I want to play a campaign in a world where humans are a young race still at the hunter-gatherer stage, but despite their primitivity absolutely terrif...

I want to play a campaign in a world where humans are a young race still at the hunter-gatherer stage, but despite their primitivity absolutely terrify the civilized Elves. From the perspective of the Elves humans didn't exist and then they were suddenly everywhere. They inhabit even the most inhospitable places with the most dangerous fauna (or flora). Elves might not understand how humans can live with so much suffering. Their short lifespan are often made even shorter with all of the hardships they face. A horrifically scarred muscular human warrior with only one good eye and a few missing fingers wearing nothing but animal rags is not a pitiful and poor war veteran, but one of the most terrifying opponents you can face, if you get too close to a human camp. And every 15 years a new generation of young male humans mature to new warriors of a tribe. But Humans are not just a martial race, but have latent magical potential, but even more so a deep connection to the Gods, who at times seem to favour them even more than Elvenkind. Imagine being an Elven Knight, who seems to face the same incursion of human raids over hundreds of years. Soon you recognize their faces and it seems like ... it's him. You face the same enemy over and over again. But that's impossible. Humans don't live that long. Then you realize the terrifying reality that the Human Warlord, who you slew hundreds of years ago, had descendants and only you Elves are allowed the terrifying realization that Humans seem to have a savage immortality all of their own, who they aren't even aware of.

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  1. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Why don't you make one then?

  2. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Your humans would struggle for survival on a day to day basis. The would be under equipped and out organized by the elven soldiers. Each human loss of a battle ready warrior would mean one less hunter gatherer to support the human community, meaning even minimal war casualties would be devastating for the human tribe.
    Their primitive ways mean they have no idea where the elven empire is weak or strong, meanwhile the elves would just build forts at the frontier and have messenger relays.
    Your player would have to civilize and organize their tribe to be to even stand a chance to the elves. This is a cool idea which I will steal right now.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      Really most settings that actually think through the Elves came first Humans later and now Humans dominate concept are the ones which the Elves either due to low birthrates or just plain disinterest deal with all the really nasty threats and then stick to their forests.
      This allows humans to settle in the left over places, the rolling planes, hot rocky terrain, the caves and ruins of defeated foes.
      And there they grow and learn and become wise by their own merits.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        Yes but the "elves retreated into the forest" concept means the humans got the best lands handed to them. The elves and the humans did not compete for lands because they want different real estate.
        The setting OP suggests is the time window where the elves haven't secluded in the forest yet, and humans must struggle for the fertile plains.
        The heart of the campaign will be this confrontation. The conclusion can be the elves losing interest in the fight and going for the forest, but I feel this is lame for the players that their opponents just gave up.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        >muh elves
        Holy shit, they really do live rent free in your head.

        Most of the time, the elves had their massive high civilization, but then some catastrophe happened, they exhausted themselves in some great war against evil or civil war against their dark kin.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      Here's the problem. You are not thinking like an Elf. You are thinking short-term. You think of the conflict between Elves and Humans as a race war, where Humans act like an Orc Horde and just throw all of their warriors into the fight. Look at it historically. It took thousands of years of slow migration, invasion and conflict for Old European Hunter-Gatherers to be displaced by the sheer population advantage of Anatolian Farmers, who were displaced by Indo-European Pastoralist Invaders by their huge martial advantage, the Ancestors of current Europeans.
      If you think of it on that timescale Humans have a huge manpower advantage, but I already explained that in the OP.

      >muh elves
      Holy shit, they really do live rent free in your head.

      Most of the time, the elves had their massive high civilization, but then some catastrophe happened, they exhausted themselves in some great war against evil or civil war against their dark kin.

      So you want to pussyfy the elves so you can jerk off to some humanity frick yeah. Got it. Any other new and groundbreaking ideas of yours?

      Based and humanpilled, making elfcucks seethe.

      I don't want to pussify Elves. I don't hate Elves. I am white. Elves are idealized white people and part of my culture.
      I just like the concept of showing a dichotomy between two extremes of (idealized) humanity. If Elves are idealized in one sense, then the "cavemen" I am talking about are idealized in another way.

      The most annoying thing about Black folk like op jerking off about how badass and kewl humans are compared to elves is that their long lifespan would make them automatic gigachads.

      Why would an elven footman ever fear any human when he has spent more time in active battle than the human has been alive?

      The only way to balance that is making it so there's a thousand humans for every elf in any given engagement.

      I don't know what fantasy universe you are used to, but Elves are not automatic Gigachad just because of their lifespan. Humans are able to compete with them. And maybe slaughtering a human tribe for settling down on an Elven Holy Site (which looked abandoned to them) might not be the best idea. Maybe they are not "stinking up the place", but were called there by their Shamaness, who has the same connection to the divine as Elves. Maybe that arrogant Elven General, who lived for thousands of years, and still sees Humans as Apes should have been sacked and replaced by someone willing to befriend Humans.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        >Elves are idealized white people and part of my culture.
        That's wrong chud

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          Magic: the Blackening isn't representative sample of fantasy

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous
          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            The largest western tabletop roleplaying game begs to differ

            • 1 year ago
              Anonymous

              >Blond
              >Blue Eyed
              >Has a tan
              this is just a white person from California anon.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >California
                I'd rather Black person elves

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          Not interested in getting baited. We both know it's true. No one will take Elves away from me.

          Humans only really need "favored by the gods" here to eventually overcome the elves. To me it basically means things that would easily wipe humans subtly become complicated while rare occurrences that mess with the elves organizing properly happen more frequently. Perhaps human settlements that suffer heavy losses are gifted with plentiful crops that year etc. At least that's how I see it instead of being very literal with smiting foes of the humans on the battlefield with lightning or such.

          I had the same thought with my "humans keep unintentionally antagonizing Elves by squatting on their Holy Sites, because the Shamans recognized them as holy and Elves like to keep them abandoned and only visit them according to certain rituals, which only get repeated every few decades or even centuries, which makes them seem abandoned to humans" idea.

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          Actually if anything, the modern surge in WOTC-funded black elf art is a tacit admission that anon is right. When I see what is being pushed by people that can only subvert and deconstruct, things become obvious.

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          >Elves are idealized white people
          They're literally not though. They ruined farms, cursed people, and stole babies to replace them with their own deformed harlequin fetuses. Yes they were magical but they were also very feared and cane to be associated with witches and satan. They're basically the European equivalent of Jinn.
          It's true that elves were described as white while dwarves were described as black, but dwarves were also stronger and smarter than regular humans. They glowed becauseof their association with supernatural powers. There was little concept of whiteness in most germanic societies because it was nearly everyone you met, and even other Europeans like Slavs and native Britons were just another foreign group not treated much differently than Turks.

          Tolkien, as the inventor of the modern definition of Elves, took inspiration from germanic Elves and the irish Tuatha Dé Danann to what we know see as Elves. Both irish and germanic cultures are "white" which makes Elves also white. You wouldn't ask yourself if the gods of a tribe in the Congo are black. I'm not even white so, I'm not saying this out of pride or to larp as an Elf.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            I express myself wrong here. I meant that for Tolkien and for the myths which inspired him, they never imagined black or asian elves, only white-looking ones because those myths come from Europe

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          WE

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        >You are not thinking like an Elf.
        Neither are you. The advanced colonial powers CRUSHED the primite peoples of the world, despite overwhelming numbers issues and being supposedly less savage than them.
        The more advanced people win, its just that simple (well, not quite THAT simple, but close to it). Doubly so when theyre also just biologically superior to their opponents.

        >You think of the conflict between Elves and Humans as a race war
        Because thats what it is if the elves want it to be.

        >where Humans act like an Orc Horde and just throw all of their warriors into the fight
        No, they wouldnt be nearly as coordinated as that.
        It would be disparate tribes acting on their own, squabbling among themselves even in the face of the greater foe because thats all they know.
        Political unity is not a strong suit of the primitive, its the product of theory more complex than what they will have developed - the ability to conceptualize a "whole" which must be served beyond the immediate boundary of ones collective.
        Human barbarian tribes would have no concept of "humans as a whole", but have the concept of the tribe.
        To them elves would be no different a foe than the tribes that live in the valley next to theirs, and if one foe will give them shiny trinkets to fight another? Sounds good to them.

        It wouldnt be a war of armies and hordes, it would be the extermination of tribes by a coordinated force while every tribe around them does nothing or actively assists in the slaughter, blissfully unaware its them next. Because that is the pattern that has repeatedly played out across human history when it came for the civilized peoples to wage war on the savages.

