[RP] Ancient characters: how to play them?

I wouldn’t say that physical beauty is synonymous with spiritual purity in the Christian faith, per se. In the Acts of Paul and Thecla, St Paul is described as bald, mono-browed, and crooked, and this accords with the typical depiction of Paul in Christian iconography. Several of the Church Fathers even read Isaiah 53 as indicating that Our Lord was of average appearance.

It’s more the case that beauty is a ‘transcendental’ (alongside goodness and truth), a kind of fundamental property which is ‘convertible’ with being and with other transcendentals. The more a being has any of the transcendentals, the more fully and excellently it participates in the font of being, God.

Tolkien’s elves represent the heights of natural glory - that is, the ability of the created world to reflect the glory of its Creator by virtue of its constitutive principles alone. The Calaquendi, the high elves, bear the natural light imbued into the Two Trees by the quasi-angelic Valar. I say ‘quasi-angelic’ because, unlike the angels of Christian belief, the Valar (with the partial exception of Manwë) are not in direct communication with God: they are spiritual intelligences but enclosed almost entirely within the order of nature.

As a Christian, Tolkien believed in the primacy of the supernatural order: the world of God, reposing in infinite love, and angels and human beings called to share directly in His light. This supernatural glory intrudes into our world as divine grace, which has its own hidden beauty. As St Paul says, “the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.” Acts of weakness, humility, and kenotic self-emptying have their own beauty to those who see in them the glory of God manifested in the world.

Spiritual purity, then, is quite distinct from physical beauty, even if the latter has its own value. (And I haven’t touched the question of sacramentality at all - the natural world can serve as a vessel for divine realities, such as Revelation or the sacraments, and the beauty of the supernatural can shine in the natural.)


With respect to the OP, I always enjoyed playing ancient characters most: the character on which I am posting, the Highborne lord Wrall, was my most beloved roleplay character. I think that nowadays I could pull off the character better. With a little age, I think I can put myself more in the perspective of the world-weariness of an elf who has seen all the glories of the world pass away, and yet is too enclosed within the memory of that glory to see the heights that are possible in the life of humility. Age doesn’t always bring wisdom; instead, sometimes a person ossifies and becomes set in their ways. I think that was always the case with Wrall, even as he eased up somewhat.

I would love to return to Highborne roleplay, but all my discomforts with the current Warcraft setting remain as articulated here: No Warcraft without Christianity - #74 by Wrall-argent-dawn. I’m open to having these discomforts assuaged. For now I suppose I’ll have to imagine the many paths I could tread as Wrall.

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