Nisei elves?


Ability Scores and Races

Sovereign Court

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Many elves are returning from somewhere else, right? What if they kept track of what generation on Golarion they were somewhat like Japanese Americans keep track of generations in America. The immigrants are called isei ("first"), those born in the US are nisei ("second"), their kids are sansei ("third") and their kids are yonsei ("fourth"), etc. Kim Stanely Robinson picked up on the idea in his Red Mars/Green Mars/Blue Mars series with the first generation born on Mars calling themselves nisei. Maybe the elves make a distinction between those born in the other place and those born on Golarion, with each generation born on Golarion being thought of as a little less pure.

The Spanish actually did the same thing with Spaniards born in Spain (peninsulares) and Spaniards born in the New World colonies like Mexico (i]criollos[/i]). Those born in the New World had fewer rights and opportunities for advancement, eventually leading to the independence movements in several countries.


Mmm...
Sounds good for some purposes, but the Elves were ORIGINALLY from Golarion, and it's more like they would have used those distinctions for those born on whatever other planet they were on... I mean, it's reasonable that some of the returning elves themselves were actually born on Golarion, and are just now returning. Elves live so long that the 'generational' paradigm would be quite different, I would think, since they can live for thousands of years, and are probably 'fertile' for most of that time, meaning hundreds of years.

What you suggest (and your examples) WOULD have great applications for the Chelish colonies in Varisia, Sargava, and Arcadia.

Lantern Lodge

It's pretty common for elves leaving the land for far-off realms (Tolkein, Evermeet etc), but Golarion is the first campaign setting I'm aware of that has had self-imposed exiled elves returning to the land from far-off realms. There may be other literary examples, I'm not that wide-read, or maybe Golarion elves and their off-world counter-parts were inspired by real-world diaspora cultures as Mosaic mentioned above. Either way, I find it a fresh and rather interesting approach.

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