Allanaki City Elves

[Vwest]

This is kind of the core of the problem. It's the identical problem to a small-time group of hunters getting accorded the same kind of respect as a Merchant House because from a PC perspective they're better represented.

I've run two groups of hunters / independents.

While both did very well and carried a lot of power both code-wise and connection wise, neither were ever (at least in Allanak) treated as comparable to a merchant House by anyone. I've seen what you're talking about happening with a couple of groups in Tuluk, but no matter how rich you are or how connected you get in Allanak, an independent hunter / merchant / grebber will never have power comparable to a merchant House.

I've never seen it happen and can think of only one semi-independent character currently (complicated) that has any kind of power to rival those in properly clanned organizations. That character is almost always a hair away from assassination because of it, too.

Virtually, the place you were in was probably packed with elves. For all you knew, there were a bunch from the same tribe as the elf starting shit who could've gone running and brought a few dozen more elves to the party. You were prospectively not starting some kind of beatdown, but a full-on scrap. But - in PC terms - there are no coded clans, and few PC elves. People don't need to think twice before they stand up and join the beating.

Trying to claim vNPC is always a bad argument because it cuts both ways. If you claim virtual elves running off to get virtual tribe members, I claim virtual humans (in this case T'zai Byn mercenaries) running to get virtual squaddies. I'm confident that if you want to press the vNPC angle and we walk through the situation realistically, the elves are going to be the ones losing out -hard- for even attempting to stand up to humans, never mind that those humans happen to be the badass mercenaries that infest the only tavern elves are tolerated in southside Allanak.

Virtual tribe wants to start a grudge match with virtual mercenaries? Or just plain old virtual human families? Virtual humans put virtual coins in virtual Templars pocket and now that tribe of virtual elves, known for attempting to stand up to humans in the Gaj, are now all wanted for 'questioning' in the theft of Lady Borsail's +5 Bejeweled Pleasure Wand. You know all those elven thieves we feed to the anakore in the Arena? The ones we never seem to run out of, ever?

Those are your uppity virtual elves. Now you know where they come from.

The KKK could get away with their heinous shit in rural areas, on a people beaten down from slavery. Drop them into an urban environment peopled by criminal and semi-criminal groups with strong family ties (compare the 'Ndrangheta http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%27Ndrangheta) and they'd rapidly be destroyed utterly.

You may want to look up the modern KKK and the list of tremendously powerful gangs associated with them, that exist in almost every major urban center and control a number of prisons in the United States.

Given these groups have been more successful in driving out foreign criminal elements (MS13, ALKN, etc.) than the LEAs, as well as openly going to war with various native gangs (Bloods, etc.), biker gangs (WoS,etc.) in their own territories, suggesting they're going to 'rapidly be destroyed utterly' is... silly, to say the least. It isn't relevant to the discussion of course, but still a pretty silly thing to say.

The point of using them as an example is that I feel that is the kind of person the average human being is on Zalanthan. Even with the power struggles and in-fighting, a human being believes they really are superior to the other races and the very idea of a lesser race getting uppity would be offensive and a reason to drop current squabbles to deal with it as soon as possible. There is a certain unity that every human in Allanak would naturally have with each other in the face of an elf (or other race) attempting to start trouble for them, no matter what tier of society they might reside.

It's a unity that elves, by their very documented nature, can never truly attain and as such, will always be at a general disadvantage when dealing with humans, especially on the front of aggression and conflict. The idea that elves are going to roll into the Gaj in force and try to openly take on a group of humans in defense of their own is absurd.

Even starting a non-violent feud with a group of humans, and we're just talking regular, run of the mill commoners, not even the lowest of affiliated humans, such as T'zai Byn mercenaries, would likely prove disastrous for the tribe. Every point of relevant authority in Allanak is human and every human in Allanak should have a personal interest in maintaining and advancing human domination.

It's why I believe the only coded tribe (technically tribes, I guess) and the only real point of elven power in-game for Allanak is in the 'rinth, where the government and the foundation of human power (politically, militarily and socially) is mostly absent. It, like the Pah and other 'free' areas of the Known, have a very might-makes-right theme because the laws of each group extends only as far as their blades can enforce it.

In the 'rinth, a tribe can etch out the kind of power and 'respect' you seem to feel they deserve. In Allanak proper, every aspect of civilized human society has everything to lose by allowing elves even a modicum of respect or influence.

And sure, the weakness of elves is that elven tribes don't trust each other, don't work together. If they did, they'd be a force in the city greater than any three Noble Houses combined. What this actually looks like is not a uniform powerlessness, but moderately-sized powerful groups at loggerheads with each other. The city isn't in thrall to the Elven Mafia because there are a hundred competing Mafias, each at war with all the others; they are ruled by humans through the old principle of divide and conquer. None of them individually are a match for the militia. But, if you're Amos the Grebber, this isn't a great consolation to you. Humanity isn't going to rally round to help you if you piss off one of those Mafias, particularly through stupidity, 'cos Tek don't care about you.

1) No, they wouldn't. That's ridiculous, even by GDB standards.
2) There would never be enough tolerance for elves to attain 'mafia' level power in Allanak proper. Even 'gang' level power would result in the Arm coming down on them with wrath of a literal angry human God-King.
3) Every human with an ounce of common sense would know it's in their own best interest to keep elves down. Would they scream 'draw steel, bitch!' and throw themselves into a hopeless fight? No, because survival is the name of the game in Zalanthas. Are they going to throw rocks at the dumb-as-bricks necker along with everyone else? You bet and it's reflected by the attitudes of PCs all the way up to Templars in-game.

I've even seen the NPCs in the Gaj animated, along with room echos, to represent humans getting angry at an elf who insisted on spitting on people and talking about elven superiority, so I'd be hard pressed to hear an argument that this is exclusively a player-represented state of affairs.

This isn't "Tuluki elf-loving". This is Nakkis ignoring the gritty, scary virtual elves.

The idea of Allanak ever tolerating elves beyond the bottom of society, right next to cockroaches and gemmers, reeks being the run-off of what is going on in Tuluk. In Allanak they're seen as nothing but thieves, scum, trash and pests of no redeeming value and this has been asserted by members of the staff in this very thread. There is no real reason for the average commoner to have any kind of respect or fear or elves, just like they have no real reason to respect or fear 'rinth rats.

Elves are not gemmers, there is no inherent fear amongst the commoner population towards elves. They're tall, gangly and the slime of society, not shadowy figures cloaked in mystery and danger (though this is what 99% of the PC elves in Allanak try to be for some reason). If an elf doesn't get out of your way, push him out of the way. If he falls down in front of you? Walk right over him, just like the person behind you will do.