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          >The advanced colonial powers CRUSHED the primite peoples of the world
          >Doubly so when theyre also just biologically superior to their opponents.
          These were the later descendents of the humans I am talking about in the OP though. The terrifying brave warriors, who wear the skin of animals? Yeah in a few thousand years they will have built great colonial Empires.
          You are proving my point. They can crush their enemies both as uncivilized barbarians and as civilized gentlemen. They did both historically.

          Elves are not biologically superior. They only have longer lifespans, but that is only an advantage, if you are purely concerned with the individual. If you instead look at group selection, you will see Humans constantly being in a eugenic battle against their environment, adapting, overcoming, improving. Sure. The individual Human died, but the Elf is constantly fighting another iteration of the same enemy he defeated so long ago. And that grim, bearded, scarred face is starring back at him. He will come back. He will always come back. His descendants will avenge him.

          >but Elves are not automatic Gigachad just because of their lifespan
          They are, because you dont understand just what that means. You dont need some kind of physical "level scaling" where elven lords suplex demon-princes and dragons, literally just "this being has several times your knowledge and experience and is still in their physical prime" will do it.

          Even asides from the obvious advantages, especially in an age before common access to writing, that this has for the preservation of knowledge and information. You have better craftsmen, better farmers, better everything. That soldier youre fighting? He knows everything you could hope to accomplish and more, he has had centuries of training and is more disciplined than your entire warband combined (which is BIG, because discipline was among the single most important things in ancient warfare, because the winner of the big army shoving match that was warfare in antiquity was "whoever broke first", not "whoever had the individually strongest soldiers" )

          But I can already hear you say "that just makes them inflexible and stuck in the past!". No. Anything that has survived for that period of time has already shown the ability to adapt to various survival pressures. An elven general with hundreds of years of experience has already lived, and adapted to, various innovations in how battles are fought - from the invention of the wheel to the domestication of the horse (or in the other order rather) - and will be fully cognizant of the fact that this paradigm shift is possible in a way that someone who has waged war for only a fraction of that time will not. The person who gets stuck "in the past" is the person with a limited perspective, who has only known one way of war and no other - a shorter lived person. Selection pressures do not generally change, if something survives them it will generally continue to survive them.

          "this species lives for hundreds of years" is an INSANE power.

          see what I just wrote
          it's a good response to this
          you are too focused on the individual and not the group
          humans might actually have an advantage, because of their shorter lifespan
          we might experience death as individuals, but our genetics, the building plan, that makes us who we are gets passed on to the next generation
          and this building plan improves and keeps improving
          until finally an iteration of man, a hero, is born, who will stop the cruelty of Elvenkind and in just a few years slay all of their greatest warriors, who survived since the birth of mankind

          Humanity will prevail!

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            >These were the later descendents of the humans I am talking about in the OP though
            No, they are in this instance the elves. The more advanced and civilized powers fighting the more numerous and "savage" primitives. That battle only goes one way, and thats not the outcome the people who jack off over the noble savage like.
            >They only have longer lifespans
            That makes them biologically superior. Literally even if its just "elves are identical to humans only they live for hundreds of years" they have an insane, nigh insurmountable advantage.
            >The individual Human died, but the Elf is constantly fighting another iteration of the same enemy he defeated so long ago. And that grim, bearded, scarred face is starring back at him. He will come back. He will always come back. His descendants will avenge him.
            And over the millennia of killing the humans the elf will become exceedingly good at culling them. In the same way a man who has to constantly kill the vermin that infest his yard will learn to do it well. And he will teach his children his mountain of knowledge in killing humans and pass that information down the centuries.
            >humans might actually have an advantage, because of their shorter lifespan
            No, no they do not. This is the most asinine "what it being bad is good actually" nonsense cooked up by the mentally bankrupt.
            >but our genetics, the building plan, that makes us who we are gets passed on to the next generation
            >and this building plan improves and keeps improving
            Every race has children, every race has future generations and "evolution". And the longer one lives the longer they can produce children, and raise them and nurture them and have them develop to maturity, and that advantage compounds.
            >until finally an iteration of man, a hero, is born
            I regret to inform you that Doomsday from DC comics is not how evolution functions. One does not simply die enough to develop superpowers. If anything the selective pressure will be for passivity.

            • 1 year ago
              Anonymous

              >That makes them biologically superior. Literally even if its just "elves are identical to humans only they live for hundreds of years" they have an insane, nigh insurmountable advantage.
              Ah yes. Breeding uncontrollably like rats totally screams "extremely civilized hyper-eugenic version of white people" to me.

              >Every race has children, every race has future generations and "evolution". And the longer one lives the longer they can produce children, and raise them and nurture them and have them develop to maturity, and that advantage compounds.
              Elves have children, but they don't have enough generation for that advantage to compound like humans. And they fricked themselves over by regulating it too much.
              When an Elf Couple wants children they first need the approval of their council. They have to determine if another citizen is needed in their community. After all an almost immortal race needs to take care to not suffer from overpopulation. The socio-economic role of that baby is determined, before they are even born. The Couple then has to follow a complicated ritual in accordance with the Elven religious body. You see Elves have figured out the Gods. Their rituals allows them to fine-tune blessings from the Gods. If their community needs a carpenter, they need to follow complicated divine rituals and pray to the Mother Goddess and the Carpenter God to make sure the baby in the womb develops properly into an Elf capable of carpentering. Of course the complicated particularities of Elven Reproduction aren't over after birth. But that's just a small window into how reproduction for Elves isn't quite the same as for Humans. And why do they do all of this? To avoid unnecessary suffering. Meanwhile Humans embrace suffering as part of life and to the shock of Elvenkind are even capable of leaving their infants to the Wolves in harsh winters or when the infant shows birth defects

              I know who you are and I have taught you well.

              You might mistake me for someone else. I rarely go on /tg/.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >Ah yes. Breeding uncontrollably like rats totally screams "extremely civilized hyper-eugenic version of white people" to me.
                What the frick are you on about.
                >into an Elf capable of carpentering
                Thats not how carpenting works. Short of an elf with no arms every elf is capable of carpenting. Its a skill, one that with their longer lifespans any elf who wants to learn will be able to.

                btw I accidentally saw a word that wasn't there
                you didn't say numerically superior

                but that just means you again fail to understand group selection
                that single elven warrior, who kills humans, might get better at a skill
                meanwhile the human survivors will biologically and also partly through the better education of their surviving elders will also improve their skills
                that elf in a few hundred years will suddenly fight against humans, who have adapted his fighting style, because they learned from watching him

                >No, no they do not. This is the most asinine "what it being bad is good actually" nonsense cooked up by the mentally bankrupt.
                You simply are incapable of understanding group-based selection pressure and evolution

                >meanwhile the human survivors will biologically
                No, they will not. You dont "biologically remember your dad getting murdered". Avoiding being stabbed by elves isnt a biological trait. What you will have is a selection pressure towards passivity and submissiveness. The meeker men who dont go to war (and subsequently die) will stay around longer and be able to have more kids (because, and this is another thing you dont get, living longer means you have more kids, people arent restricted by one "birth" per person, they have kids as long as they live and are able to)
                >and also partly through the better education of their surviving elders will also improve their skills
                Yes, experienced warriors will attempt to pass their experience on. Theyre just going to do so for a miniscule fraction of their elvish counterpart, because they have less skills and less remaining time with which to pass those skills on.
                >that elf in a few hundred years will suddenly fight against humans, who have adapted his fighting style, because they learned from watching him
                He will fight them long before that, because thats the first thing humans will try and do, because its what happens in combat. Because of that his fighting style will not have remained static for centuries but rather will have constantly evolved to deal with the humans.
                >You simply are incapable of understanding group-based selection pressure and evolution
                The only person here who doesent understand evolution is you.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >No, they will not. You dont "biologically remember your dad getting murdered".
                Correct. You witness his death or get told about it by Elders, who also tell you about many myths and legends about previous fights from hundreds of years ago. Humans are capable of speech, memory and able to orally record history.

                >Avoiding being stabbed by elves isnt a biological trait. What you will have is a selection pressure towards passivity and submissiveness. The meeker men who dont go to war (and subsequently die) will stay around longer and be able to have more kids (because, and this is another thing you dont get, living longer means you have more kids, people arent restricted by one "birth" per person, they have kids as long as they live and are able to)
                Encounters with Elves aren‘t a 100% death sentence for Humans. I guess you are referencing the myth that all good men died in world wars and left the weak men alive to procreate. This wouldn‘t happen in an actual pre-industrial age. There is no evidence of men getting weaker after war and conflict in these times. lol

                So the elves are also honed in war against a foe that's actually on their level? You keep trying to spin disadvantageous as advantages and vice versa.

