Why Do Fantasy Races Live So Long? 

One of my favorite excerpts is of an unscrupulous dwarven merchant chuckling to himself about selling a subpar shovel to a human, mentioning how it'll only last a single lifetime.

I like the DnD idea of goblins being essentially the opposite - they reproduce very fast, live relatively short and change constantly, so they can adapt to any enviroment easily

I have this idea that, being borderline immortal, elves just don't act like we do. They go with what interests them, and they can be profoundly focused, but they may lack in other areas. Like, imagine you have this Elven tracker who has been doing woodcraft for 200 years, mastered all manner of weaponry, but still can't read. They figure they'll get around to it someday. Or another elf who promises to come by soon, but doesn't return for 50 years because he got into a lovely chat with an Ent and figured a few years wouldn't matter.

Back in AD&D, in one of the race books, elves work on projects, personal and professional, sporadically as they feel like it. So an elf could work on a painting for a year, decide to visit an aunt for 'a short while' ie 30 years, get interested in gardening for a while, come back and continue painting when inspiration hits them. For elves, "I'll do it later" takes on a WHOLE new meaning.

I like settings where that last point about 3 people knowing all of England's history is actually the reason elves are often so reclusive. Humans repeat their mistakes, and if an old person tries to warn a young person, it just makes the young person do it faster with even less consideration of safety. If you can actually remember the last big war or economic depression and someone starts walking that road again without listening to you, all you can do is give up and live somewhere else

I’m fond of the idea that elves occasionally start a new career/stage in life and everyone accepts that they will totally forget their old life. Very few elves would choose to continue with the same path for 400 years, and they would be subject to both admiration and pity.

Very good example of unnaturally old wizard was present in Russian series "Max Frei". There was an old wizard who was almost all the time in a good mood, who can find common tongue with almost anyone. Often laughing and cracking jokes. Untill one time in the series one of the characters manages to get a sneak peek on the real Wizard. Absolutely cold, emotionless, calculating and far more powerful than he shows. And happy and upbeat attitude - the mask, that he wears in order to not completely creep out those who around him.

I like the idea that few Elves and long lived species rarely die of old age, when you think about it only a percentage of long lived animals die of old age, and even then they’re usually carrying scars of various degrees.

While a totally different genre, the game Kenshi takes an interesting perspective on long lived races. It's a post-post-apocalyptic world with no magic and a tech level similar to feudal japan, and the race of robotic "skeletons" come from before both apocalypses, though even they barely remember the world after the first apocalypse. They are immortal creatures, but they have to wipe their CPUs every now and then to avoid insanity. This results in them being the smartest race, but also the most depressed and cynical because everything people worry about is just so insignificant in their grand scheme of things. They're also not omniscient, as they only have their own observations/memories to go on, so it's like having an ignorant character who is just able to see a longer duration of a very limited perspective. Also, by being machines, they do not feel pain or fear or anything (in fact, they're safest in a secret city plagued by constant acid rain), instead they just feel the burden of time and the internal anguish of knowing too much. Also, they don't reproduce at all because the tech to build them is long forgotten. Instead, they are kind of like Theseus' ship, where limbs and components are replaced and repaired over time by mechanics who are generally skeletons themselves. In a way they're an extinct race that is keeping its remaining members alive for millennia. There's a lot of lore around the apocalypses and why almost all other races fear them; it's like if a race of robots from pre-butlerian jihad times showed up in a dune universe where the jihad was long forgotten, holding way more knowledge, but very obviously not to be trusted.

Here's an idea. If you have a world with reincarnation, you could have a long-lived character view the deaths of their shorter lived compatriots as a temporary fare well. For these shorter lived folk, it's not entirely unheard of to have an elf (or similar) approach you and claim to be an old friend from a previous lifetime.

The moment you mentioned how in this context humans are like dogs and will die way before elves do, I thought to myself. It’s likely that like humans relationship to dogs, some take many years before accepting their human friends death, and some others may mourn for a couple months before going out to find a new human friend again. Which I think is a way more interesting philosophy and concept to talk about in media instead of the very practiced “all my friends will die before me” idea

I always thought that Elves were so snobby because they thought they were naturally good at everything, but in reality they just forgot all the training they've done since their memory is only thrice as good as a humans. while dwarfs are similar, but their friends never let them live it down so they never forget what they had to go through, at least in comparison to elves...

The reason Greenland sharks are so long lived is similar to the reason you gave for jellyfish and sponges, they “hardly exist” which is to say they have more simple bodies with very low metabolisms because they are ectotherms and they live in incredibly cold waters. Their metabolism is almost constantly as close to being off as it can be, hence the long lives.

I've had a game where the BBEG turned out to be a human man who thought that the length of human life is unfair, so he sought to make all of them live equally long. This would average the lifespan, however since there were few members of long lived races, everyone would "only" get to be 150 or so. The party was one half orc, one human and one dwarf. In the end, the BBEG had a talk with a party before the final fight, he pleaded his case, he explained to the dwarf how his friends are going to wither and die in front of his very eyes, and in the end, everybody including the dwarf decided to help him out. I'm now planning a new campaign, where I'm going to attempt to present the effects of the ritual that took place. The devastation of elven culture for example. I think it's great, I'm very excited

One of the things I played with regarding labor laws and weekends for a dwarf PC I played, the laws regarding those were put in place for their own safety. But not because of the hazardous environment that they work in, but because working on their craft is simply addicting to a dwarf and it needs to be regulated. In a Tenday they would only be allowed to work on their craft in 2 3-day periods, with proper breaks in there as well. The 2 "mini-weekends" in between are meant to connect with your family and friends and to keep your mind away from work. Stories of crazed workaholic dwarves that shut themselves off for many years continuously working are met with a mix of fear and "gods I wish that were me" energy, and the biggest reason it has ro be regulated is because a workaddicted dwarf will do the unspeakable: in their haste to do more and more, they create shoddy work. They smith brittle armor that won't last a war, they mine unstable tunnels, they open pockets to poisonous or flammable gas that go unnoticed to them, or they create architecture that will crack and fall apart with the slightest tremor. And the biggest reason this is so regulated? It doesn't just put the crazed dwarf themselves in danger, it endangers the entire clan. Side note, this was also why my dwarf PC hated entering human mines when we played, because to him the entire mine felt even less stable compared to one a workaholic dwarf would have carved in their mania, and he genuinely feared for his life in there

The elven historian idea has the flaw that it assumes that elves have better memories than other ancestries. But imagine their memories are just as flawed as that of humans, maybe even worse, an suddenly you do not gain anything from their longevity amidst shorter live beings. But otherwise I think the video has some interesting thoughts.