I'm not sure why you think elves, virtual or otherwise, should be naturally scary to anyone.

I'd pose two really basic questions:

What is your ideal situation for city elves in Allanak? For PCs, for the virtual world, for how players should perceive it, what you'd like the documents to outline.

Why do you feel elves should be scary? I'm just baffled. Completely.

I agree with a lot of what you've posted, but at the same time I'm not... entirely... sure... what you're after.

[HavokBlue]

As a human, I would not feel particularly at risk if I were being racist toward an elf in the Gaj, for example.

If I were, say... in front of a tenement known to be populated primarily by elven families or an alley frequented by elves or in an elven merchant's tent, I would perhaps think twice about being blatantly racist, not because I am afraid of the individual elf, but because I am afraid of being caught away from home ground and outnumbered by the lawless thieving desperate scum, who while inherently inferior, are possessed of no morals or honor or sense of decency.

[i love toilets]

Lol, elves

That is all

[HavokBlue]

Thank you for that intelligent and thoughtful contribution to the thread.

[Mr.B]

I don't always post about elves, but when I do, I don't expect anyone to agree. Here's the problems I see with the c-elf race.

-They can't worth a shit outside of cities, which is a limiting factor to their ease of play outside of cities. I think they can afford to get the ability to run in the desert and not break the precious "game balance" we have going on. This should be done, imho.
-To properly roleplay an elf, they need to exibit tribe mentality. This means they need a tribe/family to call their own. If it were up to me, I would force c-elf players to play in the Jaxa or some other brand spanking new families that are geared toward freedom of play with some guidelines for not causing the Templarate to steamroll the entire family if this is a Allanak proper based family.
-Players need to understand that just because the c-elf can steal i, it doesn't mean they have to be a career criminal thiefly bastard. You can go hard-mode and be a legitimate at whatever you choose, just make sure you appreciate the artform, because those real career criminal thiefly bastard cousins/uncles/nephews/mothers, of yours were totally badass.

[Quirk]

Virtual tribe wants to start a grudge match with virtual mercenaries? Or just plain old virtual human families? Virtual humans put virtual coins in virtual Templars pocket and now that tribe of virtual elves, known for attempting to stand up to humans in the Gaj, are now all wanted for 'questioning' in the theft of Lady Borsail's +5 Bejeweled Pleasure Wand. You know all those elven thieves we feed to the anakore in the Arena? The ones we never seem to run out of, ever?

The problem is: there are a lot of them, and they are useful to someone powerful. The militia aren't going to intervene to save your sorry ass, because those elves are also putting coin in the pockets of templars and other powerful people, and more of it than your mercenary or your grebber is. If they were merely a blight on the city, they'd have been wiped out long ago.

The KKK could get away with their heinous shit in rural areas, on a people beaten down from slavery. Drop them into an urban environment peopled by criminal and semi-criminal groups with strong family ties (compare the 'Ndrangheta http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%27Ndrangheta) and they'd rapidly be destroyed utterly.

You may want to look up the modern KKK and the list of tremendously powerful gangs associated with them, that exist in almost every major urban center and control a number of prisons in the United States.

You're going to have to give me some references here 'cos Wikipedia's got nothing apart from mentioning their slow decline. Google on KKK and organised crime's bringing up little. Some hunting round shows the Aryan Brotherhood as a player, but they don't seem to be a major player - the FBI, over here: http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R40525.pdf are substantially more concerned with the Russian mafia, La Cosa Nostra, etc. In short, I think you're wildly overstating your case.

A reference I can give you is to what happened when the Silver Shirts and Brown Shirts - anti-Semitic Nazi organisations - ran into the Jewish gangsters of Minneapolis and New York.
http://www.solveisraelsproblems.com/american-jewish-mobsters-of-the-1920s/

The point of using them as an example is that I feel that is the kind of person the average human being is on Zalanthan. Even with the power struggles and in-fighting, a human being believes they really are superior to the other races and the very idea of a lesser race getting uppity would be offensive and a reason to drop current squabbles to deal with it as soon as possible. There is a certain unity that every human in Allanak would naturally have with each other in the face of an elf (or other race) attempting to start trouble for them, no matter what tier of society they might reside.

I don't see this unity. I don't see humans willing to risk death or injury to protect other humans. It's a racial chivalry that's neither documented nor one I've seen much sign of in game. Humans have their own divisions. To take it at the simplest level, a Nakki isn't going to come to the defence of a Tuluki who's pushing a Nakki elf too far.

Elves cannot transcend their tribal boundaries to form large organisations or united armies. Humans can do this, but are nonetheless split into their own factions.

And sure, the weakness of elves is that elven tribes don't trust each other, don't work together. If they did, they'd be a force in the city greater than any three Noble Houses combined. What this actually looks like is not a uniform powerlessness, but moderately-sized powerful groups at loggerheads with each other. The city isn't in thrall to the Elven Mafia because there are a hundred competing Mafias, each at war with all the others; they are ruled by humans through the old principle of divide and conquer. None of them individually are a match for the militia. But, if you're Amos the Grebber, this isn't a great consolation to you. Humanity isn't going to rally round to help you if you piss off one of those Mafias, particularly through stupidity, 'cos Tek don't care about you.

1) No, they wouldn't. That's ridiculous, even by GDB standards.

There are 135,500 free elves in Nak, and 150,000 free humans. I am if anything understating my case. If we had one tribe of 135,500 elves, they would be massively more powerful - by orders of magnitude - than any human organisation through simple force of numbers and being far more united than the humans are. If they raised an army, it would exceed everyone the Noble Houses combined could raise in numbers, quite possibly by a factor of ten. This is power. If there were a patchwork of tribes willing to work together, they might not have quite the same unity, but the sheer numbers would still make them a force to be reckoned with.

The problem - the ongoing, constant problem - is people looking at the small number of city elf PCs and basing anything meaningful off that.

2) There would never be enough tolerance for elves to attain 'mafia' level power in Allanak proper. Even 'gang' level power would result in the Arm coming down on them with wrath of a literal angry human God-King.

There are too many elves for this to work. There's an elf for every free human in Nak. The last thing the militia wants to do is make it elf vs human and give the tribes a chance to unite. They'd be overrun. The strength they have is in playing divide and conquer - they certainly don't have the resource to go in hard against every elven threat.

More than this, the economy runs on them - has to run on them, because of their numbers. This means groups of elves with substantial economic clout, likely some of them playing part of the supply chain of major Houses.

