The Inextricable Grace of Elves

I've written about elven psychology, linguistics, origin, military, weapons, half-elves, and their infinitely looping kingdoms at the end of time.

But one thing I haven't written about is what it's like for the PCs to actually encounter true elves, face to face.

Should I do a recap first?  I feel like I should.

Boring Elven Lore Shit

Originally, you had baseline humans.  When transhumanism resulted in True Elves, they basically started running the show.  They made slave-races for different tasks: spacers (halflings), soldiers (orcs), laborers (dwarves), while the baseline humans went extinct, only leaving various races of subhumans (bred to be fulfill different types of magical sacrifices).

Eventually, the technology slipped away and the True Elves lost the ability to create more of themselves.  Their degenerate offspring are the High Elves (who are the Low Elves) and they are the most beautiful creatures on Centerra (save nymphs and such).  The True Elves have either left the planet or jumped ahead to one of the temporal estates at time's end.

Elves have the best civilization and the best historical records because many of them were spared the Time of Fire and Madness; they were safely living on Eladras when it happened, a tree that grew downwards from the moon.

(I thought I wrote a post about Eladras, but I didn't.  It's roots are still in the moon, pieces of its trunk form some of the orbital biomes, its branches fell in the Dustwind, and its seeds were used to make grow Aglabendis.)

So the High Elves live forever, magical and powerful, isolating in the beautiful places they have claimed for themselves (often forests).  Each High Elf city is ringed by Wood Elves, the outcasts that society has deemed too ugly or too offensive to dwell among them.  (They're still extremely beautiful by pseudo-medieval standards.)  Elves claim all beautiful things, not just beautiful forests (which sometimes resemble parks) and so sometimes the wood elves are more like beach elves or mountain elves but you get the point.  They're the dirt-elves that range away from the parties plazas.

And then percolating through all elven society are their slave-races, except they'd never call them that.  They are their little brothers and little sisters, and they are enslaved by love.  They love their older siblings, and revere them even though they aren't allowed to sit at the same table as them, or even speak to them directly.  These are the half-elves (elf-men and elf-women) who are sterilized adult humans who have been created via semi-elfification of stolen infants, the alchemical orcs who have been restored to some of their original prowess as super-soldiers, the ashakka who are wooden golems powered by elven ancestors, and all manner of magical bullshit that they are capable of conjuring.

Most people think that half-elves are the true elves, since those are the ones that sometimes engage in trade.  Most scholars know of the furtive Wood Elves, and believe them to be the true elves.  And a vanishing few mortals have been to the elven cities and met the High Elves (who are the Low Elves) and believe them to be the true elves.  And everyone is wrong once again.

How Elves Talk

The thing to realize is this: unless you've been living in elven society for a few hundred years, you're going to offend someone terribly within a few seconds of walking in the door.

Remember that all of elven society is predicated on beauty and positivity.  Unpleasant things are corrected, removed, or ignored.

A smelly adventurer with blood in his mouth and shit on his boots represents an extremely significant challenge to etiquette, best avoided altogether.  An adventurer will find it nearly impossible to access an elven city, because they really don't want you in there.

But even within the elven city, all discussion of unpleasantness is avoided.  This means that they avoid discussing pretty much all of the outside world.  Talking about unpleasantness is an offense that entails punishment: shunning, resocialization classes, and in the most extreme cases, banishment to the wood elves.

If you could sum up the elven civic philosophy, it would be this: don't inconvenience others.

More specific advice on how to talk to an elf.

• Don't talk about unpleasant things, you may make someone uncomfortable.
• Don't make too much eye contact, you may seem intimidating.
• Do not ask questions about absent friends, something bad might have happened to them.
• Hell, don't ask questions at all.  That puts a burden on the other person to ask.
• Compliments are basically mandatory.  A lack of compliments is basically an insult.
• Don't talk about things that the other person might not know about.  If you don't know if the other person knows something or not, it is best to approach the topic obliquely.

Conversation is best limited to safe topics.  Pretty things like the clothing that the other elf is wearing.  Local music.  Delicious food.  Art.  Culture.  Weather.  Reminiscing about other happy times.  Inside jokes.  

You might think this sounds boring, but elves are brilliant and clever and pretty.  They're always alluding to other things, connecting different areas.  They're hilarious.  If they were talking to a human they liked, they'd be careful to only refer to areas of culture and history that the human was likely to know about, in order to avoid making them self-conscious of their ignorance.  Humans love hanging out with elves; they're like humans who have learned how to avoid offending people.

An elf who was interrogating you might stand at the other end of the room, look out the window, and wonder aloud "I wonder where my kinkajou is?  It's almost time for his massage."

That's remarkably direct, for an elf.  That's bad news.  You're about to be slowly lowered into a vat of acid over a 36 hour period.  You better tell her where her kinkajou is, dude.

You might think the inability to ask questions is a bit limiting.  You'd be correct.

Books are the exception.  When an elf is alone with a book, the pretense is dropped.  After all, there is still a need to learn about the actual world.  And if an elf wishes to learn about unpleasant things in the privacy of their own home, they are certainly allowed to do so, as long as they don't inconvenience others.

Written and spoken words have very different purposes in elven society.

Another workaround is the use of intermediates.  A servant hears a politely coded message, conveys it to a subservant in a less polite form, and then the subservant will meet with another elf's subservant, and the two of them will have a plainly spoken discussion.  Then the resolution will make its way back up to the elf, who is then informed of what he has decided.

Sometimes the elf is her own subservant, in a different guise and identity.  This is actually pretty common in elven society--compartmentalizing their identity into polite and impolite forms.  While wood elves might use masks to accomplish the same thing, high elves use glamours and actual transformations.

This is an advantage in fighting a high elf.  If you surprise them with combat, they'll usually refuse to fight until they can assume their "war face" (combat identity).  They're very good at running away, but try to make that first combat count.

Pretense is as important as air.

Unpleasant things are usually disguised as something else.  Combat is often referred to as dancing, but even that euphemism is becoming worn and distasteful.  Combat is now often referred to as "music appreciation" or "physical listening" or something similar.

The distaste is now even rubbing off onto actual dancing, which was beginning to have a more negative connotation due to its association with combat.  So dancing is now referred to as "joyful warfare" or "imitating the wind".

How Elves Live

Usually alone or in romantic pairs/trios/quartets.  Except not alone alone.  Each elf has a large estate consisting of their "family" of non-elves (half-elves, alchemical orcs, human sycophants), servants, playthings, protectors, and fashion statements.

