Moon Elves


General Discussion


Let me start out this discussion with this image.
The moon on the left is the terraformed Moon, the one on the right is our Moon as we see it in the sky. The Moon elves in question live on the terraformed Moon to the left. In my campaign a magical event that occurred during the Gap tore our Solar System apart and reconstituted it. For the Earth memory was lost for one decade and when history began again, it was discovered the Earth was in a new Solar System with four stars, and one of the features of this Solar System is that every planet was terraformed except the Earth of course because it did not need terraforming. Each planet has the god it was named after living on its surface or underground or in the ocean as the case may be. I've detailed two worlds, Earth and Venus, and now I'm working on the Moon. Earth and Venus are primarily inhabited by humans. Venus humans are a little different physically from Earth humans, they are more primitive and live on a world full of dinosaurs and other prehistoric beasts, but that's another story. When I got to Earth's Moon, I had to decide who lives there. The Greek goddess associated with the Moon is Artemis, she is a hunter lives in a forest etc, that sounds like the sort of deity elves might worship. So Our Moon is inhabited by elves, okay fine and dandy, but Earth and Venus aren't that much different once Venus is terraformed, aside from little details such as Venus spins backwards and their are dinosaurs, but Venusian humans grew up under a similar gravity to Earth Humans, and so Venusians are slightly taller a little weaker, but that's about it.

Now what would elves look like if they lived on a terraformed Moon for say, 30,000 years? Now during the Gap, the Earth experienced 10 years of missing elapsed time The Moon however experienced 30,000 years due to its magical terraforming. The Moon actually terraformed rather quickly but elves had lived on its surface subjectively for 30,000 years, forests have grown and its ecology has stabilized, and suddenly at the end of the Gap, these elves find themselves looking up in their sky at Earth.

Now among some of the interesting things about this Moon is that trees in a forest can grow to a height of one thousand feet up to a maximum of 1800 feet for the tallest trees. To give you an idea of how tall that is, this is approximately as tall as the Empire State Building, 1000 feet is equivalent to 100 floors of an office building, and the Moon has whole forest with trees this tall, because the Moon's one sixth gravity allows trees to grow this tall.

Now what would a Moon elf look like? Because the Moon has one sixth gravity, a Moon elf can grow quite a bit taller than a human. An elf that is 12 feet tall for instance can lift 4 times the weight of a human that is 6 feet tall but would weigh 8 times as much, but on the Moon the Elf would weigh only 8/6th as much as a 6 foot tall human on Earth assuming all proportions are the same, so how tall could an elf get? if an elf was 18 feet tall and proportioned the same as a human, he would be 9 times as strong as a human but weigh 27 times as much on earth but 81/6th as much on the Moon. this is 4.5 times as much.

This moon elf is light on her feet, she only weighs half as much relative to her strength as does a human. If she jumps, whereas a human on Earth could jump 2 feet into the air, a Moon elf could jump 4 of her feet, which would be 12 feet into the air for a normal human. This moon elf is as tall as a cloud giant, but she doesn't have the powers of one, she is just a three times big elf. Other than that, she is the equivalent to a wild elf. There are tribes of such elves roaming the lunar forests when Earth people land on its surface. Moon elves have neutral tendencies, they hunt with three times big bows large animals that roam the forests. Do you think there will be any problems with the humans exploring their world?


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http://forgottenrealms.wikia.com/wiki/Moon_elf

For inspiration.

Honestly I don't see people getting stronger in low gravity environs. In fact, they would be weaker. Taller, maybe.

https://www.quora.com/What-might-lifeforms-look-like-in-high-gravity-and-lo w-gravity-planets

Some reading material.


Sounds a bit like one of the races I did Here though I didn't go with elves as the basis (As I like mythology and Jade Rabbits were more fun to me). Space/Planetoid dwelling race adapted to it that jump good.


I'm having second thought about Moon elves being a race of giants, there are lots of small critters on Earth after all. I think I will go with normal size elves, maybe a bit taller than humans on average but not so tall as to make them a size category larger, that is they remain medium size creatures. The environment of our Moon, if it had an Earthlike atmosphere would be rather bizarre even without that. One thousand foot tall trees is possible and likely. The canopy of the forest would tend to be on one level and from above would look like an Earthlike forest, once you dropped past the leaves and the branches, you have the straight trunk of the tree that plunges down to the ground. The ground of a deciduous forest would be covered with dried up leaves, there would be a lot of space between trees as the trees would not only be tall, but the branches would be rather long as well. Trees basically compete with each other for sunlight and in very ancient forests, these trees would reach their maximum height, which on the Moon would be about a thousand feet. The map of this Moon looks like this. Roll it out onto a cylindrical projection we get this. Another question is whether I should make these elves technologically advanced or primitive. Now if the Earth in question is our Earth transferred to this setting, and the elves have futuristic technology, then immediately after the Gap, the Lunar Elves and the Earth humans come in contact with each other. The elves are technologically advanced but also live in harmony with nature, they live on a smaller world than the Humans do, the Moon by this map has more land than water but it is well watered, so the primary terrain is forest, the poles have ice caps, the atmosphere is deep so it has only one circulation cell from equator to pole, also the Moon has a very slight axial tilt, so for practically purposes there are no seasons. At high latitudes it snows at night and the snow melts after dawn. the day is very long, with about 14 Earth days of continuous daylight followed by 14 days of continuous darkness. Elves have quite a lot of use for their low light vision. Especially under the forest canopy at night.


