I would like to see a fantasy setting that really grapples with the seemingly bizarre military/population dynamics of Elves. The must be incredibly battle hardened and/or traumatized.
Technology is static, perhaps even going backwards since the First Age, so no startups, no banking. Do Elves have money?
So many questions
That question could be asked about almost everyone in Middle Earth given how little discussion there is of it. The only explicit mention of a price that I can remember is the twelve silver pennies that are paid to Bill Ferny for his pony (and an additional eighteen paid by Butterbur to Merry as compensation for the lost animals). One would assume that money is used in the Shire, but it is never mentioned--for example, we never see anyone actually paying for drinks at the Green Dragon. Everywhere else items just appear and there is no discussion of any of the behind the scenes processes that produce them or how those processes work.
Yes, and that the Sackville-Bagginses are particularly focused on wealth. Tolkien may not discuss specific financial exchanges in the Shire much, but he does paint a picture of the socioeconomic hierarchy and the position of the characters from the Shire within it.
That would be naff
Tolkien and Peter Jackson shouldn't be confused. There are plenty of maimed elves. Maedhros, the eldest son of Feanor, was one-handed after his hand was cut off. Turin was also friends Gwindor, who was crippled, maimed, and somehow disfigured. His brother was also blinded, then later dismembered in front of Gwindor.
Maybe it’s a naïve calculation extrapolated from more realistic exchanges of small bits of mithril for reasonable plots of land? Then if you multiple the land by the amount of mithril in the mail, you get something bigger than the shire?
Maybe I’ve answered my own question now…
The mithril coat was beautiful, rare, made of the most valuable metal in existence and, essentially, magical.
Thought it was a good comparison.
https://www.scmp.com/magazines/style/news-trends/article/309...
Given that he tends see overlooked value in these common folks, it does seem wildly out of character that he would compare the value of their entire little community to a piece of armor, however fine. Although, I guess, it isn’t like he’s rubbing it in Frodo’s face or anything. I guess he just wanted Gimli to appreciate the value of the gift…
> for elite goods back then
This hasn't changed.
Maybe a King who wants to survive a piercing from a cave troll?
The value of things can vary heavily depending on circumstances.
Without a source of magic they eventually lose their bodies and diminish into woodland spirits.
You can't have elves without magic and still have them be elves.
They literally disappear any place without some amount of magic.
I think RoP introduced this idea, but it is not in Tolkien.
First of all, elves appear in many different books, series, movies, and there are no hard and fast "rules" for elves. I mean, they're fictional first of all! There are no dogmatic universal laws governing them.
Also, in the Lord of the Rings, there is nothing canonical that states elves lose their bodies and become woodland spirits without "magic."
It’s just a natural process that has nothing to do with “sources of magic”, Elves lived the vast majority of their time in ME without “sources of magic.” This conceit came from Rings of Power, I am pretty sure.
Maybe an external battery might help?
Like my grandmothers high school history teacher could be marry my son.
Creepy.
In practice, however, age itself would probably become valuable on the dating market. Since people would look young indefinitely (until some tragic accident), youth probably wouldn't be valued any more, but quite the opposite: older people would have valuable and interesting life experience, and probably better finances too thanks to compound interest. So your grandmother's high school teacher might not be that interested in your son because he's too young and inexperienced.
Another thing that would likely happen is that relationships would no longer be assumed to be life-long. We already have accepted divorce pretty well these days, but in the ageless future, it'll probably be normal for marriage-type relationships to have pre-agreed time limits.
FWIW, Elven childhood and growth was actually also much longer than human childhood, but it was quick in the eyes of the Elves.
that's because on death elves reincarnate in Valinor. The exception was given when the spouse refused to reincarnate (and a lot of pain resulted form that incident).
Yes, unfortunately we don't have more detailed portrayals since those passages in The Silmarillion are very brief.
The reason you would not write a scene with your ultimate villain on the toilet is the same impulse Tolkien may have felt here.
"in the Laundry universe, elves are nazis with pointy ears"
They aren't immortal although they do deploy WMD levels of magic.
http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2017/06/crib-she...
I want to see elves that have to come to terms with the fact that will always be fighting wars outnumbered hundreds to one, attempting to make up for that gap by using their special characteristics. I don’t want to see them corrupted to debauchery by boredom, but to grim pragmatism by desperation.
With wizards-engineers spending hundreds of years on a project, I want to see bizarre siege weapons. Indirect fire guided by giant eagles. The other species should have to pull trench warfare into the fantasy era to reasonably do battle.
I think this was put vaguely into the back of my head by the Artemis Fowl books when I was a kid, I thought they had interesting vibes, but of course they were YA novels, and IMO this would be better set in a fantasy era.
The books do go downhill (as does the author's mental health, I believe). But they are definitely worth knowing.
And yep, I'm quite at home with fairly dark books.
1) they are the ones who remained in Middle-Earth, while others (e.g. Elrond's wife) departed west over the Sea to get away from the violence of Middle-Earth
2) they are ageless, and seem to have a very high adult:child ratio and essentially no elderly, so nearly the entire population is "military age"
Taken together, this could plausibly give not much under 50% able to serve in the military in extremis. Relative to Hobbits, Orcs, or Dwarves, the Elves are biologically far more different than Men.
Most plausibly, since there are numerous cases of different groups of orcs looking at least as different from one another as, say, Hobbits and Men and Wose and Dwarves, "orc" is just a term for any humanoid whose form has been corrupted by a Dark Lord.
However, I reckon the only reason these dynamics seem bizarre is that they would be very bizarre for humans, but elves are definitely not humans; their nature could potentially be very different, especially in LOTR where they have an infinite lifespan and a very different creation than other peoples.
Elves are basically aliens, however human-like they look. Would it be strange to find such dynamics in an alien species of octopus-shaped creatures that communicate through electromagnetic fields?
For instance, you could postulate that the defining feature of elves is that they do not change, mentally as well as physically, once they reach maturity. Their personality crystallizes, as firmly as their biology, and whatever happens to them over the millennia they live, they will remain themselves.
This makes them very different than you and I, but IMO it's also very compatible with the way elves are presented in Tolkien.