The Half-Breed(Not Just Humans with Pointy Ears)

1. The Half-Breed(Not Just Humans with Pointy Ears)

   #1

   One of the most mis-used, underroleplayed, and least motivational races in Roleplaying is the half elf in particular, and the half-breed in general. Many times these races are used by powergamers simply for statistic bonuses, and in other cases, the unique potential of these races is simply forgotten by their players, becoming just another human with pointy ears.
   
   The life of a half-breed is almost always a difficult one, with every step along the way a struggle. This is intended to be but a short list of some of the various problems a half-elf may face. Remember too, that by being pretty to humans, the half-elf may escape much difficulty by his handsome smile, where the half-orc may be simply stoned on sight.
   
   Rejection from family
   While cross-race marriages happen, for the vast majority of half-breeds, they are not very likely to have such a family. He will be the child of a one night stand, a week long tryst, a year-long game. He may not ever have seen the face of his father, or he may be the bastard child of a noble lord upon his slave or serving wench. In any of these cases, his family life will be tenuous at best, the single human mother putting herself through torture to raise her child, perhaps even scorned by the society about her for having been irresponsible enough to give birth out of wedlock. It may be that the mother rejects the child, placing the blame of the new difficulties in her life upon the child. He may be abandoned wherever convienent, the trash heap or gutter for a woman with little conscience, the church or police barracks for a woman with. And woe betide the babe born with pointed ears to two parents without, for he is scorned by the man who is not his father, forever a reminder of faith broken in marriage, or worse, forever a souvinier of rape. He is teased, and even beaten by his siblings for the crime of being different, and for him there can be no hope of inheritance, or even a home past his coming of adult hood. Is it any wonder, then, why he might choose to become an adventurer? To flee this miserable excuse of a family? Or to provide treasures of delight for the single mother who sacrificed so much for him?
   
   The child born to elven woman is looked down upon, an inferior creature. If he is not culled at birth, this inferiority is deeply infused in those who raise him, who teach him, who train him. For no matter how he may advance, this dim-witted, clumsy, and ugly creature can never be more than a second-class citizen. He is looked down upon as a hopeless case by even his own mother, who wonders if giving him to the church is still not impossible. His elven half-siblings are even worse than the siblings of the child born to human mother, for not only are they cruel, they are serene while delivering their blows of mind and body. Is it any wonder then, that he strikes forth into the wilderness, into the human world, in order to prove himself a creature of worth?
   
   Rejection from Society
   It is important to remember that in a fantasy realm, the differences between the races is not skin deep. The hard-wired insticts and unique abilities and lifespans of the various races are marked, and are highly influential in the manner in which the races interact with each other. Because of this, it is important to them to be able to take shelter among their own, where they are understood best. For the half-breed, however, this shelter does not exist. No matter where he goes or whom he is with, he is an alien. He can share in the deepest joys, the dearest sacrficies of no-one, for he is a creature set apart from them.
   
   In the human realm, the adult half-elf is treated with a distant, dubious respect. He's a pretty boy, and will likely have his, and your, share of the lady-folk, but not for long. Women grow bored with his beauty, soon finding that the fundamental inability to comprehend the way the percieves, the way he thinks after his broken upbringing getting in the way of true closeness. No employer or merchant will trust him, for are not elves known far and wide for their guile and silver tongue? Does this man not have the pointed ears and slanted eyes of the elf? Might he work some strange enchantment upon them? No-one really wants to know, and when something goes wrong, well... it's awfully easy to blame the man with the pointy ears. Still, he is likely able to scratch out an itinerant living, doing odd jobs for a hundred different masters until he finds the one willing to tolerate him. Even when he finds that perfect master, what suspicions will he face in five years, in ten, when those around him have aged... and he has not?
   
   In the elven realm, the adult half-breed remains a second class citizen at best. While all will talk to him, it is evident in their manner that they give him no more standing than the dog that curls up on the hearth at night. No matter how nimble his digits nor sweet his voice, they are never enough, and he is forced to subsist on the most menial of labors. His fingers worn to the bone, his body and mind terminally exhausted, he falls into the ages many times swifter than the elves that surround him, and soon, they reject him even more strongly, fearful of the ailment named mortality that can never touch them.
   
   
   
   More to come tommorrow, when I'm not three-quarters asleep, specifcially:
   Rejection from the Gods

2. The Half-Breed(Not Just Humans with Pointy Ears)

   #2

   Rejection from Divinity
   His family rejects him, and he has no people to turn to, what then, of that ultimate refuge? Can the bastard half-breed lift his face to the heavens? More than likely, he cannot.
   
