My elves are different?

(Note: This post was originally composed in August 2019 and was not posted until February 2021. It may come across as "politically correct." The statements I make here do not necessarily reflect my views as of this writing. I decided to leave it unaltered for archival purposes.)

For the longest time I have struggled with devising a new, creative take on elves. I am bored of lazy Tolkien clones that do not even understand the underpinnings of Tolkien's own creation. Tolkien went to a crazy amount of effort to detail the origins, mythology, culture, psychology and physiology of his elves. Fantasy gaming mindlessly copied surface-level details while ignoring the complicated explanations of why the elves were like that.

Indeed, one of the most important and basic aspects of Tolkien's cosmology that is forgotten in fantasy gaming is the concept of fëa and hröa (soul and body). Tolkien's elves may reincarnate after death, because their souls are bound the world. However, time in Middle Earth operates on the logic of ages, with each successive age being progressively boring and bland. Since the elves are bound to Middle Earth, they are subject to this deterioration as well. The elves grew resentful of their inevitable fate. Sauron played upon this resentment to convince their master smiths to forge the rings of power specifically to arrest this cycle. Obviously, that didn't work and Middle Earth ultimately deteriorated into the horrible modern Earth.

Earlier editions of D&D payed lip service to the concept of different souls by specifically that elves are not subject to raise dead and resurrection spells but must instead be revived through reincarnation spells. This was discarded around third edition in A.D. 2000 and elves became subject to standard revival effects, presumably because it was really inconvenient for players.

Anyway, my efforts seem fruitless since many other authors already devised creative takes on elves over the last several decades since D&D popularized the surface-level Tolkien clones.

• RuneQuest depicts elves as plant people, not unlike some folkloric imaginings of wood nymphs. 
• Warhammer depicts elves as prone to inhumanly excessive emotions. 
• Magic: The Gathering depicts extremely vicious wood elves in its Lorwyn setting, nothing like the popular hippie stereotype. 
• The Dragon Prince depicts elves with horns and ethnic groups based on their elemental magic affinity, such as "moon", "sky" and "stars." (D&D does this too, but here the magic system gives it weight)
• Warcraft depicts various elf ethnic groups created by magical mutations. (These are far more extreme than the largely cosmetic D&D ethnicity.) There are night elves, high elves, blood elves, void elves, fel-corrupted elves, and more.
• The miniatures company Raging Heroes wrote a backstory for elves in which they were depicted as one soul sharing two bodies, one a tree and the other an animal; dark elves were created during a war that burned their groves, leaving their surviving animal halves horribly burned and their souls permanently shredded.

At this point, probably the best I can do is just mix-and-match elements based on the work of other authors. Pick what bits that I like and stick them together, while making sure the result looks holistic and not lazy patchwork.

There are basically only three flavors of elves: high elves, wood elves, and dark elves. Virtually every depiction in the fantasy genre is a variation on one or more of those three. By keeping myself restricted to detailing those three for the most part, I can save myself a lot of work that would otherwise be wasted on convoluted backstories for the bazillion different elfish ethnic groups. Three ethnic groups are much easier to write as distinct than a bazillion.

Inspiration for the abyssal larvae

In an older post, I wrote a bit on the origins and appearances of the monster called "abyssal larva." I briefly alluded to their mythological inspiration in the larvae or ghosts from Greek mythology. However, I suspect that the abyssal larva may draw from Biblical imagery as well.

In Mark 9:44-48, Jesus says that "their [sinners'] worm does not die," referring to the Greek larvae. In Christian philosophy, pangs of conscience or envy are metaphorically described as a "gnawing worm" on the soul. Sinners and sin itself are often conceptualized as worms.

As I mentioned in my prior post, some depictions of the fantasy larvae may add that it matures into a locust demon. Such locust demons are described in the Book of Revelations, with disturbing features like human faces and scorpion stingers whose venom causes agony but never death.

Eschatology never ceases to amaze.

Why bury the dead when undead exist?

A question I came across is "why does anyone bury the dead when undead are around?" Which is actually quite a reasonable question to ask. You would think that if undead are a problem then people would not leave bodies around to reanimate. So what keeps people building cemeteries and tombs and so forth?

In order to answer these questions, I had to devise a cosmology that departs from the incoherent D&D standard. Instead of souls passing to the outer planes, they enter the shadowfell and retain a connection to their bodies even after death. The souls of the dead are not disconnected from the living world, but connected to it. This forms the basis of ancestor worship and respect for the dead.

Cemeteries and tombs and such exist for the psychological comfort of the deceased. As spiritual beings, the dead may actively benefit from spiritual activities. Offerings of food, goods, servants, etc provide a benefit to their afterlives in the shadowfell. If the dead aren't properly appeased, then they haunt the living. Naturally, they'll look very unkindly on any adventurers who go around robbing graves. (In my setting, adventurers are murderous hobos, mercenaries, looters and generally bad people that sometimes believe themselves to be heroic because medieval morality is not modern morality.)

Cremation is an option but, as you can probably guess, necromancers will compensate by developing spells that can raise soldiers from ashes. Read about the "essential salts" from the stories of Charles Dexter Ward and Necroscope some time. Necromancy isn't some quick and easy path to zombie apocalypses, either. It involves either building a rapport with the dead, or summoning demons to possess their corpses. If you're going around enslaving the dead, then they will hate you. In order to maintain an army that doesn't hate your guts, you need to devote effort to making the dead follow you willingly.

