orcs. Or

laws of physics. Tolkien's Elves walked a very fine line in this respect -

on the one hand, you had characters like Galadriel and Elrond, who were

4srs 24-7. On the other hand, you had the merry jerks who pranced around

in the woods near Greenhall in the Shire, singing their tinkly songs at

Frodo and his Hobbit homies who were attempting to keep away from the

black riders and rolling silently.

Elves are also probably the biggest racists in the entire fantasy

bestiary. It's not the kind of low-brow hate-group racism that involves

staging loud and disgusting protests, but the very polite kind that is

even more disturbing because the tone makes you think it might not be such

a terrible thing. Elves quite plainly believe themselves to be

axiomatically superior to the other races. Perhaps it's because they live

longer, or they are more in-tune with nature, or they are prettier and

taller and slimmer, or they're better at magic, or their culture is way

older than anything else ever. But whatever it is, it surely makes them

think they are way better than everyone else. In fantasy literature, the

often-used term is "haughty," but what it boils down to is something a lot

uglier than high-bred haughtiness.

The Altmer of the Elder Scrolls are a prime example of this. Queen

Ayrenn, leader of the Aldmeri Dominion in Elder Scrolls Online, claims to

have "no hatred for the races of Man," but goes on to describe them as

impatient children that are dumber than High Elf babies. In other words,

"It's not that we hate you; we just believe you under-beings are too

stupid and backwards to do anything correctly." They're not really much

better in any other setting, either.

Elves are usually more fun to play than Humans. In essence, they

encapsulate the entire experience of the fantasy RPG, in that they are

everything we wish we could be. They look like us, only hotter. They live

forever. They're smarter than us, and better at the things that make

high-fantasy-genre games awesome. They are the bread and butter of the

escapist. And they're slightly more accessible to the average player than

the other staple fantasy races, because they're not short or beastly. At

least, not physically. But if you want to play one, be prepared to recite

a lot of poetry about the sun and moon and trees and sorrow.

Got a pet peeve about Elves? Let us know in our comments!