Which is a plot point brought up in Traveller! Aram’s father warns him that elven warriors are known to exploit this aura of grace they carry themselves with, which is known to putting the hearts of younger races at peace. The elven beauty and grace is so disarming that it’s a known tactic for elves to cut people open after they lower their weapons.
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the dwarves were right, never trust an elf.
especially in astranar
the beast of astranaar…
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Ironically there is an elven death knight who did just that, use her beauty to lull people into a false sense of security before killing them. It was the Rider of Frost, of the Host of Suffering, the death knights Arthas tried to form after the Ebon Blade defected.
You know, this just makes Elves sound like some cosmic horror trying to blend in with society.
A great read that I very much agree with! And both you and your character sounds like someone I’d love to get to know in RP ^^ Let me know if you’re interested!
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As someone who utterly loves playing the old and sometimes mildly crazy - as always; love reading things like this.
And as always m’dear. Well elaborated.
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mfw i realise elves were the very first influencers using their looks to scam people
The I-word is an artifact of human culture, and specifically modern Internet-based human culture. Applying it to elven cultures smuggles in connotations foreign to them.
Question is, whose society? Elves fit into their own society just fine; from their perspective, it’s humans who are weird.
Like all agents of the Old Gods, all societies.
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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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Something I’ve often wondered about is how draenei handle things such as boredom and memory retention. What makes them different from ancient night elves is that their enormous life spans are natural, meaning their minds should have adapted to handle it accordingly, but what that would look like in practice I’m not entirely sure about though.
For instance, a night elf that has lived for 10,000 years might be weary after living so long but what about a 10,000 year old draenei? Would a draenei be simply more resistant to boredom, able to maintain the same lifestyle for centuries without any major changes, or would they be more adept at dealing with change instead, adjusting their lifestyle often and without much effort to stave off tediousness?
Another thing I don’t see discussed very often is how a draenei would view an elf. Elves, without immortality, are in that weird middle position where their life spans are far longer than most but still pale in comparison to draenei. To me it wouldn’t make sense for draenei to view elves the same way they might view humans.
On a more general note regarding the topic:
Avoid isolation. The last two years have demonstrated quite well how even a short periods of isolation can have adverse effects on one’s psyche, so imagine what decades or even hundreds of years would do. Avoid including extended periods of isolation in your ancient character’s backstory unless you specifically want to explore those negative effects with the character.
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This is very much true; experience doesn’t necessarily equate to humility, benevolence and all the ‘fatherly’ qualities we commonly attribute to elders and ancients. I have encountered some very well-written Highborne characters whose idealisation of their own past had turned into a corrosive obsession of ‘bringing back’ a utopia that never existed; some of them were downright villainous, others were just… sad and tragic. Interacting with them on my own character (ancient mage, but lowborn, who did not idealise the ancient world at all and, despite all he lost with it, almost sees the Sundering as cosmic justice) was incredibly interesting.
I am personally not on that RP scene (my character became an Archmage in Dalaran), but if you ever do, I know a handful of -excellent- RPers who have Highborne characters (Shal’dorei and Kaldorei), with very varied views on and attitudes toward ancient times, the Kaldorei Empire, the war, the modern world and its younger races, etc. Poke us whenever!
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I mean, Old Man Velen has been priesting about for over 25.000 years. Granted, he spent most of that time perpetually fighting and fleeing the Burning Legion, but still… he found a way to remain sane.
I’m going to question that Velen is sane.
No I won’t produce any evidence.
Careful, he might supplex you into submission for that.
( I dont know if it was you, but there was a joke on these forums not long ago that Velen is actually massively ribbed underneath dem robes).
I think it was me and a few other posters.
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I am the one who started it, thank you very much
Didn’t you have the weight copypasta about a certain draenei gamer?
it wasn’t a copypasta (yet) if I was the original author of it 
but also it got nuked with the old forum because nobody bothered saving it