Elves in Slaine?

blue crane

Mongoose
Is there a Mongoose product that gives details about this El-Race, or not?
If not, do any of you have information on them, such as: background, role, abilities, and physical description? Alternatively, do you know of a 2000AD prog. that ever covered them?

Thanking you in advance,
blue crane
 
They're only ever mentioned briefly in the comics, usually only in the context of having their own El world -- the World of Elemental Creatures like Elves and Goblins.

Now, we have seen Goblins in the Slaine universe several times, and they're detailed in the rulebook. So one might assume that Elves are similar -- basically not all that magical. However, Elementals are the wild and weird things that are covered in the PDF download -- very different to Goblins. Then there's fairies, covered in the Slaine series "The Secret Commonwealth" (don't know the prog numbers off-hand). These were mostly pretty unpleasant, and not entirely dissimilar to Elementals. Finally there's your more general Els, but they come from the World of Dev-Els and Ang-Els.

Any or all of the above might be seen as representing 'Elves' but on balance I decided not to make a firm decistion about which if any of them to call 'Elves.' Basically the more Tolkienesque or Norse-style elf isn't reallly a feature of the Slaine setting, and said setting isn't really sufficiently strictly defined to say for sure which of its denizens might be classed as an elf. I guess characters might call any vaguely humanoid El creature an elf, if they wished, but there isn't an official elf as such.
 
Er, that was me again, failing to log in -- in theory I'm set up to log in automatically, but it doesn't always work. I blame computers. All of them. Love 'em to bits I do, but I'll expect consistency from a small-minded hobgoblin before I expect reliability from a computer.
 
Nah, never seen them either.

I'd expect something along the lines of the daoine sidhe or huldrefolk rather than your Tolkien shield-surfers or lios alfar.

Mind you, with the kind of take that Slaine puts on mythology, I'd expect a more Pratchett view of elves from Mr. Mills.

As for consistency from a small-minded hobgoblin, you'd expect it with them being lawful and all. 'Yer name's not dahn, yer not coming in'.

Given the lack of material, it's probably one of those avenues where the game could write the comic... now that's a disturbing thought.

Some kind of unholy Mongoose meets Diceman alliance...

:mrgreen:

Enough dreaming - back to website.
 
The Elves of D&D are primarily based on Tolkien who borrowed them from the celtic myths of the Sidhe, who were the race before the men, who went underground and lived in Tir Na Nog (the land of the Young). They were also known as the Tuatha de Dannan.

Pat Mills borrowed many of the myths for Slaine, Niamh for example is the Princess of Tir Na Nog (were none die of age) and takes Finns son as her husband. Eventually he returns, to find the world has changed and tells the tales to the Priests of the New God, including St Patrick.

Slaine is technically speaking a Sidhe.... not that you'd want to tell him!
 
I imagine the response would be non-verbal and involve an axe!

A little more on Sidhe and a possible linguistic confusion which could be of interest.

The word Sidhe comes from Gaelic for 'hill'. This is also used to describe barrow-mounds so 'aes sidhe' or 'people of the hill' could be 'people of the barrow'. It may mean our pointy-eared pals are dead people - possibly ancestors which given the number of plagues recorded in the Book of Invasions isn't all that unlikely. If they are dead, it may explain their ties to the Other World.

:?:

It's good-natured nostalgia combined with a Celtic talent for tall tales that's created such good material to work from.

Sure Slaine is woven from other cloth. That doesn't make it any less fun though - it's also different enough from it's predecessors to make it fun! Deconstructions aside, I think Pat Mills should be commended for bringing a whole new audience to the wonderful imagery in Celtic myth and legend. Tolkein could have equally borrowed from Saxon tales of the liosalfar as the sidhe. And there are many stories which draw on common themes - just ask Joseph Campbell...
 
satyre said:
The word Sidhe comes from Gaelic for 'hill'. This is also used to describe barrow-mounds so 'aes sidhe' or 'people of the hill' could be 'people of the barrow'.

