Showing all 192 replies.
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>>98137771
I like to imagine a different martial culture per elf kindred. Perhaps a more hellenic style for drow/dark elves with heroic nudity(for women), high elves being perhaps more like the achaemenids, and wood elves like the imagined barbarians of celtic origin.
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>>98137771
>Would elves organize their militaries at all like humans do or do they have general or inherent traits that make it difficult or uneccessary?
That's already a very loadedand sloppedquestion, since there is no "human type military" by default. We humans have different cultures and therefore developed different styles of raising armies, conducting warfare, weaponry, tactics, and whatever else.
UNLESS your humans are just bog-standard medieval stasis faux-feudal knight guys with unwashed peasant masses.
There is also not one elf type anyway, and different settings with different ideas how to write these elves.
BUT one thing should be fairly universal: elves are often low on numbers, but high on quality. Every elf should be valuable, with the potential to become professionals and experts at warfare over the course of centuries. Even when they aren't actually soldiers by trade. That should affect their tactical and strategic decisions immensely. They should avoid unnecessary risks, foolishly throwing bodies at the enemy or doing suicide charges. This might lead to the stereotype of elves being cowards, when all they do is be smart, preserve their numbers, create favorable situations and make fights as winnable as possible.
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>>98138589
No more songs, we fight now.
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>>98138759
Brave knight to have neutralized that evil drow before she could carry out her nefarious plans!
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>>98137771
Elves have a martial culture, an int bonus, and see their whole race as one big family. That eliminates a lot of the training and discipline necessary for human and other lesser races armies. They are faster on their feet as well, so can outrun and outmaneuver non-mounted enemies. An elf "army" is just a collection of militias and hunting bands organized and lead by heroes of the race. The elf king is whichever hero the elven lands consider the best who was willing to answer the call.
Elven armies are only called up when elven lands are facing a major invasion, or when some truly great external evil needs its butt kicked (usually in alliance with other races, like dwarves, hobbits, or good-leaning humans). Elves never fight each other, though sometimes some evil influence catches a hold and needs dealt with (though that practically never gets far enough to have armies involved), and smaller/local problems can be handled by local militias or other smaller-than-an-army organizations (like bands of rangers, or the church of some god).
>>98138177
>They should avoid unnecessary risks, foolishly throwing bodies at the enemy or doing suicide charges. This might lead to the stereotype of elves being cowards, when all they do is be smart, preserve their numbers, create favorable situations and make fights as winnable as possible.
yep
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>>98137771
>>98138177
The way I have the "elves" of my setting organize their forces is essentially them serving as the elite warriors and commanders of armies composed of massed augmented human soldiers. This way the "elves" themselves aren't horribly outnumbered in combat as they have a bunch of men at arms to back them. Additionally they use various biological "drone" constructs and genetically engineered warbeasts to suppor themselves as well. There is only one "elf" in this picture for example.
The in-universe explanation for this need for auxilary soldiers to support themselves stems from how the "elves" of the setting are essentially descendants of an aristocratic dynasty that underwent a millenia of succession wars and conflicts in which they kinslayed so many of their fellow "elves" that in the contemporary era of the setting they are quite diminished in number.
The reason I am putting "elves" in quotes is because technically speaking they aren't really elves, nor are they called elves in universe, as they are "merely" a race of genetically engineered and enhanced superhumans, but in practice especially when it comes to just describing them it is easier for me to say that they are just elves because that is what they ended up becoming via the process of my worldbuilding. They got trapped in the gravity well of "elf" in my head and I saw no point in fighting against that pull.
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>>98138589
Very well, Mr. strange black knight. You wouldn't happen to be related to Ashram?
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>>98137771
I can imagine it would depend on the setting. Mainly in the most typical of tropes, they are a dying race with few in number; they can't gather large armies without the risk of losing an entire young generation in some war
maybe smaller, more skirmisher-like bands who ambush invaders that enter their lands or supporting other armies like humans or dwarfs (by a few hundred miles away from the small folk), mostly because they are the best fodd- uhhh I mean the best allies against the greater foes
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>>98137771
I feel like Elves would either go full Finland/Switzerland/etc. and have mandatory army training and service for all citizens (especially since disabled or retarded Elves are probably not a thing, meaning there would need to be few or no exceptions) or they'd be a fully volunteer militia force where they basically create and "tear down" the military as needed (technically, these two aren't even mutually exclusive). I guess it depends on the wider setting, too; in a setting where it's all hands on deck all the time like either flavor of Warhammer, they're definitely gonna be more on the former side, while in a setting where it's rare that the Elves ever have to fight, I'd expect it to be much more like the latter.
The point >>98138177 makes is also really important, regardless of structure Elves should value their lives over basically anything else. This could probably manifest in them using mercenaries, "dishonorable" war crime weapons, and/or hit-and-run ambush tactics as much as possible, regardless of context.
In the modern fantasy setting I'm working on, the Elves generally are pretty conservative and try to keep to themselves for the most part, but when they are forced to fight, they rely heavily on high-quality arms and equipment to massively outrange and outgun their enemies, they use lots of magitech, and have the most advanced body armor and medicine of any race. They also rely on non-Elven auxiliaries to take the brunt of combat when possible. Some Elven civilizations, though not all, are also willing to use biological and chemical warfare, slave armies, or other extremely immoral and generally disliked warfare strategies in a bid to save Elven lives at any cost.