Like if an elven household was a dungeon, it might be a redwood with a pavilion at the top and a branching complex in the roots.  It would have a romantic pair of elves as the "bosses".  One room might have 3d6 "little brothers" (alchemical orcs armed with crush gauntlets and jump jets) and a ziggurat made of hot tubs.  Another room might have Sir Hembriss the Curator, a charmed rakshasa who does hair and makeup.

Elven households are very diverse, because fashion.  No elf wants to show up to the gala with the same color rakshasa as their rival.

I've painted a pretty negative picture of elves, but there are plenty that take good care of their adopted families.  Many of them are effective mentors, and a few are even friends with members of their household.

Children aren't common because (a) some elven cultures practice population control, and (b) raising an elven child is risky and unpleasant.  Too much messy biology, too much disappointment and death.  It's also incredibly expensive: the same magical manipulation that improved human stock into elves also made them dependent on magical technology that is absent, faulty, and/or poorly understood.

For example, the elven fetus was never meant to be grown to parturition inside a uterus.  They were designed to be grown in a vat.  And since those vats no longer exist, the elves have had to invent some pretty drastic workarounds.  Expensive, unpleasant, and especially risky.

This is true for all stages of an elf's development, not just pregnancy.  Elven procreation requires a lot of infrastructure and technology.  It's not an exaggeration to say that an elven hospital is the third parent, since mom, dad, and magic all make tremendous and necessary contributions to the final product.

This restriction means that you'll hardly ever see elves living in the slums.  An elf will have wealthy parents, or they'll never make it past the first trimester.

How Elves Fight

Some cultures of elves will just run away, in order to don their war identity.

Other cultures of elves will fight you directly, but under the pretense of "dancing with you".  This requires having a bard nearby, who will strike up music during the combat.  If the bard stops playing, the pretense drops, and the elf will be forced to fight you directly.  (This makes the combat worse, not easier.)

How do you shoot an arrow at someone indirectly?  You shoot it very high, so that it takes a high, arcing path.  That makes it easier to pretend that you were shot by accident, so as not to upset the elf.

Couldn't you just hold your shield over your head and be safe from elven arrows?  Well, no, because high elven arrows don't fly in a straight line.  They're curved so that they fly in spirals.  Elves do other tricks with the fletching, such as ablative rachides and clockwork oscillators, that make the arrows fly in even more complex patterns.

Then they spend a few decades mastering it.

This means that elvish arrows are essentially useless in human hands.  (The inverse is not true.)

<sidebar>Elves really hate to see anyone else using their toys.  There are various ways to accomplish this, such as covering them in diseases that only affect humans to remaining inert unless surrounded by elven DNA (which is easily bypassed by anyone wearing elfskin gloves).</sidebar>

Elves are capable of producing pretty much every entry in the monster manual, but they prefer bodyguards who don't leave a mess.  Stranglers (such as a lesser wind) and devourers (such as an ooze) are ideal.  Elves really hate it when their bespoke stuff gets broke.

They also aren't above simply paying you to go away.  Giving an adventuring party a large ruby works fine: they have plenty more gems.  Besides, a large ruby in the hands of mercenaries is likely to bring nothing but turmoil to human lands, without making the humans any wiser, more numerous, or more powerful (all things that elves seek to prevent).

The elves would find it hilarious if it wasn't already so eye-rollingly banal at this point.

How Elves Die

The pretense persists until their dying breaths.  It is an inextricable part of their souls.

Consider the words of Milasham vin Valtir, an elf who was stabbed in the aorta by adventurers while attempting to recover her stolen kinkajou.

"Look," she said, reaching into her breast pocket and pulling out a bloody hand.  "I have found rubies."

Elven Revolvers

Gunpowder was discovered a long time ago in Centerra.  It just doesn't work anymore.

When they were taming the land and laying straight roads, they were also fighting the fire cults.  They won, as they always do, and the fire gods were sundered.  Some were gelded and boxed.  Some were driven into the sea and quenched.

You can still see some of them from the Victorious Coast.  Time and tempest have worn away some of their features, and only blasphemers claim that they are merely offshore rocks.

It was around that time when gun powder stopped working.

<sidebar> The only survivor of that is Lady Hellfire, the only volcano on Centerra.  Where fire and stone failed, paper prevailed, and she now existson the but should the treaty ever be declared void, it is likely that the last volcano on Centerra will cool. </sidebar>

not ornate enough

Elven Revolvers

Elves are loathe to ever give something up once it has been claimed.  The same is true for their firearms.

And so while the other races were cussing and melting down their cannons, the elves were figuring out ways to retrofit their pistols.

Elven pistols are baroque and highly personalized.  Each one is unique piece of art, and is worth a fortune to a historian.  They're also very functional--elven goods rarely break.

The pistol known as Charge Onwards Brave Horse bears only the slightest resemblance to a horse.  Mithril is used for the reinforced parts, but most of the rest of the gun is alchemically strengthened glass, stained a pale blue color.   It gives you +4 to hit.

One DM to another: I think guns are cooler than wands.  And anyone can use them.  I plan to give them out in place of wands whenever possible.

Elven Ammunition

In the absence of gunpowder, the elves were forced to find new propellants for their guns.  It was a welcome diversion, after the wars.  Like the guns, each part of the cartridge appears to be handcrafted.

We're still not sure what they used, but it is highly magical.  The ammunition is sorted into categories based on the shape of the shell and the type of note produced upon firing.  Note: while there are several variations of the "circle of dancers" cartridge, this one is the most common.

Casing: painted circle of dancers, tossing rose petals

Firing: brass horn chord, G# major

Effect: deep punctures that billow white smoke

Mechanics: 3d6 damage

Casing: engraved elephant, flayed

Firing: Harsh guitar strum, ascending, C#

Effect: Incandescent bullet burns path into retina for a few minutes

Mechanics: 2d6 corporeal damage, 2d6 incorporeal damage (actually fires two bullets, one ethereal and one material; enemies that can affect both are struck by both)

Casing: sculpted songbirds erupting from a mouth

Firing: clashing cymbals

Effect: Shooter appears to turn into gunsmoke, then dissipate

Mechanics: 2d6 damage and teleports you adjacent to your target (shooters also holding a rapier and trained in elven teleplay can make a free attack)

Elven ammunition is only ever found in dungeons or looted from elf lords, and only then in small amounts (1d6, maybe 2d6).  Its manufacture is an utter enigma.

The Perfect Languages of Elves

Elven Language

Elves are immortal, genius bourgeoisie with access to staggering amounts of linguistic and historical education.

They also get bored easily.