                I am spinning a story, yes. I am painting a picture, you could say.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >There is no evidence of men getting weaker after war and conflict in these times
                Is there evidence of men getting stronger after previous generations getting almost wiped out through war?
                Peer-reviewed studies only.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >Is there evidence of men getting stronger after previous generations getting almost wiped out through war?
                Again.
                It's your take that getting close to an Elf is a 100% death sentence. Not mine.

                >Correct. You witness his death or get told about it by Elders, who also tell you about many myths and legends about previous fights from hundreds of years ago. Humans are capable of speech, memory and able to orally record history

                "So, you know, Uthberd the strong fought the elves, yes? And their archers had unmatched precision. And their horses are really swift. And their staunch lines of speermen are coordinated in a manner that left all in awe, for they never behold such unity"

                "Wow, thanks grandpa! This knowledge surely will help me fight these elves... somehow, i guess?"

                You are really uncreative.
                >you know young Tal'set, before the dakini arrived in this valley, there used to be humans here before them
                >there was a tribe called the chumadka
                >it was my tribe
                >when the Elves came to drive us from the valley, the youngest of the tribe fled to the holy mountain Oros and took refuge there, I was among them
                >I was just a little girl, same age as you
                >we were so frightened and scared and waited for the Elves to find us
                >then suddenly I saw a young girl mumbling a prayer to herself and when she opened her eyes, they were glowing blue
                >Oros has blessed her
                >she stood up and went outside, she told us in the voice of an adult woman that our faith saved us
                >she went outside and we heard thunder like during a heavy storm
                >after many breaths the thunder died down
                >we were still too scared to venture outside, so we waited until the sun came up
                >we saw the bodies of countless dead elves, but no sign of the girl

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >It's your take that getting close to an Elf is a 100% death sentence. Not mine
                Not really, that wasn't my post and it doesn't change the idea that humans becoming so much stronger through getting beaten down repeatedly has as little basis in some real life shit as them becoming these docile weaklings.
                But you made the argument with your entire prompt that they would just get stronger magically through repeated defeats.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >You are really uncreative.
                Hes just not moronic like you.
                >a story about a freak magical event helps future humans
                In no way does it.

                Whats the lesson there? If in doubt just go outside and hope? Great lesson to pass down the generations there!

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >see, the lesson we can learn from our ancestors is to pray really hard and hope that the 0,1% chance of a random divine intervention occurs
                >now go grab your axe and shield, we need to escort that caravan through woods filled with elven rangers

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >Correct. You witness his death or get told about it by Elders, who also tell you about many myths and legends about previous fights from hundreds of years ago. Humans are capable of speech, memory and able to orally record history

                "So, you know, Uthberd the strong fought the elves, yes? And their archers had unmatched precision. And their horses are really swift. And their staunch lines of speermen are coordinated in a manner that left all in awe, for they never behold such unity"

                "Wow, thanks grandpa! This knowledge surely will help me fight these elves... somehow, i guess?"

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >who also tell you about many myths and legends about previous fights from hundreds of years ago
                So nothing useful. Being told "your father got massacred by people he had no hope of beating" doesent help you beat those people.
                >Humans are capable of speech, memory and able to orally record history.
                Less so than a long lived race. Information gets distorted because the original sources die and the story changes over time. What might once be "our forces marched into the ravine and saw the elves arrayed alongside the riverbank to their side, we rushed them but they had forces hidden and eveloped us as if their army were jaws" becomes "the elves summoned the great jaws of the river monster to destroy our army"
                >Encounters with Elves aren‘t a 100% death sentence for Humans
                Correct, but it doesent need to be. Its going to be an additional selection pressure acting on the human populations. Now, humans simply dont breed fast enough or exist for long enough for selection pressures to produce notable differences in them in this way, but if there was to be an "evolution" from war it would be this.

                The Elves have already perfected fighting styles against other Elves and all manners of other creatures. They were granted that knowledge by the God of War and the God of Tactics. No need to develop their own style. That‘s pleb human shit.

                >The Elves have already perfected fighting styles against other Elves
                Which means their fighting styles and strategies would constantly evolve to deal with this "perfected" fighting style their opponents have.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >To avoid unnecessary suffering
                That motivation prompts the elves to be as pragmatic and efficient as possible, the maximal utilitarians.

                >are even capable of leaving their infants to the Wolves in harsh winters or when the infant shows birth defects
                This would, by the motivation you have given the elves, be only surprising in its inefficiency. Malformed births which would only burden the collective in the long term, and through their existence bring about unnecessary suffering are to be culled. You just use them as fertilizer rather than encourage local predators to recognize your kind as food and come near your dwellings.

            • 1 year ago
              Anonymous

              btw I accidentally saw a word that wasn't there
              you didn't say numerically superior

              but that just means you again fail to understand group selection
              that single elven warrior, who kills humans, might get better at a skill
              meanwhile the human survivors will biologically and also partly through the better education of their surviving elders will also improve their skills
              that elf in a few hundred years will suddenly fight against humans, who have adapted his fighting style, because they learned from watching him

              >No, no they do not. This is the most asinine "what it being bad is good actually" nonsense cooked up by the mentally bankrupt.
              You simply are incapable of understanding group-based selection pressure and evolution

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                And yet somehow when OP gets his powerfantasy scenario and the elves suddenly lose some fights, they never learn as well?
                This is so often the problem with HFY-shit, you just write the aliens/elves (it's always elves with you dumb bastards, never something truly evil and despicable like undead or orcs, lwhich is so telling) as supremely dumb not able of the most basic deduction and learning skills. Just one-note set-in-stone fantasy punching backs that don't evolve, think and adapt, a basic trait that every race that managed to get to this point should already possess.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >meanwhile the human survivors will biologically and also partly through the better education of their surviving elders will also improve their skills
                that elf in a few hundred years will suddenly fight against humans, who have adapted his fighting style, because they learned from watching him
                So let me get this straight. Your average human tribal warrior gets adapted over several generations, because a few of them happened to not get slaughtered by the elves. But the elves, being alive throughout the entire time, just sit on their asses and not once notice humans adapt? Or, you know, adapt to the human tactics adapting? What level of HFY cope is this?

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                The Elves have already perfected fighting styles against other Elves and all manners of other creatures. They were granted that knowledge by the God of War and the God of Tactics. No need to develop their own style. That‘s pleb human shit.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                So the elves are also honed in war against a foe that's actually on their level? You keep trying to spin disadvantageous as advantages and vice versa.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >They were granted that knowledge by the God of War and the God of Tactics
                Then their knowledge is magically superior and the humans cant hope to compete. Your conclusions do not flow from the premises.

                If the elves dont need to get new tactics because they got given the objectively best ones in existence according to the gods? Well, guess what? Theyre the objectively best ones and they do actually never need to update them, the humans are at an infinite informational and doctrinal disadvantage since day -1.
                If the tactics they were given ARENT these unbeatable god tacitcs? They would have realised it over centuries of war prior, and learned to adapt them.

                Humans are not unique, humans are not special. They do not do anything that orcs or elves or giants or the lizard people do not do. They did not invent the concept of "maybe they will eventually use different tactics" and frankly arent even the best at it, theres smarter races and more chaotic races. They are not going to be the first instance of someone learning from the foe and trying to defeat them.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Why would this ever be a disadvantage? Surely these tactics can deal with a bunch of disconnected hunter gatherer tribes.

                This whole idea is making increasingly less sense. Just stick to elves being a diminishing power so that humans can flourish.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Exactly. It doesn't make sense. Elves will be flabbergasted about this for centuries, maybe even millennia. They are like mathematicians, who know how to calculate the probability of a coin coming up head 50 times in a row and they know it's going to be extremely unlikely for it to come up again.
                What they don't realize is that they worked with the wrong premise in mind. The coin is cheating. It's going to come up head yet again. The Gods are not favouring them anymore. That is why their perfect fighting style taught to them by the God of War is not actually perfect.

                >It's your take that getting close to an Elf is a 100% death sentence. Not mine
                Not really, that wasn't my post and it doesn't change the idea that humans becoming so much stronger through getting beaten down repeatedly has as little basis in some real life shit as them becoming these docile weaklings.
                But you made the argument with your entire prompt that they would just get stronger magically through repeated defeats.

                >But you made the argument with your entire prompt that they would just get stronger magically through repeated defeats.
                No. I never made it into a race-war against Elves, where the only consideration was how Humans fare against Elves. Humans other than Elves are subject to Evolution and will continually get better and better. Both in conflict with the environment and with other humans. That's how they will get better at violence and war. It's not about getting continually culled by Elves over and over again. That's not how they are going to get better.

