#elven wisdom

[ocktavo]

Who Is Ron? Why He So Sour? [MESoM15]

[jadeannbyrne]

The Last Embrace - Eternal Light of Redemption: The Ballad of Elowen & Seraphina

The Last Embrace – Eternal Light of Redemption: The Ballad of Elowen & Seraphina The Last Embrace – Eternal Light of Redemption: The Ballad of Elowen & Seraphina In the heart of the Jade Ann Byrne, a vast and ancient forest whispered the tales of countless souls who had traversed its winding paths. It was said that this forest, bathed in emerald light, was a bridge between worlds—a place where…

[arlathen]

it's a shame that dalish inquisitors can't remark on solas' name literally just. being pride. weird humble-looking homeless nerd appears after the terrorist attack that killed the fantasy pope and goes hey im 𝐀𝐑𝐑𝐎𝐆𝐀𝐍𝐂𝐄 and lavellan can't even go huh????????????

[tortoise-teapot]

my case for purpose!solas keeps growing and i've not seen a single shred of lore discounting it yet. i don't think i'll be able to make a full meta post with deconstruction but i'll definitely make sure to at least post my evidence before the 31st because... i think i'm cooking

[tinypuppysoul]

Today I played d&d for the first time and it was so much fun 😭😭😭💖💖💖💖 We only created our characters and started the story but stiillllll

[svartalfhild]

Elf Lore in the Forgotten Realms for BG3 Players who are Unfamiliar

I've been seeing some...uninformed takes lately about certain elf characters from BG3, so let me just throw some stuff out there for y'all to consider.

Elves in FR live to be about 750.

They physically mature at roughly the same rate as humans i.e. 18-20.

Culturally, elves don't consider other elves emotionally mature i.e. adults until the age of 100, at which point they may choose an adult name to go by.

What does this mean, logically? Well, consider their very long lifespan. If you are going to live 750 years, your perspective on wisdom is going to be quite different from a human's. While 60 years might be plenty mature for a human, for an elf, that means you still haven't had enough time to watch all of your shorter lived friends pass, which I imagine is something of an emotional milestone for elves.

Halsin is 350. This means he's just hitting middle-age.

Astarion is 239 (Idle Champions claims he's 350, but I call bullshit because his birth and death dates are literally in BG3 and also IC frequently gives the characters bullshit ages, like they say Jaheira is 36, which couldn't have been true even during BG1). He died at 39, which is quite young, but he had the same emotional maturity as a human 39 year old at the time, so he's not Like That because he's undeveloped. He's Like That because he's a snapshot of a privileged young nobleman who then spent 200 years being used and abused by the worst sort of person imaginable. He wasn't a full adult by elven standards, though, and I'm sure there's lots of elven rites of passage he didn't get to experience because he was dead.

BG3 does not mechanically distinguish between sun elves and moon elves and simply puts them all under the high elf umbrella, but they are very much a thing in the lore and have distinct appearances, cultures, and histories.

Moon elves tend to have black, blue, or silver-white hair and have pale skin, sometimes with a bluish hue. Their eyes are usually blue or green, sometimes with gold flecks.

Sun elves tend to have blond, black, or red hair and brown skin tones. Their eyes are usually green, gold, black, copper, silver, or hazel.

Based on his appearance, Astarion is probably a moon elf, and it's likely his original eye colour was either blue or green.

There are many other types of elves than those that are playable in the BG3, such as sea elves, winged elves, star elves, wild elves, and lythari.

It's possible that Shadowheart's father is lythari, because lythari are lycanthropic elves.

[artbyleav]

“Then Aragorn was abashed, for he saw the elven-light in her eyes and the wisdom of many days; yet from that hour he loved Arwen Undomi daughter of Elrond.”

I saw all the valentine day posts and it made me want to draw my fave couple 🤍

Also if you were curious the elvish means “I love you”.