Because of these two things, True Elves do not bother establishing a fixed language.   Most of the time, when an elf writes something down, he's going to do circuitously.  The actual message will be obscured in substitutions and metaphor.

Why write something simply when you could obscure it?  Everyone you care about (i.e. other elves) are all clever enough to read it.

And so most elven languages aren't languages.  The elf will write their message in whatever language they prefer: dwarvish, orcish, celestial, French.  And then they will encode it with as many references, metaphors, and sly nods as they can.

This makes things fun to read.

Of course, for other species, it makes things nearly impossible to read.  It's a bit like trying to read Shakespeare without a guide, or to understand all the subtleties of Nabokov or Milton without a full education in the literature that those authors reference.

Elves are fond of saying that a human must read a hundred books before they can fully understand a sentence in Elvish.  This is crass arrogance, of course, but it is also true, sadly.  And attempting to learn a highly self-referential language when all the explanations are similarly recursive is a goddamn daunting task.  Without an elf to teach you, it is nearly impossible to learn to read Elvish.  It defies naive translation.

When a human says that they read Elvish, they usually mean "I've spent my entire life reading summaries of famous Elven literature (a corpus of several thousand books, at a minimum) and can translate a page of Elven writing per day as long as the elf that wrote it wasn't too familiar with pre-Hadean poetry."

It's difficult to explain how brilliant elves are compared to us.  They can translate through several levels of languages and metaphor with nauseating ease.  And they can do it while playing an instrument and drinking wine.

Does this (by itself) make them any harder to kill?  Perhaps not, but for many, it is sufficient reason to want to kill them in the first place.

Elven Cipher

Of course, sometimes an elf just needs to write down a message quickly and efficiently.  For this purpose, there are a number of related ciphers that elves use to accomplish this, all of which revolve around the game goal: making the encoded message (and all language is a code) as dense as possible.

Shit, this digression is large enough that it probably deserves it's own heading.

Digression: Information Density of Language

How short can we make a book before we lose any of the meaning?  If we removed the 'e' at the end of every instance of 'language', there wouldn't be any ambiguity.  (Just an annoying misspelling.)  Likewise, we don't lose any meaning to compression if we change all instances of 'you' into 'u'.

What if we replaced each word with a number?  We could have a master dictionary that correlates each word with a number.

Surely that would compress the book even further.  We could use hexidecimal or Base32 for each character, in order to fit the most information into each space.  If we limited ourselves to numbers only, we'd be wasting perfectly good space.

What if we ordered the number-dictionary so that the most common words were given shorter numbers.  Surely, we would save more space if the words 'a' and 'the' were numbers '1' and '2', rather than '382' and '28190'.

We could even have an appendix at the end for common phrases.  After all, 'I think that' is a lot longer than '69402'.

Elven Cipher, Again

And so that's the problem that elven ciphers were created to solve.  Their goal was perfect information density.

It should surprise no one that the elves believe in linguistic superiority.  If there are shitty languages, (and people should have no trouble thinking of things that fail at being effective languages) then it obviously follows that there must be better languages, and even a best language (if not eternally, then at least for a given place and time).  It falls to the elves, then, to develop this piece of perfection in language (as in all things).

And sometimes, you'll find examples of the perfect language: the elven prime cipher.  You may see this language amid the micro-engravings on the diamonds in your staff of the magi, or perhaps visible on the surface of the sun (when viewed through an appropriate telescope).

The prime cipher is a hell of a thing to see.  It's dense the way that a bar code is dense.  Swarms of dots and halfmoons and violin scrolls, all tangled in a thicket of lines of varying thicknesses.

(Digression for the pedants: yes, while something resembling a QR code might be technically more information dense, the human (and elven) brain has an easier time recognizing lines, edges, and simple shapes.  By leveraging the preexisting heuristics of the brain, elven language-architects were able to cram more shapes and lines into smaller spaces without losing any legibility--something that matrix-clouds of binary code cannot do.)

The density possible with the perfect cipher is absolutely incredible.  A cuboid ink-net the size of your thumbnail could hold a sonnet, a trade agreement, or a record of past sexual encounters.

Let us not forget that elves also possess (a) incredible manual precision, and (b) stupendous eyesight.  This is how they manage to make their books so small.  An entire spellbook could be encoded on the surface of an acorn, a haze of lines as fine and as ordered as a fingerprint.  What looks like a single, extremely complex Chinese ideogram could contain detailed invasion plans, something that would take a full page of English to accomplish.

Redundant Calligraphy

But the most perfectly dense language is also going to be the most vulnerable to error and decay.  If you go into the bathroom and see a message on the wall with part of it scribbled out (such as 'FO* * **OD TIME CALL'), you can probably puzzle out what the original message was thanks to context and redundancy.

But in a language optimized for perfect information density, there is no context or redundancy.  It'll all been reduced down to its most minimal form.  Ideally, just a number that references something else.  And if that number is changed by a single digit, then it's entire meaning changes.

And so the elves had to introduce some redundancy into their ciphers, because the most perfect language is not the most robust language.

This took the form of calligraphy.  Lines were extended and merged.  They served the same function as a checksum--the little artistic flourishes that confirmed the reader's interpretation without necessarily yielding any new information themselves.

The rules governing the extension, fusion, and splitting of the calligraphic flourishes are also well-established.  It is possible to extend them indefinitely according to certain rules.

One of the games that Elven children play, when they are first learning to write, is to extend the flourishes beyond a word as far as possible.  Some mixtures of flourishes decay, some stabilize, and some blossom into networks of repeated motives.  And it's tough to tell from the starting conditions what a particular collection of flourishes will do.

For example, if the cipher-word word for "greed" is extended indefinitely, it creates an ever-expanding, non-repeating tree of calligraphic limbs.  (Elf kids think this is poetic.  It becomes eye-rollingly trite by the time they've reached adulthood.)

Elven Warbands

This is a elven warband generator, based on my last post about elven culture and magic.  It's also partially a response to +Robin Zink's excellent post about plant-elves, which, although it is super cool, is not as super cool as my elves.  My elves, I mean, MY elves wear heels when they run through the treetops.

Roll once for a leader and twice for elites + troops.

this is the perfect example of why elf art is best art
no quiver
no scabbard
and stupid clothes
I love it
all of my elves are going to look this good

Leader (1d6)

1. Violet Lord Vor Asura (F/MU)
is a high elf clad in lunar silk (which changes colors to match the phase of the moon) and a breastplate of 7373 armored, purple spiders, each of which is paralyzed but not dead (and the whole thing can be activated to form a spider swarm).  She wears noble kohl* around her eyes.  He knows the spells mass charm, elegant judgement*, and floral salvage*, among others.  Her spellbook is a ruby on a chain, which is held in the mouth to access the contents.  She rides a permanent phantom steed named Mare Imbrium, who is actually her transformed lover.  At nights, Mare Imbrium turns back into an elf.  They have a complicated relationship.