This is why Frieren beyond journey's end has become of of my favorite series, while it doesn't explain the physiology of Elves, it does just explore the idea that we play Elves wrong, 10 years to an elf barely feels like 10 months or 10 days, because their life is so long that mortality doesn't even effect them, if a human or a dwarf dies they wouldn't be phased that much, they only knew them by about a small fraction of their life. Frieren is a great story to give your elf flair if you would check it out. It's used in the thumbnail. The whole story is about an elf learning that despite her friends lifespan, they still meant something to her, as she embarks on a long journey with a new set of companions related to her old party, sometimes months or years passing between page turns because it just happens like that to an elf

I created a setting where elves have structural problems with their long life span. Their society is extremely conservative due to the fact that the older generation rules and "young" elves often tend to migrate into human societies where they count as experienced workforce rather than as youngsters.

The problem is much simpler, IMO, and is one much more core to fantasy races/species: species are presented as a single culture. So that when elves have a lot of cultures, we can't help but see them as different species. And then some writers write them as having markedly different physical abilities, rather than simply having different skillsets and outlooks that could be better explained by cultural differences. I'm far more interested in having very few species, and each species having very many cultures.

I think something unexplored is also the idea of memory. If you live for up to 1000 or even 500 years you would either need a far better memory that what we humans have or you'd have a far shorter one, and building on those two ideas is always fun for me. Elves that are quite literally incapable of forgetting even if they wanted to is my personal favourite.

The idea that Dwarven Cells and DNA are incredibly sturdy and difficult to damage. Could be considered to be backed up in older editions. Back in 2nd edition. Dwarves gained +1 to saving throws related to Magic for every 3.5 Points of Constitution they had. Said dwarf had 14 Constitution. He would have a + 4 to all saves vs spells.

One trend I never understood was the worshipping of the forest to the point of killing those that harm it...but them being vegetarian...I always thought it made more sense for them to be purely carnivorous as the plant life is worshiped. Like the sacred Cow...but a tree and everything else.

There's a quote from Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magic Obscura that I think applies here. A dwarven elder opines that humans are so short lived that they rarely see the consequences of their actions. He says that when a human looks at something, its first thought is, "What can this thing do for me?" He says the human should have taken a dwarven mindset and instead asked, "What will be the cost of using this?"

Reminds me of the Zora on BOTW. While all the other races have moved on and are used to the post-apocalyptic Hyrule as the status quo, the Zora still are in mourning and are well aware of the past and the apocalypse that came about

This was absolutely amazing, specially the dwarven society part with safety laws and the militaristic structure they would adopt, the very good physicians and healers they would have, I never thought portraying dwarves as this clean safety-obsessed society would work well in a fantasy setting but as a matter of fact it makes total and complete sense. Another point about long lived races is that when living in human societies, they would amass incredible amounts of wealth.

Once again, we can thank Grandaddy Tolkein for the idea of functionally immortal elves. And the elves of middle earth do show a number of the things of which you speak. Elrond's weary remembrance of the end of the second age and the self imposed isolation of both Rivendell and Lorien show this. The connection to a dynasty also shows up, Numenor was founded by Elrond's brother and Aragorn is his very distant descendant.

I’m sort of attached to the idea of wood elves being the default elf, and that all other species of elves are a result of an ancient empire that dabbled in magic eugenics and ended up dooming their race to catastrophe. Sort of like the Eldar of 40k it makes a helpful explanation for why elves only exist in small alcoves and allows me to have one species of elves (wood elves) that have more human like life spans.

I like the idea of elf magically mirroring the world and adapting that way. I could see a crazy wizard experiment on elves to try to replicate that ability.

I would recommend the manga Dungeon Meshi (or Delicious in dungeon), in which the difference of life span between races is brought up and explored pretty well, even though it's not the main focus of the plot (which is just cooking in the dungeon). The elf calvaries in this world always take it upon themselves to intervene and handle magic-related problems around the world with little regard to other races' stance on the matter, as they deem it a responsibility of the long living race, sort of like how an adult treats a kid. This is even funnier when you realise their combat skills are, though better than your typical adventurers, nowhere enough for the task at hand. In the main party, one of the members is a half-elf, her human dad died before she was mentally mature enough to process it, so her motivation (or rather her dream) in the story is to essentially erase the life expectancy difference between the races, as her biggest fear is having to watch her dear ones pass away. This is one of the few fantasy series that care about different races more than just their stereotypes.

That’s why frieren is a fantastic manga about the life of a young elf who has to learn to accept the loss of her used to be legendary party of adventurers. Those who have conquered and accomplished great feats passed from time. She spends the arc learning about the meaning of life and setting out on a journey to fulfill all of her old companions’ dying wishes. They actually explore the unasked question of what elves experience since they live for a much longer time

Very interesting. Tolkien actually in his later writings wrote of what Elves must be like as an immortal species. For example, he concluded his Elves are naturally monogomous, and never lose the childlike glee in actions or things again and again and again and again. Otherwise they would go mad.

It's probably because of Tolkien and all future fantasy works being heavily inspired by his words. Within his universe all the fantasy races lived longer than humans. The Elves, themselves, were immortal. It was only humanity that lived such a short life. All of this was due to the ultimate deity within Tolkien's universe. This deity was responsible for creating the vast majority of things within that universe. This universe was literally sung into existence by him and his other creations. This deity gifted his creations with different things. His "gift" to humanity was a short life and not revealing to them what happened to them after death. This was supposed to make them more motivated compared to everyone else. I didn't really like this idea myself, but that's what Tolkien went with.

