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  1. #11
    Shadewulf@aol.co
    Guest

    Gheallie Sidhe and Alignment

    Well, this has been an interesting, if not lengthy, debate. From what I
    remember, this was an alignment discussion originally, and it has been
    expanded upon since then. I will say some things, as I find this discussion
    fascinating.

    Since this whole debate has blossomed into a wide topic now, I would like to
    address the issue of history, specifically the coming of the humans to Cerilia
    when the elves were more populous and in control of more land. My impression
    from all the BR material is that the elves lived in most of the lands (not
    all), and they were not limited to the woodlands. Specifically, this seems to
    be true of the Anuirean lands.

    With the coming of the humans, the elves found that they were in competition
    for what they saw as their lands. Naturally, the humans saw otherwise. As a
    result of this, there was conflict between the two races. Over a long span of
    time, and for various reasons, the elves lost out in this competition (this is
    a word used by me, and not meant to downplay the intense struggle between the
    two races). They were pushed back great distances, both physically and
    culturally, IMHO.

    For all of this, the humans, overall, were doing what they, and many other
    races, see as right and proper, which is might makes right (bluntly put). They
    were determined to get what they wanted, and the elves were also. The elves
    lost, and are still losing. This is the way it seems have been, and the way it
    will be. To me, this means there was a war of conquest going on over a period
    of time (very long for humans, not as long for elves). I believe that the
    elves see humans as one because, in effect for them, they are. Whereas the
    humans, with their versatile numbers and innate differences, come at the elves
    in all directions but still see the elves as one also. Both races fail to see
    that their vision is too narrow, for varying reasons.

    As I see it, the elves view the current situation as a war, for their very
    survival. Because they are indeed losing, and it looks grim indeed. The humans
    do not, for they are not as in much danger as the elves, and there are
    different factions, none of them coordinated, but most having a negative
    impact upon the remaining elves.. I am not discounting the threat of the
    Gorgon here, please note. I simply believe that the elves are surrounded on
    all sides (not just by humans, but they are the greatest threat IMO), and,
    over the course of time, have lost so much, perhaps too much to recover from.

    All this means, to me, is that the elves are fighting to survive, whereas the
    humans are fighting to expand. It looks like neither side is appreciative of
    the other, and a fair case could be made the humans do not even realize that
    the elves are seeing this as a matter of survival. Especially since the humans
    are not united, but fractured., and coming at the elves in so many
    directions., unintentionally perhaps.

    I do believe this has relevance to the wide topic of the Gheallie Sidhe
    alignment and human issue. I am not referring to the narrowly defined good-
    evil argument (which I am not sure is valid in and of itself), but the broad
    multi-cultural debate.

    This brings me to another point, related IMO. I do believe that those who do
    not think the "point of view" is a valid outlook miss the point. Those of us
    who think that the multi-POV is true do not consider our beliefs "nonsense,"
    nor others for that matter. We all have different POV, some may be similar,
    and some may be polar. There is no one POV. That, for me, is preferable,
    Otherwise, we would not be discussing this, it seems to me. Alright, end of
    rant.

    So, I will sum up all this rambling, in a semi-concise manner even! The
    history of the elves and the humans does have direct relevance upon the
    current situation, esp. the GS-human interactions. To disregard this is a
    mistake in my opinion, since there is a belief by some that the humans have
    done no, or little, wrongs to the elves. I think both have done wrong to each
    other, with the elves losing out so far, and probably failing altogether in
    the long term. There has been a supposition that the humans have not warred
    upon the elves. This belief is in error. BR history, even brief as it is,
    shows that there have been such wars. . Again, this is my belief.

    I see this as one long cultural conquest, the humans over the elves. With the
    humans slowly but surely beating the elves. Military war is not the only way
    to conquer. Just as the GS are deplorable elves, I believe the same is true of
    the humans. They are just not as well known. Not yet anyway.

    Lastly, when all is said and done, all this comes down to personal belief,
    perception, and outlook. Which is fine with me, as this is indicative of all
    the diversity that all our minds can bring forth.

