Elven Views

Elf

Interracial Views

The Elves of Arandor are an ancient, immortal people, and their perceptions of other races are inevitably shaped by the immense span of their lives. An Elf may personally remember events which, to a Human or Orc, have already passed from living memory. Alliances, grievances, promises, and friendships may therefore endure within Elven society not merely as histories recorded by their ancestors, but as the memories of those who were actually present. This longevity encourages patience and contemplation, but it can also make Elves slow to abandon old judgments. Several decades may transform another nation while seeming a comparatively brief interval to an Elf. Kingdoms may rise, rulers may die, borders may change, and entire generations may pass while the same Elf continues to remember the circumstances which preceded them. Outsiders sometimes mistake this for an unwillingness to move forward. Elves, in turn, sometimes struggle to understand why other peoples are so eager to declare matters settled merely because those responsible for them have died. Arandor's long periods of isolation have further encouraged its people to approach outsiders cautiously. Elves are not inherently hostile toward foreigners, nor are they ignorant of the lands beyond their own borders, but they are rarely in a hurry to place their confidence in strangers. Respect may be earned quickly through worthy conduct. Trust usually takes longer.

Elves also possess a strong consciousness of their own history. The destruction of Jyn-Pal, the loss of ancient Elven clans, periods of upheaval within their own civilization, and the consequences of Elven ambition have left their mark upon the people of Arandor. The oldest among them do not need histories to remind them that even an ancient and learned people can make terrible mistakes. Consequently, while Elves may sometimes appear proud or condescending toward younger races, their own past offers ample warning against believing that age alone guarantees wisdom. The three surviving Elven peoples also influence these attitudes differently. Wood Elves often understand outsiders through their relationship with the land, community, and the natural world. Hill Elves, through their traditions of craftsmanship and practical labor, may find common ground with foreign artisans and warriors more readily than others. High Elves, with their strong traditions of scholarship, leadership, and the arcane, may judge foreign peoples by different standards. These distinctions are tendencies rather than laws, but they ensure that there is rarely a single Elven opinion on any foreign race.

Individual experience matters still more. A Warden who has fought beside Dwarves, a merchant accustomed to dealing with Humans, and an Elf who has lost friends to Orcish blades may hold profoundly different opinions. The following views therefore represent broad attitudes found among the people of Arandor rather than beliefs held universally by every Elf.

Humans

Of the other races, Humans can be among the most difficult for Elves to understand.

Human lives are extraordinarily brief by Elven standards. Where an Elf may consider a decision for years and reasonably expect to witness its consequences centuries later, Humans must build families, careers, kingdoms, and legacies within a fraction of an Elven lifetime. A Human child becomes an adult, grows old, and passes away during a span of time that may represent only one portion of an Elf's life. This urgency can appear to Elves as impatience, recklessness, or shortsightedness. A Human may see an opportunity which must be seized today. An Elf may wonder why anyone would act before considering what that decision will mean a century from now. A Human may spend decades pursuing a life's ambition. To an Elf, those same decades may seem an astonishingly brief period in which to make a decision of lasting consequence. This difference becomes particularly troublesome in matters of politics and diplomacy. Human rulers grow old and die. Dynasties rise and fall, governments change, and the next generation may discard the priorities of the last. An Elf may have personally spoken with the king who signed a treaty that the king's descendants now regard as an ancient document. The Human standing across the table may sincerely believe that an old grievance belongs to another age, while the Elf remembers the voices, expressions, and promises of those involved.

This can make Human politics appear alarmingly unstable to Elven eyes. An agreement made with a trustworthy Human ruler does not guarantee that the ruler's heir will possess the same character. An ally may be replaced by a stranger within a few decades. A friendship between nations must therefore survive repeated generations of Human leadership while many of the Elves involved remain unchanged. Elves can consequently find Human ambition unsettling. Humans often seem determined to accomplish immediately what an Elf might approach across generations. They build rapidly, expand rapidly, quarrel rapidly, reconcile rapidly, and sometimes abandon yesterday's convictions with equal speed. Their societies can seem perpetually in motion.

Yet this same quality is also one of Humanity's greatest strengths.

Humans accomplish an extraordinary amount within their short lives. Their urgency produces explorers, builders, warriors, scholars, artists, merchants, and rulers possessed of an intensity that can be remarkable even to an Elf. Necessity forces Humans to learn quickly, adapt quickly, and entrust unfinished work to those who follow them. Human societies can transform themselves with a speed that the far more deliberate Elven society may struggle to match. Where an Elf has centuries to master a craft, a Human may achieve remarkable skill knowing that time is always against them. Where Elves can afford to wait, Humans often cannot. Their impatience can produce catastrophe, but it can also produce extraordinary innovation. Elven attitudes toward Humans therefore often contain both frustration and fascination.