One issue that people don't really take into account with long lived races is memory. How many people in their 30-40s actually remember grade school? All the teachers they had, the classes, the students, and etc. I've seen parents trying to help their kids with homework going, oh it's been so long since I did that I don't remember. Now what about high school in your 50-60s? How much of it do you actually remember. People tend to remember key events but not the day to day. Their memory of events can also be clouded of what happen. As I've gotten older I've talked with friends about going back and watching older movies and shows we liked back in our college days where some were better than remembered and others were worse. We also found sometimes whole scenes or episodes we don't recall. None of us our at the age where mental decline is a concern or showing any signs but it is normal to forget things given enough time, and once you start digging through your past you may start finding things you didn't even realize you had forgotten. For races that live hundreds of years if not thousands the question is how much would they truly recall. To them recalling something that happen a thousand years ago would be like an 80 year old trying to recall their 10th birthday assuming it wasn't unusually memorable. The mind can only hold so much information and the more it has the more it has to sort which means potentially taking longer to access it the same way running a search through a 100 files takes a lot less time than running a search through 10,000 files. Thus the mental capacity to retain that much information and parse it at a reasonable rate would put them in the genius level. This slowly forgetting as your mind can't retain it all would also go a long way to explain why long lived races are not masters at everything. Just like us short lived races if you change professions given enough time you'll be very rusty at your old job even if you do recall some basics. But it could also lead to broader implications with traditions, much like some people keep photo albums to help them remember special events so to might long live races have items they use to remind them and symbolize their time with something or someone.

As for Gnomes, Pathfinder's depiction makes a lot of sense - Gnomes used to be Fey, but migrated from the First World (Feywild) many generations ago, and have adapted to their new home. Up to a point. They still have very Fey-like personalities (and Fey-like appearance, including strange hair and eye colours), being wild and mercurial, and they will keep going as long as they find their lives meaningful and entertaining, and Gnomes can literally die out of boredom.

There is great manga about about an elf who goes on a journey. There is constant time skip and unlike in some stories where hero trains or stays in the town for a few months the elf would spend 5-10 years training and staying in a town and you see everyone around him age and when he returns to some towns they have totally changed. You kinda feel sorry for the elf cause every time he forms a bond that is a future friend he is gonna lose. It's called "Growing Tired Of The Lazy High Elf Life After 120 Years"

Excellent reflection on the disparities of long lived races. One problem I have often noticed is that everyone plays their elf characters the same as they do their human characters, and they would be... quite fundamentally different.

The "elves (magically) mirror their environment" approach is what I do in my setting, with further implications stemming from that. Elves, being fae creatures at root, are metaphysically tied to the land, and so take on features tied to the land that they are born and raised in. This not only leads to the formation of various elven subraces, but also means that the elves are barred from returning to the realms of Faerie where their ancestors came from. The true fae deem the elves to be corrupted and fallen, tainted by the material plane, and so refuse them entry. This caused problems when the elves sought refuge in Faerie to escape a magical cataclysm that was ravaging the material, but were turned away and had to suffer it with the rest. The elves are still bitter about this.

My greatest DND campaigns main villian centered around a wood elf who kinda... "woke up" one day and realized that he and his people lifespans meant they could literally outlive generations of human rulers and academics, thus they had the potential of becoming superior to all lesser lifespans by virtue of applying themselves and advancing magic and technology over the course of centuries. His main goal was to enslave all other lesser lifepspans, teraform the planet, and explore/expand into the heavens and beyond. The reason I created this antagonist was due to the (imo) ridiculous notion that elves weren't all geniuses and masters of every craft due to how long they live, so I just kinda made that happen. It was a great campaign lol

What you mentioned about elves and them being more magically adaptive based on their environment is exactly how Pathfinder does it. Elves on Golarion grow up more closely resembling the place where they grew up than they do their parents. Even says in the Inner Sea Races that the child of two elves won’t necessarily look like their parents

1) in pathfinder the elves work the way you described all of the environmental subraces of elves can change theyre subrace when moving to a different enviroment, a desert elf can become a forest elf 2) wow I actually really love your ideas for dwarves and now I want to play a character thats a dwarven doctor

I imagine the snootiest of High Elves practicing manners and gestures for decades and centuries. Putting the same dedication of time to all skills. So they would have the perfect handshake, perfect walking, dancing, all their luxurious crafting is near perfect. It’s their contrast to Dwarves who dedicate their time to practical useful skills and equipment.

I like the idea that elves are not less likely to die young or have horrific accidents then humans. Arguably makes them prime material for edge, drama and trauma. I also advocate to leaning into an almost “cosmic horror” treatment of such long live spans. Imagine the elf villains returning after 50 years to our elderly hero and just going: “You have gotten awfully wrinkly.” 😙👌🏻

To be fair, the early versions of AD&D and 2nd Edition AD&D proposed that although Long-lived, Elves could not be Resurrected, as they did not possess a soul in the same manner that a Human did. (I usually overlooked this, as many probably did, but the Elves subsection of the Second Edition Player's Handbook I know was clear that Elves could only be Reincarnated, not Raised from the Dead. Meaning, your Elf had a better chance of coming back as the Paladin's Horse than as their former self.

in my lore, the "cells mutating differently" is the reason I gave to why my werewolves average lifespan is of around 500 years, that and the curse's healing factor

I agree I've been trying to tell so many people this, I always want to ban elves not because they are Uber powerful but because the world building part can be tricky to work with especially when you want something in the near past that was a big deal but then you have a 400 year old elf that would have been alive at the time ruining the mystery

Elven diversity can increase. In your setting these changes should atleast take 100-1000x amount the time, than a human needs. Elven in most media are rather NOTORIOUS for actually sticking to old habits, old rituals and old traditions. The rebelic and newer elves that see issues in old habits, rituals and traditions are usually the ones to go off (alone or in a group) to find a place to settle, WITHOUT these "nonsensical traditions and rituals". Old elves sticking to old traditions and rituals can be seen very often. Usually with the sentiment that: "new ways" are too radical or too disruptive of old traditions. ON TOP OF THAT: What race do you THINK should spread and form newer variations? If not THE ELVES? Sure, humans can spread and grow up in an entirely different area, than their parents and absolutely change with their surrounding. Resulting in a different kind of human. But humans are also vastly adaptable, so this wouldnt give reasons for a new "human variant". Because thats just what humans do. An elf, that lived 1/8th of their life in one place and then move to another, to slowly adapt there and have new traditions? This absolutely makes a new elf variant. Because elves arent as adabtable. But IF they adapt, it usually results in a vastly different personality. Because its alot more work for an elf to change their old ways, than it is for a human.

