I believe it’s known that I’m a fan of TVTropes, which I’m deliberately invoking here. I do so because I occasionally come across an article or two bewailing the common tropes of fantasy novels. “No Elves! No Dwarves!” they cry. I don’t believe the problem is the Elves and Dwarves (or anything else they catalog) but how they’re used. If you’re following Tolkien or your D&D manuals to the letter, sure, you’re not doing yourself much service, but even then, if you can craft an interesting narrative with compelling characters, who cares?

When I started out as a young whippersnapper, my work was as shamelessly derivative as you could get, but I was just a kid, so some measure of leniency is warranted. (Perhaps one day I’ll tell you about my first book, written around age 11: Mesozoic World. “It’s totally different!” ^o^ And the less said about my plans for Galactic Strife, the better.) This eventually prompted a fierce reactionary backlash when I zealously purged my old work and went off in search of that old unicorn called “originality”. Eventually I came to the realization of “nihil novum sub sole” and instead concerned myself strictly with making the stories I want to write according to how I want to write them. With that being said, let’s look at some of my influences in the crafting of a few of the races of the Tellus Arc and some of the points of divergence as well.

To say my Elves are influenced by Tolkien seems perhaps obvious. I was introduced to Tolkien around 6th Grade and I consider him one of my Three Pillars, the foundation on which I as a writer am based (as I’ve written in a previous post). Now, Tolkien didn’t create his Elves out of the aether. He was strongly influenced by the Scandinavian sagas, in contrast to the ideas about Elves we get from the Continent. A key difference between myself and Tolkien is that my Elves are completely mortal. A thousand years is the average lifespan, though it varies by sub-race. My Elves tend to be a little smaller than human, though not by much. Their appearance is strongly influenced by the Elves of Record of Lodoss War (namely Nobuteru Yuuki’s designs for the OAVs). This is especially true of the Dark Elves. I realize Record of Lodoss War has its origins in D&D (which in turn borrows heavily from Tolkien), but I wasn’t personally exposed to D&D until I was nearly 20 and then it was a very brief encounter. And because I didn’t play many WRPGs either, the influence of D&D-style Elves is minimal.

I have four sub-races of Elves: Light Elves, Dark Elves, Wood Elves and Wind Elves. My Light Elves are somewhat analogous to what would be called High Elves in other systems (using such a term in-universe would be offensive as the Wood Elves in particular view the Light Elves as high and mighty enough as it is). There are also two extinct branches: the True Elves and the Grey Elves. The True Elves’ power rested in the unity of Elfkind. Once the Dark Elves split off, that unity was lost, though the remainder didn’t become recognized as Grey Elves until after the Light Elves broke off as well. A few of the Grey Elves merged with Sylphs to become Wind Elves and the remainder made a blood pact with the Hamadryads to take their place as the guardian spirits of the forests. The Wind Elves in particular have no analog with other systems that I’m aware of, but Nina from the Breath of Fire series was certainly an influence. (Elves with wings. What’s not to love?)

Elven society is centered around giant tree palaces known as the Five Ancients positioned at major confluences of the aether currents. (I use aether and mana interchangeably, but I try to stick to the term that makes the most sense for the culture in question. As “mana” is a Polynesian term, I don’t tend to use it much in-universe.) Wind Elves are more apt to roam free and while the Dark Elves tend to gravitate to El-Dokun (formerly El-Haman before it died due to Xargon’s curse), they don’t have much of an anchor either. The Elves are not fond of stone and generally avoid setting tools to wood. Instead they prefer to use their magic to shape the trees into their living spaces. They worship Nature in general and the goddess El-Naia in particular. (I’ll cover Elven myths in future posts.) El-Alar and El-Sidar tend to be more matriarchal while El-Simil and El-Okur are more patriarchal. This east/west division also shows up linguistically as well, but I’ll spare you my treatise on Elven dialects. In fact, let’s leave the Elves to their business for the time being and move on to Dwarves.

The Dwarves of my canon hit a lot of the familiar notes, living in mountains, mining and crafting, minecrafting. 😛 They’re about half the height of humans but live about twice as long (the two are unrelated, mind). Significant magical affinity is rare and Dwarven psychics are almost unheard of. (No Madam Dvalla’s Tarot and Palm Reading for you.) They’ve got their grand subterranean cities and are quite content to ignore the outside world, unless they want to fight, that is. Dwarves are quite the scrappy lot and if they don’t have any external enemies to contend with, they’ll mostly just fight among themselves.

In some traditions, Dwarves turn to stone when exposed to the sunlight. I adapted this and had Dwarves, Trolls and Gargoyles all subjected to a curse from the Oreads for their long and bloody war in the Barklai Mountains in what would later be Boreas. (The curse was transmitted globally but only extended as far as the Oreads’ influence, i.e. the mountains and their foothills). The Dwarves only had to suffer the curse for a couple hundred years, though, as it was broken by the warrior-king Vesu. No such luck for the Trolls and Gargoyles.

I can probably talk about Dwarves more, but this post is already getting pretty long, so we’ll briefly touch on Goblins, Trolls and Ogres before calling it a day. I put these three together because they’re loosely related, though about to the degree humans and Dwarves are related.

Goblins (Orghim as they call themselves) tend to be around the size of Dwarves. They come in two subspecies: Tree Goblins and Mountain Goblins. Tree Goblins tend to be skinnier and more agile (capable of climbing trees rather quickly) while Mountain Goblins are stockier with greater physical strength (a bit of a necessity when you regularly take on Dwarves). They tend to be tribalistic but in some times and places have shown the rudiments of civilization.

Trolls are even more varied. There are Cave Trolls, Hill Trolls, Forest Trolls and Snow Trolls. They’re bigger than humans but not by much, the average male being around seven feet tall. As for how they look, check out the Trolls in David the Gnome for a starting point. Their hair and skin color vary by subspecies and their body types are specialized for their given environment (two layers of hair for Snow Trolls, lankier bodies for Forest Trolls, etc.). While they appear to be savages, this is entirely deliberate. Trolls are entirely capable of civilization but eschew it. The Trollwives in particular are rather fascinating. Magical ability tends to be concentrated around them and they sort of act as the power behind the power. Though rarely seen, they are said to be strangely beautiful, but this could just be the influence of the pheromones they exude. (In my canon, Sirens are actually horrible tentacly monsters that only appear beautiful because of their pheromones. A similar deal.) Snow Trolls in particular have extra fun attached to them as there as some theories that Yetis are actually Snow Trolls and the yuki onna of Japan expy Hijima are their Trollwives.

The Trolls of the LotR movies are close to how I envision my Ogres. They’re only about a foot taller than Trolls on average but about twice as wide. I have them classified as Giants in my files (though perhaps including them with Goblins, Trolls and Orcs as Goblinoids would be more taxonomically accurate), but they would be the smallest of the bunch. Still more than big enough to smash us puny humans into jelly. They’re broadly classified into two types based on head shape: the Pointheads and the Roundheads. This is actually a case of sexual dimorphism, the Pointheads being the males and the Roundheads the females. Ogres tend to be solitary sorts. They don’t normally form clans or tribes, but there have been exceptions historically, such as the Ih Clan of the Ogan League (which factors into The Shadow of the Morning Star).

I think this will do it for now. I could keep going quite a while on any one of these races or the dozens of others that I haven’t even brought up here, but I this is already a pretty long post. Expect some follow-ups in the near or not so near future. I enjoy writing about my writing almost as much as the writing itself. ^_^;

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