I've even seen the NPCs in the Gaj animated, along with room echos, to represent humans getting angry at an elf who insisted on spitting on people and talking about elven superiority, so I'd be hard pressed to hear an argument that this is exclusively a player-represented state of affairs.

Well, similarly, a small group of elves getting humans to unite against them isn't going to end well for the elves. If they clearly provoked matters and are reaping just desserts, the tribes that hate their tribe are just going to snigger and move on.

The idea of Allanak ever tolerating elves beyond the bottom of society, right next to cockroaches and gemmers, reeks being the run-off of what is going on in Tuluk. In Allanak they're seen as nothing but thieves, scum, trash and pests of no redeeming value and this has been asserted by members of the staff in this very thread. There is no real reason for the average commoner to have any kind of respect or fear or elves, just like they have no real reason to respect or fear 'rinth rats.

Elves are not gemmers, there is no inherent fear amongst the commoner population towards elves. They're tall, gangly and the slime of society, not shadowy figures cloaked in mystery and danger (though this is what 99% of the PC elves in Allanak try to be for some reason). If an elf doesn't get out of your way, push him out of the way. If he falls down in front of you? Walk right over him, just like the person behind you will do.

I'm not sure why you think elves, virtual or otherwise, should be naturally scary to anyone.

Because of their numbers, almost equivalent to humans. Because most of them run in tribes of hundreds or more - they are connected, in a way Amos the grebber is not and will never be. Their sole weakness is that tribes of elves see other tribes of elves as the main competition, not allies, and so they can be divided against each other.

They are scary because - to Amos the grebber - they are vastly more powerful than he is, and alien, and happy to cause him loss for their own amusement. They are more powerfully connected not just because their tribal network is larger than Amos' circle of friends, but because they trade as a tribe with important people, and are necessary to them. A tribe crossing a Noble House or Merchant House will certainly get slapped down, but a tribe crossing Amos? Nobody cares if an elf lifts Amos' purse. He isn't important.

I'd pose two really basic questions:

What is your ideal situation for city elves in Allanak? For PCs, for the virtual world, for how players should perceive it, what you'd like the documents to outline.

Why do you feel elves should be scary? I'm just baffled. Completely.

I agree with a lot of what you've posted, but at the same time I'm not... entirely... sure... what you're after.

I want elves to make sense. The population described by the staff on the GDB over the years is a massive part of the city.

Right now, if there were elven PCs present in the game of almost equal number to human PCs, and most of those PCs belonged to tribes, were connected, roleplay-wise we'd rapidly adjust to something that made sense. It would swiftly become apparent that messing with a tribe would lead to repercussions you'd be able to avoid only through being better connected than they were. The tribeless elf would be a football to be kicked by any, but the tribed elf would not.

The problem is that players of free humans act as if they were a huge majority in the city. They aren't. They've a slender majority only, and they aren't tribal the way elves are, they don't jump to the defence of their human brothers at great personal risk. While their largest factions are larger than the largest elven factions and mostly willing to work together where the elves squabble, these factions are not in any position where it's remotely safe to give elven tribes a reason to unite together. If anything, I imagine they'd engineer the downfall of an elven tribe not by sending the militia in, but by creating an opening for the tribe's elven enemies to destroy them.

So - we could slash elven numbers to the point that it genuinely was safe to hound them, to the point that our current RP kind of makes sense. Half-elves would be vanishingly uncommon as a result, though, and there'd be no major reason for elves not to be genocided out of the city. I think also this route lacks richness.

If we keep the elven population as massive as it's meant to be, we need some structures that indicate the kind of influence a huge minority with close tribal ties would actually wield. I'd like to see an actual Southside tribe, with some sensible economic niche, which players could play in. I think much of the realism I've discussed would fall out naturally from having a tribe in game. Ideal, if we had the numbers, would be to have a pair of elven tribes competing with and hating each other.

I'd like the docs to explore why elves are tolerated in the city - how they provide enough of the economy that they haven't been run off as a bunch of moochers, how they are kept in check when numerically they're such a massive percentage of the city. I'd like them to look at elves primarily through a tribal lens, and consider what behaviour putting tribal interests first is likely to lead to (i.e. it isn't going to be practical just to try and scam everything you see).

[Harmless]

alright. Think about it. half-elves exist because elves exist. elves exist because half-elves exist. obviously some people be f****** dem elves. And they are so, so fuckable. they aren't getting genocided because some humans really like them.

you can also add the argument that people have needs. Spice. other contraband. Eventually, you're going to need to go to an elf. this goes to another issue, that the dark side of allanak life is rarely portrayed, out of fear for survival. in general, being a city elfis not easy. being an Allanaki addicted to spice is not easy either. count me among those in this thread who have said, I -have- played that, & I have enjoyed it. But, like them, I may not decide to do it again, unless something were to tempt me..

finally, to the legal side of things that elves can do. they're skinny, they need less food. For menial work, this is just more efficient. people are starving everywhere, there are no good people to do work. If you need something done badly, you may just use an elf.

I agree with the notion to improve c-Elven stamina. even just a tiny bit. if anything, it would keep those desert elf bastards from calling my celves weaklegs all the time, which has always felt like I may as well have rolled a half-elf.

Posted with my phone.

[Twilight]

I've wished for awhile now that the "shadowy alleyways" of Allanak proper were filled out with a couple of elven shops and whatnot, trading in lower quality goods maybe.  Trading in the proper city, but in places that might  not be as well patroled, not as desireable, as other parts of town.

Now, if you made a couple of shops with backrooms, and players could start in the tribe of those shops elves and use the backroom, perhaps have different selling/buying priveleges with the shopkeeper, you would have the start of something interesting.

[spicemustflow]

I just want to "like" Quirk's excellent post. He said everything I always thought but in a coherent, argumented way. Thumbs up

[RogueGunslinger]

I just want to "like" Quirk's excellent post. He said everything I always thought but in a coherent, argumented way. Thumbs up

Yep, me too. Well worth reading the whole thing.

[Mr.B]

Quirk's walls of text read well, but the idea of elven tribes/families banding together against those oppressive humans in some kind of race war is such a silly idea. As numerous and as integral to the city as they are, the Templarate/Highlord have the power to keep them in check. Most Elves aren't stupid and aren't prone to committing their entire families/tribes to hopeless fights or even costly ones, therefore they eke out an existence however they can.

I really don't see the huge virtual deal. Tribes have documentation that further establishes their place in the world, their cultural notes, customs, motivations, history, and sometimes connections. I see a lot of complaining about the broad guideline given by the racial documentation, and that it isn't specific enough to explain the place elves have in Allanak. This is what tribal/family documentation is for.