    Na Ja. I am finally done now. On to the next person. Take care and enjoy what
    you can.

    Shadewulf

  2. #12
    Jim Cooper
    Guest

    Gheallie Sidhe and Alignment

    Daniel McSorley wrote:
    > "Humanity" is not trying to kill elves.

  3. #13
    Daniel McSorley
    Guest

    Gheallie Sidhe and Alignment

    From: Galwylin
    >At 08:16 PM 10/15/98 -0400, Daniel McSorley wrote:
    >>"Humanity" is not trying to kill elves. Some
    >>individual humans might be, but not "humanity" in general. There is
    >>therefore no comparison between war, and the actions of the GS.
    >
    >I've not decided fully on if the gheallie Sidhe is evil or not.
    THAT WAS THE ORIGINAL QUESTION!!!!!! heh. Sorry, if you're not
    discussing that, I was, so we're gonna completely miss each other.

    >But if
    >humans aren't killing the elves then why are the elves in decline?
    I left the appropriate chunk of my post up there. Nowhere does it say
    that humans aren't killing elves. The GS hates _humanity_ as a whole, but
    _humanity_ isn't killing elves, individual humans are, and for the GS to
    generalize that to all humans is completely evil.

    >Yes, its cruel. But there's only one resource to divide between humans and
    >elves, the forests. There isn't the abundance that there once were. Do we
    >give it to the humans because they are victims of their own society or do
    >we give it the elves?
    That is an issue of competition, however: in the discussion of the
    alignment of the GS, the peasants being competitors for resources is
    insufficient reason for the GS to kill them and remain good.

    >I say give because the ones we label evil also
    >inherit being the ones non-deserving of the forests.
    Huh?

    >I haven't had the
    >chance to read up on how elves treat the Rjurik. They have a more
    >nature-loving society. How are they treated by the elves and the >gheallie
    Sidhe?
    >
    I'm inclined to say the GS kills them anyway, and the rest of the elves
    have more individual reactions: you don't join the GS unless you want to
    kill humans. However, I don't recall any concrete evidence one way or the
    other because the only elven land in Rjurik, Lluabraight, doesn't border any
    human nations (My Rjurik book is at home not here at school, so I might have
    forgotten something), and I would say that the GS doesn't have very much
    interaction with regular rjurik, and has to content itself with slaughtering
    the minions of the white witch, goblins, and whatever lives in the
    Giantdowns.

    Daniel McSorley- mcsorley.1@osu.edu

  4. #14
    Gary V. Foss
    Guest

    Gheallie Sidhe and Alignment

    Ryan Freire wrote:

    > Oh? What about the Puritans and Pilgrims, they did the EXACT same thing.
    > When they fled europe from persecution and the corruption of the church
    > they landed, at first peacefully with the natives then..as more arrived
    > they began to expand, pushing natives further inward and into the
    > territories of other neighbors when the natives wouldnt voluntarily
    > move...they killed them and TOOK the land. And the elves warned and
    > asked the humans to not chop down the trees, the humans basically
    > laughed it off and continued. The elves may have not settled ALL of
    > cerilia, but they had almost all of anuire where the aelvinwode USED to
    > be.

    Again with the really weird Elves=Native Americans argument.... I just don't
    get this, but maybe it's just me. I see this as a vastly different situation.
    There are certain superficial similarities, however, mostly having to do with
    both cultures being in decline and attitudes towards nature (though I think
    this evidence is largely anecdotal on the part of the Native Americans whose
    cultural beliefs have been through an amazing process of invention in the past
    thirty years) so I guess I can understand the basis of the comparison, it just
    seems fundamentally wrong to me.

    Regarding the pilgrims: I don't know that you can realistically use them as an
    example of historical conflict of the type we are describing. There was a
    grand total of 102 passengers on the Mayflower when they landed in the Americas
    in 1620. It took ten years for the population of the colony to reach 300.
    That's not exactly a whirlwind "invasion" even on elven timelines. Aside from
    that, the Pilgrims came to America a century after Cortes conquered the Aztecs
    in 1521.