                >You are really uncreative.
                Hes just not moronic like you.
                >a story about a freak magical event helps future humans
                In no way does it.

                Whats the lesson there? If in doubt just go outside and hope? Great lesson to pass down the generations there!

                Well maybe Talset is going to keep this in mind and knows he could make a deal with Oros. Maybe he should visit the mountain and he can start a personal relationship with Oros.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >Humans other than Elves are subject to Evolution
                Are you even reading through your posts?

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Elves have too long lifespans to adapt to the environment. In a sense through their magic, traditions and genetics, they are perfectly adapted to elven society itself. They created their own environment and made it independent from nature.
                Humans represent the wild card. They are the one thing that could bring this all out of balance.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                You are almost on "they breathe rocket fuel!" levels of delusion.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                I mean sure. Technically I am delusional from the perspective of someone, who doesn't understand the concept of fantasizing about a different universe. It might seem pretty crazy from the perspective of that person.
                Anyway. Why are you calling the setting and the rules I came up with for my own fantasy universe "delusional"?

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >for my own fantasy universe "delusional"?
                You could have said "game" to save some face. But so far you dodged this question skillfully.

                What are you planning on playing?
                What are your player playing?
                Do you actually have a plan or just write your blazed out thoughts on paper?

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >. Why are you calling the setting and the rules I came up with for my own fantasy universe "delusional"?
                Because you describe outcomes that dont follow from the premises you yourself describe. Its "there is a race that can breathe underwater and see in the dark, anyways they live exclusively far inland and never venture into the water because it scares them" tier

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                The first thing I'd ask them is what chased them out of the water and how best not to draw its ire or attention.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                What have you got against the inland temple cities huh? We all know we had to escape the Aboleths anon.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >In a sense through their magic, traditions and genetics, they are perfectly adapted to elven society itself. They created their own environment and made it independent from nature.

                Historically speaking, when a civilization that knows how to do that bumps up against a civilization that doesn't it doesn't work out so well for the civ that doesn't.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Youre moron, the fact that elves have long lifespans necessitates they know how to deal with the changes in their environment. An elf will see countless changes both grand and small over his life, its the human who can rely on dying in an environment similar to where he was born.
                Elves are going to be more adaptable than humans.

                Physical evolution, the change of the species on a biological level over time, occurs on a timeframe that is utterly irrelevant in this instance. We are talking hundreds of thousands of generations. Whatever evolutionary benefit humans would have from having shorter generation cycles (something that isnt even the necessary case) would be utterly worthless in the face of all their disadvantages.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >Youre moronic*
                This is my bad for not being able to pick between "youre moronic" and "you moron" and ending up with a bastard amalgamation of the two.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Honestly in this case "You're a moronic moron" would actually fit, even if it's a grammatical abomination. This might be the only way to get through OP's skull. That, or something heavy and/or pointy, it'll be a mercy killing anyway.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            >You are proving my point. They can crush their enemies both as uncivilized barbarians and as civilized gentlemen.
            Unzivilized barbarians never crushed shit though?

            • 1 year ago
              Anonymous

              The Greeks fricked up the Persians, for a time.

            • 1 year ago
              Anonymous

              Have you ever looked at indian, persian, egyptian, chinese or russian history? lol
              You don‘t seem very interested in history, if you don‘t know about the endless cycle of history pre-gunpowder era, where civilizations were taken over by tribals, who settled down, became the new nobility and then decadent and later had to defend against people not totally unlike their own ancestors, who preserved their martial prowess.

              And yet somehow when OP gets his powerfantasy scenario and the elves suddenly lose some fights, they never learn as well?
              This is so often the problem with HFY-shit, you just write the aliens/elves (it's always elves with you dumb bastards, never something truly evil and despicable like undead or orcs, lwhich is so telling) as supremely dumb not able of the most basic deduction and learning skills. Just one-note set-in-stone fantasy punching backs that don't evolve, think and adapt, a basic trait that every race that managed to get to this point should already possess.

              The adaption would be to befriend humanity and enter a mutually-beneficial alliance, instead of isolating yourself or genociding them.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            Not those anons you replied to but I question if "evolution" would matter that much vs experience, knowledge and discipline that comes with long lives. They may not adapt on a genetic level to the same degree but they will just as much have fought each new iteration of the evolved man and learned from it. "Humans became 50% larger these last 10.000 years but their jugular is still where it's always been".
            The only thing I see holding elves back is their own civility. They could go on a meticulous extermination of inferior humans at any point before humans basically can win with numbers and technology if left completely unchecked until then. Instead they generally strive for passive co-existence with other creatures and nature until their status quo is actually threatened.

            • 1 year ago
              Anonymous

              >The only thing I see holding elves back is their own civility
              Civilization and brutality don't negate each other.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                They don't but it seems to be the common "balancing" factor for elves in a setting. You can't tell me elves that "came first" with big organizations and cities just could not completely eradicate unga bungas at will if they so desired.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        >but Elves are not automatic Gigachad just because of their lifespan
        They are, because you dont understand just what that means. You dont need some kind of physical "level scaling" where elven lords suplex demon-princes and dragons, literally just "this being has several times your knowledge and experience and is still in their physical prime" will do it.

        Even asides from the obvious advantages, especially in an age before common access to writing, that this has for the preservation of knowledge and information. You have better craftsmen, better farmers, better everything. That soldier youre fighting? He knows everything you could hope to accomplish and more, he has had centuries of training and is more disciplined than your entire warband combined (which is BIG, because discipline was among the single most important things in ancient warfare, because the winner of the big army shoving match that was warfare in antiquity was "whoever broke first", not "whoever had the individually strongest soldiers" )

        But I can already hear you say "that just makes them inflexible and stuck in the past!". No. Anything that has survived for that period of time has already shown the ability to adapt to various survival pressures. An elven general with hundreds of years of experience has already lived, and adapted to, various innovations in how battles are fought - from the invention of the wheel to the domestication of the horse (or in the other order rather) - and will be fully cognizant of the fact that this paradigm shift is possible in a way that someone who has waged war for only a fraction of that time will not. The person who gets stuck "in the past" is the person with a limited perspective, who has only known one way of war and no other - a shorter lived person. Selection pressures do not generally change, if something survives them it will generally continue to survive them.

        "this species lives for hundreds of years" is an INSANE power.

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          This, it's just fricking broken as a power

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous
            • 1 year ago
              Anonymous
              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous
              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                ayo why not just hammer the prometheus too

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Unfortunately we won't get any more because Warren Ellis was cancelled. Ah well

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >Unfortunately we won't get any more because Warren Ellis was cancelled. Ah wel

                I can't find the name of the source, please help, thank you

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            See, THIS is more or less how you do the kind of story OP wants.

            People who just write "X race fights Y race" dont understand how civilizations, especially early civilizations, work. Things also dont exist in a vacuum, people are not monoliths. If you have say, the human tribes coming from the west to wage war with the elves, then they are doing it because there is something pushing them westwards (something beyond "they want more land"), maybe its other tribes, maybe its the orcs or the undead or climate change, but they are moving for a reason.
            These humans are themselves not a united front, theyre not a hive mind, they are out for themselves and will make alliances or break them as suits them.
            The elves are also not a monolith, if you have an established structure (which you do) then you have established political divisions and separations. The lord of the great mountain hold probably wants the High Kings seat, the lords of the eastern holds might harbor ancient loyalties to the old royal line and still see the current ones as usurpers (and in turn the king does not see them as loyal)...

            If you have an established power then chances are the tribes wont run it over, but they may provide the added pressure to cause internal issues to become worse. Conversely it may just provide the impetus to allow a central power to reestablish itself.

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          And this is also ignoring the most physical and primal benefit, the race with the superior lifespan WILL be physically superior to the one without.

          A human, especially in those times, will reach their physical prime at around their mid 20's and then deteriorate until a death to disease or injury or malnutrition in their fifties, if violence or some other death caused by said deterioration didnt get them before that. His ability to work on his body is limited and he only has so long before it gives out and undoes his efforts. An "immortal" with a similar mindset will simply have longer to develop his muscles and exploit the fruits of his labors.

          This is why I personally dont like giving my elves such absurd lifespans.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        You are not even fricking english and consider elves white.
        Hell, I imagine you are not even christian but a mongloid

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        >Elves are idealized white people
        They're literally not though. They ruined farms, cursed people, and stole babies to replace them with their own deformed harlequin fetuses. Yes they were magical but they were also very feared and cane to be associated with witches and satan. They're basically the European equivalent of Jinn.
        It's true that elves were described as white while dwarves were described as black, but dwarves were also stronger and smarter than regular humans. They glowed becauseof their association with supernatural powers. There was little concept of whiteness in most germanic societies because it was nearly everyone you met, and even other Europeans like Slavs and native Britons were just another foreign group not treated much differently than Turks.