Funny and sad piece of trivia, Forgotten Realms Elves (and consequently most of the canon elves of D&D 5e) are not long lived because they are gifted by nature, but because they are basically demigods degenerating into mortals. Their leaders remained in Faerun to protect these weaker and not completely immortals by becoming their pantheon, and all the elven subspecies were kinda already there (although they further differentiated with time and some major curses), as they are descendants of elves with particular inclinations to certain aspects of what an elf is supposed to be(in fact, mixed subspecies results in full subspecies originally, and there isn't a dominant subspecies, so it is more akin to a blood inheritance than proper dna). the pantheon leader is a god of chaos and magic, known to be everchanging in appearance. So yes. They existed in a whole other timescale before even arriving in the D&D timeline, and they are also prone to variety due to the chaotic/feeric nature, even changing gender and sex cannonically from a time before transgender was being discussed in the big media. It's honestly safer to assume that elves are not 100% living beings, and are actually partially conceptual, like fey, elementals and other things that exist for a purpose other than being the herd of a god. Dwarves and gnomes on the other hand are clearly the creation of their respective gods, shaping them from stones and gems and etc. they were made to be durable by their creators, although some might have mutaded themselves through magic or psionic manipulations.

"Building things to last, as humans we understand this." ... Have you been paying attention to modern day? There is a thing called built in obsolescence which is the norm in a lot of industries these days in order to encourage more sales by making things that wear out faster. There was a sort of documentary called 200 years after humans where they showed that pretty much nothing we make would last. Pretty much only the ancient stuff made of stone that is still around today would be around as modern buildings actually require a lot of maintenance so they don't deteriorate. What would be a bigger point of contention would be the changed in leadership. Like as seen in some fantasy worlds Humans are seen as violent, untrustworthy, and expansionist. Because treaties are made and a few human generations past where the new leaders feel the treaty doesn't favor them enough so they push for war. Mean while the long live races may remember what happen in the original war and people they lost in that war. Because for this they are constantly having to deal with the changing whims of these short lived races. As for the short lived races using longer lived ones as advisors is another thing that's been done. It's also been done where the arrogant heir to the throne disregards the advice. Having access to great knowledge and guidance is not the same as actually making use of it.

In my setting, the reason that elves have so many different varieties comes down to their history - they were one of the first races made by the two progenitor gods after their war, and were basically made to be magical sponges, absorbing the excess magic generated by said ancient conflict. They absorbed the endemic magic to all sorts of different biomes, times of day, or even concepts, which created their different subspecies. This "original elf" species was the eladrin. Eladrin lineages that have stayed in the Feywild are able to maintain their original form (i.e. the feylike, seasonal-shifting version that we see in 5e. If an eladrin migrates to the material word, even to this day, they'll end up slowly transforming over time (taking hundreds of years to complete) to adapt to their environment. Eladrin children born in the material world will be born as a type of elf that would be native to the place they were conceived in (i.e. an area of high ambient arcane magic - like the underdark - would produce a dark elf, long hot seasons a sun elf, long winter seasons a moon elf, a forest a wood elf, in or around the ocean a sea elf, etc. etc. etc. And like you mentioned, an elf who is made to live in a place incongruent to their internal magic are known to become depressed - elves living in the "wrong" place who have managed to keep a good grip on their mental health would be known as badasses of the highest order to their kin. For example, there's a sea elf living in the middle of one of the harshests desert in my homebrew setting - and is very high up in a powerful criminal enterprise - who is actively feared by her kin. Their extended lifespans are twofold - one, the gods made them that way in order to be able to efficiently absorb excess magic that would be toxic to other species they wanted to re-introduce, and two, "normal" elves can routinely go into a decades-long trance if they think there isn't anything that they actively need to do for awhile or want to go on a sort of "spiritual journey" of reconnecting with the Elven Dream, a liminal place where they can connect with their ancestors' lived experience. There are elves, such as powerful adventurers and rulers, who choose to forego this experience in order to shepherd their people towards progress or otherwise maintain an active presence in the world. You're bang-on about the longevity of other races like dwarves and gnomes, though - especially dwarven bureaucracy.

I also see the longer lived species as having a very different attitude towards life and learning, more along the lines of doing things as necessary, rather than working so hard and learning with such purpose as humans do. If your family is around for centuries, then they've had time to build up security, and this continues through generations. So, play and pleasure become a much higher part of life in general. Thus, it might take an elf 200 years to gain the same skill level that a human might in their 20 years of schooling and apprenticeship.

It’s interesting how some stories take this into account when designing characters, one of the best examples is one work I read where Elves where extinct with all that remains being “half-elves” who lives at maximum 300 years, with their bodies just aging slower, one of the protagonists being a half elf in her 50s, which makes her basically 19 to 24 in human terms, and she even complained about puberty taking longer for her than any humans It was an interesting way to address this situation

Elder Scrolls does a pretty good job at explaining the variations of elves (in the game known as Mer). Different sects of elven communities worshiped different deities (Aedra or Daedra) and underwent physiological changes caused by those deities. All stemming from the original group of Aldmer.

The numerous Elf subraces thing ultimately comes from Tolkien, but with his elves their subtypes are the result of socio-religious schisms and are not literal subraces. This is made more explicit at the moments when the elves gathered in particular areas where their tribal affiliations wore away. It's kind of obvious that many authors took inspiration from this but lost most of the subtlety to the chagrin to basic logic.

