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☆ 🧝‍♀️ Guest Post 🧝‍♂️ ☆

Elves in the Spellster Series

Thank you for giving me the chance to pop over onto your blog today. I love connecting with readers and talking about specific things in the story. One of those things is the prevalence of certain sentient species in my newest fantasy romance. There’s only the three types in the world In Pain and Blood is set in: humans, elves and dwarves. For this guest post, I’m going to hand this over to one of the characters from In Pain and Blood, Madam Katarina of Dvärghem, who will give a brief rundown on elves in the spellster series…

Elves are often defined throughout large chunks of the continent as poor, small, but beautiful, pointy-eared folk who are only fit to be exploited.

Little is known of the land from which they originated, even the natives of Heimat—people who are far removed from the Udynea Empire and their toxic environment—and those who still live according to the nomadic practice of their wandering forebears have fragments of their past.

Much of the tangible facts can be found in the Udynea Empire and their old slave records. These state that the elves arrived en masse in vast ships—vessels that, reputedly, carried several thousand each and were sadly dismantled on site for their wood—on the shores of what is now Obuzan.

Having first reached the shore of a land that freely exploits its own, much of the elven population wound up in slavery. Those who escaped, whether through the initial catch or later, fled to form Heimat. To this day, those who live there are suspicious to overtures made by outsiders, human or dwarf. They trade via the nomadic clans who wander between this elven country and the place of their original berth, wildly skirting the Udynean border in the process.

Whilst relations between human and elf are more common than between elf and dwarf—this being rather due to the spread of both races across the continent than any avoidance by either party—there is a common human bias towards elves. Few gain notable status and are far likelier to be the target of bigotry. The degree of this alienation is, largely, dependent on the country. Where one elf might suffer harsh looks and the occasional slur, others will be forced into lives as beggars, if not taken and sold.

If one is curious, and quite possibly suicidal, observation of the canine definition is a useful tool to denote dilution of blood. The more prominent an elf’s canines are, the more elven an elf’s blood is. Speculation leans towards the supposition that their ancestors subsisted on a meat-heavy diet.

Their rate of healing is twice that of a human’s and somewhere between a third and a quarter faster than dwarven abilities. This may be linked to a faster metabolism and is, perhaps, in direct correlation to their natural leanness.

An elven man who claims either half or more of elven ancestry is not capable of growing facial hair. In fact, hair on all elves is largely lighter than human or dwarven counterparts of similar age. Past scholars have given several theories on why; the wider accepted lean being that their ancestral climate negated the necessity of such dense hair.

Also on the subject of hair, those men who claim over half elven blood can also expect to not go bald like humans. Nor does their body hair thicken as in most dwarven men. The hair does, however, go grey in their very late years.

Their bodies put out more heat than even the average dwarven man, this is despite being shorter than either sentient counterpart (sometimes by several feet). They likewise display a dexterity incomparable to a human of similar size. Through observation of trained warriors, it has been determined that muscle can be bulked via an intense regimen, just not to the extent of a human in the same position. However, overall stamina does seem to have a slight lean in their favour over other races.

Their sight is better than that of a human’s, almost on par with dwarven vision in distance and tracking. It is not certain if their night vision is superior or whether they use their enhanced hearing to pinpoint attacks. A lesser quality is their long fingers, wherein each digit is between half to a full inch longer than those of the average human.

The ears are, of course, a rather large defining quality to an elf and often become the target of the small-minded. Slicing or breaking the ear has become an all too commonly used assault in Udynea. When such an attack happens, the ear is often not completely removed, but rather just the pointed half.

Their ears have long been rumoured as extremely sensitive to the touch and most elves will allow only their partners this privilege. Whilst the elf’s reaction to such a touch is not instant arousal as in the stipulated rumours, testing done by a willing couple rather suggests that it encourages such thoughts. Amongst elves, the deliberate touching of another’s ears is seen as a sign of closeness and a willingness towards initiating intimacy. Allowing another to place their lips upon their ears is a sign of not only trust on the owner’s part, but also often of affection.

Whilst the vast majority of an elf’s speech pattern can be mimicked by humans and dwarves alike, elves possess the ability to voice strange extra notes. This is more evident in those with higher voice, particularly if they speak their ancestral language or sing, where there is a songbird quality to the words. Every full-blooded elf that has been tested is capable of this and thus it is presumed that all of them are. However, this ability varies in those who claim even a dilution as much as an eighth of non-elven bloodline.

They possess, of all things, the ability to purr. Not the occasional rumbling of a pleased dwarf or human, but a consistent thrum much similar to that of a domesticated feline. Unlike cats, who purr in all manner of situations, this phenomenon only occurs if the elf in question is content. Queries have lead to this behaviour being common knowledge amongst elf-dense populations.

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