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          No. Germanics regarded Elves as literally just their Ancestors. That Chieftain being buried in that burrow mound? We call him an Elf. Elves are also just generally Nature Spirits. So for my culture Elves were seen as Ancestor and Nature Spirits.
          >and even other Europeans like Slavs and native Britons were just another foreign group not treated much differently than Turks.
          That's also wrong. Celtics and Germanics were so close and friendly with each other, the Romans had trouble distinguishing them. There were some Tribes, which appeared to by hybrid germanic-celtic tribes and it's still hard for historians to tell which group they belonged to.
          Romans looked at Germanics and said "Hey, these are a related people. They worship literally the same Gods as us!"
          Greeks looked at Scythians and said "These are barbarians and cruel raiders, but they are actually kinda related to us. Our king married a scythian wife and we sent one of our princesses to them. Hopefully this will calm relations with them." Today we know Germanics had a really close relationships with Scythians, who were indo-european white people btw and not asians. Germanics seemed to somehow just travel to Scythian territory, participate in raids, intermarry and mix with them.

          Please don't spread wrong things about history. I am actually really interested in history and it pains me to see people spout these platitudes about how no one knew they had any kind of relationship with each other, were all just isolated and acted like they were dropped into a fantasy dnd world with no history or relations to each other. This is not how ethnicities work. It's like a tree. Some branches die out, but then the remaining branches become bigger to compensate and suddenly all of Europe is basically only populated by Indo-Europeans, but instead of a mono-culture, they each develop into their own branches.
          And I don't know who told you this shit about Elves. Norse Pagans regarded Elves as their ancestors.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            #
            >Celtics and Germanics were so close and friendly with each other, the Romans had trouble distinguishing them.
            So friendly the Goths violently replaced them by emigrating westward Norse founded Dublin and Iceland with Irish rape slaves. And no, the Romans clearly distinguished the Celts from the Goths and even the Celts from the Britons and Iberians.
            >it pains me to see people spout these platitudes about how no one knew they had any kind of relationship with each other, were all just isolated and acted like they were dropped into a fantasy dnd world with no history or relations to each other
            Which is not what I said whatsoever. You can understand that Christendom and culture and language families are things but the idea that the Romans or Greeks considered themselves to have some racial unity with Northern Europe is fricking nonsense. Indians and Europeans are also related but clearly don't consider themselves, and are not, one people.
            >And I don't know who told you this shit about Elves. Norse Pagans regarded Elves as their ancestors.
            You are wrong. Black Elves were descended from maggots on Ymir and the origin of the Light Elves is never explained, unlike humans who were made by Odin and his brothers from tree trunks. The reason dead people were called alfar is that it could be used as a generic term for spirits that weren't gods, hence applied to spirits of the dead. You are a stupid Anglo who doesn't know shit larping as a viking.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            Scythians most likely didn't exist as a coherent ethnic or even cultural group, just a broad stroke denomination for the nomadic tribes of that region, many of which seem to have been yuro-looking, but not all.

  3. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Read Bakker (PBUH).

  4. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    So you want to pussyfy the elves so you can jerk off to some humanity frick yeah. Got it. Any other new and groundbreaking ideas of yours?

  5. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    >They inhabit even the most inhospitable places with the most dangerous fauna (or flora).
    So like snow elves in the deep ice? Or wood elves in realms full of fey and supernatural monsters?
    > Elves might not understand how humans can live with so much suffering.
    Why not? Do they lack basic empathy and imagination?
    > A horrifically scarred muscular human warrior with only one good eye and a few missing fingers wearing nothing but animal rags is not a pitiful and poor war veteran, but one of the most terrifying opponents you can face, if you get too close to a human camp.
    Again, why? If you are a random elven warrior, chances are you are perfectly aware of this guys weaknesses. Why would he be so scary?
    >And every 15 years a new generation of young male humans mature to new warriors of a tribe.
    Yes, kids come to age and mature. Very terrifying. Certainly no young elf ever wanted to learn how to use bow, sword of magic.
    >But Humans are not just a martial race, but have latent magical potential
    Which is probably smaller then the one elven mages have
    >Imagine being an Elven Knight, who seems to face the same incursion of human raids over hundreds of years.
    So you have beaten then for centuries now. One would assume you got used to it by now. Especially if you happen to win
    >Then you realize the terrifying reality that the Human Warlord, who you slew hundreds of years ago, had descendants
    Yes, people have kids who kinda look like them. What a shocking revelation for elvenkind.

  6. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    The most annoying thing about Black folk like op jerking off about how badass and kewl humans are compared to elves is that their long lifespan would make them automatic gigachads.

    Why would an elven footman ever fear any human when he has spent more time in active battle than the human has been alive?

    The only way to balance that is making it so there's a thousand humans for every elf in any given engagement.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      The actual main problem is that the ancient immortal elves have plasma cannons and hyperdrives and warp gates and orbital habitats.

      Because they're literally a hundred thousand years older than the simians they were in the process of uplifting before the ungrateful snots rebelled and ruined their chances of ever being granted enlightenment.

      The elves watch from their glittering palaces among the stars, debating whether it's best to sterilize the planet and start over or if it's alright to abandon the experiments to their own destiny. Meanwhile, tourists and missionaries periodically visit the hostile world for thrill and sport, playing juvenile war games and larping among the animals.

  7. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Based and humanpilled, making elfcucks seethe.

  8. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    >makes human cucks believe elves are gods
    >mind wipe human souls after death and seal the greatest souls away
    >a tribe of humans forced to turn to necromancy to try to turn the tide, their empire gets shattered and their god emperor destroyed
    >sacrifice hundreds of human babies every year to the Devil (another fey)
    Human cucks kneel

  9. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Its a stupid premise, primitive hunter gatherers will get absolutely annihilated by more advanced peoples as real life history shows. But nothing is stopping you making it.

    This is just babys first HFY "what if really basic things were suddenly special because I dont understand they would have to be universal"

  10. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    >hen you realize the terrifying reality that the Human Warlord, who you slew hundreds of years ago, had descendants
    Anon, I hate to break this to you, the concept of procreation is literally inherent to every living organism to ever exist, humans arent the only species that has kids.

  11. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Humans only really need "favored by the gods" here to eventually overcome the elves. To me it basically means things that would easily wipe humans subtly become complicated while rare occurrences that mess with the elves organizing properly happen more frequently. Perhaps human settlements that suffer heavy losses are gifted with plentiful crops that year etc. At least that's how I see it instead of being very literal with smiting foes of the humans on the battlefield with lightning or such.

  12. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    sounds like you want to write a novel instead of play a game

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      I always regarded playing tabletop RPGs as a collaborative story-creating session.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        I know who you are and I have taught you well.

  13. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    What are you planning on playing?
    What are your player playing?
    Do you actually have a plan or just write your blazed out thoughts on paper?

  14. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    So you want to make up a new race and call them humans? Fair enough I suppose.

  15. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    So what kind of elves are we even talking about here? Tolkins gigachad elves? Warhammers high elves, accustomed to endless wars against their dark kin & international crisis response? Warcraft high elves, who endured endless skirmishes against the trolls and proved adaptability and tenacity even when faced with near-extinction? What kind of elf is it, that they are so shocked and scared by random savages from da woods?

  16. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    >Then you realize the terrifying reality that the Human Warlord, who you slew hundreds of years ago, had descendants and only you Elves are allowed the terrifying realization that Humans seem to have a savage immortality all of their own, who they aren't even aware of.
    How would this be a new concept? Elves also procreate.

    This just sounds like elves vs orcs, except because the orcs are human their qualities are now suddenly amazing to the elves.

  17. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    >live in shitty environments
    >spread like vermin
    >short and brutal lives
    >scarred veterans are scary
    >breed quickly and numerous
    >they all look the same
    Thats Orks, anon. You´re describing the average Ork.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      By his own logic humans, after beating the elves, would proceed to get absolutely shitstomped once Goblins turned up because they have all the things he values in human but to a greater degree.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        Even without The One Ring the Orcs were winning the war decisively.

  18. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    I know this post will get lost in shitposting but has anyone in this thread ever considered the outcome of elven-human contact to NOT be an all-out race war (which humans would, of course, win because they're amazing and special and alwayswinningly alwayswin)?

