Dragonstone 10

Chapter 10
What's that you say? You were hoping for more scenery porn? Well, this is your lucky day!
We start with a description of “a land known as Darda Galion, as the Eldwood, as Larkenwald, as the Land of the Silverlarks.” Turns out this is an entire forest of Mallorns “Eld Trees,” which are special, quasi-magical trees from Valinor Hôhgarda, the High Plane, the original homeland of the elves. Seems the elves brought enough Eld Trees to Mithgar to grow an entire forest, all of which are now hundreds of feet tall. Because screw the local ecology; we're going to introduce an alien species and stamp out local diversity.
“Yet the enormous reach of time required is of no moment to the Elves. After all, they are an immortal folk whose lives are forever just beginning, no matter the span of their age. And so what matter that it had taken a thousand years or ten thousand for the forest to be born?”
Let's talk about immortal elves.
All too often, elves are portrayed as having a perfectly stagnant culture that never changes, grows, or evolves even as thousands of years pass. This is true of hack fantasy cultures in general, but most especially of elves. Characters will meet elves who are hundreds or even thousands of years old, and yet there's no indication that anything about their society or culture has changed even a little in their enormous long lifespans. 
And this is complete malarkey. Cultures change. Technology changes, and even if your elves use magic instead, magic should change and grow. Modern wizards should not be grunting out the same crude spells first discovered by their cave-elf ancestors. An immortal society surrounded by mortal societies will have no choice but to evolve or die, out-competed by their faster-breeding, more adaptable, more creative neighbors.
Now, some authors (coughPaolinicough) may try to get around this by establishing their immortal elves as being innately superior – their societies are already so much better than those of their short-lived, round-eared neighbors that they don't need to change. They have reached a sort of plateau of perfection, a Utopia which humans can only hope to someday draw near. 
And this, too, is complete malarkey. Firstly, because such societies never, ever appear as flawless as the author would like to believe, and secondly, because a theoretical perfected society could not coexist with its neighbors in such a way. If elves are the perfect race, have a perfect society, live forever and are Better Than You in every conceivable aspect . . . they should rule the world. There should be no human societies, because the law of evolution dictates that elven society expands to fill any available niche and dominates human society by outperforming it. And this is never the case.
Some may blame Tolkien for this, as the man who pioneered the concept of superior, immortal elves, but this is inaccurate. First, Tolkien's elves were most definitely not superior to the Race of Men. Some individual elves were, true, but as a whole they were just as prone to violence and selfishness and poor decisions. Second, and more importantly, their culture changed over time. Read the Silmarillion and you will see the elven cultures (that's right – cultures, plural!) expanding to fill available space, quarreling with their neighbors, advancing in various fields, and changing as the world changes. The elven culture of Galadriel's youth was not the same as the elven culture at the time of the War of the Ring, even if many of the same elves were still alive.
Consider human history. More specifically, consider American history. I am writing this in the year 2016; let's cast back a mere hundred years, barely enough time for an immortal elf to grow to adulthood. Here's a partial list of the changes that have occurred just in American society in that time:
*Electricity and telephone service becomes ubiquitous
*Automobiles replace trains and horses
*Heavier-than-air flight becomes common
*Space travel achieved
*Instantaneous communication between almost any two points on the globe becomes possible
*Television comes into existence
*Photography becomes universal
*Video recording becomes universal
*Equal rights for women
*Equal rights for minorities
*The rise of the internet
And that's one nation, in a measly hundred years. Now multiply that by the countless millenia of an elf's lifespan.
So the idea that even immortal beings such as elves would not care about a mere few millenia is absurd. \~/ They still have to live in a world full of shorter-lived, faster-living beings, meaning they still have to deal with and react to that world.
Anyway, the elves never chop down any Eld Trees, because . . . um . . . reasons. No actual explanation is given, like the trees are sapient, or blessed by some god, or lay a curse on their killer. It's just . . . a thing. \~/ But occasionally, if a tree falls in a storm, the elves will harvest it and make uber-special stuff from the wood.
Say, isn't that an awful lot like scavenging? As in, benefiting from another's misfortune? As in, exactly what the elves were sneering at the Rivermen for doing just two pages ago? \~/\~/
Drinks: 4
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