Violet Lord Vor Asura's troops have glowing violet eyes, bleed glitter, and get +4 to save vs magic.

2. Fleshcrafter Vyrinculembria (F/MU)
is a high elf who cavorts in the nude.  Those who behold him are awestruck at his beauty and cannot attack him until they succeed on a Wisdom check (one allowed per turn).  He can change gender and skin at will.  Every morning, his troops collect their own blood in a bucket, which he uses to paint his body.  He can jump 100' and has a poisonous bite (save or be stunned for 1d6 rounds while gaining a new mutation).  Once per day, he can shed his own skin as he jumps out of it.  This heals him for 1d6+1 HP and ends all ongoing effects on him (even things that don't affect his skin, like charm).  He regenerates 1 HP per turn and can even recover from death (unless burned).  He has only prepared a single spell today: dominate appendage*.  His spellbook is tattooed on the skin of a charmed human girl (Commoner 0) of uncanny beauty named Mia who wears a sundress, works as a servant, and would happily die for her "brother".  He is going mad (Zala Vacha speaks to him) and has already killed another high elf who was beginning to suspect that Vyrinculembria was due for a mental "rebalancing".

Fleshcrafter Vyrinculembria's troops have an extra arm (and a weapon for that arm), which lets them do +2 damage.  50% of them are also undead, but this is indistinguishable except for the fact that they don't speak or bleed.  If any (living or dead) are destroyed, they can be resurrected.

3. Warden Palladar (F/MU)
 is a wood elf who rides a manticore.  The manticore's name is Acerax, and its wings have been clipped in order to make it more docile.  Each of the manticore's spines has a detailed pastoral scene painted on it, along with a message.  Painting is Palladar's only passion, and it is what he hopes to return to when allowed back into high elf society.  The messages contain the equivalent of elven bumper stickers.  Samples: "Suffer no ugliness." and "Wisdom is a happy home."  Palladar is an excellent tracker and archer, and can fire two arrows in the same round.  He has the following spells prepared, among others: rain of arrows*, serpents of the earth*, and dominate animal.  His spellbook is built into his quiver.  1d6 of her arrows are magic (roll a d50).

Warden Palladar's troops all have bows in addition to their regular equipment.  If they already have bows, they get +2 to hit with them.

4. Treespeaker Quenlaia (F/MU) 
is a pregnant wood elf who wears living armor made from mosses and honeysuckles (as leather, self-repairing, requires water).  She rides an enormous treant, whose branches contain a 3-room minidungeon (1 - pool of dew that doubles as a bath and a scrying pool, 2 - seedling chamber that contains mandrakes among other things, 3 - hospital containing beds for troops, salve for treant injuries, and a trove of healing + antidote potions).  She rains down arrows and commands, while being surveying the whole battlefield from her vantage point, 50' in the air.  The treant, named Rowanoak, is old and stiff and cannot attack people climbing his backside (however, there is a symbol of stunning halfway up).  She has the following spells prepared, among others: entangle, mass warp wood, sleep, and lightning bolt.  Her spellbook is a bunch of animated origami that lives in her satchel.  She is secretly plotting against the high elves, and is trying to plant treants that will only be loyal to her.  She especially wants to kill Fleshcrafter Vyrinculembria, who's baby she carries.  She carries 3 epic acorns.

Treespeaker Quenlaia's troops surprise with a 4-in-6 chance while in the forest.

5. Mercenary Captain Travion (Fighter) 
was probably extremely handsome before his nose was cut off.  He now wears a prosthetic nose (with a strap, like an eyepatch).  If his nose is ever removed, he will flip the fuck out and abandon everything else to get it back.  He wears a locket around his neck, which contains a portrait of Avannalia, an elven noble that he serves and is in love with.  The locket is worth 200g for its materials and craftsmanship, but it is also a scrying device, and allows Avannalia to scry on and communicate with the wearer.  Captain Travion wears plate mail and rides an alchemically-enhanced charger (stronger and faster than a regular horse, but has a 30% chance of its heart exploding at the end of every battle).  He wield a lance + shield on horseback and a sword + shield on foot.  He wears a belt of woven oaks* and is an brilliant tactician.  His armor is mithril, and is worth a fortune.

Mercenary Captain Travion's troops get +2 morale will always fight with ideal tactics.  They also carry twice as much gold as they normally would.

6. Disgusting Hatebeast Vekkay (Assassin/MU) 
is one of the skull people, a faceless elf.  He wears a mask that depicts a green monkey face with bulging eyes and a mane of purple feathers.  He rides a black orn* trained to respond to a click-language of Vekkay's own devising.  In combat, the two fight in fearsome synchronicity--if they attack the same target simultaneously, Vekkay does +100% damage.  He wields a cryptic dagger, poisoned with hagsblood (2d6 damage, Cha check for half, only works once).  Vekkay can climb as spiderclimb and can spit acidic webs (as nets, 1d6 dmg/rnd) twice per day.  , He can also be stealthy 5-in-6 (surprise, hide in shadows, move silently, etc).  He has the following spells prepared, among others: speak with birds*, invisibility, darkness, faerie fire, dimension door.  He's likely to creep around the party and ask them questions in his rasping, groaning voice, careful not to give them a clear shot at him.  "Why do you wear such disgusting faces?" "Who do you serve?" "What is wrong with your heart?" He's (genuinely) more curious than he is cruel, and he's plenty cruel.  He enjoys wearing faces of his victims under his mask and cutting himself.  He also enjoys lying at the bottom of streambeds with a heavy stone on his stomach.

If Vekkay is the warband's leader, there is a 90% chance that you should not roll on the Elites/Troops tables and just roll on the skull people tables instead (at the very end of this post).

Disgusting Hatebeast Vekkay's troops poison all of their weapons, each of which deals an extra 1d6 damage on their first hit (save negates this poison damage).

elf secret #37
All elves think that they're Drizzt
They're all broody and artistic and think they're rebelling against a corrupt establishment

Elites and Troops (d12, roll twice)

1 - Lightning-Struck Treant (Elite)
Boatloads of HP and AC.  Immune to fire.  Hits like a fire truck on bath salts.  In his branches are either some troops with ranged weapons or an enormous wasp nest (that can be thrown like a grenade), DM's discretion.  Moves slowly, but is not slowed by forests (other trees get the fuck out of the way).