This is why I contend the elven tribe/family must be a part of the non-virtual world if at all possible for the player. This sits right above running in the defining feature of elven roleplay imho.

[Harmless]

Err, I just realized Mr. B is actually in agreement. Edited.

Also, I edited out the rest of my post because I think I don't know what I'm talking about.

+1 to ideas of adding families and vNPC support for "tribeless" celves. +1 to reducing the amount of imm-meddling that's required to exist happily as a celf. Those are my thoughts.

[Quirk]

Quirk's walls of text read well, but the idea of elven tribes/families banding together against those oppressive humans in some kind of race war is such a silly idea. As numerous and as integral to the city as they are, the Templarate/Highlord have the power to keep them in check. Most Elves aren't stupid and aren't prone to committing their entire families/tribes to hopeless fights or even costly ones, therefore they eke out an existence however they can.

Well, the point I was making there is that there are a ton of elves in the city. Many more elves than militia. The militia alone certainly do not have the power to keep them in check were it to come to a straight-up fight; the templarate and Highlord may, but it would be a messy business. On the whole it seems better strategy to keep the elves divided and at one another throats than it does to rile them up by trying to defend every idiot who crosses an elven tribe.

I really don't see the huge virtual deal. Tribes have documentation that further establishes their place in the world, their cultural notes, customs, motivations, history, and sometimes connections. I see a lot of complaining about the broad guideline given by the racial documentation, and that it isn't specific enough to explain the place elves have in Allanak. This is what tribal/family documentation is for.

Well, the virtual deal is that a relatively small proportion of the urban PC population is elven, but virtually, almost half the population that PCs are drawn from (free commoners) should be elven. More than that, the majority of these are in tribes.

People treat elves as though they were a small, downtrodden underclass without resources, because when the PC population is a handful of tribeless elves, there are no consequences for this. If the PC population reflected the virtual population, this would soon stop.

This is why I contend the elven tribe/family must be a part of the non-virtual world if at all possible for the player. This sits right above running in the defining feature of elven roleplay imho.

Despite the above, it seems we're deeply in agreement on this point anyway.

[Quirk]

I'm going to do a recap post, in the hope of laying out things in such a way I don't need to answer them again.

Why haven't elves been genocided out of Nak already?

Because there are heaps and heaps of them.
http://gdb.armageddon.org/index.php/topic,38969.msg535915.html#msg535915

This isn't a minority that can be easily crushed. If elves had to fight for the survival of their species, they'd be able to make a bloody fight of it. They're smarter than humans and very numerous.

They are however badly divided. Tribes may well distrust each other worse than they distrust the humans. This saps their power ferociously. No individual elven tribe should be able to stand against the militia or any great House.

(Note that this doesn't give carte blanche for Recruit Malik to kill an elf who's annoyed him - pissing off an individual tribe still potentially produces hundreds of angry elves scheming to get even with a rich elven inventiveness, and no organisation is going to be happy with a recruit who brings in that much trouble.)

How do they feed themselves?

A few of them are career criminals, but the city obviously can't support that as a lifestyle for the majority. Most work and trade. This is reflected in the NPC life of the city. Evidently some mechanisms exist which make this situation more or less stable; they're producing some goods the city needs at prices the city is willing to pay.

Assuming elves work together as a tribe, and have tribal businesses, then there's an easy mechanism for stable business relationships: long term tribal interests win over braggable feats of theft which lose customers.

(Note an organisation of a few hundred people employed in the same business will have influence corresponding to their numbers and their wealth. If our legal and above board elven tribe is emptying chamberpots and cleaning latrines over part of the city, and a couple of drunken mercenaries decide for a laugh to go about disrupting their work, templars are unlikely to comment openly on the disappearance of the latter; the tribe has coin that can be extorted to keep things quiet, and the mercenaries are indirectly working against the humans who rely on the tribe's services.)

What's the problem?

Problem 1: Elves are not powerless
What we see in game in Nak are tribeless elven PCs who are unconnected and are effectively powerless. In Tuluk, where there is an actual coded tribe to contend with, PC roleplay has had to accomodate the simple fact that large groups of closely connected people are far from powerless, even members of a poor underclass. This is not a flaw in Tuluki RP; the failure to account for the existence of elves who do not fit the tribeless PC model is a flaw in Nakki RP.

If the sheer numbers of elves, and their networks of connections, were reflected better, it would be apparent that elves are not merely despised, like half-breeds, but feared as the groups of xenophobic close-knit bastards they are.

Problem 2: People trade with elves
Some mechanism exists by which people are routinely doing business with elves. If they weren't, elves wouldn't be eating. This mechanism doesn't seem to be very well established in PC land.

[Vwest]

The problem is: there are a lot of them, and they are useful to someone powerful. The militia aren't going to intervene to save your sorry ass, because those elves are also putting coin in the pockets of templars and other powerful people, and more of it than your mercenary or your grebber is. If they were merely a blight on the city, they'd have been wiped out long ago.

All of this is assuming you have a race of elven supermen; they make more coin, they pay more bribes, they're more useful to Templars and have more powerful connections than the human counterpart. This is a false assumption, across the board.

Humans are better paid because they're human, they're able to get more for less in the bribe department because they're human and they're going to have a much easier time with Templars and other powerful points of authority because they're all human. A human is just as capable in every single regard as elves; fighting, crafting, sneaking, stealing, etc.

Spies? Point goes to human when the most important information is almost always held by humans of influence in Allanak. Hunters? Mounts give humans the win, both virtually. Do I need to keep going? Where is this elven superiority that makes them so much more useful than a human? They can get 'shady deals'? So can the Guild, who are predominately human and well established with all tiers of Allanaki society.

What use is a shifty elf when you have the human equivalent available? Who in power would choose to deal with elves over humans without exceptional circumstances?

I want to give elves the 'well, they're the best thieves / crooks' but all of the best criminals I've interacted with have been humans or breeds and since vNPCs aren't subject to stat rolls and skill limitations, elven +agi stat perks don't really factor in. There is nothing that I recall in the documentation about elves being superior thieves / spies / swindlers, only that they venerate and aspire to thievery.

Soldiers in the Arm are more than happy to take bribes and since they're all human (or half-giant), they're by nature going to be more inclined to take a handful of human coins instead of dirty necker coins. Or take both and side with the human anyway. A lot of it boils down to the individual soldier, but I've never seen a soldier (or Templar) in Allanak take the side of a non-human. That isn't to say it doesn't happen, just that it would be another exceptional situation, rather than 'templars prefer dealing with elves because elves mysteriously have a lot of money' as your post implied.

