cultural posturing elves with superiority complexes are way out, now we’re doing elves who literally cannot stop adopting other species and imparting elvish wisdom on them
because elves have a very low fertility rate to counterbalance their remarkable longevity, to the point that childbearing elves are lucky if they’re able to get pregnant, say, more than twice a century
but some elves just want to Nurture and they’ve noticed that adoption is a pretty sick deal, and that their human neighbors in particular always seem to have a veritable cornucopia of orphans sitting around in need of shelter and food and loving guidance and someone to teach them the finer points of communing with nature.
elves reaching out to their human neighbors nervously for guidance because their beautiful adopted human son has decided he wants to get married but he’s only 25, he’s only completed one apprenticeship, he’s so young, is that really normal? are they sure? are they sure sure?
a 400 year old elf eagerly introducing her friends to her younger siblings: a 100 year old elf, 55 year old human, 27 year old tiefling, and 12 year old human.
elf parents spending centuries proudly maintaining large and convoluted family trees where some of their great grand-kids are older than their most recently adopted children. elves highly prizing sprawling systems of family that span species and culture and share everything they can with each other.
I’m just. I really charmed by the idea of elfin culture having the potential to be remarkably set in its ways, since they lack the relatively quick generational turnover of other species, but instead being almost infinitely open-minded and fluid to accommodate the needs of their many adopted community members.
even elves who have left home to become professional adventurers aren’t immune to this; no wandering elfin bard or warrior is going to pass up a perfectly good opportunity for adoption. it’s relatively commonplace to run into adventuring parties followed by one or two or five wayward children in tow, on the way to the elf’s parents to deposit those kiddos for safekeeping. the rest of the party are a little confused about whether their elf friend is those kids’ parent now, or if their parents will be considered the parents and that makes the elf in question a big sibling now, or what. the elf shrugs it off. they’re family, what do the specifics matter?
it’s a fantasy meme that elves will see an orphan sitting around and ask if anyone’s going to adopt them then not wait for an answer.
and they’re all considered elves which means that within like. a generation or two? the word ‘elf’ starts to become more of a broad cultural descriptor than a specific species. there’s an orc on the elfin high council, and at first visiting dignitaries assume that, obviously, she was adopted by elves. but no, actually she was raised by a lovely human/lizardman couple, but both of them come from adopted elf families, which makes them elves by association, and obviously the grandparents would never allow anyone to imply that their cherished granddaughter isn’t an elf just because she happens to be an orc.
after a few centuries of this calling someone an “elf” means “someone somewhere in their family was probably an elf at some point, don’t worry about who it was.”
