High Elves

High Elves

Living Standards
High Elves live in towns and Cities. Like all Elves they have a Superiority Complex that puts a Parisian to shame. They pride themselves on building the biggest most beautiful cities and as such they are extremely clean with wide paved avenues and lots of money sunk into elaborate public monuments. Their cities are usually built in highly strategic locations either militarilly or economically, and many of them started off as Trade Posts when the world was still young and the Dwarves were the only other race with any serious society. As such, they are highly wealthy and accomplished Traders and Mercantilists, being the most accomplished sailors in the known world. However, while they welcome members of all races into their cities to trade, that is the extent of their openness. They have lower birth rates than humans and they know it and as such, the number of non-Elves that are permitted to permanently live in High Elven cities are limited and strictly enforced, with non-Elves also being forced to live in a designated and walled off “Foreign Quarter” that is guarded, while its members are forbidden to wander the wider city after dark without an authorized Elven guide due to the propensity of certain groups groups to engage in petty crime. That being said the city guards do still occasionally have to flush out the rogue Goblin infestation that made it through.

Foreign Diplomacy
However this Mercantile mindset does not make them pacifists by any means. The High Elves see themselves as the “rightful” protectors of the world, for according to them, only they have the farsight and wisdom necessary to save the world from itself. And the real kicker is that they are arrogant enough to actually believe their own propaganda. While in a human civilization this might lend itself to a “World Police” mentality, the High Elves actually make sure to keep a healthy diplomatic distance from the affairs of most of the “lesser races” in day to day policy. They don’t see it as worth their time to go around patrolling the world and stopping all the Humans, Orks, and what have you from fighting each other, and even if they did it’s unlikely they would be able to succeed (although they’ll never admit that). But in the event of some world threatening calamity, like say a massive Ork horde that’s united all the disparate tribes, or a portal opening up and spewing forth an army of Demons, you can be rest assured that there will be a High Elf Ambassador claiming their “right” to lead the coalition of Free Races against this new menace. Those that refuse their leadership will be made to comply by force, except for the Dwarves who have enough power to actually call the High Elves’ bluff.

Military Doctrine
Like their cousins, High Elves possess vision, hearing, and magical aptitude far superior to the average Human. This has influenced their military strategy for generations, and continues to do so after the in/k/ursion. Being the richest and most open minded (by Elvish standards) of their race, the High Elves were one of the first to adopt firearms and other New-World technology on a mass scale and begin producing their own. They typically favor long range rifles chambered in fairly large rounds. Expect to see a lot of .30-06, 7.62 Nato, and 7.62x54R, with larger and more exotic rounds being present for higher Officers and specialists. “Quality over Quantity” is the watchword for High Elf military operations, and as such their armies are relatively small but highly disciplined and well trained. On the topic of military doctrine, the High Elves most fervently embrace the idea of combined arms, making use of multiple arms of their military working in unison. Tanks and other mechanized vehicles are still generally frowned upon, as they are seen as slow and far too clunky for the graceful and elegant Elves, but certain designs are being tinkered with for possible inclusion in High Elf Armies. In the air, the Elves rely on a plethora of magical creatures that they believe to be superior to human fighter jets, as they are capable of being much quieter smaller, and nearly impossible to detect on radar, plus being able to land to the rear of an enemy army and double as cavalry or armor (depending on the species). Their natural aptitude for magic means that High Elves also make extensive use of weapon and ammunition enchantments, having the most enchanted gear pieces per 100 soldiers of any race in the world, by a rather large margin. These can range from relatively simple weight reduction enchantments for light infantry all the way up to suppressor enchantments, ammo conservation enchantments, and high explosive or armor piercing enchantments.

Culture
Due to aforementioned superiority complex, High Elves are highly chauvinistic and conservative with regards to their culture. They are the “pinnacle of civilization” and want everyone else to know it. In daily life this means two things: one is that High Elves have a very strong sense of cultural identity and a desire to preserve it, especially when lower birthrates are factored in. They may fight among themselves occasionally like any other race of sentients, but no High Elf would be caught dead conspiring with another race to the detriment of his own people. Secondly, it means High Elf society and culture are extremely conservative and as such are highly averse to accepting any new ideas about how society should be structured or their culture changed, with the one possible exception of new practical technological applications. Even then, High Elves see the technology from the new world more as a buffet table to pick and choose what you like and leave what you don’t than a superior scientific standard that they must “catch up to”. The gate guards may be wielding battle rifles, but don’t expect to find many TVs in a High Elf city.  Attempting to pressure them into accepting some foreign idea will only entrench their resolve not to change. They will adapt foreign cultures on their terms, or not at all.
All this being said, different groups of Elves have always shared some cultural affinity for certain New World (our old world) nations. For the High Elves, that nation is the now long dead Eastern Roman Empire that was once based out of Constantinople. Much the same as the High Elves, the Eastern Romans were once the world’s undisputed superpower but eventually fell into a long and slow decline, but still remained a major power for nearly one thousand years after their zenith had come and gone. The High Elves look upon the fate of the Eastern Romans with much sympathy and more than a little trepidation for their own eventual fate. Having once been the undisputed rulers of the world and masters of civilization, the High Elves must now contend with a world where they are merely one among several great powers. Linguistically, the High Elven language forms the basis for many civilized tongues, with most other languages except for Dwarvish taking a significant amount of loanwords from Elvish, much in the same way that European Languages borrow from Greek or Latin. These cultural similarities have made Greek the preferred Old World language of High Elven traders in Europe and has offered a diplomatic and economic edge to the modern Greek state in the lucrative New World markets


The Constantinople Incident
An early even that strained not just Elven-Greek ties but threatened the security of the entire region Two or three years after the initial /k/onvergance, consistent diplomatic contact had been established but things in the Old World were still...shaky. Governments all over the globe were still somewhat destabilized and most competent militaries were dealing with various invasive species, while the incompetent ones had long since collapsed. Despite this, civilization had survived, and there was a sense of normalcy returning to the West, albeit with a radically different definition of “normal”. So it was not long before various embassies, merchants, and even tourists began travelling through the more well established and defended portals, and a small industry sprung up making sure denizens of each world were properly equipped to enter what each world saw as the uncharted wilderness of the other. High Elves, having been exposed to choice elements of Byzantine culture in their world, excitedly flocked to Constantinople, then still called Istanbul for business, diplomacy, and pleasure. Once there they were hit by a case of Paris syndrome harder than any other previously observed cases. For those unfamiliar, Paris syndrome originally described  a condition that some Humans, mostly East Asians suffered from when visiting Paris, caused by the discovery that Paris is not what they expected it to be. The Elves naturally expected Constantinople to be similar to how it was 1000 years ago. Upon their discovery that a new people had taken the city for their own some time ago, the Elves became convinced that the City was under occupation and they were needed to reclaim it. The resulting magical firestorm killed a large portion of the city’s population, as well as a large but unknown number of Goblins, because no one cared enough to count them. While the Turkish Government was outraged, there was nothing they could diplomatically do as the massacre was not directed or planned by the High Elves in any way. The High Elven Government offered an official apology, although the incident would severely weaken the Turkish hold on the city and pave the way for conflicts to come