[swordince]

rotates da!adam,, giving in to grayskull's possession to borrow his strength in disguise,,,, sorta-incorrectly being identified as the spirit of an eternian legendary figure, he-man, come to fight for the kingdom in its time of civil-war-caused turmoil,,

[dragon--sage]

something something this shot, to me, symbolizes the struggles of a figure who plays an important political and/or spiritual role in their time, only to lose their sense of identity and self in the process of becoming this figure. only to have that identity swallowed by this position. walk with me...

see how tiny solas looks, down there in the bottom left corner. so small in this framing, even wielding tons of magic at the center of this epic ritual. and compared to the enormous and towering wolf statue beside him, he's almost difficult to spot.

it reminds me of ameridan, who saved the world only to be forgotten, to be erased from history. only to learn, ages later, that his efforts to save his people failed in the most terrible and final of ways.

it reminds me of the parting wisdom ameridan has for the inquisitor: "take moments of happiness where you can find them. the world will take the rest."

it reminds me of an elven inquisitor whose identity and beliefs are totally overshadowed by the humans' perception of them as 'the herald of andraste'.

the devs were cooking with fire here, pointing out (intentionally or not) how solas is just a tired old elf trying to get (1) plan to turn out as planned, once in his long, long life. a tired old elf long overshadowed by the title of fen'harel.

solas (the lover of wisdom, the clever tongue, the playful flirt) almost entirely swallowed by a figure of myth and legend and divine duty: the 'dread wolf'..............................

hahahah i'm gonna be sick.

[ocktavo]

Bored of the Rings? [MESoM13]

[brokenhardies]

big difference between c2 athel and c3 athel is that - at level 8 c2 athel picked her fighter subclass while c3 athel went up a level in ranger

[arlathen]

anyway MY stupidest dragon age theory that means nothing. is that harel has a passing verbal similarity to hahren. something something lavellan always sees him as a protective/friendly white wolf as opposed to the scary "dread wolf" persona. something something he wants to give wisdom not orders. something something the primary way you befriend him is by allowing him to share what he knows with you. something something.

[thesummerestsolstice]

Only the elves really see Elrond as "half-elven." They focus, of course, on who he is in relation to them. He's sort-of an elf– enough that they can accept him into their society, but not enough to erase his differences. They understand the different parts of him– his propensity to get sick, his elvish-sharp hearing, his need for sleep, his immortality– as "elvish" or "not-elvish." And while they can be rather condescending about anything they see as "not-elvish," they aren't usually very curious.

Most men regard Elrond vaguely as a fae being. This isn't unique to him– much of Middle-Earth's changling and fairy stories were built on the strange human-and-not-human nature of half-elves. Of course, different humans regard them very differently– sometimes with respect, even reverence, believing that "fairies" are beings of great wisdom and knowledge. Others see them with suspicion and fear, viewing them as sources of danger and deception.

To the Numenorians, Elrond is just one of them– a kind of "immortal man." He is like them in several key ways– he gets ill, he needs sleep, he regards the passage of time in a very "human" way. More importantly, he is their kin, a living remnant and reminder of both their mythical founder and non-human blood they share. He acts as a healer and counselor when they need him. This is all well and good until some of them start thinking that if Elrond could make the choice to be immortal, surely they should be able to as well.

The dwarves see Elrond as an elf. They absolutely do not care enough to tell the difference between him and the others. He's immortal, he's always with a bunch of elves. He's an elf.

The Maiar do not really understand what Elrond is, and have kind of defaulting to seeing him as one of them but like, small. Look, they're all uncounted thousands of years old, he's a child to them. They dote on him and think he's adorable, but sometimes forget that he's also part-elf and part-human, and can't just drop his physical form whenever he likes to go be a disembodied spirit in the clouds. Gandalf encourages all their antics. Elrond is working on it.

(Contrary to popular belief, the average hobbit does not have any kind of opinion on Elrond Peredhel. Bilbo Baggins, who lives in his house and has written several long, extremely personal ballads about his family history, is a statistical outlier and should not have been counted.)

[euphorial-docx]

“astarion is still a child because he was turned before he reached 100” please stop saying that. it’s not true. you’re oversimplifying it. stop it.

elven cultural maturity in dnd is reached at 100, yes, but that does not make a 90 y/o elf a child. i’ll try to explain more (but please correct me if i am wrong about any of it, this is just what i’ve gathered):

before 100, elves can reflect on their past lives while trancing, but around 100 is when they become unable to do that— which means that 100 is a milestone for the end of the connection to their past life and the full embracing of their current life, as well as to mark how much worldly experience they have.

with the 100 year milestone, they pick a new “adult” name for themselves and usually leave their family home to set out on their own and explore the world and gain wisdom and all that elven stuff.

well before turning 100, elves are mature in pretty much every sense except culturally, because elves live a long time and need a longer time to be considered well seasoned. that’s all the elven age of maturity is.

astarion is not literally a child, just inexperienced and young relative to older elves. it is sad that he didn’t get to experience the proper milestones, but stop creating more ways to treat him like a baby. it’s weird.