    By the way, for most realistic outcome of "what happens if a technologically superior race meets more numerous, faster breeding and zealous foe", look no further than the middle east. Except "America" in this case has way more creative artillery.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      You mean, how it is in the vast majority of fantasy settings, where they even more often than not allies?
      We are discussing OPs moronic prompt here.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        Well, yes, but both OP and people in this thread do not seem to consider that humans might not be an orc-like all-consuming conquering horde and might even have some sense of self-preservation.

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          I think the fact that humans wouldnt be a unified opposing force has been pointed out

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      >"what happens if a technologically superior race meets more numerous, faster breeding and zealous foe"
      Colonialism mainly.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        Sometimes they run roughshod over your continent and then vanish back into Asia because they have to elect a new Khan.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        How did that pan out? Vietnam drowned the French in a river of vietnamese blood, and then the Americans soon after as well, and won in the end.

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          >How did that pan out?
          Pretty well, colonial empires conquered just about the whole globe with trivial ease - and only ended those empires when they started fighting themselves.

          >Vietnam
          You do understand that even with all the weapons and support china and the USSR was giving them the Vietnamese got absolutely mauled in terms of numbers right? It wasnt a war, it was a question of whether the americans had the stomach for genocide

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            > vietnam
            One of the dirty secrets about history is America met most of it's strategic and political objectives in Vietnam. What most people forget is that it was like 3 years after the Paris accords that the south Vietnamese were overtaken by the north. President Ford wanted to recommit to enforcing the peace treaty but congress wouldn't do it and that was still a time when the president couldn't just unilaterally order troops into other parts of the world like I guess he can now because reasons and shit or something fake and gay.
            Vietnam could have very easilly remained in a situation like that of Korea but our politicians just decided not to.
            We "lost" in Vietnam only in so far as you can lose a war you elect not to fight.

            • 1 year ago
              Anonymous

              Not that anon, but this is the first time I am hearing this. Do you have any books you recommend to read up on the subject?

            • 1 year ago
              Anonymous

              You lost in Vietnam in the sense that the Vietnamese had more of a stomach for the fighting than you did

            • 1 year ago
              Anonymous

              War is the continuation of politics by other means. (Clausewitz)

              The political goal of North Vietnam was unify the country.
              The political goal of the USA was prevent it.

              One achieved their goal, the other failed.

            • 1 year ago
              Anonymous

              Everyone knows Vietnam was a bloodbath for the vietnamese, as said as much in the original comment

              How did that pan out? Vietnam drowned the French in a river of vietnamese blood, and then the Americans soon after as well, and won in the end.

              , but politically it was an utter defeat. Yeah, the French and Americans killed a shit ton of jungle hooks, but so what? Neither could maintain their presence there in the end, so the Vietnamese won. Even if OP's elves could utterly BTFO the humans again and again, how long could such an advanced society deal with near genocide in intervals that to them would seem like the blink of an eye? Even if it's a war they could militarily carry out it would probably be a political and social pitfall they couldn't recover from.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            >It wasnt a war, it was a question of whether the americans had the stomach for genocide
            And do OP's elves?

  19. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    isn't this literally warhammer fantasy when sigmar was still just a dude?

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      No, the interaction between primitive humans and elves was the dark elves driving the native americans out. The human tribes who settled the old world did so when the elves had to leave to defend ulthuan from Malekiths invasion following the war of the beard.

  20. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Whatcha tryin'a say CUS?

  21. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Explain why all of these advantages don’t apply to orcs doubly so

  22. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    I mean if you take away the latent magical power thing isn't that basically the most standard human/elf origin story?
    Like elves are better but spend all their time dicking around in Tir na Nog whilst the humans slowly spread.
    Kind of just rolled the Giants and Humans into one with this myth.
    Neat anyway OP. Could be cool to explore from both perspectives.

  23. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    >nhabit even the most inhospitable places with the most dangerous fauna (or flora). Elves might not understand how humans can live with so much suffering. Their short lifespan are often made even shorter with all of the hardships they face. A horrifically scarred muscular human warrior with only one good eye and a few missing fingers wearing nothing but animal rags is not a pitiful and poor war veteran, but one of the most terrifying opponents you can face, if you get too close to a human camp. And every 15 years a new generation of young male humans mature to new warriors of a tribe. But Humans ar
    Well, you're going to have to create it yourself. There isn't a single mention of noble minorities and evil whites in your setting so no publisher would touch it.

  24. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    If the Elves are established with their own civilizations and are scared of the humans, why wouldn't they put their pointy heads together and massacre the humans? I understand it's for the drama of it and all that, I'm not totally ignorant, but it seems to make more sense for an established civilization to be rid of a species they deem troublesome.

  25. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    sanest HFY-fan

  26. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    >hur dur Human Elf Race War NOW
    How the frick is that all you took away from my thread?

  27. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Heres a better story:

    A male elf wants to bang the daughter of the human chieftain, learn the ways of the human and helps them defeat the elven oppressors becoming a war hero

    Later he has to learn how to swim or something idk

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous
  28. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    [...]

    >So friendly the norse founded Dublin and Iceland with Irish rape slaves.
    So friendly that many coastal irish cities today were founded by norse. So friendly that historians talk about "the norse becoming more irish than the irish" to describe the intermarriage and assimilation of them into irish society. As soon as Viking Raiders settled down in Ireland, they were regarded as a part of internal irish politics. Some chiefs offered marriages and alliances to them, while other irish chiefs, of which there were hundreds, fought with them. They were no an alien race engaging in a race war with the Irish. They became Irish in the end.
    >And noz the Romans clearly distinguished the Celts from the Goths and even the Celts from the Britons and Iberians.
    Of course the Goths are Eastern Germanics, who weren't living in the West close to the celts.
    >Iberians
    Of course there would be a stark difference between these tribes as one are locals and the other ones are invading tribals, who became the new nobility of the area.

    You arguments are poor and I don't even know what your point is. First you wanted to imply white people had no sense of familiarity with each other. And now you deny that certain cultures can be friendly with each other?

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      >They were no an alien race engaging in a race war with the Irish. They became Irish in the end.
      If they were not alien they wouldn't have been able to become Irish to begin with.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      >First you wanted to imply white people had no sense of familiarity with each other. And now you deny that certain cultures can be friendly with each other?
      Strawman and strawman.

  29. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    This reminds me of ElfQuest, in which the elves are advanced and very civilized -- even the wild elf Wolfriders, who are desperately primiative by elven standards, are leagues ahead of the humans. Meanwhile the humans are savage tribals still using stone tools.

    Doesn't stop the humans from absolutely fricking over the Wolfriders when they decide to rid themselves of the "evil wolf spirits" by burning the entire fricking forest down, thus kicking off the whole story.

  30. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Hunter gatherer societies can't sustain large-scale warfare. Tribes would be constantly on the move and never exceed the size of a few families. Population density was extremely low.
    > A horrifically scarred muscular human warrior with only one good eye and a few missing fingers wearing nothing but animal rags is not a pitiful and poor war veteran, but one of the most terrifying opponents you can face
    Pic related doesn't seem that terrifying to me tbh
    Take your Conan the barbarian fantasy and do whatever you want but nothing of what you described has anything to do with how humanity actually looked like and how it lived during hunter-gatherer times.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      Pic related doesn't look terrifying to you because you can both replenish your numbers more or less at the same rate if you need to,so your technological and military power can be leveraged really powerfully to dominate them, but imagine how the wars between colonial powers and settlers against the Zulu would've panned out if those guys could give birth to,.raise and train a warrior to his full capacity in just 5 or maybe even 3 years. That's a hell of a lot more threatening to you and the kind of thing the could pose a long-term existential threat to the more developed people.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        The only thing that would change is the empire having to spend more bullets.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        >but imagine how the wars between colonial powers and settlers against the Zulu would've panned out if those guys could give birth to,.raise and train a warrior to his full capacity in just 5 or maybe even 3 years
        They wouldn't go any differently anon. When the attention of the colonial powers fell on the zulu it ended in a war so thoroughly one sided and unjust that the British felt bad for them. It doesn't matter how fast they could have bred because the zulu war didnt last years or decades - it lasted months. And it ended in literal genocide.

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          >And it ended in literal genocide
          That would've just given space to a new generation of warriors in 3 years that want the same thing as the previous one, and then another and another ad infinitum until you are completely spent.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            >That would've just given space to a new generation of warriors in 3 years
            No, it would have ended with the British simply murdering the zulu until there were none left, something that was entirely within their power to do had they wished to do it.
            The zulu did not have 3 years, the zulu did not have the luxury of the kind of attrition warfare where this would make an iota of difference. The zulu simply got rolled.

            >It wasnt a war, it was a question of whether the americans had the stomach for genocide
            And do OP's elves?