I think alot of people here are forgetting a little detail regarding memory from what might be considered the progenitor race of all elves, the Eladrin. Part of their Trance feature mentions that there is a shared Elvish Memory that they can draw on through extended meditation ie long resting. Edit: After additional research I have realized that this is something all of the most recent Elvish subraces have access to, so I think it can be assumed that it is applicable to all elves.

I personally like the idea elf’s are partly sustained by mana and are fairly sluggish. The different types of elf’s could also be simply the effects of their preferred magic affecting their bodies.

One other thing you've not mentioned is that long lived races would have drastically different beliefs about both romantic and platonic relationships compared to their shorter lived neighbors. At 750 years average lifespan a 70 year old would be seen as barely an adolescent in even society. In the video game series Mass Effect, fan favorite character Liara T'soni is "only" 120 years old - barely out of college as one of the youngest Asari graduates in her class and roughly the same mental maturity as a 21 year old. A big part of her character development is that she's experiencing most of the wider galaxy for the first time while many of the human characters a 5th her age are hardened military veterans.

For my world building sanity, I am planning on reducing elves to about 150 years, dwarves to 200, and gnomes to about 125. Halflings are likely only going to get about 80. Obviously I'll have to adjust birth rates to compensate.

The thing with D&D is that all elfs originate from the Fae, a trully chaotic but very magical place. So all these variety of elves make sense. But once they settle in a place they no specialize. Also elfs are truly ancient. Some of the first races in most settings.

I like the concept of the races that are more based in fae lore having that one weird subrace in each race that is considered the black sheep of the group. It makes all the Fae-like races have a similarity that they can't quite understand, and it fits pretty well. Hill dwarves being more nice and willing to work with different races, loving to travel, it's so bizarre to mountain dwarves! And I love how the dark elves, the subrace the other elves don't understand and don't like, have a lot of dwarvish traits in their personality and mindset: they're goal oriented, they perfect their craft, they're materialistic, and they hate sun elves so it's kind of a done deal. That and Eilistraee is friends with some dwarven gods and her brother's followers trade all the time with dwarves. They're the dwarves of the elven race, and it adds a cool idea to how different subraces would act to one another or perceive each other. * No one likes the sun elves because they're VERY much the stereotype and racist assholes. * Moon elves are awesome. That's it, everyone likes those weird hippies. Humans have kids with them all the time. * Wood elves are a mixed bag and more cautious if you go by Tolkein lore. * Drow is distrusted by most races, but might have more of an okay relationship with mountain dwarves in regards to trade.

1. "crafted by the elves of the first age... You could not wish for a better blade!" Gandalf the grey, late into the 3rd age 2. The idea of dwarves developing OSHA is hilarious to me. 3. It's often said that a dwarf or an elf will not consider a given human as a friend, but rather a family, but only after at least a century of trust and friendly interactions.

I have to say the wide variety of elves always made me roll my eyes. In my homebrew dnd world all elves look similar, some might be more tan because they live in a hot desert, but mostly the way you tell a difference between an elf in this world is what clothes are they wearing, and what if any tats they have.

You see, on the mention of elves magical adaptation being alien to human concepts of longevity and natural adaptation, I find it rather amusing that in Pathfinder's Golarion setting, Elves are quite literally aliens that came to the world from another planet and colonized it during the time when humans, for the most part, were banging rocks together.

This is incredibly well done. Even though I know nothing about actual genetics or stuff relating to all biology, this is good! This helps a lot with my own world building and also gives me a good idea to how my characters see life and death.

Something to point out, too, is that the og fantasy elves (LotR) "subspecies" we're not at all subspecies. Wood elves just lived in a big forest, but were otherwise just like other elves. This is why I really like the worldbuilding in Pathfinder, where elves are 1, extremely alien, and 2, separated by cultural history moreso than speciation.

I like that you keep looking around. It's a good break from the constant staring of other people's videos.

9:54 There is a thing in biology that if you clone a cat its spots won't be the same. It could be with elves that when exposed to different stimula as child they would demonstrate diffeerent quirks in adulthood while having almost identical DNA. E.i. the elves have one race but the environment that they are raised in alters how they look.

I definitely agree with your points and that so many fantasy worlds gloss over these major issues that long lived to short lived species face when attempting to coexist. I always thought that the "diverse" town of fantasy races always makes it seem so happy and there everyone gets along fine. In reality if you had a town where dwarves, elves and humans lived together, I imagine that humans would occupy the lowest ranks in society. If the mayor was an elf he might not see the urgency in having certain public works completed within a single humans lifespan. A critical aqueduct that the current humans need might not be built in time because the elf mayor thinks that 60 years is relatively short time when in reality the humans that needed it will be dead before its completion. If you were a 20 year old human joining the merchants guild and the leader of the guild was a 200 year old elf, it would be reasonable to assume that you would never have an opportunity to become the guild leader. That 200 year old elf may live for hundreds of years before retiring, dying or moving on to a new career. Your family would have to spend generations working up the ranks to install a member at the higher echelons. If you were a young human craftsman starting a smithy, you would have to compete with master dwarven smiths who have been working longer than you have been alive and will continue to work long after you die. You might never earn any recognition in the higher ranks of society, relegated to be some back alley cheap smithy despite being a master among humans. You could argue that elves or dwarves dont live with the same urgency and that humans work faster and get more done, yet elves and dwarves seem to work just as well as humans and evlves especially are seen as quick and agile not slow or lethargic. I think the idea that humans learn faster is a good way to balance things out, a master dwarven smith could spend hundreds of years inventing a new form of smithing that is superior to any others, then he writes a book detailing his collective works and knowledge that a human smith reads and learns to do in a single year. You could have that longer lived races are actually poor teachers, as their offspring have more time to learn on their own, while humans have a greater sense of urgency when it comes to teaching the next generation. Humans would see passing on knowledge as a key part of human life and vitally important to survival. Elves might actually be poor record keepers as well, seeing less reason to document their experiences and knowledge as its not important to do so for the next generation since they assume they will be around to personally recount the information. This could make an untimely death of a major elven figure a monumental catastrophe as he was the primary source of certain knowledge. Humans may also have a greater sense of advancement and innovation than dwarves, elves and even gnomes. Elves especially might see the first hundred years of their lives as a human sees their late teens, like an explorative, figuring themselves out thing. A human might get more done in 60 years than an elf does in 200. Elves might also be more oblivious to the passing of time. An elf might be guiding a group of adventurers to a human town they visited 50 years ago insisting they know the place and can show them around, only to be dumbstruck as the once small town is now a bustling city full of unfamiliar streets. Elves may even struggle living in human dominated towns as they find they cant keep up with the pace of life that humans live. Constantly confused why humans demand that something be completed right away or how humans constantly have social gatherings and celebrations seemingly every other week, and feel exhausted by the constant flow of things to do and what feels like not enough time to do it. There is so much to think about when incorporating long lived and short lived species in the same world and especially the same town or city, that I think many fantasy worlds try to ignore or never even consider.