2 - Two Unicorns (Elite)
Gore attack with horn, trample with their shiny shiny hooves, charm, will attack the most promiscuous member of their opponents (unicorns hate sluts!)  Can heal their allies.  Horns cure all diseases and curses (even if you are impaled on them).  Have a death curse: their killer loses 1d6 from their highest attribute until they sincerely apologize to unicorn's ghost and then create a work of immortal beauty in the world.

10% chance that the unicorns are undead unicorn husks.  These unicorns have beautiful black coats and look alive, but they have no magical powers.  If they are killed, their skins collapse and a crackling blue gas escapes, filling a 50' diameter area.  Those in the gas are paralyzed (convulsions and vomiting), but get a save each turn in order to act normally (1 turn only).  Each turn they remain in the gas, they take 1d6 damage and 1d6 strength damage and 1d6 charisma damage as their body putrefies and sloughs off, because that's what unicorn-killers fucking deserve.

If there elves, they might ride the unicorns, DM's discretion.

3 - Three Eunuch Ogres (Elite)
Clad in full plate mail, covered in spikes (ogre stats with higher AC).  Each armor is a beautiful work of art, and each helmet depicts an androgynous face.  Each ogre can cast invisibility 1/day.  The ogres are eunuchs because their vulgar genitalia offended elvish sensibilities.  They carry the dried, offending bits of flesh in a pouch around their necks.

4 - 1d4 War Ashakkas (Elite)
HD 6, AC 15, Fly 15, Slam 2d8, Morale 12, otherwise treat them like wood golems that can cast wall of force, magic missile (3 missiles), and a variant of force cage  that is channeled and therefore interruptable.  Each 1/day.

5 - 1d4+1 Winter Wolves (Elite)
HD 5, AC 14, Move 15, Bite 1d8+1 + trip attempt, Morale 10, can breath a cone of cold (5d6) and vanish in snowy conditions.  Some of the troops might ride them, DM's discretion.

6 - 1d4+1 Elementals (Elite)
Equal chance of being air or water elementals.  HD 5, AC 15.  Morale 12.

Water elementals slam for 1d8+1, but are also fond of engulfing opponents and then freezing.  They'll stay frozen until dead (can be attacked by third parties at this time, all attacks automatically hit), commanded to unfreeze by their commander, or until they take fire damage.  Frozen people take 1d6 cold damage per turn, cannot breath, and have a 0-in-20 chance of escaping each turn, modified by their Str bonus.  Move 12.

Air elementals slam for 1d4 damage, but are also fond of grabbing people (their Str is 16) and flying straight up until they can drop them.  They deal 1d4 damage each round while flying upwards.  Any arrow that enters a 10' space around an air elemental is automatically grabbed and redirected (the air elemental makes a new attack roll with a new target).  Whenever they hit someone, that person is prevented from spellcasting for 1 round as their voice is sucked straight out of their lungs.  Fly 24.

this is how ridiculous my beautiful elves look
just look at each piece of this drawing
take it all in
I'd rather lose a PC to dire rats than to her shitty bow

7 - 2d4 Elven Sword Dancers (Troops)
HD 3, AC 16, Move 12, Sword 1d6+1, Morale 10, Backstab x2, automatically counterattack whenever a melee attack misses them, AC 20 vs arrows (knock them out of the arrow), as stealthy as a 6th level thief

8 - 2d6 Wood Elf Scouts (Troops)
Level 1 elves in leather armor, bows, scimitars.  Uncanny ability to jump from branch to branch, and prefer to fight from the trees.  Impossible to surprise in a forest via mundane means, normally (they keep a tight watch).

9 - 1d8 Wood Elf Rangers (Troops)
Level 1 elves in breastplates, bows, scimitars.  They all have an animal companion (equal in number to the elves).  Roll a d4 for the whole troop: 1 - hawks (1 HD) trained to pluck out eyes, 2 - wolves (2 HD) wearing feathered necklaces, 3 - black bears (3 HD) with elaborately dyed hair, 4 - A single giant webspitting spider (6 HD) for the entire troop.  If they have a chance to defend, they will set up ingenious forest traps: snares and deadfalls and punji sticks.

10 - 2d6 Elven Mannikins (Troops)
These are soulless elves with visible perfections.  They are made by elven fleshcrafters from left-over body parts.  They have water for blood and abnormal internal organs.  Treat them as elven clerics (HD 1) in leather armor.  They get +4 AC against any weapon that isn't 100% clean (this usually means cleaning your weapons/arrows before the battle).  They each know a level 1 cleric spell, usually bless, cure light wounds, or command.  Morale 6.

11 - 2d6 Orc Mercenaries (Troops)
Orcs (2 HD) armed with glaives.  They wear immaculate white armor and have beatific, beautiful masks locked onto their heads.  (Their leader holds the key.)  They will praise the elves--their beautiful, kind benefactors--with their dying breaths.

12 - 3d6 Human Mercenaries (Troops)
Humans (1 HD) armed with longswords, shields, and breastplates.  1d3 of them ride horses (lieutenants).  Half of them also carry crossbows.  If captured and questioned, they will mostly talk about how beautiful and wise the elves are.  50% chance that one of them is a 4 HD changeling agent of the elves.

this picture is unrelated to elves
no wait
this is what an elf party looks like before the band shows up

*Appendix

Magic Items

Noble Kohl
Magic Makeup
Wearing this cosmetic gives you +4 AC as long as you seem lordly and beautiful.  The effect ends at once if (a) it washes off, (b) the wearer takes any damage, (c) the wearer gets dirty, or (d) the wearer performs anything embarassing or undignified.  This jar has 1d4+1 doses remaining.

Belt of Woven Oaks
Magic Belt
You can step into a tree and exit through another tree up to 50' away.  If you are riding a mount, you can share this ability.  Alternatively, you can hang out inside a single tree, which protects you.  You can see and hear out of the tree, and breath normally.  This belt has 1d8+2 charges remaining.

Cryptic Dagger
For the next 10 minutes, the character's body erupts in injuries (cracking bones, lacerations, epic nosebleeds) that have no mechanical effect, but make it impossible to track how injured you actually are.  Tell the player that you are going to keep track of their (now secret) HP total, and then do exactly that.  In the hands of a PC, this is usually enough to force a  morale check on a group of monsters if you hit their leader.

Epic Acorn
If planted, they instantly grow into a 30' oak tree.  If eaten, the function as a potion of giant growth.