Humans can appear rash, ambitious, quarrelsome, inconsistent, and painfully short-sighted. They can also demonstrate tremendous courage, ingenuity, adaptability, loyalty, and sacrifice. Their mortality itself may inspire a peculiar kind of respect. A Human soldier who knowingly risks his life is wagering something very different from an immortal Elf. A Human who dedicates twenty years to a cause has surrendered a considerable portion of his entire existence to it. An Elf who understands this may judge Human accomplishments differently than one who sees only their haste. Friendship between the races can carry its own sorrow. An Elf who befriends a Human does so with the knowledge that, barring violence or catastrophe, the Elf will almost certainly outlive that friend. They may watch the Human grow old while they themselves remain largely unchanged, and perhaps later meet the children and grandchildren of someone whose companionship still seems recent. Some Elves avoid such attachments for precisely this reason. Others consider the brevity of Human life a reason to value those friendships all the more.

Thus, while Humans frequently confound the Elves, they are not necessarily regarded with contempt. To many Elves, they remain a strange contradiction: a people granted very little time who somehow manage to fill that time with an extraordinary amount of living.

Dwarves

Of the other great races, Dwarves are perhaps the easiest for Elves to understand.

Though Dwarves do not possess the immortality of Elvenkind, their culture possesses a sense of continuity familiar to Arandor. Dwarves remember their history, preserve their traditions, honor old obligations, and expect words spoken in earnest to retain their meaning long after the circumstances in which they were uttered have passed. This alone provides considerable common ground. An Elf may disagree vehemently with a Dwarf and still take some comfort in knowing precisely where the Dwarf stands. Dwarves are not generally expected to change their convictions merely because doing so would be convenient. To Elves accustomed to watching foreign societies transform over comparatively brief periods, Dwarven constancy can be reassuring.

Elves likewise hold considerable respect for Dwarven craftsmanship. Hill Elves in particular can find common ground with Dwarven smiths, artisans, engineers, masons, and builders. Both peoples understand that mastery is not something declared but demonstrated, and that great works are the products of discipline, knowledge, patience, and labor. The works of Karagard are therefore admired for more than their appearance. To an Elf, a Dwarven hall, weapon, monument, or mechanism may represent generations of accumulated expertise. There is something distinctly familiar in the idea that a craft should be inherited, refined, and passed onward without casually discarding the lessons of those who came before. This does not mean Elves and Dwarves always agree on what constitutes beauty or perfection. An Elf and Dwarf may admire one another's work while arguing endlessly about how it ought to have been accomplished. Such disagreements are often made worse by the unfortunate fact that both peoples can possess sufficient patience to continue the argument for a very long time.

Their similarities are, indeed, sometimes as troublesome as their differences.

Both peoples possess long memories. Both take pride in their heritage. Both can be stubborn, and neither is particularly inclined to abandon a matter merely because an outsider believes sufficient time has passed. Insults, debts, promises, and acts of loyalty may all be remembered long after younger peoples expect them to have faded. An argument between an Elf and a Dwarf can therefore become an impressive monument to mutual determination.

Yet those same qualities make their friendship equally enduring.

Dwarven loyalty is greatly respected among the Elves. A Dwarf who has given his word or friendship is not expected to discard either lightly. Their warriors have likewise earned a reputation for courage, discipline, and resilience. Elves may favor different methods of warfare, but few would question the value of having Dwarven shields beside them when battle is joined. The two peoples also differ in important ways. Dwarves can appear excessively rigid even by Elven standards, while Elven deliberation may strike Dwarves as needless hesitation or abstraction. Elven relationships with magic, the natural world, and the Valar likewise differ considerably from Dwarven traditions. Familiarity does not mean sameness. Perhaps this is precisely why the relationship has proven meaningful. Elves do not need Dwarves to behave like Elves in order to respect them. The relationship between Arandor and Karagard is therefore founded less upon similarity than upon recognition. Elves see in the Dwarves qualities they understand and value: memory, tradition, craftsmanship, loyalty, perseverance, courage, and the willingness to stand by one's commitments.

For an immortal people accustomed to watching much of the world change around them, it is deeply reassuring to encounter another people who understand that some things ought to endure.

Orcs

Elven attitudes toward the Orcs of Burz'kal are considerably more complicated. History, cultural differences, warfare, and profoundly different ideas concerning strength and society have all contributed to an uneasy relationship between the two peoples. To many Elves, Orcish society initially appears harsh. Burz'kal places great importance upon strength, martial prowess, hierarchy, clan, loyalty, and the teachings of Gruumsh. Orcs are generally more comfortable with open aggression and direct confrontation than Elves, and disputes that might provoke prolonged deliberation in Arandor may be settled far more directly among the Orcs. To an Elf accustomed to carefully chosen words and measured conduct, Orcish bluntness may appear unnecessarily provocative. To an Orc, the same Elf may appear evasive, indecisive, or unwilling to say plainly what he means.