You're going to have to give me some references here 'cos Wikipedia's got nothing apart from mentioning their slow decline.

This is turning into a wall of text.

I should really have been more specific instead of just referencing "KKK", since you're technically right in that the old school brand of hoodied klanners is definitely in it's twilight. There are various gangs (HA, for example), prison gangs, street gangs and similar groups that are effectively no different than the KKK, just going by different 'brands'. The white power movement would have been a better way to explain it.

I don't see this unity. I don't see humans willing to risk death or injury to protect other humans. It's a racial chivalry that's neither documented nor one I've seen much sign of in game. Humans have their own divisions. To take it at the simplest level, a Nakki isn't going to come to the defence of a Tuluki who's pushing a Nakki elf too far.

I see it all the time, I've had PCs I've never seen step up and back my characters in disputes with other races. I've had PCs from organizations mine were fundamentally opposed to assist mine in combat against an assassination attempt, simply because they wanted the 'lessers' in question to fail. Because they're lessers and once they were put down, we went right back to being opposed to each other.

It has nothing to do with chivalry or honorable intentions, it's a survival mechanism; we're human and we're superior, it's in my personal and direct benefit to keep the other races in their place. There's a crowd forming to lynch some elves? I'm all in. A couple few people heard that elf raped a human girl? I'll hold the left arm, you get the right, we'll fix that necker good and proper.

It's no different than our world, where people are naturally inclined to side with their own, be it religion, race, association, family, except that in Zalanthas the stakes are much higher due to the difficulty of survival. It's often life or death and it's something that most people would understand. It's another reason beyond the authorities why the racial tension and distrust generally remains at animosity instead of open hostility and violence.

Elves cannot transcend their tribal boundaries to form large organisations or united armies. Humans can do this, but are nonetheless split into their own factions.

Split into factions, but time and again you will see Aides, soldiers, servants, you name it, from different Houses, even Houses that have a spat in progress, all temporarily turn on an offending lesser race if they happen to slight someone, or just be at the wrong place at the wrong time. A certain Amber was very good at making non-humans the target of human ridicule and it was great.

There are 135,500 free elves in Nak, and 150,000 free humans. I am if anything understating my case. If we had one tribe of 135,500 elves, they would be massively more powerful - by orders of magnitude - than any human organisation through simple force of numbers and being far more united than the humans are. If they raised an army, it would exceed everyone the Noble Houses combined could raise in numbers, quite possibly by a factor of ten. This is power. If there were a patchwork of tribes willing to work together, they might not have quite the same unity, but the sheer numbers would still make them a force to be reckoned with.

Again, you're assuming elven supermen who leap over tall buildings and slay soldiers with a single stab.

The relatively small number of Templars in the city control a much larger army of (trained, disciplined) soldiers because opposing them means facing down the magickal wrath of the most powerful magickal entity that has (as far as most know) ever existed, the Highlord. The sheer volume of untrained, undisciplined elves would be daunting only in so far as the time and logistics required to haul all of the bodies out of the city and clean up the mess of full on genocide.

There isn't even the angle of them forming some kind of super mafia because... they're elves in a human society. Every Noble House, the senate, the Templarate, everyone from commoner to black robed Templar would be on that level of threat with immediate and deadly intentions. The entire social, military and political structure of the oldest power in the Known is designed to keep them there and backing them up is an immortal power that can transfer entire land masses from one end of the world to the other.

Oh, they also have legions of enslaved abominations who have no choice but to serve to the death with all their magickal horror.

Sorry, but even with those numbers, all they'd have the power to do is incite the largest display of genocide in history.

Human domination, interrupted only once by the arrival of a deus ex dragona and resumed upon it's departure.

There are too many elves for this to work. There's an elf for every free human in Nak. The last thing the militia wants to do is make it elf vs human and give the tribes a chance to unite. They'd be overrun. The strength they have is in playing divide and conquer - they certainly don't have the resource to go in hard against every elven threat.

Humans still boast the larger numbers, superior infrastructure can more reliably unite and press other lesser races into service (dwarves, breeds, half-giants, muls) - because they're humans and the safe bet, where as elves are all thieving, lying, backstabbing scum as far as the average person is concerned.

Bloody? Yes. Elves all but vanishing from the city? Yes. Victory for the Highlord? Yes.

More than this, the economy runs on them - has to run on them, because of their numbers. This means groups of elves with substantial economic clout, likely some of them playing part of the supply chain of major Houses.

I'm not seeing a lot of documentation suggesting the economy is dependent on elves, other than they are often used as slaves.

One of the points in the thread is the inconsistency of the documentation on how / where elves fit into the economic machine (unless I'm misunderstanding something), so I'm not seeing how you can take something up for dispute and pose it as a fact. While I do agree they are and should be one of the many cogs that keep the economy of Allanak in motion, I'm not really confident enough in the where and how to consider using it for or against.

Given that the Allanak economy IS, by the documentation, often in flux with booms and depressions common, even if elves are as critically ingrained into the economy, them suddenly disappearing would just be another temporary (if severe) fluctuation. In the aftermath, there are all those jobs now available to be taken up by humans in need of work, so I don't see it having an age-long effect.

Because of their numbers, almost equivalent to humans. Because most of them run in tribes of hundreds or more - they are connected, in a way Amos the grebber is not and will never be. Their sole weakness is that tribes of elves see other tribes of elves as the main competition, not allies, and so they can be divided against each other.

They are scary because - to Amos the grebber - they are vastly more powerful than he is, and alien, and happy to cause him loss for their own amusement. They are more powerfully connected not just because their tribal network is larger than Amos' circle of friends, but because they trade as a tribe with important people, and are necessary to them. A tribe crossing a Noble House or Merchant House will certainly get slapped down, but a tribe crossing Amos? Nobody cares if an elf lifts Amos' purse. He isn't important.

Again, you're making assumptions in favor of your elven supermen, colossal tribes with swathes of connections and wealth.

I don't see it in the documentation, I don't see it in the game and based on the existing documentation, I can't see any of that happening under the authoritarian gaze of the humans in power. If elven tribes were to have that level of connections, influence and power due to numbers (of which humans still have more), you can be sure that groups of humans would begin forming to rival that power.

Suggesting elves could form huge tribes and strike constant fear into every 'Amos' as you put it, without any kind of opposition from a race that believes to their core they are superior and the rightful citizens of the city... I think you're kind of reaching here.

The powers that be exist to perpetuate themselves; human from every walk have a reason to keep hold of the upper hand.

