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  1. #1

    The wiki's weird handling of half elves annoys me somehow

    I sort of see what the person who used it to reorganize the concept based on his pet theories but it's just not great and also conflates actual canon half-elves, canon humans who happen to have ties to elven culture, and what's largely described in the core books as human prejudice.

    It's awkward, and it doesn't help that "half elves are all changeling transformed to bring about elven domination over... their lost indigenous lands" raises so many red flags in my head that you could call me a Grand Prix.

    So I feel like the Hanner Sidhe thing is definitely something that deserves a lot more mystery and definitely a lot more delicate handling than the wiki's weird conspiratorial handling of it.

    - We have the original canon, humans distrust half elves, most half elves live in elven communities, if it wasn't for the politics of it both Fhylie Dhoesone and Laela Flaertes would probably be happily chilling in Tuarhievel with their maternal families and given the way the former comes off as, she'd probably be happier that way than having to wrangle the worst possible humans for her big brother.

    - We have the weird wiki cannon, "half elves are changelings" which creates a hodgepodge of issues of its own by merging people who have well known elvish heritage and for whom it sometimes matters (admittedly for a number of half-elvish NPCs is seems to be almost a throwaway) with people who have some history with elves (like if you're going to do something other than write her out of canon entirely, I guess making Savane half elvish works but still). It also has the problem of effectively taking the view that a conspiratorial view of half elves that the core books imply is largely human bigotry is effectively true in some way (although in the reverse way that option A implies, which seems to be that all half elves are really fully elvish and merely adopted by the human parent through trickery)

    - I would suggest, if anything, a synthesis. Whether half-elves are really changelings remains entirely in the air, and while some humans who believe it to be the case do so on a purely theoretical basis, a lot do so out of bigotry. The relative rarity of half-elves remains a matter of both species barriers making them unlikely without some form of magic enhancement at play and the history of deep hatred between the two. I simply represent that lingering doubt in my games by having players who roll half elves (either preexisting characters or their own) use elf as their race. In the end, that a lot of those half-elves tend to side wholly with their elvish kin ends up having more to do with how they are treated than it has to do with theories about the nature of mixed elven births. People like Torele Anviras remain fey-touched humans (if I were to allow warlocks in a BR5e game, which I've contemplated doing to replace wizard altogether, I would see him specifically as one of the very rare human feylocks).
    Last edited by FhieleLlyrandor; 06-16-2021 at 08:01 AM.

  2. #2
    Site Moderator Sorontar's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by FhieleLlyrandor View Post
    I
    So I feel like the Hanner Sidhe thing is definitely something that deserves a lot more mystery and definitely a lot more delicate handling than the wiki's weird conspiratorial handling of it.

    - We have the original canon, humans distrust half elves, most half elves live in elven communities, [snip]

    - We have the weird wiki cannon, "half elves are changelings" which creates a hodgepodge of issues of its own by merging people who have well known elvish heritage and for whom it sometimes matters (admittedly aside a few a lot of half-elvish NPCs might as well be described as fully one or the other and it would affect nothing) with people who have some history with elves
    What do you mean by "wiki canon"? The wiki has multiple versions of various concepts. Some are versions of the BRCS 3.5e pages. Some are versions of concepts like half-elves. None are official, none are absolute. As it is a wiki, none should be regarded as final and finished. The section on Hanner Sidhe is labelled as a variant, in the same way that Taint is an unofficial extension of the Seeming (not quite sure how to label it though - perhaps "optional" is enough). Any wiki page can be rewritten to clarify, extend or edit it, except personal pages and the BRCS 3.5e and D20 pages (except by mods and admins). If you don't like the Hanner Sidhe version of Savane Mhoried, then you are welcome to write a non-Hanner Sidhe version. We can help you format the page to fit the two versions in or move the Hanner Sidhe to its own Savane Mhoried (Hanner Sidhe) page.

    If you think there should be a variant to the variant, you can write that too. I would like to point out that the concept of Changeling is covered in the wiki and doesn't relate to Hanner Sidhe (though, I should add a link to there to help disambiguate it). I believe the wiki version relates to the version in the official Birthright publication, Blood Spawn, which I guess makes it fairly canon.

    Note also that there is a Category: Hanner Sidhe that helps show how little in the wiki actually relates to Hanner Sidhe (provided I haven't missed anything, since I am normally the one who creates or tidies up categories). One of the posts in that category should be Hanner Sidhe (development history) .

    Sorontar
    Last edited by Sorontar; 06-14-2021 at 01:54 PM.

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