    > I wasnt referring to elves getting diseases...mainly humans. The short
    > lifespan they have coupled with the fact of disease would probably give
    > the humans a urge to have as much as they can before their time is up
    > that would confuse the elves. As well as explaining the greed the
    > humans would have for the land. The poor HUMANS (ie: serfs and
    > peasants) in an effort to better their lot..would have expanded into the
    > territories of the elves. Which is also why the GS is attacking the
    > civilians...its not the ARMIES marching into the elvish territories..
    > its the peasants who want to make more money, the woodcutters, farmers,
    > and herdsmen. With it in that light its far less evil than if they WERE
    > attacking the armies. The members of the army havent done anything to
    > them, its the peasantry.

    Oh, I see. Sorry I misunderstood your point about diseases. I thought you
    meant Andu peoples were distributing blankets infected with small pox to elves
    or something, which seemed rather odd.

    As for the GS attacking civilians and not armies. I think that is the crux of
    the matter. If the GS attacked military units then I would be much more likely
    to see that as a moral fight. But they don't. They kill innocent civilians.
    In fact, they revel in it. That's clearly evil. In fact, I see the GS as
    being evil bastards who only use their cultural defense argument as a cover for
    their racism and hatred.

    I've compared the GS to the KKK, and I really think that is an apt comparison.
    The Klan argued (and still does) that they are trying to defend their culture
    and race from corrupting influences. Exactly how a lynching constitutes
    "defense" is where I see this argument breaking down. If the KKK held bake
    sales and raised money for cultural events like... Oh, I don't know... Banjo
    concerts or long distance spitting contests or determining the exact genetic
    effects of when cousins marry, then I'd say they weren't evil. But they
    don't. They burn down churches.

    The arguments I hear defending the GS sound amazingly like the arguments I hear
    coming out of the KKK. They incorrectly argue that their culture is
    threatened, that they are on the verge of destruction, that there is a vast,
    conspiratorial social mechanism working against them, and that violence is the
    only solution to the situation. Now, I believe that on some level people do go
    to war in order to defend their way of life, but calling what the KKK or GS do
    a war is again a perversion of that term. War involves nations as a whole and
    defined opponents. It requires government endorsement, national funding,
    conscripted or voluntary soldiers under designated military command.

    At first, there were aspects of this in the formation of the GS. "Elven
    knights were commissioned" the Atlas of Cerilia says. But government
    endorsement is not the only requirement for a war. The KKK was a political
    force for decades in America, for instance. The rest of the sentence in the
    Atlas says, "...to roam the lands held by elves, slaying whatever humans they
    found..." That's not what soldiers are supposed to do. That makes them much
    more like the state sponsored death squads of South America than soldiers.

    > >Where is all this coming from? I think you're statement about
    > >misapplication of MODERN morality is actually correct, but I don't
    > >think I'm the guy applying modern standards. There's a very thick
    > >undercurrent of political correctness in this whole POV morality that
    > >people are advocating that is the real source of this confusion.
    >
    > The statement that ALL killing of intelligent life is evil IS modern
    > morality. In that time period, people were killed for all manner of
    > things and it was not considered evil.

    Oh, I'm going to have to argue that point. Not killing people is one the
    oldest moral statements in existence. It's Old Testament stuff.

    Besides, I don't think the argument has been that the GS are evil because they
    kill. The argument is that the GS are evil because they kill
    indiscriminately. Even when humans came to Cerilia and committed the horrific
    crime of cutting down trees for which they earned an elven death sentence, they
    did not cut down trees indiscriminately. Humans did not gather together in
    bands and say, "Tonight let's go out and cut us down some trees! Yeeehaaa!
    Get them lousy leaf producin' photosynthesizin' good for nothin' bark colored,
    woody plants! Get 'em!" No, the humans cut down trees for things like
    building materials and fuel. It's the humans who were dealing with basic
    survival issues, not the elves.

    Gary

  5. #15
    Gary V. Foss
    Guest

    Gheallie Sidhe and Alignment

    Galwylin wrote:

    > I've not decided fully on if the gheallie Sidhe is evil or not. But if
    > humans aren't killing the elves then why are the elves in decline? We have
    > elven ruins through out the lands that humans dwell in yet it wasn't the
    > humans that did this?

