On Elves

Elves live the life of tribal nomads. There isn't a single corner of the world that has not known the tread of an elven foot; certain elf-tribes have even taken to the sea in great flotillas. Living off the land and owning no more than they can carry, land-dwelling elves have little use for commerce, but sometimes trade with dwarves for items of metalwork they cannot make themselves: tools, weapons, and armor chief among them. Seagoing elves, while they do not build trading ships per se, are given to carrying small but valuable trade goods in the unused nooks and crannies of their vessels.

In order to gain the coin to purchase what they need, elves reaching maturity leave their tribes and hire themselves out as scouts, skirmishers, ambushers, spies, and other careers requiring stealth and discretion where they can put their incredible fieldcraft skills to good use. A few even become adventurers, forsaking regular pay for the opportunity to gain incredible treasure. These sojourns among other races traditionally last for one hundred years, and in addition to being opportunities to gain wealth for the tribe, are seen as an essential part of a young elf's education.

Elves have generally excellent relations with the other races. Their constant wandering frequently brings them into contact with other cultures, and has made elven diplomats the finest anywhere. This, coupled with the respect their status as one of the elder races gains them, means that elves are often asked to mediate in disputes between different races.

Elves are generally laconic and taciturn. The elven language has an immense vocabulary, containing words for every imaginable object, condition, action, and so forth. This allows elves to be extraordinarily precise in their speech and to use no more than the bare minimum of verbiage. Where dwarves wear their hearts on their sleeves, elves are very restrained, to the point of seeming shy. They are also scrupulously polite, and will never give offense if they can help it. An elf will even show an icy courtesy to a blood enemy... usually just before putting an arrow through the enemy's eye. In combat, elves display economy of action similar to their economy of speech, disdaining flashy maneuvers and grandstanding flourishes in favor of a brutally simple doctrine of cutting the enemy down as efficiently as possible.

Elves enjoy a degree of longevity only slightly less than that of dwarves: reaching maturity at approximately 30 to 35 years of age, the average elf lives a total of roughly 800 to 1,000 years.