Night Elves

Night Elves are nightwalkers, meaning they sleep during the day and work during the night. They were created by Gibbou as an attempt to have mortals communicate with the gods to see if their appeal was stronger. They didn't quite succeed at that, but at least they're around now. They have excellent night vision, but rely mostly on their magnificent hearing and keen sense of smell to move around. They are also easily sunburned. Also commonly referred to as "nelves" with the adjectives "nelven" or "nelfish" being used rather than "elven" or "elfish". 
== Physical Appearance ==
Upon their creation, the night elves were described as such:"Gibbou agreed and jumped back up to the “sunlit” area. There, she did a roundhouse kick, whipping up a great deal of dust in the process. The kick blasted the dust forward to form a canvas-like cloud before them. In the span of a few seconds, Gibbou materialised an enormous brush from bits and pieces of the midnight making up her clothing and painted two humanoid shapes in black on the dust canvas. Once the figures were done, she let out a ‘woosh’-sound as she slapped the canvas away with a strike like a hurricane. The dust travelled all around the area, spawning more shapes as it went on. Around two hundred shapes made a small crowd before Gibbou and Adrian. Gibbou smirked and snapped her fingers. The black around the shapes went ‘poof!’ and the next second, two hundred humanoids, seemingly male and female, with skin like plums, grapes and blueberries, eyes like quartz and hair like midnight, stood blinking in wild confusion at what just happened."From the post https://www.roleplayerguild.com/posts/5091112. Night elves will typically, as per the quote, have the skin colours of plums, grapes and blueberries, with hair as black or blue as midnight and eyes white and shiny like quartz. In some special cases, their hair can also be chalk white like the light of the moon, and their skin can be black as coal. Furthermore, a typical male elf will stand on average 178cm tall, given they grew up eating well enough; a female will on average stand 174cm tall under the same conditions. Compared to humans, night elves will typically be lankier and often a little hunched over as a result of their tendency to live in caves with low roofs. They have long, pointy ears that bend outwards towards in order to catch as much sound as possible, and particularly wide and moist nostrils to pick up all kinds of scents. They are also know for having particularly long eyebrows, growing outwards in an owl-like manner.
== Biology ==
Night elves reach sexual maturity at the age of 31 in females and 38 in males and have a lifespan of typically up to 300 years, but most die long before they ever reach that age. Females experience menopause around the age of 180 years, and will in their fertile years typically birth up to ten children. Pregnancy lasts between 47 and 50 weeks, and females menstruate once a year during the winter solstice. Night elven lifespans and slow rate of maturing poses significant challenges towards population growth, as the risk of dying before being able to reproduce is immensely high. This causes nelven populations to typically be very limited. 
Night elves fare excellently well in the dark, thanks to excellent night vision, hearing and smell; in contrast, they do soul-crushingly poorly in daylight, fumbling around as blindly as a human would at night. They sleep during the day, meaning they struggle to interact with daydwellers outside of sunrise or sunset hours.Their nightvision comes from the presence of a tapetum lucidum, which reflects the same light their eyes absorbed back at the retina additional times. It allows for the eye to capture more light at the cost of blurrier images, so night elves aren't known for their farsight. They use sound, touch, smell and taste in place of sight most of the time. 
Their hearing is immensely potent, similar to that of cats (14 Hz to 79 kHz). This means that sounds that would be inaudible to humans, both in terms of infrasound and ultrasound, are usually easy to pick up nelves. Their large, flexible ears also aid them in picking up and locating sound. Their hearing is incredibly sensitive, too, and they hear sounds clearest between 500 Hz and 32 kHz. This, however, comes with the downside that many sounds within this spectrum are amplified way beyond what a human would experience, mainly due to the structure of their ears and the tendency for much of mortal activity to be within this range. For this reason, Night Elven speech incorporates mostly whispering and/or curt sounds like clicking, smacking or exhalation. Whispering sweet nothings into a lover's ear is the same volume to them as a conversation, and a chat between friends may as well be a screaming argument. Actual yelling may incur hearing damage, and it's not uncommon for Night Elves to experience shock or stress related symptoms when faring through non-Nelven settlements. While a human would experience a Nelven settlement as a visit to a library or a cemetary, many Night Elves will often complain that towns are loud and unpleasant.
Nelven sense of smell is comparable to that of dogs. It reacts particularly well to animal odours and is the main sense used by nelves on the hunting path. This powerful sense has come back to bite them as the nelves have begun to form larger communities and urbanise, however, since they can easily detect each others' bodily odours and filth. This is the main motivator behind the almost omnipresent cultural bias towards cleanliness and borderline worship of perfumes, scented oils and herbs.
== Cultural Traits ==
The night elves are nightwalkers, so almost all of their daily (or nightly) routines take place when the rest of the world is asleep. Their society understands this, and applies their circadian rhythm to hunting, agriculture and the arts.
==== The Arts ====
For instance, as paintings are difficult to make in the dark of the night, even for a night elf, their art is constricted primarily to what can be heard and smelt. Night elven music is appreciated as the grandest of cultural feats among their people, but their biology makes them appreciate only the softest players, those who can produce masterpieces of music while barely making any sound at all. For olfactory works of art, flowery and botany are appreciated professions, and perfumes are quite common among the elites.
Visual arts aren't completely disregarded, however: the Nelves are particularly fond of contrasts between light and dark, and this is reflected in the clothing of certain Nelven cultures; Fragrancians value individuals of dark skin wearing bright clothing, for example.