Spells

Elegant Judgement
Wizard Spell
As fireball, except the damage is necrotic (purple flames) and the targets make a Cha check instead of save.  Creatures with 17 or more Charisma are immune to this spell.  Casting this spell involves snapping your fingers at the end of the incantation.

Floral Salvage
Wizard Spell
Flowers (caster chooses the type) erupt from the target's wounds.  Target takes 1 damage for every point of damage it has already taken.  (So a target with 7 out of 12 HP would take 5 damage.)  Save for half.  If this damage kills the target, their corpse is entirely consumed by plant growth, and turns into a beautiful tree covered in flowers.  Height is 2d4 x creature's HD in feet.  Elves use this spell to salvage creatures they can't make any better use of.  Violet Lord Vor Asura always chooses violets.

Rain of Arrows
Wizard Spell
As fireball, except that the caster fires an arrow into the air (which turns into a multitude) and the damage is all arrow damage.  (1 arrow per 1d6 damage.)  Doesn't work in places with low ceilings (less than 100').

Serpents of the Earth
Wizard Spell
Cast on a section of natural soil or stone, 1d6 enormous serpents of HD 1d4 crawl up from the dirt.  They have AC 13 and deal 1d6+HD damage, except for the 1 HD serpents, which are small and bite for 1 damage + deadly poison.  Serpents are not controlled by the caster.  They're just pissed off snakes.

Speak with Birds
Wizard Spell
If there is a party of 3-6 adventurer's moving through the forest nearby, a random songbird has a 60% chance of knowing where they are and if they're doing anything extra weird.  Birds of prey are rarer, but more observant.

Creatures

Orn
Beast of Burden
These are riding birds, sort of like chocobos but more like aepyornis.  Compared to horses, they are faster and deal more damage with their claws, but they cannot run for more than a few hundred feet, and they are more fragile.

behind that mask is a faceless rictus
remember not to use your lips when you do their voices

Skull People (1d4, roll twice)

1 - 2d6 Skull Lancers
Skull people (as 1 HD elves) in leather armor, spears.  Uncanny ability to jump from branch to branch, and prefer to fight from the trees.  Like to drop down from the trees atop their spears (dealing 2x damage as if from a charge attack).  After their death, corpses retain the power of speech until the next new moon.  Heron masks.  Morale 6.

2 - 2d6 Skull Poisoners
Skull people (as 1 HD elves) in leather armor, kukris.  Each one carries a sling and a vial of toxic gas (1d6 acid damage each round of exposure, thick as fog spell, lasts 1 minute) and are immune to toxic gases due to filters on their masks.  Penalties for fighting in fog are halved.  After their death, corpses retain the power of speech until the next new moon.  Frog masks.  Morale 6.

3 - 1d4+1 Holy Divers
Skull people (as 2 HD elves this time) without armor, kukris.  Each one is capable of possessing a target by jumping into their target's body and dancing inside their blood.  While inside, a holy diver can either (a) make a bloody exit that deals 2d6 damage to the target, or (b) control their actions for one turn.  Possessed people can make a save each turn to expel the holy diver, which stuns the holy diver for 1 round.  After their death, corpses retain the power of speech until the next new moon.  Rabbit masks.  Morale 6.

4 - 1d4+1 Leatherbacks
Skull people (as 2 HD elves this time) in breastplates, scimitars.  They crawl around (at running speed) while wearing the skins of boars, bears, and wolves.  While crawling, they can bite (1d6 damage + save or fear 1d6 rounds).  They can also throw off their skin and attack normally (1d6+1 with their scimitars).  After they throw off their skin, the animal skin will continue to fight, attempting to grapple opponents (treat as a net that does 1d6 damage if it hits you, and has Str 12).  Unless someone throws the beast skin, all they can do is crawl around feebly and bite anyone foolish enough to step on them.  After their death, corpses retain the power of speech until the next new moon.  Pig masks.  Morale 6.

elves really do fight in outrageously fashionable costumes
they are also always clean
and smell like raspberries and new car smell
#elvesinunreasonablearmor
#onlyelvesthough

Notes

If your players strip any wood elves of their armor, remember that they don't have any genitalia.  They're just like barbie dolls down there.  While some wood elves might treat other races as semi-equals, high elves have nothing but contempt.

Also remember that elves will be loathe to kill a beautiful PC (Cha 16) or higher, and will instead try to capture them, either because they want to induct them into elven society, or simply harvest them for attractive body parts.

sorry
so sorry
but this is too perfect
elves start every day off with 1000 crunches

Elven Culture and Magic

High Elves

These are the elves you think of when you hear about elves.  Aloof and magical.  Beautiful and wise.  Living in harmony with nature.  And that's exactly how elves think about themselves, but it's not quite true.

Beauty and Goodness

Elves embody beauty and domination.  They live in a world that is seen entirely through the lens of beauty.  They are known for building beautiful cities in the forests, but they also build beautiful cities over waterfalls, mountains, caverns, canyons, and coastlines.  They will go to war for these places, and their proxy armies will wade through rivers of blood to get them.  They will war dwarves for crystal caverns, and they will win.

Elves always win, in the end.

They equate beauty with morality.  The goodness of a person can be seen in their countenance, in the bone structure of their face.  Their trustworthiness is apparent in their posture, and the irregularities of their skull can betray one's aptitude for virtue or for vice.

Any action is good if it is beautiful.  Assassins are vulgar and disgusting, but that is why the elves train sword dancers.

Their own governments are ruled by the young, or the young-looking (this second category is a very broad one).

Just as dwarves assert that all precious metals/stones mined from the earth belong to them, so do elves claim that all natural beauty belongs to them.

surprisingly, it is not hard to find pictures of elves with bare midriffs

Wood Elves

These are the outcasts of elven society, either because they possess some physical defect, lack magical talent, or committed some crime against decency/fashion.  They have been kicked out of the verdant bourgeoisie of high elf society in order to slum it in the margins.

By any non-elven standard, wood elves live comfortable lives with many amenities.  Most first-generational wood elves consider this barbaric, and are desperate to win their way back into their society's aristocratic circles.

Technically, there aren't supposed to be any second-generation wood elves.  As part of their punishment and exile, fleshcrafters will remove their testicles or ovaries.  If and when a wood elf is re-admitted to high elf society, their reproductive glands are returned to them.

Some wood elves are those that have sold their faces.  These elves wear wooden masks and do not associate with wood elves who still have their faces.  These faceless wood elves are called skull people (most people don't realize that they're elves at all).  They are deeply troubled individuals.  Stay away from them.

