Clockwork Dreams

I had an awesome dream the other night, and not for the same reasons that my dreams usually will earn the adjective of awesome. In fact, it had what would often have been a count against it: elves. Yes, the entire dream was about elves. Every single person in it was an elf.

But no, what made it awesome was the sheer depth of the world that my imagination had created. I still remember it all and I’ve been exploring the finer details in my spare mental time, and it is amazing.

First of all, it seems to be post-apocalyptic of some sort. The entire world is populated by various races/species of elves (I will let you select the term which most suits your sensibilities), categorized primarily by their place of residence. Typical terms like mountain elves, woodland elves, plains elves, jungle elves, etc. etc. etc. I blame that on my mind’s inability to come up with creative names for things. (Seriously, unless it’s a person I know or a character from an anime, movie or book, nothing in my dreams have ever had a name. Ever.)

Anyway, each variety of elf has a specific cast of potential magical abilities. Not all elves are mages, however, and it varies within each culture as to what role the mages have. Some have a magical ruling class, while others have more of a witch-doctor kind of thing going on. I don’t think any of them ostracized their magic users. Anyway, the level and categories of magical talents vary from elf to elf, just like any other kinds of talents. However, the pool of magical talents, so to speak, is limited by the type of elf. Mountain elves are, predictably, able to use various kinds of ice-related magic. They also have a high resistance to cold. Jungle elves, in contrast, can have various plant and animal magics, as well as the rare weather magic, and are acclimated to hot and humid climate.

Another differentiating quality is the coloration of each variety of elf. Mountain elves, to stick to my previous example, tend to come in various shades of blues and greys. The skin tends to be more on the grey side and lighter, while the hair can range from silvery-white to midnight blue. Their eyes are very light, usually silvery grey or light blue. Jungle elves tend to be brown-skinned, but their hair and eyes range the entire spectrum. Some can even have multi-colored hair, although having more than two colors is very rare.

There are about a half-dozen of those types that I consciously know of right now, which I might as well list come to think of it. Just pretend each of the following things says “elves” after it.

Mountain
Jungle
Woodland
Plains
Desert
Ocean
Wetland
Forest (think vast dense evergreens, as opposed to the deciduous trees/shrubs of a woodland)

So that’s the basic types. Then we have what has been dubbed the Night elves, which are basically a recurring mutation(?)/recessive type that can crop up in any of the climatic types. They are usually darkly colored, always with black or near-black hair and eyes, and have their own special pool of potential magic as well as a “cast” that goes over their inherited magic pool.

The inherent night magic covers things like concealment and illusion. Any of the more general types of magic that they might have (like a mountain night elf who has ice magic) will manifest itself differently. The effects will generally be slower or more subtle: a creeping frost instead of being trapped in a block of ice, for example. They both freeze you just as solid in the end.

The different cultures have very different ways of reacting to, treating, and/or using their night elves. They might train them as an elite special force, consign them to lives as assassins or thieves, treat them like any other elf, or drive them out of their society entirely. Even in the cultures where night elves are treated as equal to all others, however, they tend to suffer from a feeling of not belonging – understandably. As a result, night elves will often leave their birth country.

Which brings us nicely to the next point: crossbreeds. The different varieties of elves are completely compatible with each other, genetically and biologically. As such, they can have children. The children can end up looking like the type of either parent, or a mixture between them. The same holds true for their potential types of magic. So if a mountain elf and a woodland elf had a child together (which one of the characters in my dream was), they could potentially have any of the animal or forest magic from the woodland elf, and any of the ice etc. magic from the mountain elf.

Hybrids are also treated differently in the different cultures, although they tend towards the extremes. They are never treated the same as “normal” elves. Generally they are looked down on, and sometimes driven out entirely. The mountain elves in particular value purity of blood – they’re the only variety that I know off-hand drives out their night elves, if not actually the only variety, and some more extreme mountain elf groups will kill a hybrid child and exile the parent.

There is a city which the exiled hybrids have created to make their own home. I don’t know the name (of course!) but it is a river port city and acts as a bustling trade hub. I have a feeling there is a story in that city, waiting for me to find it and tell it. I’ll have to chase it down, someday.

If you are intrigued by this place and feel there’s a story in there for you to tell, let me know and I will answer any questions about the setting that you might have. And you are welcome to make up as many names as you’d like.

Tags: dreams

This entry was posted by Inventrix on Thursday, October 29th, 2009 at 10:11 and is filed under Creativity, Ramblings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.