Myrna Minkoff

Dungeon Clearer! The Wonderful World of an Adventurer

That's fine. In no uncertain terms you have told me that I'm not allowed the privilege of being able to roleplay a character who looks like me in your setting. You have articulated just how unwelcome all of us are, not just me as an individual, and I would not have been able to abide by that for very long anyway.

@Raineh Daze And just so you know, I've sat at gaming tables next to literal rapists who have acted less toxic than you. At least they've managed to let a RP get started, and even finish a session or two before they forced their characters on mine, or forced themselves on another girl at the table, or made disgusting comments that made everyone with actual scruples uncomfortable. I'm not kidding.

For the sake of the people in your life I hope you only act like this on the internet, for faceless strangers who will never matter to you. For the sake of those faceless strangers, I hope you seriously reflect on your behavior and how disgustingly you have treated me, and judging from your post history, plenty of others who have come into Vita's games with nothing but good intentions and a love for a hobby. You narcissists with Little Emperor Syndrome never do, but I will go on hoping nonetheless.

Love you guys. Peace.

Dungeon Clearer! The Wonderful World of an Adventurer

Now, please drop the science discussion, I have to read papers often enough day to day without doing it when I'm looking at fantasy.

@Raineh Daze

Look, sooner or later we were gonna run out of excuses and we were gonna start coming to the real reason you're so afraid of letting brown people into a setting with gold and purple eye, furry dog people, and necromancer lolis. I hope it's not as unflattering as it's starting to look from out here. :/

Dungeon Clearer! The Wonderful World of an Adventurer

pdf version of the same article for another publication: sbs.utexas.edu/levin/bio213/articles/…

We found that the earth's surface could be divided into three vitamin D zones: one comprising the tropics, one the subtropics and temperate regions, and the last the circumpolar regions north and south of about 45 degrees latitude. In the first, the dosage of UVB throughout the year is high enough that humans have ample opportunity to synthesize vitamin D all year. In the second, at least one month during the year has insufficient UVB radiation, and in the third area not enough UVB arrives on average during the entire year to prompt vitamin D synthesis. This distribution could explain why indigenous peoples in the tropics generally have dark skin, whereas people in the subtropics and temperate regions are lighter-skinned but have the ability to tan, and those who live in regions near the poles tend to be very light skinned and burn easily.

One of the most interesting aspects of this investigation was the examination of groups that did not precisely fit the predicted skin-color pattern. An example is the Inuit people of Alaska and northern Canada. The Inuit exhibit skin color that is somewhat darker than would be predicted given the UV levels at their latitude. This is probably caused by two factors. The first is that they are relatively recent inhabitants of these climes, having migrated to North America only roughly 5,000 years ago. The second is that the traditional diet of the Inuit is extremely high in foods containing vitamin D, especially fish and marine mammals. This vitamin D-rich diet offsets the problem that they would otherwise have with vitamin D synthesis in their skin at northern latitudes and permits them to remain more darkly pigmented.

Jablonski & Chaplin 3

Dungeon Clearer! The Wonderful World of an Adventurer

Yes, and the paper then goes on to explore why Inuits are the exception, receiving zero sunlight for months at a time, and very little sunlight elsewhere in the year, and yet being as dark as any other Indigenous American from the plains or the southwest.

Edit: @TheMushroomLord Ninja. The reason I believe elf physiology is similar enough to human physiology to warrant these comparisons is that the two species are close enough in genetic makeup to be able to breed with each other.

Dungeon Clearer! The Wonderful World of an Adventurer

@TheMushroomLordI cited a secondary article on Inuits for this post which says largely the same thing. Here is the link. It cites dead links, but a quick Google of the authors' names revealed their peer-reviewed paper on the subject, from a more reliable (and intact) .edu domain.

To respond to your comment proper, this is precisely why I just asked about the timeline, as a matter of fact. The research indicates that these permanent changes to melanin pigmentation do not happen on an evolutionary timespan, but can be visible when a people has been inhabiting the same biome/climate for as few as 500 years. So if the Dark Elves were exiled to their new homes that many years ago or longer...which I must suspect is more than merely plausible for an immortal race...

Dungeon Clearer! The Wonderful World of an Adventurer

That's fair. I'm sorry for coming off petulant or unruly, too.

I've been loyal to all the lore available to me, but again, look at the information that was available to a Dark Elf writer during my first drafting:

* Dark Elves can alternatively come from caves or from "far to the north in Barukstaed" (the latter is never described outside of being very dark and very snowy.)
* They're rare in Velt.
* They're good at sneaking about and killing things.