The magical adaptation of elves is similar to how Pathfinder elves are described. Regardless of where they were born, an elf living for decades in one environment gains traits related to that environment and adapt physically, without the need for natural selection.

One thing I liked in the series, Frieren, (which is in the thumbnail) is that because elves basically live forever and rarely reproduce, they're inherently not all that socially inclined. They don't stick together and seem to treat meeting one of their own kind as ships passing. Because time is limitless to them they can also be inclined to fritter away several years at a time doing nothing of particular note as well and not feel like it was wasted as there's plenty more years still to come. In many ways, their perception of time is almost entirely anchored in the shorter-lived races around them and without that reference they can lose track of time's passage. I also think it's take on demons is quite unique too.

I always like the idea of elves’s matabolism using magic to some degree. Like if you cut the world off from magic they would essentially “starve”.

Elf: "Wait, there are ruins here? There weren't when I came by 200 years ago . . ."

Warcraft elves are actually incredibly consistent and their variation and lifespan is openly explained in the games, including their origin. Unlike other races, which need food and water to survive, elves also need magic. Their lifespan is tied to how strong and pure their source of everyday magic is. There's no real genetic difference between their varieties, just a difference in their magic sources, like a flower changing colour depending on the water it drinks. Not only there are distinct "races" of elves that have one or two generations at most between them (the high elves relocated as adults, and were distinct from the night elves before their first king died) there are also differences in appearance within a few years as shown when they lose access to the Sunwell and start consuming magic from fell crystals, causing a clear split in blue eyed and green eyed elves. Then there's the wretched, elf junkies that have changed physically to the point of barely resembling their family members in just a few months or years due to magic addiction and withdrawal. And that's without going into all the late WoW varieties. The fall of the well of eternity, creation of the world tree and its destruction also explains their mortality. Within a single generation, night elves become mortal, then immortal, then mortal again due to their supply of magic coming and going. They're probably the best explained elves out there, and they're technically weird trolls, as they were originally trolls that started drinking absurd amounts of magic water and changed as a race. The only thing that isn't explained is their ability to have offspring with humans.

Ok, I will low key say that DnD elves would be more interesting if they actually had slightly shorter lives than people, it would really bring in the idea of reincarnation. All elves get visions of their past lives in trance, and in that they can recall and relive the defining moments of all their previous lives, so then how would a culture with simultaneously short lives and quasi immortality view death, or the threat of something that could potentially inhibit said reincarnation. It even plays into Corellion Being a god of change in DnD lore and weaves it into his race directly. They will live forever but they will constantly cycle through growth and death.

This was a very interesting video (and impressively engaging). I never really thought about the implications of longevity in terms of superstitions and stereotypes, but the examples were pretty interesting. Additionally, the implications brought up about labor laws were super interesting to me, because a common trope in media (at least what I consume) is the long lived races having much slower social change, so I've never really bothered to consider what actually would be impeded by the much longer presence of the older generations. Although I never really thought about the other implications in the video directly, I think that I naturally picked up on them just through media consumption , but having them named feels really nice. My only real gripe with the video is the thumbnail because I, personally, feel that Frieren is a very good example of many of the world building implications brought up in regards to long lived species in fantasy, in addition to having a great portrayal of all of your dog friends dying (along with other very well done aspects of fantasy). There's surely worse examples of elves that are more generic and probably more well known that could've been used.

The adaptability of elves mirroring their environment actually makes a ton of sense when you consider if elves were originally from the eladrin line they carry that same trait of eladrin shifting with the seasons. Running a world with night, dawn, day, and dusk eladrin as well

Just imagine elven job postings: * Entry level position. * 30-50 years of work experience required.

My ideas based on this are: Elves are so involved in nature that they actually turn themselves into trees and grow from the seeds that are sprouted in something like a gourd. They age like humans but when they want to have babies, they turn into a type of tree that's nearby, explaining all the different types of elves and why they're so plentiful. Dwarves are given their age by their gods, which is why they're so devoted to their careers, the devotion is actually part of their religious ceremony. Also dwarves are known to very often be paladins. Gnomes are gnomes.

The diversity of elves comes largely from Tolkien who had 'kindreds' (the Sindar, Vanyar, Noldor, etc). He also made his elves immortal and so innately connected to the universe that we would percieve their powers as magical. Likewise his dwarves are largely influenced by Norse mythology (craftsmen) and whilst ho doesn't have gnomes from him we obviously get orcs and hobbits/halflings. Some games (e.g. runequest) challenge these tropes, e.g. their elves are plants. but D&D deliberately drew from a wide range of fantasy literary sources, and this continues to this day, e.g. Pathfinder's Golarion setting, the Forgotten Realms, etc. It's a cultural inheritance and each GM decides the rules for their setting.

