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[smakemupagus]

For too long our world has been ravaged by greedy mortal races, hungry only for gold and jewels, blood and plunder.  It is time for the firstborn to strike back and reclaim their birth-right!

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Welcome to the Elf Hamlet module in development, for the Masterwork mod.  It is in the planning stage so everything is still on the table, no idea is too big or too small.  In the second post I will lay out some ideas I have so far, to kick off the discussion.

[smakemupagus]

Elf Hamlet Brainstorming! 
Updates based on feedback are in italics

* Castes
Silvan - "A medium-sized creature dedicated to the ruthless protection of nature.  They possess great powers over wild beasts and natural elements, but are not very versed in the use of metals."

Ashlander - "Ashlander elves live a semi-nomadic lifestyle and follow an unusual religion of ancestor spirit worship.  Ashlanders have great respect for order and tradition, but are distrustful of outsiders and repay even the least of slights with bloodfeud."

Highborn - "Highborn elves are the greatest among the elves in lore and smithcraft.  They harbor a great love for beautiful objects, both natural and crafted.  They are prone to great and noble deeds, but their actions often appear ruthless and inscrutable to mortal minds."

Snow elves, Grey elves, others?

* General principles
No treecutting; 10% learnrate digging and masonry; very steep penalties for cave adaptation (perhaps including devolution into a troglodyte, etc.)
Wooden objects will be crafted from living saplings, requiring planning ahead.  Lots of other ranching/farming industry available too.
Enhanced options to make basic hamlet necessities from cloth (silvan), leather (ashland), etc.
Domestic armor will be generally light: mail and bucklers, not breastplates and shields
Domestic weapons will tend towards bows, daggers, spears
Alignment TBD: default is "good" alignment: war with Orcs etc. ... but war with Dwarves would be interesting too..
Willing to butcher sentients

** Workshops
* Silvan quarter
Treesinger's Pagoda: saplings->wood products; logs-> acorns (Similar to Orc shop plundered from elves)
Ranger's Pagoda:  saplings->wood, ironwood, steeloak weapons including fletchery
Nursery/Greenhouse:  resource intensive, cultivate seeds by hand
Compost Heap:  create lots of potash from organic matter
Weaver's Pagoda:  wicker, plus alternate paths to quickly make stuff from plants (hammock beds from rope reed, e.g.)
Fae Circle:  summon fae flora & fauna like unicorns, dragonflies, faedogs, treants, orchids; upgrade treants

* Ashland quarter
Bonemolder's Yurt:  chitin->armor and bows; teeth->knives; bone->spears; shell->bucklers
Ancestor Cult Temple:  summon Spirithunters
Alchemist's Yurt:  resource intensive, fuel from biological sources or oilsands (no treeburning of course)
Rancher's Yurt:  upgrades non-mythical fauna like unicorns, elk, great cats, desert scorpions, netch. maybe a few special leather reactions too.
Ashland Glassblower:  special stained & weapons-grade glass (similar to Orc shop traded from Elves)

* Highborn quarter
Artisian Stoneworks:  building supplies and decoration from exclusively high end materials (marble, silver, etc.)
Calligrapher:  tbd
Embroidery:  silk, gold, silver thread clothing; war-grade robes from silk + ()
Mithril Forge:  extract mithril
Swan Knight Pagoda:  high quality "foreign" mithril and steel weapons (halberds, decent shields, breastplates)
Silmaril Forge:  gem weapons; better things from large gems; rings of power from particular rare large gems


* Additional ideas
Schools or "Paths" (Ranger, Druid, etc.)
Beastmaster Kennels:  (maybe separate stuff from Ashland Rancher, tbd). 
Master Bowyer:  Greatbows, enchanted arrows, enchanted bows
Herbalist:  Potions, herbs, elvish waybread
Various elfy build materials
Shearing a "tree"-like pet for bark?  Fruit?
Special gatherable plants from various biomes

[Meph]

Random ideas:

Adv./Great/High Bowyer's Workshop => more bows
Fletcher's Workshop => arrows
Enting => Living tree pet reactions
Schools => Like guilds, for example Rangers School or School of the Druid.
Adv./Great/High Kennels => Improve your pets, mass boosts
Herbalist => Creates special items directly from specific plants, like a drink that boosts recuperation for a while.

ProjectileExpansion.lua from putnam should come in handy... smoke arrows and sleeping gas arrows...

Wooden/Root armor is a must.
Tree/Root walls would be nice... block name change... instead of "This is a gabbro block wall" you have "This is a oak root wall".

[travellersside]

Elves have a reputation for cannibalism, which horrifies other races and leads to wars.

So, some kind of nod towards this might be useful. Whether that be workshops that directly turn remains into useful food/resources, or 'raids' on caravans that bring back, amongst the loot, meat from the sentient races.

[Undeadlord]

Lots of elf races to use as castes perhaps?

