A Taxonomy of Elves

Kindly recall that elves are magical phenomena that do not exist in material reality. Though physical means of treatment are absolutely necessary, they cure only symptoms, not the disease. Killing them does little but keep the abductions down.

artist: john anster fitzgerald

Viral elves are called fae, faerie, folk. They are the least concerned with human life, though as dependant on it as the rest. They are the most uniquely aware of their unreality, that they are momentary projections of a subtler force, mere ghosts of metaphor.

Fae are a parodic reflection of man's relation to nature, a psychic hijack of a corrupted means of production. They embody not wrath but scorn and derision, most often scolding and punishing. Tangled are their judgements, buried under irony and snared on subconscious guilts. Outbreaks occur most commonly as morality shifts, when old taboos are broken or new ones formed.

They appear most commonly in carousing bands, near-identical but reaffirming themselves with titles and caricatured relations. They pantomime society's most powerful figures to find better purchase in its psychome (their host), bitterly counterfeiting an individuality they can never possess. Identity is often erased by their judgements, sad princes turned into ponds or flayed poachers stuffed in goat skins.

The classic witch's cure is a simple memetic immunisation (leaving out perhaps a saucer of milk, or never breaking twigs on the solstice) and of course reconciling a culture with the natural world is an instant fix.

Bacterial elves are called borrowers, brownies. They exist in the essence of man's slow succumbing to nature: where homes crumble, bridges rot and fall, a carriage molders in the wood and a low cairn grows over with moss.

Feeding off this decay, borrowers must necessarily nurture it, protecting it from other agents of decomposition. They are martial, though more concerned with ceremony, ritual, keeping house.

Their population kicks and spurts; only after a decade do they move in, then five or six, a family. Each decade brings a dozen more, each century or so another clade, an institution enshrining their traditions against the ending of the slow collapse they ride. Castes of candledousers, damcoddlers, snailslayers and lichenmonks war against entropy.

White-haired sages sing their legends to starry-eyed squires (each turning of a season is 400 of their years, a lifetime) and pass the sacred knowledge of their home. Every detail is recorded in verse, woven into tapestry, tattooed, mosaiced, tallied and stored that it might be preserved for only a year more.

A flip book the size of your thumb, four hundred perfect paintings of a bench rotting away in the woods; a loving, anguished study of a raindrop falling to dissolution in a puddle.

Insectile elves are called sylphs, sprites, satyrs. Thriving on the sheer bloody mass of humanity, their encouragement of human activity is direct, usually carnal. They crave places held to be sacred, private or simply sentimental.

They machinate behind shotgun weddings and runaway brides, keeping families large and power structures volatile. It is fresh blood they want, not stagnant inbreeding, in politics encouraging unlikely alliance, conquest and coups. Even they seem not to know their motivations, caught halfway between lust and love, upturning old order for a joyous germination.

Commonly likened to pubic lice, in purpose far closer to the humble bumblebee. Fairy godmothers are their ilk, though any stated preoccupation with destiny is a distraction from the base nature of their desires. They watch you when you fuck.

They can be differentiated from viral elves via vivisection. From the many-eyed drow to the furze-girdled satyr under a mantle of antler antenna, all are invertebrates.

figuring out how 2 trick some guy into jacking off

Fungal elves are goblins, bugbears, redcaps and boogieboos. Their range of form and demesne are unparalleled, seemingly a species for every niche.

They may imitate other elves or other beasts entirely, stealing their wit from the foolish with tricks and pranks and gambling games. They are rambunctious and quick, most inclined to false friendship and eating children.

Of all elves the least anchored to this material plane, their form and fearsomeness may shift as a matter of perspective. Just so they are a stiltskinned wedge into our world, leveraging cracks and unbalances that other elves may colonise.

Loosest in form, they are the tightest mirror of man. Their characters are the nearest to human, with emotions in broadest range and schemes driving to most particular ends. Addicted to elvish irony, they hunt those whose true natures jar against their station in life and ruin them utterly.

Traditionally treated by throwing stones, numerous apocryphal tales suggest a stubborn infection can be cured by beating them at their own game. Such stories are gleefully disseminated by goblins.

artist: georgedragon

Elvish animals is what people are.