In "King of Elfland's daughter" by Lord Dunsany the King of Elfland just stopped time entirely in his kingdom. When the protagonist, human Noble Alveric came back from Elfland, 10 years have passes in the human world. He also came pack with elven Princess Lirasel, and i think if she stayed with Alveric a little bit longer she would age. I really love this magical explanation to elven immortallity. As a matter of fact, this novel basically invented modern fantasy elves before Tolkien and kinda insipred him to write Hobbit and later LotR. In his other works. And not only him, but also Lovecraft, Howard and Pratchet

One way to explain elves would be to say that their longevity is dependent on complex biological systems that protect them from cellular damage and allow them to correct it, but that these systems are extremely sensitive to their environment during gestation. Even tiny amounts of toxic exposure could cause problems at this stage because the systems need to develop in an very precise way, or else they simply won't work. Elves forced to live outside of their preferred environment would therefore suffer from low fertility, and any offspring they did manage to have would live much shorter, faster lives. This would provide both a strong natural selective pressure and would shorten the length of a generation, thus allowing the wide range of elf subspecies that are observed. That could be why elves are often depicted as being so close to nature. They absolutely need their homelands to be as pollution-free as possible. It could also be the case that elves do have the genes they would need to deal with a wide range of environments, but only a few of them are expressed in any given type of elf because trying to express all of them would cause too much cellular stress, especially for a fetus.

Reminds me of that meme where the party comes to a tavern, order alcoholic drinks, the barman pulls out a "Legal Drinking Ages Habdbook" and asks the party members "Race and age?"

I imagine it being similar to how we forget things that happened in our youth, but we’ll occasionally see something or someone and remember fragments of it. Like en elven archer walks by a workshop and stands there watching them work as he’s gradually reminded of the 60years he spent as a carpenter. All those long forgotten scents of different types of sawdust and the feeling of warmth in muscles well adapted to sawing and hammering and planing wood. Now his muscles would become exhausted by the labour since he is adapted to drawing a bow and moving with speed. He’s lost that muscular endurance that a manual labourer has. But he remembers it. He remembers pieces about how to measure and cut, vague images of joints but no recollection of their purpose and no longer is he capable of putting it all together. The further away from the moment the more the memory fades and becomes vague. But still they would hold onto those small fragments of wisdom and their intuition would develop more complexly.

I just made my elves adapt to their environment (not evolve, individuals adapting). You could easily explain the elven verity from epigenetic changes, so long as you say that elven populations (if not individuals) in the wrong environment will change to match it. Also made them able to better wrap their minds around the various details, angles, etc of a task, able to think about it from multiple perspective or on multiple levels at once, but having a good danger od getting obsessed with a task/job/role where they are always drawn back to it and never quite escape it. To counter that, many elves will never devote their time to one thing for too long at a time, leading to a society of generalist and masters (and often specialists at that), with not much in-between. They are biologically immortal, and the older one’s definitely have an almost alien mindset to humanity, but the younger ones are a bit more comparable/relatable. Dwarves (which also have the normal gnome tropes of engineers and scientists) are just a genetically augmented strain of humans distinct, but still not really seen as separate or wholly incomparable genetically). They are longer lived by a century or two, sometimes longer for exceptionally venerable individuals, can function anywhere from zero gravity to a few times earths without any difficulty, are remarkably tough physically, can withstand low oxygen content, low water supply,and bad nutrition for short periods of time just fine (and survive longer than humans on it long term), and are almost impossible to poison. They don’t even get drunk like humans do, getting a buzz but not being imparted, and are psychologically better suited to surviving hardship without trama or to much stress (seemingly at the cost of stubbornness). Just an idea though. Just found the channel and already subscribed.

Variety actually does makes sense in elves, as evolution adapts to the environment the organism s found in, therefore rather than not changing at all, after continuous struggle it only makes sense that elves though look mostly the same, have these minor difference's depending on their place of origin

Asset, wealth, and land accumulation by long-lived individuals would be a really significant difference, and probably necessitate these communities have a sense of communal property to simplify the world building, otherwise the socioeconomic scene would be insanely complicated.

Loved it. Really detailed explanation and your voice is really relaxing, thank you :)

There is actually a biological function that would make the variety of elves feasible and it's called epigenetics which is most exemplified in octopuses Epigenetics, describes How behaviours can affect gene expression in individuals from environments and how they can be expressed in Young Octopuses are a great example of this as a part of their biological function certain gene can be chosen out by their environment, like heated and cooled resistance that aren't expressed or necessarily shared in the parent and that's why they found in every ocean Another factor that could play into fantasy else variety is that they could just be very little difference in genes between each type of elf. If you look at humans, there's a lot of variety in humans, even though our genetic variety is actually smaller than most mammals due to the bottleneck events humans have gone through. To summarise my point, it could just be that these elves have an extreme form of gene expression based on there environment, and probably don't have much more diversity in their genome, then humans which already have a very limited gene pool compare to other mammals. This at least matches up with some DND settings lore where it takes 3 or 4 generations for elf to take to an environment. And Warhammer40k there's just not much difference between the type of elves.

To be fair to some of the racial concepts, like in World Of Warcraft or some D&D settings that you mentioned, some race diversity is forced by outside forces to make a change happen. In World of Warcraft, the original elves they had are LONG gone not because so much time has passed with generational mutations separating them, but because magic forced the entire race to change in different settlements. The common elves we see in World of Warcraft called Night Elves were the product of an ancient races (not quite elves) that came in contact with an *extremely* potent magic source that forced their form into a base elf called a High Borne. From that race, others came to be, it wasnt a change over generations and slowly mutating from the presence of that power, it was instead almost immediate. As in, the changes only took 10-15 years or so for the entirety of that group of elves or effected individuals to be completely changed forever. old, young, or otherwise.

Elves are technically based on the Fae, as in, elves are literally just the fleshy version of Elementals, which is why there's so many variants, as they're of literally varying magics.

My personal explaination of Elf Varieties and length of life, as it stands: Elfs have slow breeding cycles, but lots of Varieties. This is because the elf reproduction cycle. When in the womb, the elf child attunes to the environment. Partially innately being in the environment themselves, partially because the parents store up genetic adaptations. Therefore elves that are born are preadapted to the environment they are born within. Now, as for elf longevity, They can get a full nights rest in 4 hrs. That means they recover exceptionally well and stay well rested, which is key to maintaining health over time. Now some stuff ive been mulling over, You could also say that they constantly absorb the magic of a region which keeps them in good condition and relates to the birth process/ diversification.