    There was a lot of time before humans arrived on Cerilia. It says that
    "civilization all but stagnated during this time. The elves built their slender
    towers and the dwarves constructed their stonewrought wonders, but all these
    marvels eventually fell to one marauding tribe or another."

    So here's a possibility that I don't think anyone has addressed. Maybe the
    elves' decline is inevitable. They simply don't produce enough in the face of
    more successful species. Let's take an example from the Baruk Azhik sourcebook
    in which Graybeard finds himself leading a race who are fighting what he believes
    to be a losing battle against the Orogs. Humans have little or nothing to do
    with this decline. They become involved only rarely in dwarven issues. In fact,
    the dwarves separated themselves from the rest of Cerilia for centuries. Yet the
    dwarves still decline. This is because dwarves reproduce so slowly in the face
    of their military losses against the Orogs.

    I think there is a similar situation going on with the elves. Elves reproduce
    even more slowly than dwarves do. They fought the humanoids to a standstill for
    centuries before humans came. Their strongholds were built and destroyed over
    and over again. If an elf generation is 200 years (which I think is a pretty
    good estimate of their birthing cycle) that's ten times the human cycle. If
    there is a even a 10% population growth per generation that means humans are
    going to create nearly 5.2 children in the same time that elves would create 2.2.

    The difference between elves and dwarves in this scenario is that elves are more
    directly in competition with humans. I still think this competition is much more
    oblique than is presented by many people on this message board. The elven love
    for trees, for instance, is only related to their survival in an indirect way
    from what I can see. But the elven "decline" may or may not be directly related
    to humanity's presence. It could be more directly related to their own slow
    reproduction combined with their need to fight both humans and humanoids putting
    them in harm's way in a way their birth cycle can't support.

    If this is true, then the elven racism against humans is even more displaced.
    It's a reaction to their own racial decline in the face of competition from
    humans or humanoids. I am starting to think elves realize their own weakness,
    but instead of dealing with it on a self-preservation level (there are plenty of
    things they could do to insure the continuation of their species under these
    circumstances) many of them have turned the situation into yet more conflict with
    more successful species.

    What do you guys think of this line of reasoning?

    Gary

  6. #16
    Siebharrin / Arathorn
    Guest

    Gheallie Sidhe and Alignment

    >>enough bloodshed to go around on both sides and painting one more evil than
    >>the other seems to be ignoring history.
    >>
    > The history doesn't matter! The question was, and remains, is the GS
    >evil! Right now, they are not being slaughtered, they are not being forced
    >from their homes by "humanity". There may be some individual humans who
    >slaughter elves, fine, kill them. But the GS does not descriminate! It
    >doesn't matter if they were forced from their homes 1000 years ago! If they
    >kill innocent people RIGHT NOW, they are evil!

    I'd say they still defend their homelands. Whoever trespasses within elven
    realms (who supports GS) has broken the laws, and sentenced according to
    elven laws.
    If I occupied your house for 1000 years... Would you still consider it yours?

    Siebharrin the Lich

  7. #17
    Siebharrin / Arathorn
    Guest

    Gheallie Sidhe and Alignment

    >>I'd rather brand the humans as selfish than GS evil.
    >>The first we know is true, GS is but a way to defend their land and
    >>culture. The Hunt is not *only* against the humans, its against
    >>*anyone* who trespasses elven lands. Goblins, orogs, trolls, gnolls and so
    >>on... Everybody..
    > Those two are _not_ mutually exclusive like you make it sound. The
    >reason the GS exists is ostensibly to "defend their land and culture",
    >however, the way in which they carry this out marks them as evil.

    Hmm... there is no other way.
    Trying to convince humans to leave cerilia, because the elves settled it
    first?
    It is the *only* way. Or else they will be assimilated by the humans, and then
    the humans would have won (as there are so many more humans than elves).