   The gods of races shall look down upon him as an abomination, neither gdos of man nor elf wanting any part of his tainted lineage. He is impure, and thus not to be trusted, nor rewarded, through no fault of his own. When their gods reject them, so too do their priests, and there is no refuge for him anywhere in the land.
   
   What then, of the gods of Principle and power? How can the Lord of Honor trust a man born of a week-long tryst between two adventurers, perhaps even underneath a tavern table? The Lady of Love has no desire for the cast off results of her own teachings, for he is a miserable sod with none to love himself, not the passionate creature she desires.
   
   It is like that he will fall to the council of mischevious Lords, the Masters of such assorted aspects as Theivery and Deception, and at his worst, he will heed the council of the dark and desperate voices buried at the bottom of his soul, seeking out the guidance of the Lords of Hatred, Fear, and Vengance. These Gods are not kindly ones.
   
   While he may fare better here than in other places, depending upon the gods he seeks, this too will likely be only the thinnest of comforts for him, and indeed, the half elf may be denied both heaven and hell, for there is no place for him in the scheme of things at all.

3. The Half-Breed(Not Just Humans with Pointy Ears)

   #3

   Now that we have all of this, what do we do with it?
   
   Solaria: A half-elven community
   We'll begin with some basic assumptions:
   1: Half-Elves are hard to make
   2: Half-Elves, like mules, are not genetically stable, and are thus sterile.
   3: Because of rarity / differences / bastardry, most half-elves are cast out, as above.
   
   Cast away from the rest of society, is it only natural that the cast-out should seek a place of shelter, a place where they are understood. Here, in the salt desert of Karaka, where neither man nor elf dares tread, have those abandoned by humanity made their home. Surrounded by high mountains, the Salt Flats of Karaka were once the bottom of an ancient ocean, drained away in some ancient, unimaginable cataclysm. There are no oasis, no open wells throughout the deserts.
   
   Rather than being open and spread as are the towns of other peoples, the village of Karaka is built into an ancient, and long dead, mountain of coral. Homes and streets have been carved into that ancient structure, butressed by the fae magic of the half-breeds. Near the bottom lies a wellspring, perhaps the only source of fresh water in all the desert of Karaka. It is from this wellspring that all the life of the community of Solaria springs, used to farm the spares, sandy soil in the lowest rooms of the mountain., and to quench the parched throats of the creatures that live there. Strangely, there is no need for lighting within the coral mountain, as the sun reflects and winks among the coral itself, suffusing the deep layers with a warm, gentle glow, even as the bulk of the stoney mass keeps out the worst of the heat.
   
   Within the coral mountain itself, there is currently room for about two hundred inhabitants, though it is rare for the halls to be full. Children too, are exeedingly rare, if not unheard of, but this is not for lack of trying. Descended from fifty or more different cities and cultures, the people of have but two things in common. Each is the child of elf and man, and they are bound together by the thread of persecution in the outside world. So too, are they bound by the dominant force in their lives... the Sun above. Sun-God Worship is the religion of all those in Solaria, reguardless of what they worshiped in the world outside, for it is the Sun that protects them, the Sun that provides, and the Sun that kills them when they hear the call of Elysium.
   
   Though tradesmen and farmers may be found within Solaria, making it self supportive, the lack of breeding means that the city is not precisely a fully functional community. Solaria is fully dependant on the immigration of the outcast refugees for population, and were an army to actually make it to the gates of Solaria, they would fall in war. It is only the 10+ day forced march across the most blistering desert in the world that saves them from military action... and who'd want to obliterate them?

4. The Half-Breed(Not Just Humans with Pointy Ears)

   #4

   BTW, I'm done lecturing now. Feel free to tag on long winded responses / other well developed half-elves. If at all possible, please tag on the basic assumptions that have to go on about the half elf to make the example material viable, as done under Solaria.
   
   The half breed shall rise again!

5. The Half-Breed(Not Just Humans with Pointy Ears)

   #5

   It seems a common assumption to mark half-elves as undesirable helf-breeds, estranged from both kindred. To me this smacks of Dungeons and Dragons.
   
   Perhaps instead of becoming pointy eared humans, the half breeds become something different entirely. In the Tolkien miliue the Edain, or high men, were actually of mixed heritage, comming from three human/elven crossings. They were not humans with pointy ears, nor were they estranged from mortal men and immortal elves.
   
   They were tall and fair of bearing, and long lived, but not immortal in the fashion of their elven blood. They were wise from their longer years and found themselves as kings among men. They brought learning, taught to them by the elves to the men of the wild lands. When they were corrupted by evil they became tyrants and demanders of tribute.
   
   If there is enough crossings of blood, it is likely that a new race could emerge from it, able to consistently breed true, and no longer bear the stigma of being half breeds.

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