Contrived Beauty

Elves will tell you that they live in harmony with their environment, but this is not true.  In reality, elves undertake huge engineering projects to re-arrange the crystals around their caverns, or divert rivers to make better waterfalls.  Or that they send their slaves out to paint rocks more pleasing colors.

To us, they seem trivial.  To elves, this is how you make the world a better place.

If you visit the elves on friendly terms (unlikely), they will make you wear masks because your ugly faces are disgusting to them.  Or more than disgusting--your faces are evil.  People with Cha 16 or more are exempt, of course.

In forests, they'll command the trees to uproot themselves and move to a location where they don't block the sunset.  Or they'll set their servants to the singular task of moving a hill to a location where it can provide better shade.

When possible, they'll get the trees to do it themselves.  This is where ents come from.

Elves have poisoned trees to make their foliage more beautiful, and released mildly-poisonous gases in order to enhance the sunsets.  They've made rivers undrinkable in order to have an enchanted waterfall that ran across the surface of a cliff.

Elven Necromancy

Some elves abhor necromancy; some embrace it.  (Elves are not a monoculture, although it may seem that way to non-elves.)

Elvish necromancers are sometimes kept busy killing a forest, then maintaining it in a state of pristine beauty.  Dead trees with beautiful leaves, fields of wild flowers perpetually in bloom.  Majestic herds of deer that collapse into rotten dirt with a single axe swing.

Elvish nobles will also sometimes rent out undead party guests.  What do you do when you have too many couches and not enough friends to fill them?  Why not hire some beautiful escorts who will sit on them and pretend to sip from a champagne glass?  And what elf is so bigoted to insist that these beautiful guests be, necessarily, alive?

(Elves will tell you that they are the least bigoted people alive, since they can respect anyone who is beautiful, regardless of race, creed, sexuality, or loyalty.)

The long-abandoned Mithril Chateau is full of these party guests, perpetually dancing up and down the ballroom, reclining on chaise lounges, and standing in circles while smiling and laughing (but never talking).

Cosmetic Wizardry

In elven enclaves, you may purchases faces as easily as ballroom dresses.  The cosmetic fleshcrafters showcase their faces inside thin panes of glass, where the faces float and smile at their prospective customers, grinning beautiful smiles.

And you must have a beautiful smile if you are going to be invited to any elven party.

And you must go to an elven party if you wish to talk to an elf an any importance.  (Everyone knows that all important business is discussed only at parties.)

The fleshcrafter halls are like Armani stores.  White and black surfaces dominate.  Pleasant scents and pleasing music drift through the air, without any visible source.  Pedestals hold pieces that customers might be interested in.  A pair of breasts on this pedestal, a particularly graceful forearm on another.  (Elves obsess over forearms.  The wealthiest wear a different pair of forearms for each season.)

Unfortunate souls can choose to sell their face, and wealthy ones can buy new ones as they age.  (Metagame: You can buy and sell your Cha score in elven metropoli, but it will cost a fortune in gems.  Elves love gems more than dragons do.  Gems remind elves of stars.)

This is why elves always wear little armor, or close-fitting armor.  A trustworthy elf bares their (toned) midriff.  Wearing heavy armor is equivalent to lying about your name.

This is partially why elves hate dwarves, and take extra pains to master styles of combat suitable for killing their heavily-armored foes.

Euphemisms and Lies

Elves abhor violent violence.  They prefer to speak of it as "the dance".  Their speech is couched in so many euphemisms and jargon that it is nearly incomprehensible to outsiders.  Here are two elves describing the destruction of a human town:

Elethriel: "Most Graceful Lady, the dance at Shimmerbridge was inspired, a recounting of our ancestor's gracile touch.  Our dancers distinguished themselves.  The floor has already been swept and the windows braced.  Their pipers already carry news of the song, if it please Your Most Majestic Eye."

Quinthera: "Compensate the composer, and wizen the unicorns."

Politeness and social niceties are paramount of course.  Insult an elf in public, and you will have made a deadly enemy.  Work against an elf in private--steal their possessions, kill their pets--and all can possibly be forgiven with a proper apology and compensation.  (Perhaps your forearms.)

The worst thing that you can do is contradict an elf's worldview.  To accuse them of ugliness, or to remind them that perfection doesn't exist in this world upsets them terribly.

Slaves and Proxies

Mere slavery is abhorrent to elves because slaves are often miserable, and it pains an elf to witness pain.  So they are careful to practice their particular brand of it.

Slaves are inducted into families, where they are charmed and given the title of "little brother" or "little sister".  These subservient "siblings" are extremely careful to never enter the sight of their proper elven siblings (because then niceties and greetings would have to exchange, hugs, kisses, etc).  Most of these slave-siblings are active during the night, and travel through elven enclaves through their own set of secret passages.

Elves are rich through their mastery of magic and technology, which they sell.  They also sell a substance called amberine, which allows for eternal youth and an elf-like longevity, and another substance called odochrysm, which is a powerful euphoric that allows wizards to cast more spells per day.

With this money, they hire mercenary armies.  It's not uncommon for an elven enclave to have a mercenary army on their payroll.  This army can be composed of wood elves, humans, or even orcs.  (The orcs are usually forbidden from appearing without their silvered helms.)

Elves rule through the extensive use of magical charms, tailored indoctrination, and grooming their subjects from childhood.  And when that fails, they are not above wiping the subject's memories.

Although an elven subject-slave might be starving and ignorant of anything beyond the magnificence of their "big brothers", they will be clean, fashionable, and cheerful.  The iconic image is that of an orc (grandson of a warlod who once warred against the elves) sitting in his leaky tent, shivering inside his gaudily painted elf-armor, praying for the well-being of his elven benefactors before going to bed, and then waking to fight and die for his elven masters.

Elves laugh at the crude techniques of the mind flayers.  Elven mind control is based in love!  It is fitting because the elves are beautiful, and therefor worthy of love.  And even if their charm spells are dispelled, their subjects will still die for them.

"Rescuing" an elven slave also includes disabusing them of the lies that their heads are filled with (such as "all halflings are cannibals" and "all humans are butt rapists" and "everyone else is diseased and starving").  It also helps if you have a beautiful person do the explaining, since elf-slaves have a hard time trusting anyone ugly.

Ancestor Golems

The most potent servants of the elves are their ancestors.

When an elf is old enough that they grow sickly, incompetent, or unmitigatably ugly, their peers will creep into their house and murder the senile elf in their sleep.

Then, the three murderers (called "carpenters") will capture the dead elf's ghost, laminate it with secret, brutal domination spells, and utterly suppress it's former mind.  Then the ghost is stuffed into a wooden golem called an ashtar.

