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[cameron1124]

when they themselves have everything made out of either trees or plants?

[dree12]

They summon them. Elves in medieval fantasy (wood elves, at least) live in the forest, and some tales/interpretation suggest they will to defend it at all costs. In most tales (and most fantasy games), elves use iron equipment as to not cut trees down. DF elves, however, have been suggested to "summon" the wood that they use. The reasoning is that elves will not cut trees down, and they have a lot of wood (a full set of wooden armor for each elf, and there are more elves than their are roads), leads many people to believe they use a hidden "magic" to create the wood.

Of course, you could always just say the wood is made by editing a few bytes in the computer's memory, and elves have learned to memory-hack DF...

[Urist Imiknorris]

They sing the wood from the trees in an elaborate ritual every other full moon.

[Snook]

They sing the wood from the trees in an elaborate ritual every other full moon.

With their breeding habits it would surely be more like bi-fortnightly.

[Kobold Troubadour]

That's like asking why Dwarves love booze...

[terminal]

I heard that they use their elvish treeherding arts to grow the wood into the shapes that they want and then harvest it after it dies naturally.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Because the Elves are morally myopic, hypocritical, self-righteous, cannibalistic, slaver, hippy bastards.

[Tokkius]

I imagine they use wood that has been culled in a "humane" way from trees that have excess or have recently died.

[Aspgren]

Because they are not only protectors and guardians of the forest; they are also part of the natural ecological system.

Trees die naturally. Trees fall. Twigs and other items gather up in huge amounts. The elves do not spoil anything, they see to it that fallen beasts are consumed and fallen trees are put to good use. Yet they don't disrupt the balance of other scavangers in the ecosystem because they are so gentle and noble in their work of the forest. The life of an elf is spent tipping on this thin, proper line of balance of harmony.

[Josephus]

They sing the wood from the trees in an elaborate ritual every other full moon.

It's wraithbone style. Man, I wish that one (which is technically already canon) was implemented in-game already.

[Sensei]

I'm pretty sure it's stated that all plant products the elves used are grown "humanely", whatever that means to plants. There's some special elf-kosher way of going about it.

[NW_Kohaku]

Because they are not only protectors and guardians of the forest; they are also part of the natural ecological system.

Trees die naturally. Trees fall. Twigs and other items gather up in huge amounts. The elves do not spoil anything, they see to it that fallen beasts are consumed and fallen trees are put to good use. Yet they don't disrupt the balance of other scavangers in the ecosystem because they are so gentle and noble in their work of the forest. The life of an elf is spent tipping on this thin, proper line of balance of harmony.

Which sounds all well and good, until you recognize that even sentient creatures have a place in the cycle of life and death.

Honestly, after watching Avatar, I could not get over how similar the Pandorans were to the stereotypical "wood" elf that we see in DF.  (Including the crying over having to kill wild animals that were attacking people.)

Anyway, I'd say that trees are not like animals.

Consider naval oranges: They are oranges that, thanks to a mutation, do not grow seeds.  The only way to make more naval orange trees is to cut off a limb, plant it in the ground, and wait for it to turn into a new tree.  Naval orange trees do not breed in any way other than by "cloning" them through snippets of previous naval orange trees.  All naval orange trees are just clones of the original mutant, and have never changed (outside of potential mutations that occured within a living tree) since the first one was discovered.

Now then, as for how elves use this, consider this:

However, if elf-towns just spawned unbroken wooden houses with, I dunno, maybe some bushes (maybe trees or wooden protrusions for branches) hanging off into space for leaves, you could say they're not natural trees, and shaped that way the same way elves can somehow reach into a tree and harmlessly pull out wood from it.

EDIT: Sort-of like this: http://www.popsci.com/arbona/article/2006-11/grow-your-second-home

Basically, elves just manipulate trees into growing whatever they want, and then pull it out of the tree in a way that "does not hurt the tree".  The "not hurting it" part seems initially impossible, but the only living part of a tree is the outer ring, the trunk is basically just dead wood.  If you could prevent the growth of the outer ring in a section of the tree trunk after it has grown to the shape you want, you would not be harming the tree while exposing a dead piece of it that you could remove...

[breadbocks]

According to the Eragon series, the Elves use their language to ask the trees into the shapes they need. I imagine this translates to the Elves torture the trees into warped echoes of their former selves. The Elves then chop down the entire tree, just to get at the single wooden earing.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Wait. Elves might twist trees into mockeries of their former selves. Forgotten Beasts and Clowns are generaly "X twisted into human form". Then...

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

We should have known from the beginning. Hell and the Underground used to be elven lands. Hell was either their lab or where the experiments that had gone wrong were dumped. The animal people were the previous civilizations that the elves buried with the rest of their Old Empire to cover up the truth. That would make Humans, Goblins, Kolbolds, and even Dwarves genetic offshoots of the Elves. The twisting of plants must be the only thing still allowed because it going wrong doesn't result in the end of days. The time before time is a lie. Dwarven history is just when the New Elven Empire begins. That must be why they attack us. They don't care about the stupid plants. Dwarves are the only ones who will dig down into the Old Empire and risk discovering the truth. They'll attack for any reason they can justify.

[Cespinarve]

According to the Eragon series, the Elves use their language to ask the trees into the shapes they need. I imagine this translates to the Elves torture the trees into warped echoes of their former selves. The Elves then chop down the entire tree, just to get at the single wooden earing.

According to Eragon, it's oaky to be a selfish sociopath so long as you maintain the privilege of being the designated protagonist and Author Avatar.