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I've been known to moon elves.


Reading over your overview of Lunar's ecology Thomas. Land to water is 70/30 rough guess, free pass. Assuming Lunar or Golarion's moon hasn't been lost with Golarion, and same stats as our moon. Giant trees are ok, also make sure to differentiate between tree species since you got forested and desert environs. With lower gravity flora and fauna along with humanoid inhabitants would be bigger because of less strain on their bodies and forms. Trees would be same mass as the trees from Pandora, bigger, beefier, able to support villages and cities in one tree. Megafauna would be possible possibly with avian megafauna (another Pandora staple). Also possible that avian species are more aggressive for prime roosting areas.

Per the elves. Biology, taller and more frail. Maybe more mentally hardened from the avian predators. They would have suffered in the same manner as the traditional elves. Xenophobic and closed borders unless either individual has trusted friends or certain races like gnomes that they are more open too. If the half-succubi residents still exist, they would be the ancestral enemies. Along with the demonic jungles either as a quarantine zone or a training area for elven doom slayers. Technology would be similar to Wookie technology. On par with the current technology level with more emphasis on natural materials. Starships would be tricky Small ships like fighters, racers, interceptors; would probably be avian looking in appearance. Medium ships; you might want to have a transitional look from avian to capital ship depending on the ship type. Large and capital ships might be similar to the Tenchi universe, probably emphasis on organic looks, probably a section of a ship with a hydroponic area with the native flora.


I converted the Traveller Air/Raft both open and enclosed to Starfinder, I think these stats look reasonable. What do you think? I think the elves would travel around in vehicles similar to these when they are not flying on the backs of giant eagles. In my scenario, these elves are living on an altered version of Earth's Moon. Our Earth from the near future is transported to this system. There is also a hostile altered Mars that is inhabited by orcs, the elves of the Moon feel threatened by them, and so have recruited Earth humans to fight for them, since their lives are so much shorter and thus have presumably less to lose if they die. So the elves land on Earth and offer their advanced technology in exchange for a recruitment of humans into the various space based military organizations to deter the Orcish threat. Also there are just not that many elves living on the Moon, perhaps a few million of them tops. Elves don't live in cities, their technology and equipment are made by fully automated fabricators, and their technology hasn't changed for millennia.


Nice vehicle build.

I get about half of the backstory.


I'm putting together an altered version of our Solar System that includes four Suns and with every planet habitable, this setting I detail in the Homebrew Section titled Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn. Also Neptune and Uranus are habitable, but I have not gotten to them yet. Each planet or Moon in the case of Earth's Moon has an associated Greek god, and the environment of each world is related to the nature Greek god that its named after. I added some pulp elements to Venus, it is a world of dinosaurs and warrior women, a primitive human inhabited world. Mercury is the Roman god of thieves and the messenger god, that means halflings and other rogues live there, it also has a population of dwarves living on it due to its high metal content. the goddess associated with the Moon is Artemis, the Greek god of the Hunt, so I figured it would be a suitable homeworld for elves. The Earth is the same as our Earth, a few decades in the future, there is Gaia, the Earthmother in charge of that planet, but mostly she lets the nations of the World to their own devices, so long as they give her sufficient respect, she also has created a lot of monsters that are popping up all over the place, mostly nonhumanoid monsters such as dragons and the like.

As you might imagine the World has been thrown into some sort of chaos by this. Mars is ruled by Ares, the Greek God of War, it is the home planet of the Orcs, but also some warlike humans live there as well. There is a lot of fighting on the planet's surface, and Ares wants to spread this over the rest of the Solar System. Some of the Empires on Mars look to the stars for further conquests. Jupiter is a gas giant, I've enlarged it a bit to give it lower gravity. its atmosphere is habitable at a certain level, there is no ground below that one can stand on, instead if one falls to far they get crushed and cooked by the increasing temperature and pressure of the atmosphere. With Saturn its much the same, except their are whirlwinds that sometimes suck the unwary into the Elemental Plane of Time. The God of Saturn is Chronos also known as Father Time. Uranus is a weird ocean world orbiting Saturn, its extreme tilt toward the Sun causes some violent storms twice a year. Orbiting Jupiter is Neptune, ruled by Poseidon, god of the seas, this world is dotted with islands and is otherwise completely covered with ocean.


Interesting.

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