Editing v0.34:Elf

{{Quality|Exceptional|07:51, 9 August 2010 (UTC)}}
{{Creaturelookup/0
|wiki=yes}}
{{av}}
{{creaturedesc}}

Elves are <s>smelly, stuck-up, arrogant [[tree]]-fondling hippies</s> humanoids dedicated to the protection of ''their'' concept of nature (focused on trees).

Elven caravans arrive in late spring. During [[trade]], elves will '''not''' accept [[wood]], wooden items or any goods [[Decoration|decorated]] with wood. This includes  ''clear'' and ''crystal'' [[glass]] items and [[soap]], because wood-derived [[lye]] and [[pearlash]] are used in their production, however, ash-[[glaze]]d items are acceptable. Elves will, however, gladly trade you their own wooden items. They will not, however, accept their wooden items back. <s>Bunch of hypocritical bastards.</s> Be careful to not offer them your wooden [[bin]]s or [[barrel]]s, or [[quiver]]s containing wooden [[bolt]]s/[[arrow]]s. If the contents of bins are marked for trade individually, and are not wooden themselves, the elves will not care that you used wooden bins to haul the goods to the depot. You may also steal from them or even kill/torture them without any known repercussions as they cannot fight back. 

Offending elves by attempting to trade wooden items normally causes them to refuse further trade this year and leave early. Repeatedly offending elves by attempting to trade wooden items may cause them to attack your fortress with an [[ambush]].

Elves will generally '''accept''' items made of green glass, stone, metal, bone and other refuse, silk, leather, plant fiber cloth, meat and fish, totems, and even plants. They will accept animals in trade, as long as their [[Cage|cages]] are not wooden.

They also accept ''raw'' clear glass and ''raw'' crystal glass, despite the fact that they are made using [[pearlash]].

Elves bring only plant-related and wood-related items, caged animals, various types of clay and sand.

They have no facial hair but rarely they have at least stubble.

Some <s>stupid, useless, treefondling traitors</s> dwarves will like elves for their ''grace''.

=== Trading ===

List of what you can expect in an average elven caravan:
*Wooden bins of [[rope reed]] raw [[cloth]] (depending on how many bins of these you have already). Buy a few for [[mood]]s, but leather is generally less expensive and more dwarven.  You may want to buy a few more if you haven't started producing your own cloth.
*Wood logs (quantity depending on how many logs you have already: lower means more). Always useful.
*Various aboveground plants, with sometimes [[whip vine]] and [[sun berry]] or their byproducts.
*Aboveground plant byproducts : [[golden salve]], [[gnomeblight]], [[alcohol]], [[flour]], [[dye]], [[seeds]]. Some, such as [[gnomeblight]] are useless, while some, such as [[sun berry]] or [[whip vine]] seeds, are quite useful and valuable.
*Wooden containers : [[chest]]s, [[cage]]s, [[bucket]]s, and [[barrel]]s. They all are useful.
*Soil types: [[sand]] in bags, various types of [[clay]]. Can be useful if you are lacking of either.
*[[Bag]]s and [[rope]]s made from plant cloth. You already should have those, but a few extra bags never hurt, although plant cloth bags are a bit expensive.
*A few exotic aboveground tame animals in cages. May be [[opossum|a]] [[stoat|disappointingly]] [[fox|useless]] [[hoary marmot|animal]] or [[Giant badger|an]] [[Giant tiger|incredibly]] [[Giant desert scorpion|awesome]] [[Giant eagle|one]].
*Caged tame [[vermin]], which has no real use aside from putting in a [[zoo]].
*Rope reed [[clothing]], mildly useful if you are in lack of clothing and haven't bothered setting up a clothing industry.
*Wooden [[crutch]]es and [[splint]]s, which are pretty handy for [[health care]] if you didn't make any.
*Wooden [[armor]] and [[weapon]]s, which are generally useless unless you are [[trap]]-happy, lack metal, or don't have enough wood to build spears for [[danger room]]s.
*And finally, plenty of useless crap which has no use at all (apart from being traded to the next caravan for actually useful stuff, but even then you can make crafts out of more valuable stuff than wood) and should be dumped into [[magma]] as soon as possible (along with the entire caravan if you desire).  They include cloth [[craft]]s, wooden crafts, wooden [[toy]]s, and wooden [[instrument]]s.

==Ethics==

Elven [[ethics]] often differ from those of other races. Their position on moral philosophy will likely put them at odds with [[human]]s, [[goblin]]s, and sometimes [[kobold]]s and animal-people. They are likely to be friendly with [[dwarf|dwarves]], unless provoked, although a dwarven civilisation ''may'' be at war with elves in world-gen.

Elves are the only race which wholeheartedly accepts the devouring of enemy combatants. Looking in legends mode shows that an elven combatant will sometimes devour the other person they were fighting when they win. In spite of this, elves refuse to butcher and consume intelligent beings. Elves find torturing as an example acceptable, but condemn other forms of torture and consider torturing for information misguided. To elves, keeping any trophy of any kind is an unthinkable act. Elves begrudgingly allow for killing animals when done in self-defense, and the killing of other elves by an elf is justified if there is an extremely good reason for doing so. For elves, the killing of plants, ''especially'' trees, is unthinkable. On the other hand, the killing of neutral beings and enemies is acceptable. Elven society seems to be regulated by shame from the community, rather than by threat of punishment. As such, elves never offer serious or capital punishment to criminals; instead, elves found to have committed vandalism, trespassing or theft are reprimanded, while those convicted of treason, lying, breaking oaths, assault or participating in slavery are forced into exile.

===Bugs===
*Elven diplomats do not arrive in Fortress mode.{{bug|3295}} They can be restored by manually adding a "diplomat" position in the elven entity object in the raws, then generating a new world.  If this bug is fixed in this way, the elven diplomat will arrive approximately half way through the first month in Spring.  If the player agrees to a treecutting quota, it will be visible after selecting the elves in the Civilizations screen and pressing Tab a few times.

{{gamedata}}
{{gamedata|title=Entity ([[civilization]]) Raws|{{raw|v0.34:entity_default.txt|ENTITY|FOREST}}}}
{{Creatures}}
{{Category|Races}}