more on elf communication

From: Martin Crim <MCrim_at_erols.com>
Date: Mon, 01 Nov 1999 18:42:42 -0500

The following is from Ken Rolston, with his kind permission:

Aldryami Communication
Abran Insilli has learned the Rist language from surviving Rist plants. Aldryami communicate by contact -- elfsense -- emotion and health. Plants are passive communicators and do not use abstraction. Aldryami (goblins, runners, dryads, and elves) use active expression of emotion and health -- but can only communicate through touch. Sign language is native to the Aldryami for ranged communication, but verbal speech was learned from humans. Aldryami mouthparts are more rigid and durable than animal and human mouthparts, and speech is easily understood only with practiced speakers. The Hellwood and Poisonwood elves are not practiced speakers.

Speech is used only between elf and other species. Aldryami is an artifact - -- possibly of non-Aldryami origin -- used for communication with non-Aldryami.

Within the plant community, plants communicate through a contact-empathy. Elf sense can perceive and communicate in this mode. It is not a language that promotes abstraction, and is most efficient in communicating needs, desires, satisfaction, and dreams. The more ancient the plant individual, the more complex and rich the texture of communication. Only elves, and to a lesser extent, runners and sprites, have a perception of linear time similar to that perceived by man things.

Elf dialog proceeds at an almost glacial pace compared to human speech. Everyone listens carefully as everyone speaks at once. Impressions build like music. Propositions are made as strong themes; comments are variants on themes. Logical argument is not an elf mode of communication. Logic is abstract; useful knowledge is practical and immediate.

Within the elf warrior community, a subtle system of sounds and signs are used for swift long-range communication.

Arts and Literature
By analogy, a great work by an elf consists of a sensory theme overlaid, paced, and given emphasis by emotive sensations. These sensations are familiar to elves, but would have no meaning to a human. (Exception: Hazia users experience their own sensations and associate them with their emotions in a similar manner.)

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Conversation with an elf can be a terrible trial; they are slow to speak, with long pauses for reflection and recall, and then marked by long recitations of detail; if interrupted with a question, they are often flustered and confused, and must start over from the beginning of the thought. Elves deliberately pause for long periods to memorize important thoughts and details, and elven dialogs are punctuated by long delays as individuals digest and commit to memory what has been said and heard.

• --------- ElfSense or Lifesense is the medium of language and communication for Aldryami, and it depends on touch. Communication depends on touch, therefore society depends on intimacy and trust. Non-Aldryami lack this communication, and cannot attain intimacy with humans or other elder races. Aldryami are xenophobes. They have no concepts of progress, politics, technology, and cannot comprehend these human artifacts. They lack primate curiosity; they associate the new and novel with corruption of the ancient Eden of the Green Age. They were created complete, and have not evolved socially or technologically. They have a mystical understanding of life incomprehensible to humans and other elder races. Elves normally are an extremely social race, with an essential community with plants and one another. The Warrior class is one of the few novelties evolved by the culture, postdating the first contact between elf and man [man in this context refers to all flesh-based man-creatures]; these individuals are capable of independent operation for extended periods of time, and, as such, are likely to be the types encountered in the wide world. Hellwood and Poisonthorn Elves are atypical of Aldryami. The Poisonthorn became exceptionally inter-racially social in the First Age, with disastrous consequences. They retain the knowledge of other races and communication with them, but they fear and avoid them. Hellwood elves, on the other hand, have been driven mad with vengeance and isolation from their motherland. The warrior class is a perversion -- a noble ruling class that worships the power of monstrosity as a tool of war. The krjalki are more like a human ruling class imposed by conquest upon the brown elves beneath them than integrated parts of their community. [Hellwood elves may be exclusively Rist refugees or a population of Rist refugees combined with a pre-existing elf community -- yet to be determined, Greg has some peculiar notions.]

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