I see now that I was supposed to look at this incredibly sparse information and think "I'd better ask for more" rather than think "Oh boy, the GM is letting us get wild with our apps." (But you also see that of what little I was given, I kept all of it intact. Again, I'm not trying to overrule the GM.) A lot of conflict and confusion may be avoided in the future if that information is actually written down for us, or we're at least given a "there's a lot of lore we haven't written down so please ask to see it" disclaimer. As it stands it's an odd choice, IMO, to make players write apps first, then show them the lore they're breaking, imply they're morons for failing to follow this lore, and demand rewrites. I know I could've written a good app the first time if all of this knowledge had been available to to me ahead of my drafting the character.

In the spirit of asking questions, I suppose my next one is just how long ago dark elves started living in Barukstaed and/or the underdark? The exact time frame of...whatever it was that split them off from the other elf subraces.

Dungeon Clearer! The Wonderful World of an Adventurer

It's not that you're asking questions, it's that you want to contradict my answers.

VitaVitaAR

Pardon me for speaking up against this, but that simply isn't true. Not once have I expressed anything but a desire to fit in and get along. When your rude and incredibly condescending GM not only rejected my app, but implied that I didn't read the thread and that I wrote a "lunatic," I ignored the obvious insults and waited for the hard judgments on where I could rewrite the app to improve it. Whether they came from her or from you. When you gave me those critiques, I only asked for a bit of codification so I could redraft what needed redrafting without having to start over from scratch. I started asking permission, like I was specifically told to, and passing ideas by you instead of assuming they were greenlit, but trying to wring some actual lore out of this thread (you know, so I'm not breaking the lore, all three sentences of it) brings out even more hostility?

I apologize if I've given the impression that I'm insubordinate or that I'm undermining your authority somehow, but that's not what's happening here. I'm bringing new information to the discussion to try and persuade you of one or two of my ideas. Don't say "please discuss this with me beforehand" and "please ask questions" in your OOC if you're then going to punish me for trying to discuss and to ask questions. I'm literally doing what you ask and you're shitting in my mouth for it, so what gives?

I'd still like to join if you'll let me. And this is me outright declaring, without ambiguity, that I can follow any directions I'm given from the GM team. That said, if you never wanted me here from the beginning, there are far easier and more straightforward ways of sending that message than saying I ask too few questions one second, too many the next, telling me to discuss ideas and then punishing me for discussing ideas, then pretending I'm the one who's being belligerent here when really I don't know how I can even respond without bringing this unearned hostility down on myself. Please, if I was never welcome here at all then you can stop playing games with me and just say so.

All right, I guess at this point I'm on standby to see your decision. Over.

Dungeon Clearer! The Wonderful World of an Adventurer

...You literally told me to ask questions, and now I'm asking too many questions?

You realize your OP features exactly three sentences on Dark Elf habitats, right? If we're not allowed to write our own lore and we're not allowed to ask for the canon lore then how is anyone supposed to actually create a character?

Dungeon Clearer! The Wonderful World of an Adventurer

From the Far North, Dark Elves are mysterious folk who dwell so far to the North that the sun rarely pierces the snowstorms.

VitaVitaAR

As early humans started migrating north into Europe and east into Asia, they were exposed to different amounts of sun. Those who went north found their dark skin worked against them–preventing them from absorbing enough sunlight to create vitamin D. To adapt, these humans started producing less melanin.

But Inuits’ vitamin D intake wasn’t dependent upon the sun. They get all that they need from their diet, heavy on types of fatty fish that are naturally rich in vitamin D. The plentiful amounts of the vitamin kept them from developing less melanin. In fact, before milk was fortified with D, people living outside of Northern Canada and Alaska loaded their diets with fishy products, such as cod liver oil, to get their daily supplement. So despite their chilly climate and lack of sun exposure, it’s the Inuit diet that has kept them in their natural glow.

scienceline.org/2007/06/ask-dricoll-i…

The same reason you can be darker than the average Mediterranean without seeing the sun for most of the year. Or never seeing the sun at all, if you live underground.

To edify, the lore has not yet given me reason to believe that the people in the Far North are capable of subsisting on a grain-based diet, as will be typical for the world's temperate zones. They're certainly not raiding grains from agrarian societies (as you very politely informed me,) and the lore makes no mention of them using magic to create artificial conditions fit for agrarian commerce. This leaves hunting and foraging to sustain sizeable populations living in the Far North, and I don't see what's so unlikely about at least some of these societies eating mostly fish, a food naturally rich in Vitamin D, thus the indirect cause of northern peoples being darker in complexion.

... and because I like the faceclaim and would like to keep it.

Dungeon Clearer! The Wonderful World of an Adventurer

Aw, heck. With the Far North being described basically as this world's Arctic Circle, I thought I was making an elf with an Eskimo complexion. 😒 Can I say they're darker because of a fish-rich diet so I can keep the faceclaim?

And if I'm on the same page as you, the actually important changes I gotta make are:

1. Dial back on the house rivalries; fewer assassinations, more spying and subterfuge

2. Find out more about elf gods so I can use them in place of "subterranean fire-gods"

?