Elves as a Young Race

[Havard]

Now, Rafe's campaign has a somewhat different take on this, but IMC elves of Blackmoor are a relatively young race. This would make them very different from elves of most other settings. In most settings, elves is the race that has been around forever, the keepers of all the stories and all the secrets. In my campaign the elves have "only" been around for a thousand years, and most of that time they have spent hiding in their forests. Their few encounters with the outside world have been traumatic. At the same time, I think they would still have some of their youthful curiousity intact.

Using this assumption, elves of Blackmoor would be more comparable to Tolkien's elves in the 2nd Age, where they are still exploring the world and learning their own abilities rather than the dying race we often see in so many copies of Tolkien's late 3rd Age elves.

That is not to say that elves are innocent. They have suffered the division among their race about 500 years ago (still IMC), and with the Rise of the Egg, more than half of their woodlands were permanently flooded, killing thousands.

How would the assumption that elves are a young race be a way to present them in a different light from other settings?

-Havard