What a bearded elf may look like
(i'm so sorry)
(not nearly sorry enough. it's physically impossible for you to ever be sorry enough. we're going to have to refurbish the afterlife to accommodate a brand new hell in order to encompass and embrace the sin you've struck.)
This reaction confuses me. Dwarves are the absolute zenith of all living things, the standard of perfection to which the gods judge us all, so you would think that something that possesses any dwarven characteristics would be preferable to something that does not... regardless of any other factors. We all hate kittens (except as yummy nighttime snacks and a source for leather) but I think we can all agree that they would be slightly less detestable if they were heavily bearded alcoholic kittens.
There is not a single thing in this or any other world that can't be improved with added dwarfyness. And this includes dwarves. Your dwarf needs to have a beard that has a beard, be drinking a beer that has just finished drinking a beer, and be swinging a pickaxe that is swinging a pickaxe in an infinitely recursive chain.
But it is also so that elves are the exact opposite of the zenith of all living things. By growing beards, they make that one of the most sinful things to do.
No, no, elves should have little wimpy moustaches and goatees, at most. Any more and their stringy frames won't be able to hold its weight off the ground.
Somehow I thought you meant that elves wouldn't be able to hold themselves to the ground. That is, that their beards would act as sails and they would float away like dandelions.
(Ugh, why did they make mornings so damn early?)
This just made my morning. That's the funniest image I've had in my head in weeks.
"Shave? Nay I say! All the raiders we've lost to the dwarves... Surely they must have an edge over us! We have the advantages of height, agility, and our fabulous wooden weapons. But what quality do they possess that we lack? Beards! So I've grown one to- Oh no, a breeze! Grab me! Aaaah!"
Made my day as well. But I was thinking more in the way of propulsion. Wait until the wind is just right, and they unbraid their hair and beards, attach it to a complex array of featherwood twigs and jump. They sail silent and fast towards the fortress and over the magma moat, the problem they had been trying for months to solve. However, what they didn't account for was the lift the warm air above the magma generated. They flew over the fortress, further into the mountains. The fortress was situated in a harsh and forboding mountain, infested by giant eagles. The elves naturally took them as friends, but they forgot they now had monstrous beards. The giant eagles, eager for dwarf meat, quickly plucked them from the sky. Other elves panicked and ripped their beard from their faces, only to crash into the magma to burn, or through the clear glass window of the great dining hall. The elves that were lucky enough to not die from the fall or the magma, were quickly seen by the eating and drinking (well, mainly drinking) dwarves. And short thereafter defeated.
...I
NEED to see the engraving for that.
Psst, Inaluct.
You know you want to.