I want elves to make sense. The population described by the staff on the GDB over the years is a massive part of the city.

Right now, if there were elven PCs present in the game of almost equal number to human PCs, and most of those PCs belonged to tribes, were connected, roleplay-wise we'd rapidly adjust to something that made sense. It would swiftly become apparent that messing with a tribe would lead to repercussions you'd be able to avoid only through being better connected than they were. The tribeless elf would be a football to be kicked by any, but the tribed elf would not.

The problem is that players of free humans act as if they were a huge majority in the city. They aren't. They've a slender majority only, and they aren't tribal the way elves are, they don't jump to the defence of their human brothers at great personal risk. While their largest factions are larger than the largest elven factions and mostly willing to work together where the elves squabble, these factions are not in any position where it's remotely safe to give elven tribes a reason to unite together. If anything, I imagine they'd engineer the downfall of an elven tribe not by sending the militia in, but by creating an opening for the tribe's elven enemies to destroy them.

So - we could slash elven numbers to the point that it genuinely was safe to hound them, to the point that our current RP kind of makes sense. Half-elves would be vanishingly uncommon as a result, though, and there'd be no major reason for elves not to be genocided out of the city. I think also this route lacks richness.

If we keep the elven population as massive as it's meant to be, we need some structures that indicate the kind of influence a huge minority with close tribal ties would actually wield. I'd like to see an actual Southside tribe, with some sensible economic niche, which players could play in. I think much of the realism I've discussed would fall out naturally from having a tribe in game. Ideal, if we had the numbers, would be to have a pair of elven tribes competing with and hating each other.

I'd like the docs to explore why elves are tolerated in the city - how they provide enough of the economy that they haven't been run off as a bunch of moochers, how they are kept in check when numerically they're such a massive percentage of the city. I'd like them to look at elves primarily through a tribal lens, and consider what behaviour putting tribal interests first is likely to lead to (i.e. it isn't going to be practical just to try and scam everything you see).

A lot of that already exists in Tuluk, where society would allow it - and some of the reasons it's there are too sensitive for the forums, unfortunately.

Those reasons don't really exist in Allanak and while I'm willing to accept that a large part of that might be how limited related documentation is, I'm not seeing how a society like the one in Allanak would ever come to tolerate packs of 'hundreds' strong elves infiltrating a very prideful human city and having the kind of power you're suggesting they should have. I would suggest that even from an exclusively playability point of view, having a coded clan everyone can opt into upon creation is going to immediately grant excessive power right out of the gate.

You would have elven PCs join, have access to gear, allies, support and influence... and I'm sure you can imagine how quickly that could (and likely would) turn ridiculous and we're right back to what happened previously that caused the staff to disallow tribe calls full stop.

If it's a special app / role call clan to control abuse potential... it isn't really going to address the general issue with city elves in Allanak.

I don't really have a solution to the problem though, so all I can really do is pick away at your points until something starts to take shape.

[Quirk]

Some possible solutions:

Keep the current RP, cut the virtual population:

We could retcon elven population to a tenth or less of what it is now. Elven tribes could be banished to the 'Rinth. The Southside could be populated by a few tribeless elves only. Elves could be routinely treated as criminals.

Advantages:
Current PC RP habits would align again with the virtual world.
If elven tribes chiefly lived by theft and plunder, no real work would need to be done to the elven roleplay docs.

Consequences:
Half-elves might need some extra retcon work done to prevent them from becoming very rare.
There'd be nothing much to prevent templars from declaring war on elven scum and practically wiping them from the parts of Nak they control.

Concerns:
This model, as seen to date, leaves elves with a socially stunted and inflexible role.

The well connected and rapacious model:

Elves are numerous and useful. Larger tribes fill a critical place in the city's economy. They deal with the powers of the City, and deal more or less honestly, because that's the only way to ensure tribe survival.

The powers of the City therefore will tolerate only limited harassment of the tribes that contribute to their supply chains or keep vital infrastructure going, and will look the other way or even offer assistance when that tribe enters conflict with some group of low-status humans or another tribe.

This makes them an unholy terror to anyone who doesn't have enough power and status to force them to play nice. While they are bound to some degree by the templarate's desire for a peaceful city, and the necessity of not uniting large numbers of humans against them, getting their attention is a Bad Thing. They're hated with reason as the bullies they are, and the fear and resentment associated with them trickles down to be repaid to tribeless elves in alleys with human boots.

Advantages:
The PC and virtual world would square more closely - we know why elves are tolerated, and how they impact the economy - and PC RP habits would adjust.
Elven tribes would have a political place and there would be good reasons for interaction with existing clans.
There'd be new sources of conflict for human independents.

Consequences:
The docs would need a little filling out to explain how elves made a living and were tolerated in the city.

Concerns:
Tensions would need carefully managed. If Amos the grebber, favourite elven plaything, suddenly becomes Aide Amos of Oash, it's important that the conflict doesn't become an Oash vs tribe one.

The productive underclass model:

The rich and powerful don't deal with elven tribes. Instead, they fill bargain basement niches: weapons cheaper than Salarr, clothing cheaper than Kadius. People grumble about the quality of elven goods, but the poorer classes buy them anyway. Most elves aren't complete swindlers, but more dodgy salesmen selling items which aren't high quality, but are good enough.

Some tribes are relatively wealthy, and this buys them some leverage with the militia and templarate, but it's limited. Tribal elves largely have to curb their thieving instincts, but the elven reputation is under constant assault from the tribeless and outlaw tribes who won't or can't.

Business competition between tribes is brutal, and the templarate mostly looks the other way, figuring a few dead elves doesn't matter one way or another.

Advantages:
PC and virtual world in alignment as above.
Elves remain downtrodden, but PCs can enter trades without greatly fearing being scammed, so interactions and playable roles rise.

Consequences:
Difficult for elves to remain a "proud" race - they're clearly an underclass, here.
Docs still need some updating to discuss how elves make a living in the city.

Concerns:
PCs probably don't buy much in the way of low value goods. Interaction may not increase as much as hoped. Possibly fixable with a tribe that distills cheap liquor or something similar?

The mafia model:

Everybody wishes they didn't have to deal with the elves. The rich and powerful certainly don't do so openly. Nonetheless, tribal elves control a lot of city commerce, and past attempts to wrest it from their grip have proven fruitless. Once in a while the templars step in and kill some elves who've become too cocky, but it's mostly a reminder to the tribes to take their share quietly and keep out of the light.