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>>98141870
>"dishonorable" war crime weapons
>willing to use biological and chemical warfare
You make good points, but a hard disagree on those 'dirty tricks'.
Elves have the literary pedigree to have a moral high ground, and the long lives to learn it either with patience or the hard way. Being long lives also means have to live a long time with your regrets and mistakes. Inteligence gathering, illusions and deciet are part of any toolkit, elves just magic those up a bit, but I would not call that a dirty move.
It's one thing to magically blow up a whole golbin nest, infants and all. It's quite another to walk through a city you have conquered and watch as a child is eaten alive by a former play-mate, now an undead husk.
Assassinations are always in a weird state in fantasy. In real life, they seem quite rare, but in some fantasy fiction, there are whole nations of highly succesfull 'nothing personal, kid' backstabbers. If everybody does it, the elves do it best. If it is evil and rare, then elves stay away from it.
Then again, there is a reason there is always such a hard distinction between 'good' elves and "dark" elves.
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https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/17_NxYlec-g4gnWneN7UXLHEwQ5C1TY hywl6q_GSEtcg/edit?gid=529903319#gi d=529903319
the result of research into identifying every japanese elf
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>>98143983
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>>98144490
To find a elder x human fanart that isn't goonelop or some reddit tier cringe is like finding a needle in a haystack, there probably some fan writing somewhere that decent but I dont really read that stuff
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>>98144490
Does this count
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>>98144769
Damn son, not everything is related to 40k.
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>>98143897
Yes, I was thinking of that also. 5e still sort of does this with Elven Weapon Training giving proficiency with longswords, shortwords, and bows. I think it makes plenty of sense for a highly communal race with relatively low numbers.
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>>98144880
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>>98146404
If I can find suitable bodies to base the conversions off I'd seriously considering paying some jeet on fiver to sculpt the helmet and head designs of KuF high/dark elves.
Shieldwolf has some promising kits, some of maxminis desert elves could also work and then I really have to take a proper look at WHFB witch elves and various proxies. Ideally there should be sword+shield, archers and sword+shield cavalry
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>>98144807
They were also literal faggots--it's because they were the ideological antithesis to Athens, as well as being their geopolitical rival. Athens vs Sparta illustrates two fundamentally opposed models of society and the way in which they conflicted is very well recorded.
The LEAST interesting thing about the Spartans was how they fought. Though that is what the normgroids remember. Sparta was a eugenics-based ultraconservative society of explicit minority rule. The Spartans thought of themselves as non-Greek foreigners who had come to rule over a lesser race (Helots, i.e. actual Greeks), and thus rule by the people was obviously unthinkable to them. Their legal code began with Lycurgis writing things down, his followers suggesting changes, and him saying "Okay follow the rules exactly until I come out I'm going to think things over in this cave" and then starving himself to death in the cave to make sure the laws were followed absolutely.
Their system ultimately failed, but it lasted far, far longer than their rivals, whereas the Athenian state collapsed once every few years. They built nothing, invented nothing, produced no philosophic ideas of note, but they endured for an absurd period without significant deviation from their model of government and core ideas despite being an over the top armed camp of a country. It's very telling that when Sulla came to wipe out Athens he had to be begged by his celebrity friends to stop mass murdering them all because he was convinced they were too cringe to permit to continue existing, but when they conquered Sparta they just let them keep LARPing as Spartans.
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https://www.youtube.com/shorts/m2mbqpeghqM
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>>98150165
It was cool indeed, but this whole time I was thinking about how lame it was that the Eldar were just doing basic dogfighting.
40k runs on rule of cool and there is also this whole theme of technology actually regressing, especially for the Imperium. But I would assume that Eldar spacecraft wouldn't just be sleeker, more nimble ships.
Yeah sure, stop overthink it, anon.
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>>98149934
>>98149931
>>98149929
>>98149925
>>98149922
I seriously hope no one was paid to do this shit.
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>>98150517
Calling it an autism project is not badmouthing it, it is just an accurate description of the nature of it and why I engage in worldbuilding for it. As in, my own autism drives me to work on it more than anything else.
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>>98149877
The sheer alienness of Spartan society, and how oddly successful and stable its fucked up system was on the domestic front, is indeed something most media misses. The only fiction I've ever encountered that captures the spirit of it is Stirling's Draka novels.
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>>98161392
Shadowrun more or less proves that.
If that shitty Bright movie did one thing right, then it was showing elves going John Wick on their enemies.
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>>98163169
Could never decide if I can accept elves wearing glasses or not.
But good art nonetheless. Left is the best, IMO.
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>>98163262
Ultimately, it depends on the setting and system, if the elves actually have some bonus to perception, spotting things.
It's no big deal, but it would indeed be funny if Aragorn asks:
>Legolas, what do your elf eyes see?
And Legolas first pulls out his glasses to spot the Uruk-hai.
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>>98163169
for me it's the left one. Cute dark elf.
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>>98165006
t.
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