Wild Elf [Dragonlance]

Wild elves rejected the refinements of the western and elder high elves to live in the wilderness. They are about the same height as those cousins but far more muscular, with dark brown skin they decorate with clay and paint patterns. Their hair is usually black to light brown, sometimes silvery white, and their eyes are hazel. Fringed leather trimmed with feathers is their usual dress, set off by handsome bracelets and necklaces of turquoise and silver.

Wild elves neither start wars nor attack strangers, but they are far from peaceful when provoked. A wild elf sprinting along a straight course reaches a movement rate of 15. They wear leather armor and like to fight with slings, war hammers and bows large or small. Tame stags carry some of them, ridden bareback; one in five members of a group (20%) is mounted this way.

Wild elves hold that a good life comes from living in balance with the natural world. Intensely proud of their ancestry, they are as fiery and passionate as the elder elves are reserved. They build no permanent towns. Villages are temporary lodges of hide and light wood, worked into the limbs of living trees for support and concealment, each housing a tribe of related families. Roughly 70% of a tribe are fighters of assorted levels, the remainder children and 0-level laborers. Tribal life centers on its eldest, wisest elf, who serves as chief, and on the chief's kin; every decision is the chief's alone.

Their faith is animistic. The dead are laid in canoes and set adrift to the open sea. Outsiders often dismiss such customs as savage, but they rest on ancient and holy traditions.

Wild elves accept most races calmly, yet they bear an old, bitter grudge against the elder and western high elves. In the War of the Dark Queen, the uprooted elder elves overran wild elf lands and eventually enslaved them, and the arrival of the western elves brought more ruin. With many human villages they are on friendly terms. They keep dogs and deer as pets and eat game, fruit and vegetables of many kinds.