Neither impression is necessarily correct.

The hierarchy of Burz'kal can likewise seem severe to Elven observers, but Arandor is itself no egalitarian society. The Elves live beneath a monarch chosen according to their own ancient traditions, maintain orders and offices with considerable authority, and place great importance upon duty and position. Their objection is therefore not simply that Orcs possess hierarchy. Rather, the two peoples differ considerably in what they believe grants authority legitimacy and what qualities those entrusted with authority ought to embody. Elves who know little of Orcish culture may nevertheless fall into the easy mistake of seeing only its violence.

To do so is to misunderstand Burz'kal.

The Orcs carry the memory of enslavement and of the struggle through which their ancestors won their freedom. Their devotion to Gruumsh, fierce independence, loyalty to clan, and reverence for strength cannot be separated from a history in which weakness could mean bondage or death. What outsiders sometimes interpret as pride has roots in a people once denied control over their own lives and who came to regard the ability to stand unconquered as sacred. Elves need not agree with the conclusions the Orcs drew from that history to understand why those lessons became deeply embedded within their culture.

Indeed, this is one area where the two peoples share an unexpected point of understanding.

Elves know what it means for catastrophe to divide history into a before and an after. The ruin of Jyn-Pal remains an enduring wound in Elven memory. Ancient clans have disappeared. Mistakes made thousands of years ago still influence Arandor today. The Orcish experience is not the Elven experience, but the idea that the suffering of one's ancestors can continue shaping a people long afterward is hardly foreign to Arandor. The cultures often differ most sharply in their understanding of strength. Orcs admire courage, martial prowess, endurance, decisive action, and the ability to overcome adversity. Elves are more inclined to count patience, discipline, restraint, wisdom, and mastery of oneself among the highest expressions of strength. An Elf may consider the warrior who knows when not to draw his sword stronger than one who reaches for it immediately. An Orc may not always agree.

What an Orc considers hesitation, an Elf may consider judgment. What an Orc considers admirable boldness, an Elf may regard as unnecessary recklessness. Conversely, an Orc may regard excessive Elven caution as weakness concealed beneath ceremony. This difference can make the two peoples intensely frustrating to one another.

It can also create respect.

Courage is not foreign to Arandor. Neither are loyalty, martial discipline, sacrifice, pride in one's people, or the willingness to defend one's homeland. An Elf willing to look beyond unfamiliar Orcish customs may therefore recognize virtues that are expressed differently in Burz'kal but are nevertheless recognizable. An Orc who keeps his word, stands beside his allies, protects his clan, or demonstrates courage against overwhelming danger may earn considerable Elven respect. The Elf may dislike his manners, reject his beliefs, and argue with him at every opportunity while still regarding him as honorable. The Orcish relationship with the natural world is likewise more complicated than some Elves initially assume. Orcish traditions do not mirror those of the Wood Elves, nor do the Orcs necessarily understand nature through the same spiritual or philosophical framework. Nevertheless, they have traditions of their own concerning the land and the forces that inhabit it. Wood Elves may find these beliefs strange, crude, or unsettling, but an informed Elf should not mistake difference for absence.

Past violence remains impossible to ignore. Elves who personally remember Orcish raids or battles cannot be expected simply to forget them, and those who have lost friends or kin may carry resentment for centuries. Orcs have their own memories of conflict and their own reasons for distrusting Elven intentions. Immortality makes reconciliation particularly difficult when one side includes living witnesses to events the other knows increasingly through stories. This does not make reconciliation impossible. Relations between Arandor and Burz'kal therefore frequently occupy an uneasy ground between suspicion and respect. Neither friendship nor hostility is inevitable. Much depends upon the individuals involved and what they have demonstrated through their actions. An Elf may distrust an Orc. An Elf may even hate an Orc. Another may regard an Orc as an honorable rival, a worthy adversary, or a trusted companion. An Elf who has repeatedly fought beside the same Orc may eventually place greater confidence in him than in a stranger who happens to possess pointed ears. For the Elves, understanding another people does not require approving of them. Respect does not require agreement. Recognizing virtue in an adversary does not erase old wounds, just as remembering old wounds need not make every future conflict inevitable.

For a people who possess nearly limitless time to remember, learning when memory should guide the present, and when it should cease ruling it, may be among the more difficult forms of wisdom.