I LOVE how you put Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End in the thumbnail. It is one of my most favorite manga series and explores the concept of a long-lived elf really well

Building off your idea that Elven and Dwarven products are of higher quality, consider the apprenticeship requirements (length of time) to become an "expert". Also the longer lived races typically are much smaller in population size and recover much slower to wars and pestilence . I think much of this concept in RPGs can be traced to LOTR Elves as immortal.

I always thought that fantasy races lived longer because of magic(ex:harry potter wizards live for 2-300 years without things like the philosopher's stone but 300 year old mages are rare)

I've been working on fleshing out my own version of Elves, and this has been rather helpful.

The "Humans are the dogs" section made me think "I do love my party, but, but... They're more like pets to me"

It's interesting how the likes of Elves or Dwarves (sometimes essentially the same thing) live compared to humans in most fantasy worlds. Whether magically or just biologically masterful or attuned, they live so much longer that its anyones guess on how they view life. And with Elves, they seem to be able to properly adapt quickly because of these things; In the Elder Scrolls, the Aldmer (First Elves/Elder Folk as they're called) are similar to demigods in how they've come into the mortal world. Some adapted to have brown skin in the Jungles of Cyrodil, some had pale skin in the Tundra of Skyrim, either to best soak in the magic from the sun or to match the snow and ice around them. The Sea Elves in Pyandonia don't have gills but their fingers and all have some webbing, with sometimes scaly skin. So while long lived, their evolution is more magically attuned to their environment. The Aldmer biology is changed easily by their innate, near ethereal ability to quickly adapt and master their surroundings best suited for life. So, aside from the Dark Elves and Orcs, who have godly interference with their form, the Elves despite known to be static and unchanging by nature, still have an element of change that allows them to be "perfect" in their environment. Once they evolved from Aldmer however, you don't really ses any signs of the Elven races adapting much to new environments anymore, unless some magic is involved. The humans all look rather similar save for the dark skinned ones from the african-like continent and province, but those changes are small as well. Nords from the Tundra are more pale than Imperials from the Jungle, but the Elves in those places are very different as mentioned before. The Snow Elves being pale white or sometimes bluish, and the Ayleid Elves being tanned and often with darker hair. For Elves in life across franchises, they can master Arts and Crafts and be legendary at it after 100 years of constant practice. If practice makes perfect, and they have the time to do as they please, its no wonder their way of life seems perfected or so advanced. Everyone has their thing, and is done so well and researched relentlessly that their societies often function to a higher degree.

Another thing to consider is how quickly human language can change. A long lived being who last spoke to English speaking people 500 years ago wouldn't understand a word you were saying today. If we did live in a world with elves, some of us would learn elvish as a second language, but that too would shift over time. The elves might return to find us addressing them in what we think is their language, but is in reality an incomprehensible dialect of it, much the way an ancient Roman would be confused and horrified by the sounds uttered by a modern day "Latin" speaker.

One thing I've been having fun with when playing my elf character is having her sometimes sort of forget that the rest of her adventuring party grew up in a completely different world than she did, because they're mostly equivalent to her in terms of mental maturity so she tends to reflexively treat them as though they're just as old as she is. I'll start talking about major historical events as though they're recent and something we all lived through, only to be reminded that those things were multiple generations ago and they only know about them as old stories from grandparents. God, I bet elves would be even more annoying than Boomers when it comes to giving hopelessly outdated life advice.

With the elves' variations, in at least D&D, I'd argue that the many variations are a consequence of the inherent chaotic magic of their original homeland: the Feywild. The "proto-elf" is the Eladrin, which in D&D is the initial point at which the elves split off from the *literally immortal* Fey and Archfey. Eladrin are inherently magically chaotic and unstable, and all other elf species split off as different grouos of Eladrin left the Feywild. In this case, I'd think that the reason there are so many elf species is that as these eladrin went to places with less chaotic magic, they'd adjust to the environment via their unstable magic within just a few generations, while, simultaneously, their children's magic quickly becomes less chaotic due to no longer being under the influence of the Feywild.

My perspective honestly is that any long lived fantasy species, in the face of humans or even shorter lived species, would become insular and distanced if only because they get frustrated at the pace that other species live and adapt. Not that they would totally ignore technological and philosophical developments in the world at large but they would be loathe to delve into new things at their pace and focus knowing it will be outdated in short order. Just look at the development of AI lately, putting aside any of your personal feelings regarding the morality and ethics of AI and only look at the timeline of AI development. Stable Diffusion was initially released in August of 2022. The first version of ChatGPT released for public was released in November of 2022. In their first month of release people were fascinated and treated them as curiosities, if a little concerned about their development. And look where we are now not even a year later. Legitimately in less than a year we are already reaching a point of exhaustion and frustration with the development speed of AI. It is going too fast for humanity to keep up and we're getting tired. But in the open market you have to try if you want to be competitive, even if in less than a year from now what you adopt today will be at best a laughable curiosity and all your effort now will be pointless. Now take this real world example and apply it back to the fantasy world and the developments of short lived, high pace species constantly improving and iterating on technology. The long lived species that maintains their creativity and curiosity, such as gnomes often are suggested to be, is the opposite of the insular species you typically expect like elves and dwarves who stick to their kingdoms and specialize. Think of the short lived species in the AI example as the various AI release models, each iterating off of the last, each making rapid strides in improving their technology and efficiency with every generation. Humans would be a "commercial" release, a baseline checkpoint which sees larger scale adoption, but in just a few generations it will be outdated and a new release must be adopted. Already you have a problem with keeping up. And then you have the people who don't adopt, or who stay out of the technology because of its dizzying pace. These are your long lived species who recognize the futility of trying to engage and stick to their guns, outdated as they are, because despite being outdated, mastery of them makes them effective, if niche, and won't collapse if the faster paced species do. Getting a long lived species to involve themselves in the affairs of the shorter lived naturally is quite difficult as a result.