- Drow
- Wood Elf
- High Elf
- Snow Elf
- Rock Elf
- Ghost Elf
- Grey Elf

and those are just some off the top of my head I have seen in other fantasy resources.

[jaxy15]

Elves have a reputation for cannibalism, which horrifies other races and leads to wars.

So, some kind of nod towards this might be useful. Whether that be workshops that directly turn remains into useful food/resources, or 'raids' on caravans that bring back, amongst the loot, meat from the sentient races.

Simply enabling the cannibalism ethic allows for butchering sapients at a standard butcher's shop.

[SharpKris]

firebird=OMGWTFBBQ

should make some fire resistant wood?

[Meph]

very steep penalties for cave adaptation (perhaps including devolution into a troglodyte, etc.)

That. Is. Brilliant. The solution the the dig-or-no-dig question.

[Isngrim]

the answer of course would be strip mining...i wouldn't make a very good elf.

[Meph]

Ha, you could force people to strip-mine only, but that would be for the humans I guess.

[smakemupagus]

@Meph
>> Random ideas:

Good stuff, updated the post

@Undeadlord
>> Lots of elf races to use as castes perhaps?

Yep, thanks, also good stuff.  Sticking to the neutral-to-good side of the spectrum, so no Drow, Morag Tong, or fae Winter Court; but I think several of your suggestions would fit.  Do you have any specific ideas how they would implement in game terms?  (caste creature stats, unique arms and armor, unique workshops?).  Or, link to Rock or Ghost elf info?.. i dunno what those are.

@travellersside & jaxy
>> Elves have a reputation for cannibalism, which horrifies other races and leads to wars.
>> Simply enabling the cannibalism ethic allows for butchering sapients at a standard butcher's shop.

Ha, I thought that went without saying   Added explicitly to the OP.


@Meph
>> That. Is. Brilliant. The solution the the dig-or-no-dig question.

Thanks.  It is possible, right? 

@Isngrim
>> the answer of course would be strip mining...i wouldn't make a very good elf.

Or... are you the PERFECT elf?!  Strip mining in order to conquer Hell and replace it with an alder grove?

@SharpKris
>> firebird=OMGWTFBBQ

I think, that walls won't burn, even if they're technically made of wood.  Doors and bridges probably will.  But there will be some access to firesafe stuff: glass; stone won't be fully restricted; maybe nethercap too.

[Kazymir]

Winter Court Elves would make a FANTASTIC enemy race. The counterpart to the Frost Giants, perhaps? I can see them using enchanted ice arms and armor, accompanied by thralls and horrid beasts from the lost corners of the world.

[jimboo]

Dryads could be nice. 

Rare or at least uncommon; not all Elves talk with trees, not all trees can communicate with Elves but for Dryads, options.  “Experts” used to think the Colorado Aspen grove was the largest single organism on earth …  Having at least some tree species with varying levels of sentience would make for challenging defenses.  How could an invading Orc (or human or dwarf) know which tree was watching?  Or perhaps those would also be clumped together by necessity, like giant redwoods and sequoias --  “Witching Woods” where foreign stragglers and thieves disappear.   Tolkein had Fangorn and Old Man Willow, Baum’s Wizard of Oz had The Haunted Forest so it’s not like “Haunted Woods” is going to be some big rip from another online game.

The Methusala Tree is the oldest known living thing in our world (a bristlecone pine, some great photos on Wiki); something like that (or David Eddings’ “just ‘The Tree’” from his Belgariad, shading whole acres) could be a focal point for some special Elf embarks in the same way volcanoes give advantages to metallurgists.

Too wordy – but Dryads could be nice. 

[Meph]

Could be done by using GOOD and EVIL tree biome tokens. Elves in good biomes would have access to magical trees, maybe giving fast access to good weapon/armor materials, like ironbark/steeloak, while elves in evil regions can use the evil trees to spawn living "tree"-creatures that are immobile, look like tree-icons, but can be moved to protect your fort.

Only problem: To get these materials the trees would have to be felled.

Solution: Change the tileset (only for when you play elves) to make wood logs look like trees, rename the "cut wood" to "move tree" or something, and then have your woodcutters repurpose trees without killing them.

Problem: That would raise the download size by ~10mb. Or, if done for each new race, by ~50mb.

One could really go that far, changing the exe and the wtf-texts inside the game for a total conversion, that gets toggled by my GUI. It would be a bit more work then the kobolds/orcs have been so far, but it can be done. You can do a whole lot with the localisation patch...of course the races would be mutually exclusive then, with one playble race per world.

[fasquardon]

Re: digging, if these are Tolkienesque Elves, the Noldor were supposed to dig just fine.

Though Dwarf fortress' elves aren't terribly Tolkienesque at the moment, so if you were keeping with that theme, I would say elves would not be diggers.

fasquardon