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.
What are are the mechanics for Rights of Blood and Tradition?
I think that is a list of actions a character can undertake in order to roll again and get new points to spend for heritage moves.
Yeah it’s on page 26 of the Planar Codex. When you invoke the rights of blood and tradition you gain hold. You spend hold to do heritage moves, which are usually drawn from monster moves. GM moves aren’t mentioned, but they are a natural conclusion.
Added another part I found in another version of this document. This is an old piece written up long ago and I cobbled together what it is here from a variety of notes.
I’d be interested to see others tackle different races in a similar way!