==== The Importance of Personal Hygiene ====
Related to the Nelves' love of olfactory works of art, they are easily offended by sharp musks or adverse smells. It's therefore not uncommon for Nelven cultures to settle next to sources of clean water or build bathhouses in their settlements to keep the population clean. Foreigners who don't know of this culture are often heavily discriminated, and one can easily locate nelven settlements and enclaves by the powerful smells of flowers, scented oils and herbs.
==== The Great Peace - emphasis on tranquility and quiet ====
Furthering the emphasis on stillness and peace, the night elves are themselves quite quiet during the night - although everyone's awake, the discomfort of loud noises creates a culture where tranquility in the settlement trumps roudiness and celebrations. This is known as the Great Peace - a tranquil existence where even the smallest disturbances are regarded as cultural faux pas and outright ruckus is considered a punishable offense.
==== Food ====
In terms of food, nelven communities rarely cook with fire on account of the offensive light; if they do, it is usually kept hidden inside stone ovens. Therefore, much nelven cuisine is prepared and served cold and uncooked, even fish, meat and insects. This varies heavily by culture and class, of course, and in Fragrance, for example, the quality of food is tied closely with its medicinal property.
==== Weaponry ====
In terms of weaponry, night elves prefer the sort that can be used over a short range or in the melee. The darkness makes it difficult to reliably use ranged weaponry, so they restrict themselves mostly to spears, javelins and daggers.
Furthermore, their life in the dark, competing with other nightborne predators, has made them terribly territorial. Anything deemed to disturb the precious peace they keep is deemed a threat and must be dealt with accordingly. It should be noted that night elves rarely kill other night elves - seeing as a life is such an investment of time and resources, murder is a grave crime regardless of culture. 
==== Clothing ====
Clothing-wise, night elves typically clothe themselves in the skins of their prey or in linen clothing on account of their climate's tendency towards warmth. As night time is typically cold and moist, however, nelven clothing tends to incorporate fur and wool, as well, and is often baggy to trap heat and allow freedom of movement. All of this is very dependent on culture, of course - in Fragrance, men may wear both little clothing to expose musculature, or thick clothing to ward off the desert cold, while women in this culture are typically covered up. In terms of colouring and bejeweling, the admiration for contrasts usually applies visually; texture-wise, wealthy clothing typically incorporates multiple types of skins and fabric to create variation of textures when wearing an attire; smell-wise, leather is considered a material of the poor given its animalistic smell, and wool isn't much better when wet. Silk is considered the finest of materials in clothing on Pakohu, but is very expensive and reserved for the higher classes.
Night Elves in cities on the Hreelcii Isles typically wear krazhafans during celebrations and in loud professions and parts of the city. These are special hats that dampen light and sound for their sensitives eyes and ears.
==== Language ====
The Night Elven languages (also known as Nelvish) share common traits despite the enormous geographical displacement of nelvenkind. The most distinguishable feature among Nelvish languages is that they are all based around whispering and low-volume communication. They thus have very distinct consonants and vocals to avoid confusion, though context usually solves those which can be confused. There are three notable language groups for Nelvish:
* X'oa-sa-ga (Pakohuan Nelvish): SOV-structure; both aspirated and unaspirated consonants; incorporates dental clicks; four vowels (a, e, i, o) with diphthongs.
* Tsao-cho-ag (Godlach Nelvish): SOV-structure; aspirated consonants with few unaspirated ones; no dental clicks; three vowels (a, i, o) with no diphthongs.
* Zaa-xo-yk (Neverdayan Nelvish): SOV-structure; both aspirated and unaspirated consonants, as well as palatalisation; incorporates dental clicks, as well as inhales and exhale; eight vowels (a, e, i, o, u, y, ø, æ) with diphthongs.
The written Nelvish isn't as much written as it is carved. As it's very difficult to see at night, Night Elves read with their fingers like one would when reading Braille. While the writing systems used differ between the three main hubs of Nelven cultural influence, they all account for poor lighting by being textural instead of visual. In Fragrance, the script known as nax'ag' (means 'record symbols') is written vertically and read from right to left.
==== Tools ====
The material used for tools varies considerably depending on location and access to resources. Societies by the ocean will often have connections to the local Akuans, given their shared ancestry with the Night Elves, and thus use coral, grassteel, pearl and other materials from the sea; those with access to obsidian may choose to use that.
Metal is used in some communities, but the ruckus that comes with mining and working it is often too much to bear. In Fragrance, smiths are considered the lowliest of professions. This is in large part due to the fact that it's a terribly noisy trade, with loud furnaces and sharp tings of tools. These are typically banished to the edges of settlements, seen as a necessary evil, but an evil nonetheless.
==== Architecture ====
Night elven buildings famously do not employ nails in their construction, as loud hammerwork is considered borderline criminal. Buildings do therefore not grow particularly tall and rely on strategic placement and heavy materials, as strong winds threaten to blow over weaker, frivolously placed structures. In place of nails, however, they often use rope or straps to bind the materials together. Clay and mud are often smeared over grass or reed walls.
== Notable Individuals and Settlements ==
* Fragrance, gateway to the Land of Great Shade, city-state on the south-western tip of Pakohu.
* Xiang, city-state in the ravines of Pakohu.
* Scenta, city-state in the ravines of Pakohu and close ally of Fragrance.
* Oi'wet Tribe, tributary of the Za'a'alim Civilisation on Neverday Island.
* Nazdamundi, home of a considerable number of Nelven urbanites.
* The Godlach Circle in the Hreelcii Mountains.
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Category:Mortals
Category:Species