    Ohh.. and may I remind you... all awsheghliens are there because of humans.
    If humans had never come, then deismaar would never have come. And then
    Azrais blood would not have been shared with the 'mortals'.
    And I do think that quite a number of elves remember this incident, and
    so they have yet another reason to drive out the 'evil' (elves pov) humans.

    Siebharrin the Lich

  8. #18
    Gary V. Foss
    Guest

    Gheallie Sidhe and Alignment

    einarh@fagerborg.vgs.no wrote:

    > Nothing lasts forever. And the humans chaotic nature (selfishness) makes
    > sure of it. The Gheallie Sidhe is just a natural reaction on
    > loosing all their territory. Hmm... What if US got invaded and you were
    > only left with one of the original states? Wouldn't you use any option
    > available to regain US territory?

    I thought chaotic nature was an elven trait not a human one....

    Again, however, I really think these arguments in favor of the GS keep putting
    their actions in a context that isn't supported by the material at hand. You're
    comparing the GS to an invasion of the United States?

    > >I can find no evidence to indicate to me that elves are the persecuted race
    > >that they make themselves out to be. (Or that they are made out to be on
    > this
    > >message board.) Oh, humans have a tendency to cut down trees, but how does
    > >that kill elves? They might find it aesthetically displeasing to have
    > ancient
    > >sources ruined, but I don't see how that is some sort of genocidal
    > movement on
    > >the part of humanity. Elves are not destroyed by deforestation, they just
    > have
    > >fewer things from which to hang their hammocks. Boo hoo for the elves.
    > >And the elven response to humans cutting down trees? Kill them! Kill them
    > >all!
    >
    > Hmm... you forget that elves are children of the elements. They have based
    > their life on the forrest. Taking away that forrest causes them much mental
    > harm, according to the BoM. Seems to me you don't think
    > Imperialism is evil? Conquering other nations?

    Let me see if I got this straight. Humans farming techniques pushing elves out of
    the forests is imperialism, but elves trying to boot all humans out of Cerilia is
    not?

    As a matter of fact, I don't think Imperialism is evil. I think you're confusing
    imperialism with colonialism

    > >We don't really have to analyze that to describe it as evil, do we? It seems
    > >obviously so to me. In fact, I think the burden of proof should be on the
    > side
    > >of someone trying to convince people that the GS is NOT evil, rather than the
    > >other way around.
    >
    > What is so obvious about GS? As I see it, there are at least thousands of
    > different views on it. You represent one view, I represent one. Do not
    > claim you speak for all.

    I don't think I claim to speak for everyone. I am going to claim to speak from a
    moral standpoint, however. If you see that as offensive in some way then maybe
    you should apply some of the same POV arguments that you have used to defend the
    GS to my arguments and accept them as coming from someone of a culture that cannot
    condone racial violence. I don't see that as a POV debate, but if you are going
    to use that standard, shouldn't I be able to use it too?

    This whole debate does, however, beg the question that if the GS is NOT evil, then
    what is? If racial murder isn't evil then that makes actual evil a pretty rare
    item, doesn't it? I believe there is a pretty blurry line between good and evil,
    the "vast and vague gray area" I have called it, but I think you would be
    hard-pressed to argue that the GS activities fall into that category, let alone
    pass it into the "good" side of the gray area.

    I've made arguments that I thought pretty clearly spelled out that the cultural
    defense rationale that the GS use to support their actions doesn't hold up. So
    far I haven't seen anybody come up with what I could call a logical and
    supportable argument to contradict that. You can't just restate the original,
    refuted argument as a response to the proof that shows it is an invalid one and
    expect that to be accepted as a rebuttal. Defending one's culture is not
    self-defense, which is a justification for killing and, therefore, not murder. If
    you are going to justify the actions of the GS, you have to explain how they are
    not murder.

    > I'd rather brand the humans as selfish than GS evil.
    > The first we know is true, GS is but a way to defend their land and
    > culture. The Hunt is not *only* against the humans, its against
    > *anyone* who trespasses elven lands. Goblins, orogs, trolls, gnolls and so
    > on... Everybody..