But I digress.

Is it wrong to animate dead?

In the past I’ve posted long dissertations on the morality of the undead and the shadowfell. In general, I have felt that the morality would vary by campaign setting and GM discretion.

Another idea I had involved a different take on the afterlife. In my post on the cosmology of my head-canon setting, I said most people who die pass to the shadowfell rather than the outer planes. When revived, their soul likewise returns from there. The shadowfell serves as the mythological underworld and occult spirit world.

To explain why people in-setting have such a visceral reaction to the undead, I decided to adopt a model of the soul based on real world mythology. Rather than being totally disconnected from their bodies, the dead retain a connection to their bodies. They can essentially scry using this connection, even interact with their living relatives without leaving the shadowfell. In extreme cases, they can enter and reanimate their own corpses, such as to defend their tomb from robbers or help protect the necroscope. Temporal parameters vary from manifestation to manifestation.

So, among other things, the spell speak with dead actually communicates with the soul of the deceased and not just an impression. Even if the soul is far away enjoying (or not) their afterlife, this operates like a long-distance phone call. This also explains why societies, as in real life, develop complex practices regarding mourning the dead even long after the funeral: the dead benefit from such treatment, like consuming offerings, being guardian angels, etc. 

The reason why animating the dead, at least without their consent anyway (they can give consent, or have reason to animate themselves a la BoED’s deathless), is so taboo is because the dead know it and may become upset with such treatment. To prevent the dead from rebelling, you have to enslave their soul too even if it isn’t providing the animating force. (This opens a lot of plot hooks too, such as a lost soul begging you to kill the vampire demon animating their corpse.)

So you can only have good necromancers if they have a positive social rapport with the dead. Otherwise it’s no different from enslavement. That said, there are definitely societies with state-sanctioned necromancy where people sell their corpses as slaves. Even though the dead are aware of what going on, they’re still dead. Backbreaking labor loses most of its unpleasantry when your body no longer feels pain or thirst.

That’s the gist of it. I might explore this further in future posts, but I don’t know if I find it interesting enough at present. I had enough of a headache trying to make sense of the many inconsistent ways that soul loss is handled.

Ecology of the abyssal larva

Larvae are fiendish petitioners in the D&D cosmology. Their exact ecology has varied in different editions. They are known by many names: abyssal larva, demonic larva, soul larva, soul maggot, soul worm, etc.

Too many psychopomps

The world building in Pathfinder and Golarion is retarded at the best of times. One of the many, many stupid things is how death and the afterlife are handed.

Earthbound evils

While demons typically arise within the lower planes (and are largely trapped there), some people are so evil that their souls may become demons without ever leaving the material plane. Likewise, some terrestrial spirits may become so corrupt that they are twisted into demons. Some may build fleshy bodies for themselves or reincarnate within family lineages. These earthbound evils are commonly known by names like div, oni, rakshasa, and sahkil depending on the local culture. Pathfinder introduces all of these as new races of demons, but I prefer not to split hairs. The rakshasa and ogre mage in the MM are examples of such demons, but they come in many more varieties (see the PF bestiaries for ideas and then build them using the DMG guidelines).

Soul magic

Souls and corpses are not really given much thought in the rules. Do undead have souls? Do celestials or fiends? Do they leave corpses behind? How do they interact with animate dead, magic jar, raise dead, speak with dead, etc?

Cycles of the soul primer

ADDENDUM 9/27/2018: I have slightly revised this post to reflect what I have learned since.

Mongoose Publishing published a few books about the planes. Two of them dealt directly with the passage of souls into the afterlife. In this post I will briefly compare them and then try to synthesize them into one.

Cultural views of the soul

Different cultures developed different views of the soul. Paracelsus posited an "elementary body", "sidereal body" or spirit and "eternal spirit" or immortal soul. Both the Chinese and the Egyptians believed that human beings had multiple souls and that these were tied to different parts of the body. This led to the Egyptian's practice of storing mummified organs within canopic jars and to traditional Chinese medicine's preoccupation with organ systems

The ancient Egyptians believed that every person had a soul composed of multiple parts and that these needed to be maintained in order for the deceased to maintain a happy afterlife. Hence the elaborate mummification and funerary rites and the continued practice of making offerings to tombs. The exact schema is unknown because all our knowledge was painstakingly reconstructed from Egyptian texts and thus the greater context was lost.

At its most basic the Egyptian soul was divided into "a body (khat), a spirit (ka), a mind (ba), a shadow (sheut), a heart (ib), and a name (ren)." These parts would be transformed, split and merged through mummification and judgment in the afterlife. There were other parts, like "akh", but the nature of these is not clear and may have changed over time.

Taoism devised a scheme where every person had two sets of souls, the hún and pò. The hún is the ethereal soul, sometimes translated as animus. The pò is the corporeal soul, sometimes translated as anima.

The hún was divided into three parts, the pò seven. The precise symbolism varies between orthodox Taoism, folk religion, yoga, Buddhism and traditional medicine. These souls can be mapped onto any trinity or hebdomad with enough effort.

The hún souls variously correspond to Feng Shui's cosmic trinity of heaven, earth, and man, Aristotle's hierarchy of plant, animal and human, Taoism's three virtues of compassion, frugality, and humility, traditional Chinese medicine's three treasures of essence, breath and spirit, etc. The pò souls variously correspond to the seven orifices in the head, the seven basic emotions, the seven chakras, etc.