            Probably, most pre modern societies had very little issue with that sort of stuff.

            • 1 year ago
              Anonymous

              >Probably, most pre modern societies had very little issue with that sort of stuff
              Highly debatable, complete annihilation is something very rare to see in history and when it did happen it'd usually be targeted to a specific group that exist within a larger one, like the Cathars. It was also apparently common to play up the atrocities you'll commit against those that get in your way, the Mongols are famous killing up to 2M in Baghdad but we know that's almost certainly bullshit on their part, given the city was up and running as a major population center just a few months afterwards, something that would take Rome almost a whole-ass millennium to replicate, with the number of dead being probably in the tens of thousands for the city's bombardment and thousands for the executions.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        Sounds like HFY goyslop where you make the elves deliberately moronic to handicap them, and also make them afraid of impotent stone-age homosexuals because... you're a pussy homosexual and all you can imagine is fear, I guess?

        Primitive hunter-gatherer tribes don't beat agricultural civilizations. Certain nomadic societies can, but not if they're stone-age primitives and/or practice hunter-gatherer lifestyles, and even then they inevitably depend on severe instability / conflict / internal problems in the agricultural civilization they're up against - the Arabs basically had to wait until Rome and Persia had virtually destroyed each other, the various Asian steppe nomads who conquered China always did it when China was in turmoil, rebellion, civil war, etc and typically lost control of China for the same reasons.

        Well, guess what? Even if your elves are politically unstable and fractured, they're still going to shit all over your humans, because even the best steppe nomads relied on the advantage of being horse archers against civilizations who were not. Being horse archers does not help against superhuman archers with centuries of experience, which is what typical fantasy elves will be fielding. Due to their age they're also not going to fall for bullshit like feigned retreats, most of the soldiers in any given elven army will have seen that shit before at some point in their lives. Also, most likely your hunter-gatherers are not horse archers, while the elven super-archers probably will be mounted, and an agricultural civilization fielding horse archers on steroids vs primitive hunter-gatherers is just an absolute one-sided slaughter.

        >imagine how the wars between colonial powers and settlers against the Zulu would've panned out if those guys could give birth to,.raise and train a warrior to his full capacity in just 5 or maybe even 3 years
        "Whatever happens, we have got
        the Maxim gun, and they have not."

  31. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Extreme longevity is not an absolute advantage, because you need a reliable process of iterative advancement for it to matter particularly much. The development of which is specifically contra-indicated by the stronger preservation of Ancient Wisdom.

    If everything else were identical, from identical starts, the Elves have a massive early lead that is swiftly lost to horrifying ossification because they can get away with absolutely mind-boggling levels of inefficient rote imitation, due to having the TIME to parse decades-long pileups of "well, that worked, so let's do it again" teaching.

    On a long enough time scale, humanity's "win condition" is the building of a vast horde to organize an army for the sole purpose of kicking the ass of a single Elven general. BECAUSE that general has kicked human tribes into the dirt for longer than anyone cares to recount, the Elven society is totally unprepared for him to lose.

    Essentially, the problem of the Elves described by OP is that for whatever reason they're cripplingly overfitted. In a lot of ways, the better comparison point is China, not Rome, in that things have sunk into such deep ruts that only an outside imposition has any chance to change the entirely literally ages old status quo.

    When the Elves lose, the time it takes them to fix the cause is enough for the humans to leap several centuries of development on the loot, making the fix useless because it's for what they were generations ago.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      You only need to look at China to see how something that quickly develops itself as a dominant force can end up stagnating and being unable to cope with sudden changes.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      >Extreme longevity is not an absolute advantage
      yes it is
      >swiftly lost to horrifying ossification because they can get away with absolutely mind-boggling levels of inefficient rote imitation
      no it wouldnt, because the elvish society which does that will be overtaken by the elvish society which does not. you do not live to whatever extreme lifespan is on offer while being inflexible - elves arent humans who have the luxury of having the world remain the same for the ~40 years they really experience it
      "ruts" and inflexible doctrine are a result of a lack of personal experience, it is the impersonal copying of information in the most simple way. people do what the previous guy did because they dont have the time or personal knowledge to learn from their own mistakes - so they just repeat what worked for those who did
      the cultural perception that "things have always been like this and will always remain like this" is impossible for someone who will have lived long enough to have seen that not be the case. someone who has seen the horse be domesticated and the invention of bronze isnt going to be the one scoffing at this new "cavalry" thing - thats going to be the guy who has had chariots exist for as long as he lived and knows nothing but them
      >the Elven society is totally unprepared for him to lose.
      because chain of command is literally magic right? if you eventually overcome the guy with 4000 years worth of experience genociding your people into the dirt that just leaves you to deal with the guy who has 3900 years worth of that same experience serving under that first guy, and millennia worth of chain of command after him
      >china, not rome
      you mean china the land of "if it works today thats good enough?" the place where building on pillars of sand isnt so much a metaphor as an apt description? china is the fantasy humans of the world

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        >no it wouldnt, because the elvish society which does that will be overtaken by the elvish society which does not.
        You mean like the Chinese society which does will be overtaken by the one which does not? Because that has pointedly never been the case. Overcoming first-mover advantage is a difficult and lengthy process, with success increasing in frequency the less that first-mover is positioned to stop you.

        >"ruts" and inflexible doctrine are a result of a lack of personal experience
        Have you literally never met a person three generations your senior? Because the entire reason this happens with old generals IRL is that their personal experience becomes outdated. World War One went contrary to anyone's expectations because it was a novel occurrence, then World War Two went contrary to most expectations because it was ALSO a novel occurrence. The experience simply did not exist in the chain of command.

        >because chain of command is literally magic right?
        You're wrongly assuming that the person with 3,900 years experience has the same KIND of experience. Nobody else has been in charge in millennia. Nobody else CARES to note what happened under the previous guy because of how long it's been, because they still individually acclimate to their personal routines over time. They just have "routines" spanning decades or centuries

        >you mean china the land of "if it works today thats good enough?"
        You may as well complain about comparing Fascism Ground Zero to the fantasy "Ancient Empire" trope, as the CCP is very much not Ancient China. They're the first ruling power of a unified China without Confucian bullshit since that shit was INVENTED. The fantasy humans are the multiple rounds of "primitive nomadic barbarians" who conquered China despite numerous "obvious and insurmountable" disadvantages, because the Chinese system repeatedly ground to a halt under the weight of accumulated inadequacies.

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          >because it was a novel occurrence
          Because the generals who went into it gained their experience in a way of war they perceived to be "the norm", why would they expect this war to be different if wars had all been the same over their career?
          Thats an issue of limited perspective, of too little experience. Its exactly the disadvantage of a short lived race over a long lived one.
          >You're wrongly assuming that the person with 3,900 years experience has the same KIND of experience
          He will, because thats literally how you replace generals dipshit.
          >Nobody else has been in charge in millennia
          >what is chain of command
          The guy in charge of half the army is still in charge of half the army. Only he now has 3900 years of experience in leadership, rather than say, 30.
          >They're the first ruling power of a unified China without Confucian bullshit since that shit was INVENTED
          Yes, they have a different ideology to the ancient chinese, you have managed to state something correct. Irrelevant., but correct.
          >because the Chinese system repeatedly ground to a halt under the weight of accumulated inadequacies.
          Do you mean "periods of civil war", because I hear china had a fair few.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            >Its exactly the disadvantage of a short lived race over a long lived one.
            No, it's the disadvantage of slow-turnover versus fast-turnover, because the problem is that SHIT CHANGED so the older generals COULD NOT have relevant experience BECAUSE RELEVANT EXPERIENCE DID NOT EXIST IN THEIR YOUTH

            >He will, because thats literally how you replace generals dipshit.
            But it's been so long since they've had to that near-enough everyone has long since stopped caring. There has been no reason to prepare for such an eventuality for numerous generations because a really good one has been around as good as forever

            >The guy in charge of half the army is still in charge of half the army.
            He has, in comparison, vanishingly little experience with anything the other half does, and all the other "lower" rank commanders in that half have vanishingly little experience with him in comparison

            >Yes, they have a different ideology to the ancient chinese, you have managed to state something correct.
            You dismissed the observation of mind-numbing ages of political stagnation with the modern hyper-short-sighted graft machine, with that ideology being a cornerstone of HOW that stagnation happened because it insisted on crushing ANY objection to how things were run

            >Do you mean "periods of civil war", because I hear china had a fair few.
            It's the cause for the civil wars AND getting their asses kicked by much less developed nomads. China failed to make any meaningful correction to the system with the Old Masters dead for literally over a thousand years, why are you so insistent that having the Old Masters still be around makes institutional inertia LESS of a problem?

