Half-Elves Part One

From: arkat_at_telstra.easymail.com.au
Date: Wed, 28 Apr 1999 10:38:05 +1000

If anyone else has played about with this idea I'd appreciate some constructive comments. Its basically a 'my game' idea and before it goes into the files I'd be happy to tweak it up a bit.

Half-Elves in RuneQuest

Introduction
I have run a campaign including one half-elf PC. His change from human came about spontaneously. The player was running two characters, a Trickster thief (originally arriving through a dimensional rift from a Young Kingdoms mini-campaign), and a half-crazy Babeester Gori female elf. The two characters were assumed as partners so I made it so. To cut a long story short they ended up in the Underworld whilst still alive and were permitted to return to the land of the living. I decided for the elf it was easy, she would be reborn in the giant marrow beds, from which all elves are born, emerging as an adult rather than a child. (See pages 30/31 Elder Secrets Boxed Set) For the life of me I couldn't think of how the other character could get back, and then the idea came - the same way, however the process would cause the character to become half-elven. This is what occurred, and so Pavis had the first half-elf in residence since the city founder himself.

Official Ideas
Quoting from Cults of Prax: "Half man and half elf, he (Pavis) grew up in his human father's family. ... Though it was considered strange for a half-breed elf, Pavis had many connections with the dwarves". It seems that Pavis was indeed half-aldryami and half-human. I recall reading elsewhere that his mother was a dryad, and that the Empire of the Wyrms' Friends was the environment in which this mating took place. My simple idea is that during that time, the heyday of the EWF, this sort of mating was possible, although by no means common, aided by special magical ceremonies whilst the races were so closely allied and co-operative. The ceremony was lost with the end of the EWF, and the elves, having drifted further and further away from the other races are unlikely ever to republish it.

New ideas
Half-elves are extremely rare indeed. Whilst half-troll Tusk Riders are a well-known race, no such race of half-elves is known to exist. The other way to become half a troll is to be initiated into a troll cult without actually going through the entire troll adoption ceremony (as Arkat and his companions did). Consequently the concept of being a half-troll is at least known, and actual half-trolls (such as Severin Troll-friend from Drastic: Darkness) are available as evidence.

With little or no mention in official lore, I have to conclude that half-elves are a thing of the past, or at least of ultra-rarity, and here are the rules I have developed, specifically for creating a background for half-elf PCs or NPCs that you might wish to have in your campaign:

1. A human character (most likely an elf-friend) performing a dangerous task to aid the elves, is slain or mortally wounded. The elves have access to ancient resurrection rites they can use, however these are Aldryami rites, and the individual will be reborn in an elf-birthing pod, and emerge with some elven characteristics.
2. A long-time human Elf-friend is at least an Initiate in an acceptable Elf-Cult is well-known to elves, and even may live with them. Falls in love with an elf and the marriage is accepted (possibly only after a quest is fulfilled). Part of succeeding the quest is to embrace the Plant Rune, and on return to the mundane world, the human is half-elven. A variation on this could be a special ceremony to welcome the human into the elf-society, and they must spend 24 hours inside a specially prepared elf-birthing pod. On emergence they are half-elven.
3. EWF technology does strange things, and I think it was actually a Hugh Cook story where I read of a party of adventurers discovering a ruin. In the ruin was a machine that they investigated, and several members of the party were inside when it suddenly activated. ("Watch out, your damn trollkin slave is leaning on a lever!") Very strange things happened to each person inside, some I recall were fatal. In a recently discovered Rubble ruin, there may be an experimental racial-alteration device, that was abandoned when it was primed and ready to go, perhaps bricked up due to fear, rather than destroyed. Whilst Pavis was not an EWF city, they were allies and the EWF sent armies to try and help the city in official lore, so its not so far fetched that weird technology was there.
4. The child of a mating between a half-elf who originates in one of the above ways and a normal human. The elf genes can remain so strong that this child is also half-elven (or third-elven or whatever).
5. A throwback. Descendents of a half-elf with one of the above origins might suddenly be born with pointed ears (or not). Perhaps it is seen as a family curse, every third generation a half-elf child is born, often concealable due to no obvious elf traits, othertimes these traits may become obvious at puberty, and perhaps the child is cast out to fend for themselves.
6. Somewhere in seclusion, probably associated with elves there may exist a tribe of half-elves, as yet unknown to the vast majority of Gloranthans. Perhaps a couple set out to explore the world, are driven out, or kidnapped, and their child is at some point left outside a human habitation, hopefully to be cared for when they find it there.

Statistics for Half-Elves
Appearance - Varied. Its up to the Storyteller whether the person looks very elvish with obvious pointed ears and green-tinged skin, or else the visual evidence is slight, such as merely an odd silver sheen to the eyes and a predominantly meat-free diet.

The most common human-sized elves are the green, brown and yellow aldryami, so skin tints from brown elvish genes might appear as a dark skin tone. From yellow elves the person may look slightly oriental. Green elf genes could pose a problem with the individual looking permanently ill!

Characteristic	Dice		Average
STR		2D6+4		(11)
CON		3D6		(10-11)
SIZ		2D6+D4		(10)
INT		3D6+3		(14)
POW		2D6+6		(13)
DEX		3D6+2		(13)
APP/PRE 	3D6		(10-11)

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End of The Glorantha Digest V6 #558

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