The great saving grace is that the tribes are at each others' throats. Without it, they'd be unbearable. As it is, a lot of humans who work in areas of the city which are substantially under elven influences try the best they can to stay out of tribal battles and not draw attention. It's altogether something of a relief to find an elf who doesn't have a tribe and can be ill-treated safely.

Most elves, in this model, are productive - it's just that they are working businesses their tribe fiercely defends against all comers, building their little empires and warring with other tribes. The templars dislike and distrust them, but only move against them on occasions that they annoy someone powerful or make themselves too visible.

Advantages:
Explains elves' large virtual numbers, brings PC RP in line.
Elven sociopathy is well catered for.
Plenty of room for conflict.

Consequences:
Again, docs would need updated.

Concerns:
This might have too much room for conflict. In particular, a single tribe with no other elves to fight might end up making trouble for all and sundry until human PCs banded together to bring it down.

[Quirk]

All of this is assuming you have a race of elven supermen; they make more coin, they pay more bribes, they're more useful to Templars and have more powerful connections than the human counterpart. This is a false assumption, across the board.

No.
You're missing something fundamental: your human belongs to a group of two or three. Your elf belongs to a group of a few dozen or more. The latter group will have a lot more money. It's not that elves are supermen: it's that they're tribal.

Elves cannot transcend their tribal boundaries to form large organisations or united armies. Humans can do this, but are nonetheless split into their own factions.

Split into factions, but time and again you will see Aides, soldiers, servants, you name it, from different Houses, even Houses that have a spat in progress, all temporarily turn on an offending lesser race if they happen to slight someone, or just be at the wrong place at the wrong time. A certain Amber was very good at making non-humans the target of human ridicule and it was great.

The problem here is that you're talking about a room in a single moment - not an organised venture. If a tribe of a hundred elves plots vengeance on Amos the grebber, he's done. He doesn't have an equal organisation to bring to his aid.

There are 135,500 free elves in Nak, and 150,000 free humans. I am if anything understating my case. If we had one tribe of 135,500 elves, they would be massively more powerful - by orders of magnitude - than any human organisation through simple force of numbers and being far more united than the humans are. If they raised an army, it would exceed everyone the Noble Houses combined could raise in numbers, quite possibly by a factor of ten. This is power. If there were a patchwork of tribes willing to work together, they might not have quite the same unity, but the sheer numbers would still make them a force to be reckoned with.

Again, you're assuming elven supermen who leap over tall buildings and slay soldiers with a single stab.

The relatively small number of Templars in the city control a much larger army of (trained, disciplined) soldiers because opposing them means facing down the magickal wrath of the most powerful magickal entity that has (as far as most know) ever existed, the Highlord. The sheer volume of untrained, undisciplined elves would be daunting only in so far as the time and logistics required to haul all of the bodies out of the city and clean up the mess of full on genocide.

Seriously? This is no more true than the notion that generals in our world are somehow capable of fighting all the soldiers under their control and winning. You don't need to be able to beat people to command them.

However, while "the Highlord" is used as something of a deus ex machina, when you're talking urban guerilla warfare against vastly larger numbers, you'd pretty much have to burn Nak to the ground to win.

In any case, we're getting away from the core point. You're jumping from the Noble Houses to the militia, carelessly, and talking about an all out war. It's not that the One Elf Tribe would command ten times the army of the Noble Houses and so they could kick Tek's ass, it's that they command that number of people and so they would be listened to because crossing them has the potential to be immensely costly. It's a fight that might be winnable, but it would be a deeply Pyrrhic victory. If the top Lord Borsail huffs out of the meeting with the Chief Elf of Nak because he doesn't want to talk to an elf, it's the elf that people apologise to, because frankly it's a lot less trouble to deal with Lord Borsail's snits than the elf's. It's the same principle which gets people listening to a half-breed Kuraci Agent over a human independent merchant.

There isn't even the angle of them forming some kind of super mafia because... they're elves in a human society.

They're not, though. They're elves in a mixed society. An almost evenly mixed society. A society in which the humans are on top in no small part because the elves cannot get their shit together and cooperate. Nonetheless, on the scale where elves can very much get their shit together and cooperate they should be a force to be reckoned with.

There are too many elves for this to work. There's an elf for every free human in Nak. The last thing the militia wants to do is make it elf vs human and give the tribes a chance to unite. They'd be overrun. The strength they have is in playing divide and conquer - they certainly don't have the resource to go in hard against every elven threat.

Humans still boast the larger numbers, superior infrastructure can more reliably unite and press other lesser races into service (dwarves, breeds, half-giants, muls) - because they're humans and the safe bet, where as elves are all thieving, lying, backstabbing scum as far as the average person is concerned.

Bloody? Yes. Elves all but vanishing from the city? Yes. Victory for the Highlord? Yes.

They might be able to win, but there's no reason for them to stupidly provoke a war against a proud race. Short of war, it's entirely plausible for them to go in hard with a branch of the militia, get every last one wiped out, and have the elves they've united vanish into the city, be nowhere to be seen.

The basic point here that you seem to keep passing by is that even if you could win an all-out war in a costly fashion, unless you're determined to fight such a war you have to provide at least a nod to the power possessed by the other side, you have to pay it some respect, even if only on a local scale. Soldiers are routinely disciplined for inflaming tensions against sides that their commanders don't want to fight.

More than this, the economy runs on them - has to run on them, because of their numbers. This means groups of elves with substantial economic clout, likely some of them playing part of the supply chain of major Houses.

I'm not seeing a lot of documentation suggesting the economy is dependent on elves, other than they are often used as slaves.

One of the points in the thread is the inconsistency of the documentation on how / where elves fit into the economic machine (unless I'm misunderstanding something), so I'm not seeing how you can take something up for dispute and pose it as a fact. While I do agree they are and should be one of the many cogs that keep the economy of Allanak in motion, I'm not really confident enough in the where and how to consider using it for or against.

The docs actually state the exact opposite. Elves are rarely slaves.

It's the basic mathematics of moochers. If one half of the free population works and the other half steals, we rapidly arrive at a ridiculous conclusion. Sanity is only restored when we conclude that much of the stealing half has to work too.

Given that the Allanak economy IS, by the documentation, often in flux with booms and depressions common, even if elves are as critically ingrained into the economy, them suddenly disappearing would just be another temporary (if severe) fluctuation. In the aftermath, there are all those jobs now available to be taken up by humans in need of work, so I don't see it having an age-long effect.

We're not talking about all elves dying off. We're talking about groups which have economic power being hurt, which act as suppliers to other People Who Matter. These are the people who'll get pissed off if someone hurts their supply chain. Sure, it would eventually recover, but for now? They're out many thousands of sid and looking for the folk who're to blame.

