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Family - Marriage - Customs & Courtesies -
Gestures - Hygiene - World Views - Diet -
Dwellings - Cultural Economy - Warfare
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FamilyThe elvish term for household is mal, which usually includes the parents and children, plus the husband’s parents. An elven family is hierarchical. Status within the household is based on age and gender. The head of the family is the oldest adult male, and he exercises a high degree of authority and responsibility. Females, however, wield more behind the scenes power than what appears. The oldest female in the family often has considerable say in what happens in the day-to-day operations within the home and how the children are reared.
Marriage
Marriages are significant events to elven families. Traditionally, they are arranged, and potential brides are expected to display shyness and reticence to marry. Marriage celebrations can range from a day to a week. Gifts are exchanged between the families. On the sixth day of marriage, the couple has close relatives visit, receiving presents for their new life together. If the groom does not support his wife according to the standards of her own family, the bride has grounds for divorce. A man may divorce his wife by publicly renouncing her three times.
Customs & Courtesies
Elves often greet each other with a number of ritual phrases and fixed responses. Elaborate greetings are often lengthy, but are important in establishing friendly relations.
Upon entering a group of people, elves greet those present – especially the elderly – before sitting down. When meeting a group, elves will usually approach the senior person, but greet the entire party. Eye contact signals respect to the person greeted.
Elves are comfortable when surrounded by people in open spaces, but can feel uncomfortable or threatened when enclosed in small physical spaces.
Privacy of personal property is very important to elves. It is rude to look into someone’s home or touch their possessions; equated with trespassing and theft.
In their territory, it is customary to offer friendly strangers food and shelter. Shelter is provided by the agha, the eldest female member of the village. When visiting the agha’s shelter, other women of the tribe will make and serve food, and because elves take pride in being good hosts, they will often provide entertainment. A host would be disappointed by somber or uncooperative guests who do not go along with the entertainment – be it conversation, games, music, or dance. Elves will refuse offers of food two or three times before accepting, and similar behavior is expected of a visitor. When visiting, the host will often offer a spiced tea. It is considered rude to refuse, but just as rude to drink more than the host offers or drinks himself.
Gestures
By placing ones hand over their heart shows respect or thanks
Touching the fingers to the forehead while bowing slightly shows loyalty and respect
Sharply pinching the thumb and first finger together in front of one’s mouth means that what is spoken is a lie.
Hygiene
Personal hygiene is extremely important to elves for very practical reasons. It is typical to wash the hands before and after eating. It is common to wash the face, hands and forearms daily. A head-to-toe washing is commonly performed every few days or following contact with unclean substances.
World Views
Elves tend to perceive events as isolated events. They do not generally subscribe to humans’ concept of cause and effect; they often dismiss casual chain of events. This thought process seems illogical to humans who look for a unifying concept.
Elves are also extremists. Perhaps due to their harsh life in the desert, they perceive the world in extremes. There is water or no water, it is either day or night, it is either hot or cold. Surrounded by an environment of extremes, elves perceive the world in those terms. As a result, if a plan, project, or piece of equipment has a problem, then it means the entire plan, project or piece of equipment is a problem.
Elves appear paranoid by human standards. Many perceive problems as part of a plan to foil their attempts to make life enjoyable or more pleasant. This concept helps explain elves’ unwillingness to trust strangers and defensiveness.
Diet
The staple of the elven diet is meat and flat bread known as aish. While fresh meat is preferred, dried meat (usually z’tals) is most common, and easiest to transport. A mixture of vegetables and quinoa is popular, as is the spiced tea specific to elves.
Midday meal is the main meal of the day, as elves tend to travel during dawn and dusk, keeping meals eaten at those times small. A tribal camp would have been made to wait out the mid-day and afternoon heat.
Elves love nuts and also use a variety of spices in all their dishes. Some more common dishes include: kubba – a cracked grain mixed with meat and spices, tikka – meat skewered and roasted over hot coals, quozi – mixed meat and quinoa, masuf – a small lizard cooked over hot coals and eaten entirely.
Celebrations often take place, many times without any special significance. Elves love a brink called broy, which is kank nectar that has been allowed to ferment. It is a sweet and tart beverage, and if drunk in any great quantities, provides inebriation.
Dwellings
Being nomadic, elves live in tent camps. Even those elves that make their home in urban areas will often live in an encampment of tents owned exclusively by other elves.
The tents are made of a light, woven cloth, similar to silk, and are supported by a series of poles and cross-poles. Colorful rugs and mats cover the ground, providing a decorative interior, which is surprisingly cool and comfortable. Belongings are stowed and carried in bags of all sizes, and are placed around the interior base of the tents, making room for its occupants and helping to hold the tent down against strong desert night winds.
Camps may consist of an entire tribe, or just merely a few families who have joined together.
Cultural Economy
Elven economy is extremely diverse. Depending on local resources and which territory they are in, tribes vary greatly from one another, and are economically independent with respect to their respective interests. It is fair to say, however, that the majority of elven tribes make their livelihood on herding beasts or in trade caravans.
Elves are forthright to a fault, from a human perspective. Elves will voice their opinion, positive or negative, which can at times be interpreted as being aggressive or rude. In economic concerns, this can make humans uncomfortable and hesitant to embrace elves as partners. In addition, the relationship between the elves and the regions that they occupy has hampered outside investment in traditional elvish areas. However, elves pride themselves on precision and attention to detail. They are also more inclined to individual enterprise as a means of self-reliance. Wealth and success are not seen as being excessive, and are qualities to celebrate and strive for.
Warfare
The nomadic lifestyle of elven tribes tends to make them skeptical of outsider groups, fearing competition for scarce resources. Protection of territory and allegiance to the social unit are primary reactions against intrusion. It is thus common to engage in armed forays to usurp and plunder resources belonging to a weaker tribe or neighbor.
The glory of the raid, whether against another tribe, settled enemy, or caravan, is a key aspect to elven tribal warfare. In many cases, raids are carried out with brute force and blunt violence. Often, tribal raids become flash points for larger tribal conflicts.
Although it varies greatly as to raiding parties, the typical group travels light, avoids detection, moves quickly, and strikes with surprise and violence. Livestock, captives, and other spoils are taken based on what the raiders need or can carry. When raiding leads to greater conflict, the objective usually is not to force submission, but to restore the balance of honor through blood revenge.
Participation in a raid is considered a dramatic test of courage, skill, and dedication to the goals of the tribal group. Combat usually bestows honor on both sides. For elven tribes, honor is the dominant value. In the collective sense, honor means defense of the tribe, the group, or the society as a whole against its challengers. Lost honor, according to tribal tradition, must be retrieved by violence.
Tribes commemorate their raids through poetry and song.