Ashtars look like cylindrical logs.  The smallest ones are the size of soda-cans.  These small ones are tutelary asthars, and they are herded into graveyard-library-gardens, where they function as a library and repository for knowledge.  Elves go there often to confer with their ancestors, or to have sex with their ghosts.

Ancestral ghosts behave a bit like robots, or servants with anterograde amnesia.  They repeat themselves a lot, are utterly subservient, and have a hard time remembering what the last conversation was about (they cannot form new memories).

Military ashtars can be barrel-sized, or taller than a man.  They are full of so many spells and potent magicks that its a wonder they don't explode.  They specialize in forcefields, lasers, and fireballs.  (Living elves prefer not to dirty their hands with such blunt, crude combat spells).

Elf Metal

There is mithril, which is extraordinarily light and strong.  Everyone knows about that.  (Mithril armor takes up half as many inventory slots as it would normally, rounded down.)

But elves also know the secret of making fairy steel, which is so beautiful and fine that dirt and blood are loathe to mar its immaculate surface.  This is why edged weapons made from fairy steel are so sharp--blood and flesh part before the edge in order that not stain its loveliness.  (Fairy weapons deal +1 damage).

True Elves

True elves are genetically identical to high elves (and wood elves).  However, ever since a true elf was an embryo, they have been subject to so much magical and alchemical improvements that they're barely related to their cousins.

True elves call all other elves "low elves", and all other creatures are considered "beasts".  They are 50% taller than humans and are so beautiful that most mortal races can only fall down and weep when they behold one.  (They roll 12+1d6 for all of their stats.)  They are immortal, and will return to life if killed unless their remains are locked inside a golden chest, or encased in gold.

The most powerful human mages are considered apprentice-level among high elves, and the most powerful high elves are considered apprentices among true elves.  (They're lich equivalents, in terms of power.)

For the most part, true elves interact very little with the affairs of the world.  They deal with things on the astral plane, or with extraplanar machinations that do not concern "mere mortals".

True elves are also dying out.  The techniques used to turn a high elf fetus into a true elf baby have been lost.  But true elves don't care about this, not one bit.  They operate on a whole different level.

medusa is an elf

Using Them In Your Game

Remember that everything on this page is subtle, or it is backstage.  You can/should continue to present elves as the nature-loving mary-sues that they pretend to be (and that most of the world believes that they are).

Because when you visit an elven village, all you see are the professional wood elves escorting you into a treetop village between a pair of waterfalls.  The high elves are graceful, courteous, and excellent hosts (although a bit aloof).  You might even meet a couple of humans, who will tell you how they were rescued-then-adopted by their elven benefactors and allowed to live in this earthly paradise.

Most of the elven PCs are wood elves, who are removed from the madness of inner circles of elven bourgeoisie.

See also: the elven creation myth.

High Elves and their Creation Myth

There are two kinds of elves.

Low elves (high elves and wood elves) are the cliche ones.  They build tree-houses, live in harmony with nature, and are highly magical and aloof.  They worship beauty in all of its forms.  Beauty is what they are all about, since beauty is a special sort of goodness all of its own.  You'll also find them living on beautiful islands, beautiful caverns, and atop beautiful meadows.  They won't want you there, since you are smelly adventurers.

True elves take the magic and the aloofness and turn them up to 11.  They are the ancient masters of the planet.  True elves were once low elves until they enjoyed certain magical enhancements in the womb and during their maturation.  In adulthood, they enjoy a level of health, beauty, intelligence, and magical aptitude that dwarfs any other race.  They are the perfect creature.

Unfortunately, true elves are going extinct because they no longer have the resources required to turn normal elf fetuses into high elf fetuses.  So, all of their children are merely low elves, which they despise the way you would despise monkeys if your wife constantly gave birth to them.

High elves are immortal, and the least of them is a more powerful than any human wizard.  Without a society, and with dwindling numbers, most of them spend their days pursuing obscure agendas of their own.  Actually, you'll find them at the bottom of high level dungeons as an alternative to liches because (a) I'm tired of liches and (b) elves are easier to talk to, aren't all necromancers, and aren't obviously evil.  If you ever meet a high elf, running her golden fingernails though the ichor of a dead godling's eyeball on the 15th level of some dungeon, you should probably run the other way.

So, yeah, powerful sorcerer-kings of a former age.  Waged numerous genocides against the lesser races whenever they felt like it, with varying degrees of success.  Godlike magical prowess.  Elitists who claim to know more about the universe than anyone else.

That's only mildly interesting.  What's more interesting is their creation myth, since they are atheists in a world where no one is an atheist (because giant faces appear in the sky with alarming frequency and also clerics exist).

this is the douchiest looking wizard I could find
and he's still not douchey enough

The High Elven Creation Myth

In the days before the Time of Fire and Madness (where recorded history begins; everything was either on fire or insane) high elves were rulers of this world and countless others.   Reality was bent to their will and the physical laws were pudding under their soft feet.

High elves created all the other races.  There are no gods, only a shared mythos that is sometimes given form by human faith.  Wood elves, beautiful and wise by human standards, are their degenerate cousins.

Halflings were bred for small size, clever minds, and quick hands.  They would travel in ships that flew up above the clouds and between the stars, where there are other worlds.  They needed to be small so that they would require less space in these ships, where size and mass were at a premium.

Dwarves were bred to be laborers.  Once, there were many kinds of dwarves, but now there are only the miner-dwarves.  They excavated the many worlds of the high elves, and also stripped the resources from mountains the floated in the airless spaces between worlds.  Because they were created to work, they were not given creativity.

Orcs were bred to be supersoldiers.  They are fast, strong, and cunning.  They were regulated alchemically by various elixirs and potions that were pumped into the orcs' brains.  And even now, where you find high elves you may also find alchemical orcs, who have realized the full power of their birthright.  There is no mightier warrior on the planet than an alchemical orc with his ancestral regalia, nor no thrall more rigidly controlled by its master.

Humans were the original stock.  The first creatures that high elves bred were themselves.  In the Time Before, the rich and brilliant bourgeoisie of human society enhanced their children to make them smarter, healthier, and longer-lived.  After generations of improving their children, the high elves declared that they were perfect, and turned their attention to creating the other races to serve them.  Currently, true humans are nearly extinct, and can only be found on isolated enclaves beneath the surface of the moon, where they are kept as holy pets.

Subhumans comprise most of the people on the surface of Centerra.  They come in different colors.

Low elves (PC elves) don't believe any of this, and instead have a much more generic creation myth.

Does any of this affect the generic fantasy milieu of Centerra?  Nope.