Again, you're making assumptions in favor of your elven supermen, colossal tribes with swathes of connections and wealth.

I don't see it in the documentation, I don't see it in the game and based on the existing documentation, I can't see any of that happening under the authoritarian gaze of the humans in power. If elven tribes were to have that level of connections, influence and power due to numbers (of which humans still have more), you can be sure that groups of humans would begin forming to rival that power.

Suggesting elves could form huge tribes and strike constant fear into every 'Amos' as you put it, without any kind of opposition from a race that believes to their core they are superior and the rightful citizens of the city... I think you're kind of reaching here.

No. Again and again, you fail to understand that power is not binary. Large groups have more power than small groups which have more power than tiny groups which have more power than single people. Even if the tiny groups share some characteristic with the larger groups, they don't have a free call on the resources of the larger groups; being a group of white men doesn't automatically make you rich or influential, nor does having the surname Gates.

America in particular is replete with examples of why your logic is faulty. Ethnicities with strong family ties that were despised and downtrodden grew powerful locally, some through simple accumulation of wealth, some through illegal activity.

Some humans exist in large organisations. These organisations have more power than elven tribes. Some humans exist in groups of two or three, or are solitary. These groups have less power than elven tribes. If they want to form together into some kind of group to uphold their race, they can have at it, but most people won't, because they've got too many other stresses in their life. The elves don't need to form a pro-elven group; they've got their tribe. We're back to the Brown Shirts being chucked through the windows by the Jewish gangsters.

Zalanthas is a place where the templars don't care about the poor and weak. The crimcode is a bug, not a feature. They aren't going to come running because one low-life assaults another, whether that low-life be human or elf. It's not important to them. They're not on some human privilege kick. They're on a Noble House and Merchant House privilege kick.

A lot of that already exists in Tuluk, where society would allow it - and some of the reasons it's there are too sensitive for the forums, unfortunately.

Those reasons don't really exist in Allanak and while I'm willing to accept that a large part of that might be how limited related documentation is, I'm not seeing how a society like the one in Allanak would ever come to tolerate packs of 'hundreds' strong elves infiltrating a very prideful human city and having the kind of power you're suggesting they should have.

Infiltrating? There's 135,500 elves in Nak. Large tribal families breeding and growing. There's no infiltrating required. How's the militia to know that a tribe's become hundreds strong? Why should they care about it? It would be more surprising, in such a large number, if no tribes of over a hundred existed.

I would suggest that even from an exclusively playability point of view, having a coded clan everyone can opt into upon creation is going to immediately grant excessive power right out of the gate.
You would have elven PCs join, have access to gear, allies, support and influence... and I'm sure you can imagine how quickly that could (and likely would) turn ridiculous and we're right back to what happened previously that caused the staff to disallow tribe calls full stop.

Hah. This is why I want an actual clan: you can see at once that if there were a clan in game, PCs would have access to gear, allies, support and influence. With numbers comes power. But when arguing this in the abstract, I've felt the whole "with numbers comes power" thing has been lost on you. This is a simple, real consequence of having an actual tribe rather than a couple of buddies to hunt with who probably won't slit your waterskin.

However, I'm not in love with the notion of a default coded clan. If we were going to have an opt-in coded clan, I'd prefer to start with two or three at each others' throats. That way the factor that's meant to balance the elves would be in play from the start.

If it's a special app / role call clan to control abuse potential... it isn't really going to address the general issue with city elves in Allanak.

Eh, I'd take it. It's better than what we have.

[Eurynomos]

There have been some very thoughtful posts made here. I will say this is turning into a bickering contest between a few people, and i'm losing interest in reading bickering walls of text. The discussion itself was nice, though.

[Barsook]

There have been some very thoughtful posts made here. I will say this is turning into a bickering contest between a few people, and i'm losing interest in reading bickering walls of text. The discussion itself was nice, though.

[evilcabbage]

I'm going to do a recap post, in the hope of laying out things in such a way I don't need to answer them again.

Why haven't elves been genocided out of Nak already?

Because there are heaps and heaps of them.
http://gdb.armageddon.org/index.php/topic,38969.msg535915.html#msg535915

This isn't a minority that can be easily crushed. If elves had to fight for the survival of their species, they'd be able to make a bloody fight of it. They're smarter than humans and very numerous.

No they're not, if they were smarter than humans they would be running the citystates, and elven tribe after elven tribe wouldn't have fucking been wiped out by humans.

[Patuk]

I'm going to do a recap post, in the hope of laying out things in such a way I don't need to answer them again.

Why haven't elves been genocided out of Nak already?

Because there are heaps and heaps of them.
http://gdb.armageddon.org/index.php/topic,38969.msg535915.html#msg535915

This isn't a minority that can be easily crushed. If elves had to fight for the survival of their species, they'd be able to make a bloody fight of it. They're smarter than humans and very numerous.

No they're not, if they were smarter than humans they would be running the citystates, and elven tribe after elven tribe wouldn't have fucking been wiped out by humans.

The documentation fairly outright states that it's psionicism that had humanity come out on top, not elves or humans just being that much smarter than one another.

[RogueGunslinger]

It's fairly well known and documented that elves ARE smarter though. Surely it's not just a code thing.

[manonfire]

I'm going to do a recap post, in the hope of laying out things in such a way I don't need to answer them again.

Why haven't elves been genocided out of Nak already?

Because there are heaps and heaps of them.
http://gdb.armageddon.org/index.php/topic,38969.msg535915.html#msg535915

This isn't a minority that can be easily crushed. If elves had to fight for the survival of their species, they'd be able to make a bloody fight of it. They're smarter than humans and very numerous.

No they're not, if they were smarter than humans they would be running the citystates, and elven tribe after elven tribe wouldn't have fucking been wiped out by humans.

As compared to humans, elves have a higher agility (on average), and a somewhat higher wisdom.

Also, for what it's worth, elves probably aren't running the citystates 'cause Tektolnes and Muk Utep aren't elves (so far as we know).

[i love toilets]

I have a tin foil hat (as in I don't know) theory that the sole reason elves aren't in charge outside of the tablelands is because of authority's use of psions.

[BleakOne]

Elves also don't work well in city-sized organization. Nobody can beat the solidarity of an elven tribe, and even a collection of tribes can sometimes become 'bonded' and see each other as not-outsiders, but most elves consider most other elves just as untrustworthy as humans and other races do.

Elves have a higher wisdom so therefore are 'smarter' as such on average than roundears, but they are handicapped in the World Domination area by their own mental quirks.