Elves as "closer to nature and lower-tech" - give them a revulsion to metal?

[whswhs]

Having to wait years for a sword to grow assumes that wooden swords are a NEW technology. If they've had wooden swords for a few hundred years, they'll have a standing crop of swords waiting to be harvested.

[jason taylor]

Originally Posted by RyanW

Just an idea to throw out, but perhaps the elven way of doing a lot of things is really slow. Elves don't work metals at all (my first thought was that metalworking slowly poisons an elf's connection with nature magic), but they have ways of inducing trees to produce woods with a wide range of properties. Need a building? Grow a tree in the shape you need. Need a sword? Make a tree grow a super dense branch in the appropriate shape. It takes decades, but what are decades to an elf?

That's one of the best ideas I have heard. But there is no reason that several swords cannot come from the same tree. It can be trademarked with the tree's name. There can be guilds surrounding the same tree.

[SolemnGolem]

Inspired by the responses to this thread, I went back to the Low Tech books and found a good number of weapons and materials that a non-metalworking society could have.

I was less confident about whether or not to make stone off limits, which I think would still be quite a useful building and weaponry material (obsidian spear points and arrowheads, for example). I've been toying with a limitation that "all materials they use must once have been alive" to fit in with their "one with Nature" theme. This leaves open the possibility of shells, teeth/fangs, and sharpened bones and so forth for weaponry, but closes off most rocks and all metals. (As a side note, if carved shells are important as a source of arrowheads, then it could give rise to interesting geographic priorities or sacred sites for the elves. A prehistoric riverbed-turned-hillside in their forest, which also happens to provide the only source of ancient shells, could become a Place To Be Highly Defended if they have no other source of useable arrowheads.

Armor could be fashioned from animal skins and shaped wood (magically if need be) and weapons could maintain a decent forest deterrent with bolas, slings, spears, bow and arrow, caltrops, and potentially even grenades with contents such as burning pitch, sleeping powder, madness spores, and the like.

Vehicles such as wagons, chariots, and carts would not be used, not least owing to their problematic material manufacture, but also perhaps aesthetically being non-pleasing to the elf who prefers to "feel the life of Nature by their skin". Mounted transportation could still be done naturally, if elves are deemed to be able to ride woodland animals like deer - similar to Prince Ashitaka riding a red elk in Princess Mononoke.

Magery or other powers could be limited by the Nature limitation, so they may even deactivate altogether if the elves venture into higher-TL areas. Combined with their limited options for vehicles, this could make the elves a permanent sylvan guerrilla race, quite willing to raze human (or other) higher-TL settlements, but unwilling to take them over for their own.

Obviously, my vision for elves in such a campaign would completely avert certain fantasy tropes ("blond pointy eared skinny nobles wearing platemail, holding their elegant steel rapiers amidst the soaring marble spires of Palace Clichéfael" etc.) but I think it's a good basis for a nature vs. civilization narrative contrast.

[Polydamas]

One detail: Carts and wagons are thousands of years older than iron smelting, and all-wood-and-hide Red River Wagons were still used in the 19th c. Not having bronze or iron tools does make woodworking harder. You would see more dugout canoes and bentwod boxes than intricately carved munti-story wooden buildings. Not being able to use stone axes and scrapers would be crippling for food gathering and tool making.

[AlexanderHowl]

Without stone, they are not even on the TL spectrum really, as TL0 assumes extensive use of stone tools. Honestly, such a species would have been overwhelmed by humans early on unless they have substantial magical advantages and/or lived in areas where humans could not prosper. In the former case, the average individual would need magical abilities that would compensate for lacking stone tools.

[The Colonel]

Continue the "growing" theme - the elves work stone by using some form of magic to make the stone grow into the shapes they require - all of their buildings are effectively one-piece castings extruded from the bedrock, possibly with the occasional welded on bit. This would have the added bonus of giving any elven buildings the opportunity to have a delicate, organic look with traceries and flows and such things. Stone tools could also, presumably, be grown into shape.
Singing would seem a thematic way of doing it.