(There's a preamble followed by ==COOL STUFF== if you wanna skip)

(There's a preamble followed by ==COOL STUFF== if you wanna skip)

So when I run OSR systems and settings (currently gearing up for a long-anticipated Yoon-Suin Lamentations of the Flame Princess game set in the Oligarchies) I like to get my players to create two characters simultaneously to begin with.

My reasoning is that these are worlds where their characters can die, and if my players pin all their hopes and dreams and identity on one person, being made to write up a new stranger to play as could leave them cold. Secondly, if their first character is temporarily waylaid - recouping from a broken leg, or trapped in the Phantom Zone - they have an understudy to hop in and out. Another reason is my players are chronically indecicive with character creation so letting them make one warrior and one wizard makes everyone happy.

Point is one of my players LOVES elves, and wanted to play an elf in Yoon-Suin. The game doesn't really have any elves, and I was worried if I said yes anyway she'd create a Europeanesque Legolas before she even really absorbed anything about the system. Instead she created a holy-woman named Meerha who wears teal robes and worships mother nature in the form of a terrifying dragon.

But creating her second character she mentioned elves again, and now that I knew she appreciated the Indo-Tibeto-Asian world we lived in, I was happy to work with her to create lore-friendly elves.

==COOL STUFF==
Yoon-Suin is the Indian Subcontinent. The God River is the Ganges, the Yellow City is Bangladesh/Bay of Bengal, the Oligarchies are Nepal, Druk Yul is literally Bhutan, the Mountains of the Moon are the Himalayas/Tibet, the Hundred Kingdoms are the Gangetic Plains, Sughd is Kashmir/Afghanistan

Humans are Indian/Nepali, Slugmen are...slugmen, and Dwarves are Tibeto-Bhutanese, sort of.

What we figured, regarding elves, was that south India had not really been discussed. Far beyond the steamy nightmarescape of Láhág dwelt a presumable Dravidian heartland in keeping with the Indian comparisons. A land of palm copses, sandy shores, azure seas, coconut and really really really spicy chili. Rainbow-coloured ziggurat temples and circular glyphs carefully inscribed on the inside of banana leafs.

This is the Empire of Ever-Summer, the Triumvirate of the Elven Kings. Where unfathomably powerful sorcerer-priests call down powerful magics atop their monumental kopuram. Where eagle-eyed kadambars patrol the shola forests on the perimeter of the elfland. A rare day it is to receive an ambassador from furthest elf-country in the courts of Yoon-Suin.

==

This also works because it explains the total absence of elves in daily life and corresponds neatly to the continued independence of the Tamil country in the face of world-conquerors like Ashoka, Gupta, and the Mughals