            • 1 year ago
              Anonymous

              >BECAUSE RELEVANT EXPERIENCE DID NOT EXIST IN THEIR YOUTH
              Yes it did, its called "things changed then too".
              Someone who has lived through the nature of warfare changing 20 times will expect the 21st, someone who has known one way their entire life? they're not going to be able to conceive a 2nd.
              >There has been no reason to prepare for such an eventuality
              You mean asides from centuries of millennia of war? And subsequently millenia of drilling and preparation for every conceivable eventuality because thats the kind of magical advantage "way more time than the other guy has" buys you?
              >vanishingly little experience with anything the other half does
              The other half of the army works just like the first half Einstein, thats literally the whole point of how forces are divided up. One battalion functions like the other, one squad can be replaced with a second or third.
              >It's the cause for the civil wars
              Funny, I thought that had to do with things like money, attempts at seizing power and so on. But I suppose the chinese got really heated in their confucianism debates.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >Yes it did, its called "things changed then too".
                This has literally never worked out for "unknown unknowns" of the humans genuinely innovating, and if there really are four thousand year old individuals then they could well have deadlocked into a cycling "metagame" of a finite roster of military methods. If the humans miraculously created 18th century firearms out of nowhere, the Elves would be just as clueless as IRL Europeans or Africans on how to face such a leap.

                >You mean asides from centuries of millennia of war?
                War working in a relatively stable way because the same people are waging it, and you're assuming they're refining themselves like a modern military by engaging in serious trials of theorized threats instead of spinning in near-playbook level stagnant circles like phalanx warfare.

                >The other half of the army works just like the first half Einstein
                Again, you're assuming modern methodologies. Even with Rome's famously standardized periods there were STILL dramatic operational differences between Legions. Largely due to the much less rigid professionalism standards making it so that the commanding officers had A LOT of influence on how things ran

                >Funny, I thought that had to do with things like money, attempts at seizing power and so on
                After the first three "great" dynasties, the fourth falling to shit the exact same way in a rather close window is the fault of SOME common system. And it "just so happens" that the Confucian bureaucracy was EXTREMELY hostile to any attempt at reform while trivially inviting cronyism. For the entirety of its existence

                Your fundamental premise is that the Elven society is continually advancing, while mine and seemingly OPs is that Elven society ISN'T advancing BY NOW. As I said, there's every possibility for them to race ahead on "low hanging fruit" but come to a halt, with humans overtaking them a few ages later by being ABLE to discard the shit takes of Ancient Wisdom

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >if there really are four thousand year old individuals then they
                Would have seen so many military innovations of every scale imaginable that they would be the most equipped to deal with it.
                >War working in a relatively stable way because the same people are waging it
                That would lead to an arms race between the factions that fight each other.
                >Largely due to the much less rigid professionalism standards
                So not something you would see in an institution where soldiers have easily served for centuries if not millennia.
                >Your fundamental premise is that the Elven society is continually advancing
                Yes, because it would be.
                >while mine and seemingly OPs is that Elven society ISN'T advancing BY NOW
                That is certainly the conclusion OP wants, but one that he has no way of justifying - and you have yet to manage that either.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >Would have seen so many military innovations of every scale imaginable that they would be the most equipped to deal with it.
                5,000 BC to 1,000 BC warfare was sizably recognizable recognizable for most of the world, including still-advancing sedentary civilizations. You do not fathom the depths of civilizations spinning in circles.

                >That would lead to an arms race between the factions that fight each other.
                "Arms races" are a very recent thing, basic technologies of warfighting ground slowly over centuries because nobody had a solid framework for WHY things worked. You do not fathom the depths of civilizations spinning in circles.

                >So not something you would see in an institution where soldiers have easily served for centuries if not millennia.
                What does duration have to do with conduct? Have you no concept of the Dirty Old Man, did "rape and pillage" simply fade from your memory?

                >Yes, because it would be.
                Why, when there are numerous human civilizations that have been largely static for three lifetimes straight? You do not fathom the depths of civilizations spinning in circles.

                >That is certainly the conclusion OP wants, but one that he has no way of justifying - and you have yet to manage that either.
                You do not fathom the depths of civilizations spinning in circles. You do not have the slightest inkling of how profoundly useless lifespan has proven for humanity, the idea of "selection shadow" totally foreign to you. The notion that Ancient Wisdom can be utter garbage makes no egress into your thought processes. You are a brain-rotted modernist with no concept of stagnation, that what is is what will be for the foreseeable future.

                Before the 1600s, people were taking multi-millennia wisdom as inarguable fact that was wrong on such things as the number of teeth that women had. YOU cannot justify YOUR position in any meaningful way, because YOU argue solely from the supposition that the Elves never stop trying new things and never forget anything

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >5,000 BC to 1,000 BC warfare was sizably recognizable recognizable for most of the world
                Uh huh. Whats the chariot or horse anyways. Technological advancement happened slower in antiquity, it still happened and still posed fundamental differences to what would come after it. Likewise doctrine moves forwards and advances.
                >"Arms races" are a very recent thing
                I know youre a moron, but at least TRY and pretend to know what youre talking about. Arms races are as old as weapons. the romans developed tools to deal with the Carthaginian navy, the kingdoms around the romans shifted their military to be more similar to the romans when those changed.
                But of course you think this was invented for the cold war right? Centuries of castle evolution in europe were just a happy accident right?
                >selection shadow
                A concept of evolutionary biology with no bearing on a species that does not degrade with time in the way humans do.
                >that the Elves never stop trying new things
                Correct, because that is simply not a thing that happens unless you remove all selective pressures from something (and even then it doesent actually happen, it simply slows down)
                >never forget anything
                Feel free to find where this is stated. But of course im being facetious, because you cant, because it never was. Because its a complete irrelevant tangent you desperately insert to try and weasel yourself out.
                A long lived race will still forget things, it will simply preserve information far better than a species that degrades over time and then dies.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >If the humans miraculously created 18th century firearms out of nowhere, the Elves would be just as clueless as IRL Europeans or Africans on how to face such a leap.

                They're not going do that, because they are hunter-gatherers. Did you forget your own premise?

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >They're not going do that, because they are hunter-gatherers. Did you forget your own premise?
                It's to exemplify the point that novel threats are "Unknown Unknowns" that experience is irrelevant for, hence noting "miraculously" and "out of nowhere". Literally anything significant the humans happen across independently is a potentially fatal problem for the Elves defending against them, ESPECIALLY if that time has been used to escalate efficient specialization because almost any meaningful defeat is liable to cascade.

                To a civilization running on "Nothing New Under The Sun" for longer than they have useful records because of the layers of summarization to fit it in the libraries (which is assuming they haven't been deliberately mythologizing it per antiquity propaganda norms), nobody tribesmen cracking ironworking is an existential threat to this time immemorial status quo of ages-long "Good Enough" traditions.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >hence noting "miraculously" and "out of nowhere"
                Thats not how technology works buddy, you need to play less civ. You dont just walk over a ruins and randomly unlock markets.

                >nobody tribesmen cracking ironworking is an existential threat
                Them cracking ironworking would be a marginal increase in effectiveness in some limited regards relative to sticking with basic bronze.

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          >without Confucian bullshit
          anon confucianism is still very much a thing in china, this is also like trying to argue that (insert political group here in europe) seized power without all this platonic bullshit

  32. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    > but even more so a deep connection to the Gods, who at times seem to favour them even more than Elvenkind.
    Gods favor humans because a human life is the equivalent of a TV show or Movie, while an Elf life is a soap opera that should have been canceled several seasons ago.
    Mortals are nothing more than entertainment for the gods.

  33. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    You know that vikings were a completely civilized race with agriculture and ironworking and not 'hunter gatherers' right?

  34. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    >still at the hunter-gatherer stage
    Humans would easily get dominated by the farming elves.

  35. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Okay here's how to resolve all of OP's worldbuilding problems:
    >the hunter-gatherer humans have access to supernatural abilities and wisdom on account of their hyperborean genes

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      No, he already justified it with
      >but have latent magical potential, but even more so a deep connection to the Gods, who at times seem to favour them even more than Elvenkind.

      Everyone in the thread has been ignoring the low hanging fruit of OP's scenario self-admittedly relying of deus ex machina.

  36. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    I'm glad that OP has acknowledged that the only way to beat a massive advantage such as increased lifespan is making elves unable to reproduce or making them moronic, as i said in the very beginning.

  37. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Jesus, what kind of watered down, pathetic pussy elves do you imagine in your shitty setting?

  38. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Then have a look at some of the Pelegrane Press releases.
    They're the ones with the vegana logo

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