Elves (Blood and Tradition)
for World of Dungeons
Elves are beautiful. Perfect really. Tall, delicately featured, wise, immortal. It really shouldn’t come as a surprise that we can can hardly stand them. No one wants to be compared to that. Elves exist at the unhappy crux of being too heart-achingly beautiful to be desired and just different enough wrong. Sadly, they will never be quite at home with anyone but other elves.
This is one thing that is common among all elves. They are separate. Aloof. Perhaps even a little alien. Their immortality makes them distant from the brief lives of mortals that flicker around them. This gives elves an air of quiet sorrow. They react to the world around them with a cool detachment, knowing at all times that, this too shall pass.
And then this will fall away and, they will smile, or laugh, or make some dry joke and for a moment, they will be gloriously happy. And we will be happy just to have been here to witness it. And then we will both remember that this moment cannot last, for either of us.
Rights of Blood and Tradition
Break from the group and sing, alone, under the stars.
Speak fondly of a time millenias dead with one of your own.
Craft something of delicate and fragile beauty. Share it with no one.
In a rare moment of openness, try to explain to your allies how things were long ago.
Stop and contemplate an object of beauty, fallen into ruin.
Heritage Moves
Shape wood with a song
Summon a small friendly nature spirit
Recall a secret from ages past
Perform an act of inhuman grace
Blind, dazzle, or confuse with glamour
GM Moves
Someone is offended by their hauteur
Cold iron brings pain and poison
Nature cries out for aid or shares it’s pain
Your beauty marks you as alien, strange, or dangerous
You are enrapt by a display of beauty
For Your Game
Where did elves in your world come from? Why are they so damn pretty? Were they the result of some experiment with immortality? Perhaps they are failed gods or fallen angels. A sort of too perfect first draft of mortals by the gods, before they got the concept of “mortal” down. Or maybe they’re a refinement. A new breed of life in balance with nature and not misshapen or doomed to die like the rest of us. Did they always exist this way? Did they have some shining glorious kingdom that fell into ruin? Perhaps they are trying to rebuild it. Perhaps they destroyed it themselves, knowing it could not last. Perhaps not. Perhaps they have always been a wandering people. Rare and elusive. Meeting only rarely and living lives of solitude outside the busy lives of the mortal races.
This is good.
I feel foolish now, realizing I’ve never enraptured anyone with a display of beauty.
I like these a lot.
Would like to see one for dwarves 😀
I have the moves and such for dwarves, but the write up for description hasn’t quite fallen into place yet.
Added a section I found in another version of this document. This is an old piece, I’ve had this lying around for years.
I’d love to see others tackle different races in a similar way.
I have some material on two dwarf gods I used way back in the day, but nothing this extensive.
Inebra Truestone is the dwarven Goddess of Drink. She was forged when Navanor Truestone was experimenting with different quenching materials, and he used rum (dwarven of course, 3 times more potent than that human drivel). Being what serious minded people might think of as the Divine posterchild of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, during her youth, she would disguise herself and engage people in drinking contests.
After a few centuries of this, a human named Ogmar recognized her, and he asked for her hand in marriage should he win. She was conflicted in this, but in that moment of doubt, she knew she had to reaffirm her position as The Best of the Best. She won, but he lasted long enough to get her a little tipsy, drinking at least 8 times what a human should. She could have at that point, changed her mind and he not do a thing about it. Her father would not have anything but a dwarf wed his child either, so she transformed him into a dwarf, and promoted him to demi-god. She also bequeathed the name Oathbinder upon him for making a god keep her word.
This is why in proper dwarven society, while most monarchs are kings, there is a largely matriarchal judicial system with every step having a council of 8 males acting as council to a woman holding the actual position.
Dwarf Paladin Racial Move
Whenever the GM tells you what vows are required to maintain the blessings of the Quest move, Temperance is off the table.