[mythalism]

feeling crazy thinking about getting to see a completely different side of solas, a side we have only seen in brief moments of lowered guard or heightened emotion and in short stories, the podcast and secondhand accounts of the dread wolf. he tells lavellan that she saw more than most but even what she saw is only one half of who he is. even if solas came first and fen’harel came later, fen’harel still emerged from solas.

we see hints of it in inquisition; the ease with which he commands and instructs others, his giddiness at the winter palace, his effortless win against bull in 4D mind chess, when he burns the mages who killed wisdom to ash without hesitation, but it’s always momentary and diluted under the mask of the humble apostate. but in veilguard there is no mask. rook does not know a humble apostate, only an elven god. and solas honestly has no incentive to pretend otherwise like he did in inquisition. if anything, it’s in the best interest of his goals to be as menacing and god-like as possible to get rook to do what he wants. we can already see his intimidation tactics at work in that first conversation between them in his fade prison, where he throws rook around like a ragdoll by moving the floor beneath them, demonstrating his absolute power over the fade, and situates the two of them so that he is standing clearly above rook, looking down on them. solas gets close to acting this way, maybe in the low approval conversation, but he can never actually because it would give him away, he needs to blend in, he needs to get the orb back in the end. but now there’s nothing, it’s going to be the opposite process from what we had in inquisition; the slow cracks forming and realizing our elf mage who burns his coattails on accident and has a sweet tooth is the ancient elven god of lies, betrayal and rebellion. now, rook is going to be learning that the ancient elven god of lies, betrayal and rebellion is an elf mage who burns his coattails, loves sweets, and has a mortal lover. i wonder how long it will take for the cracks to show

[perseidlion]

Now that I've finished watching Rings of Power Season 2, I have to say they were right to cast Celebrimbor as an actor who looked older than most of the other elves. People will point out that in canon, he was younger than Galadriel. At first, I didn't really get why they changed that for the show. Was it just for variety? Some other reason?

Well, after finishing the season, I think it's safe to say the reason was thematic.

The tragedy of Celebrimbor is so much greater when he visually reads older to the audience. Here is a man at the absolute pinnacle of his craft. His name is legend. He built an entire city around his forge. He has a talent so rare that Sauron needed him for conquest. If he had been cast as a younger actor, even if he was 1500+ in Elven years or something, his story would read as a naive youth seduced by power. It's so much more poignant and tragic to see the legacy of a master of his craft destroyed along with the man.

Watching fantasy is a different experience to reading fantasy, especially with wacky elf ages. The LoTR movies knew this, which is why Hugo Weaving (39) was old enough to convincingly play Liv Tyler's (22) father even though Elrond probably still looked similar to his daughter's age in the books. It's so it doesn't feel weird for the audience and they don't lose suspension of disbelief.

Episode 8 of S2 (and the episodes that precede it) really hammer home that Celebrimbor's undoing isn't just a win for Sauron - this is a loss for elvenkind. Elrond's utter horror at watching Celebrimbor's written legacy being burned to ash was a brilliant storytelling choice. More was lost at the Fall of Eregion than Elvish lives or a weapon in their enemy's hand. They lost the work of a master - the kind of person who comes around once in an age, if that.

What's more, they didn't just lose Celebrimbor. Sauron destroyed him from the inside, eating away at him until he was a pathetic shell of himself. He tried very hard to turn Celebrimbor from celebrated master to a man corrupted by darkness - both in reality and in reputation. But he resisted with what strength he had left. And his kin saw the truth before he died.

All of this was heightened by Celebrimbor being played by a man older than most of the other elf actors. It was a visual signal of his position of respect and wisdom, regardless of his actual age. That was his position in Elvish society that was efficiently shown by aging him up.

You might not always agree with what the minds behind Rings of Power are doing with their story. But after this season, I trust they do have their reasons and will be eagerly awaiting season 3.