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The Colonel · 08-20-2019, 06:47 AM

For those that like a metaphysical angle, perhaps the elves have a problem with their supply of souls - conception requires a soul to inhabit the flesh, but there are fewer elven souls awaiting incarnation than are required for the species to reproduce rapidly. This allows you to drive the birthrate down.
Why will depend on the metaphysics of your setting...

Other random ideas:
An elven childhood of a century or so may not mean slow physical maturation - perhaps an elf is full grown in the same sort of time as a human, but is not considered an adult for much longer and thus is unable to participate fully in elven society, marry or whatever until they have hung around for a long time. This is the period of their life where they wander about the place annoying shorter lived species - they then go home, settle down and become NPCs (if they weren't already) and live until long after everyone is tired of them.

Elves are hermaphrodites with a circumstantial gender - population stress caused by conflict with shorter lived species had forced most of them to assume their "male" gender (identified in comparison to mammals where the male is non-offspring bearing, optimised for resource control), thus reducing the proportion of "females" well below what is required for a replacement birthrate.

Elves are naturally fae - immortal, non-reproducing outsiders and at least partially spirit beings. Being spirit/conceptual in nature they are suffering from what is essentially memetic mutation and, due to the influence of (mostly human) mortals they are becoming more fertile but shorter lived. One day they will be nothing more than humans with pointy ears and a bad attitude. The greatest amongst the elves are still terrifying, inhuman and immortal - and probably not that fond of mortals - the least are far more suited to being RPG characters...

08-20-2019, 06:47 AM	#35
The Colonel Join Date: Jul 2006	Re: Elven maturation and population growth For those that like a metaphysical angle, perhaps the elves have a problem with their supply of souls - conception requires a soul to inhabit the flesh, but there are fewer elven souls awaiting incarnation than are required for the species to reproduce rapidly. This allows you to drive the birthrate down. Why will depend on the metaphysics of your setting... Other random ideas: An elven childhood of a century or so may not mean slow physical maturation - perhaps an elf is full grown in the same sort of time as a human, but is not considered an adult for much longer and thus is unable to participate fully in elven society, marry or whatever until they have hung around for a long time. This is the period of their life where they wander about the place annoying shorter lived species - they then go home, settle down and become NPCs (if they weren't already) and live until long after everyone is tired of them. Elves are hermaphrodites with a circumstantial gender - population stress caused by conflict with shorter lived species had forced most of them to assume their "male" gender (identified in comparison to mammals where the male is non-offspring bearing, optimised for resource control), thus reducing the proportion of "females" well below what is required for a replacement birthrate. Elves are naturally fae - immortal, non-reproducing outsiders and at least partially spirit beings. Being spirit/conceptual in nature they are suffering from what is essentially memetic mutation and, due to the influence of (mostly human) mortals they are becoming more fertile but shorter lived. One day they will be nothing more than humans with pointy ears and a bad attitude. The greatest amongst the elves are still terrifying, inhuman and immortal - and probably not that fond of mortals - the least are far more suited to being RPG characters...