    I've never once heard someone say that the GS was against anything other than
    humans. From what I can tell, elves already have an established military that
    would defend their lands against such invasions.

    > There are two versions of elven lands:

    > 1) Realms where the elves thrive.
    > 2) Realms where the elves *once* thrived, but they were derpived of.
    > I stick with the first, but number two is not wrong. Its still defence of
    > your ancestral grounds.
    > What would you have thought about it, if elves were a subrace of humans,
    > and were a minority group?

    I would make no different argument at all if the GS were a human minority group.
    In fact, I've used examples of human minority groups in my arguments that the GS
    are evil.

    > To give an example coming from your history (please comment if totally
    > wrong): Englishmen, French and Spanish colonized America.
    > How many indians died? Why? How did they die? Did they try to defend at any
    > cost at any time? Are they evil?

    I'm going to need someone to make a more convincing case than the Native American
    one, which I really don't see as an adequate parallel. The differences between
    the Native Americans and Cerilian elves are just too drastic to support the
    comparison.

    Even if it is an adequate comparison, I could very easily argue that Native
    Americans have no higher moral grounds than any other people to begin slaughtering
    civilians.

    > In the beginning they lived side by side, but as humans are selfish by
    > nature, they wanted to expand. And they took the way with the smallest
    > resistance. Think about what consequenses of england trying to invade
    > france because of the land. (they did wage war, but not because of
    > landgrabs). And they viewed indians as easy targets, then waged war,
    > assimilated, used diplomacy and deception in order to gain the land.
    > Who is evil? the war-waging, land-hungry, fat europeans? or the indians,
    > who were waging war against themselves, and generally just survived?
    > Indian culture is as good as gone, and the same situation is in cerilia.

    What is the primary elven complaint about humans? They cut down trees. Cutting
    down trees is just as valid survival issue for humans as it is for elves. In
    fact, I'd argue that it was even more of one. Elves, being creatures more attuned
    to nature, are able to live in forests without the kind of shelter requirements
    that humans have. It's fine for an elf to tell humans that they think cutting
    down trees is wrong, but from what I can tell they didn't come up with much of a
    solution to the implied question, "How do I keep from freezing to death without a
    fireplace?"

    Elves have a solution to that question. Magic. According to the description of
    elves in the Rulebook "Cerilian elves are creatures of faerie dust and starlight,
    gifted with immortality and powers of mind and body beyond those of humankind."
    Even after Deismaar, elves have much more access to magics that would allow them
    to create homes out of trees and live in them without having to do the kinds of
    things humans have to do to survive.

    The Native Americans that people seem to find such a good comparison to elves,
    cooperated with Europeans in exactly the way the elves did not. The elves
    "thought they could all live in mutual enjoyment of the forest, with humans
    respecting elven lands and the ELVES CAREFULLY AVOIDING HUMANS." Emphasis added.
    Elves NEVER wanted to associate with humans.

    The point in this is that elves can't just say "Don't cut down trees" without
    running into an unavoidable conflict with humans. Humans HAVE to cut down trees
    to survive, especially in medieval times when there is much less access to things
    like power plants and heating oils. Humans don't cut down trees because they like
    stumps. They cut down trees because they are a vital natural resource.

    Gary

  9. #19
    Siebharrin / Arathorn
    Guest

    Gheallie Sidhe and Alignment

    >> >Where is all this coming from? I think you're statement about
    >> >misapplication of MODERN morality is actually correct, but I don't
    >> >think I'm the guy applying modern standards. There's a very thick
    >> >undercurrent of political correctness in this whole POV morality that
    >> >people are advocating that is the real source of this confusion.
    >>
    >> The statement that ALL killing of intelligent life is evil IS modern
    >> morality. In that time period, people were killed for all manner of
    >> things and it was not considered evil.
    >
    >Oh, I'm going to have to argue that point. Not killing people is one the
    >oldest moral statements in existence. It's Old Testament stuff.
    >
    >Besides, I don't think the argument has been that the GS are evil because
    they
    >kill. The argument is that the GS are evil because they kill
    >indiscriminately. Even when humans came to Cerilia and committed the
    horrific
    >crime of cutting down trees for which they earned an elven death sentence,
    they
    >did not cut down trees indiscriminately. Humans did not gather together in
    >bands and say, "Tonight let's go out and cut us down some trees! Yeeehaaa!
    >Get them lousy leaf producin' photosynthesizin' good for nothin' bark
    colored,
    >woody plants! Get 'em!" No, the humans cut down trees for things like
    >building materials and fuel. It's the humans who were dealing with basic
    >survival issues, not the elves.

    Forget Fuel.
    I don't remember what book it was, but the one where
    Gannd and Brand the Blade was featured.
    In that book it was written that humans had never learned the elven way of
    making fire.
    The Straws or whatever on the plains.
    Much easier and in much greater abundance in central anuire, than trees.
    Seems to me humans 'preferred' trees, and didn't care about their elven
    neighbours.

    Siebharrin the Lich

  10. #20
    Siebharrin / Arathorn
    Guest

    Gheallie Sidhe and Alignment

    >> I've not decided fully on if the gheallie Sidhe is evil or not. But if
    >> humans aren't killing the elves then why are the elves in decline? We have
    >> elven ruins through out the lands that humans dwell in yet it wasn't the
    >> humans that did this?
    >
    >There was a lot of time before humans arrived on Cerilia. It says that
    >"civilization all but stagnated during this time. The elves built their
    slender
    >towers and the dwarves constructed their stonewrought wonders, but all these
    >marvels eventually fell to one marauding tribe or another."
    >
    >So here's a possibility that I don't think anyone has addressed. Maybe the
    >elves' decline is inevitable. They simply don't produce enough in the
    face of
    >more successful species. Let's take an example from the Baruk Azhik
    sourcebook
    >in which Graybeard finds himself leading a race who are fighting what he
    believes
    >to be a losing battle against the Orogs. Humans have little or nothing to do
    >with this decline. They become involved only rarely in dwarven issues.
    In fact,
    >the dwarves separated themselves from the rest of Cerilia for centuries.
    Yet the
    >dwarves still decline. This is because dwarves reproduce so slowly in the
    face
    >of their military losses against the Orogs.
    >
    >I think there is a similar situation going on with the elves. Elves
    reproduce
    >even more slowly than dwarves do. They fought the humanoids to a
    standstill for
    >centuries before humans came. Their strongholds were built and destroyed
    over
    >and over again. If an elf generation is 200 years (which I think is a pretty
    >good estimate of their birthing cycle) that's ten times the human cycle. If
    >there is a even a 10% population growth per generation that means humans are
    >going to create nearly 5.2 children in the same time that elves would
    create 2.2.
    >
    >The difference between elves and dwarves in this scenario is that elves
    are more
    >directly in competition with humans. I still think this competition is
    much more
    >oblique than is presented by many people on this message board. The elven
    love
    >for trees, for instance, is only related to their survival in an indirect way
    >from what I can see. But the elven "decline" may or may not be directly
    related
    >to humanity's presence. It could be more directly related to their own slow
    >reproduction combined with their need to fight both humans and humanoids
    putting
    >them in harm's way in a way their birth cycle can't support.
    >
    >If this is true, then the elven racism against humans is even more displaced.
    >It's a reaction to their own racial decline in the face of competition from
    >humans or humanoids. I am starting to think elves realize their own
    weakness,
    >but instead of dealing with it on a self-preservation level (there are
    plenty of
    >things they could do to insure the continuation of their species under these
    >circumstances) many of them have turned the situation into yet more
    conflict with
    >more successful species.
    >
    >What do you guys think of this line of reasoning?

    I think its good..
    BUT...

    How would elves ever preserve themselves? I mean, if they wanted to
    preserve themselves
    they'd have to give up on their home and culture.
    There is *NO* way humans are going to stop chopping down trees.
    And if the elves tried to hide behind eternal 'warding' or anything like that,
    there would surely come a human mage dispelling it, because the price of
    lumber goes through
    the roof.

    Siebharrin the Lich

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