Yeah, in the Book of Invasions the Tuatha de Danaan are given the land beneath the hills in Ireland. I argued during an essay for my English degree that Grendel and his mum in Beowulf are similar, your classic matriarchal people who get forced into the hills and fens by later settlers and demonised as 'elves' or 'goblins.' I was told that such an argument was no longer trendy, as it had been during the 1970s, and that I shouldn't be making such old-fashioned arguments. . .

Incidentally, the Slaine RPG was written from my home in Brynteg, North Wales. Brynteg means 'Fair Hill' or 'Fairy Hill' in Welsh! So quite possibly I'm sitting atop an old Sidhe mound even as I write this. It would certainly explain the number of fairies in the local woods.

I always liked Michael Moorcock's view of Sidhe in his later Corum stories -- tall warriors without much in the way of pointy ears.

This is of course one reason why there are no Sidhe in Slaine, as was pointed out Slaine sorta is a Sidhe. . . in that he is a Tuatha de Danaan. He is one of the legendary proto-Celts that the later Celts assumed were elves due to (of all things) their better quality spears as well as their greater command of magic.

Similar themes are being explored in the current Book of Invasions material in the comic.
 
How do you make an old-fashioned argument when you talk about historical myth is what I'd like to know? :) ...but then I've always believed that subjectivity is what makes academia the nightmare it is.

:twisted:

I agree with you on Moorcock.

Having recently found out I'm not a million miles away from where one of the big druidic sanctuaries (Vernemeton - at Willoughby) my interest in this area has been re-kindled.

Must... continue... writing... web site!

:D
 
satyre said:
How do you make an old-fashioned argument when you talk about historical myth is what I'd like to know? :) ...but then I've always believed that subjectivity is what makes academia the nightmare it is.

I found it very frustrating. After the relative freedom of the English A-level, in which any solidly argued point was accepted to the teacher, I was suddenly in a completely subjective environment. I very nearly walked out when one tutor tried to argue that Coleridge's mad opium poem Kubla Khan was sexist according to his preferred version of Marxist Literary Criticism. I do remember shouting 'It's just a bloody poem' at him, I think.

Ah, sorry, elves!

One interesting point on this with regard to Slaine is the role of dwarves in the comics. Very little is revealed about dwarf society, as far as it exists outside of human society. There is a dwarf community in one of the Diceman comics that has a mine, IIRC, in a traditionally dwarf-like manner.

However, there is also a dwarf community in one of the later time-travelling episodes -- maybe the Robin Hood one -- where the big-eared ones are looking distinctly sylvan, hiding out in the woods in a very elf-like manner, resembling ElfQuest wolf-riders more than they did Ukko! The point is also made here that dwarves are at least partially El creatures themselves. So, if you want little people of the woodlands, a dwarf community might also do the trick.
 
Ah! Haven't seen the Robin Hood strips yet. I'd always imagined the dwarves to be slightly more along the lines of Alberich or Fafnir in the Ring Cycle - crafty, dodgy, untrustworthy but phenomenal craftsmen. Add to this certain prehistoric tin mining legends around Cornwall...

Mind you the Norse dwarves were meant to be very competant sorcerors -something the comic goes against with the 'Earth Power of a small newt' thing... still there's always goats for that kind of thing.

I would imagine any community of dwarves would be perhaps regarded with incredible suspicion, similar to the prejudice tinker communities would encounter. Dwarves are able to get into places and get wealth that ordinary miners couldn't get. Must have stolen it. Cue beatings.

There isn't much about dwarves at all - something which could be expanded on. But at least there's more than Elves - either Mr. Mills is going to surprise us or we could surprise him?

As a thought, how far do we want to slide from established Slaine cosmology with this setting? Do we want to slide at all?

Given the current incarnation of fomorians as headgear (yes I know, not your usual aquaphibians this lot) there are some gaps which the comics have and which the game setting would be readier to bring into play.

In addition, the goblins seem to have shifted from cowardly assassins and incompetant warriors (Diceman 1) to brutish El-beast warriors summoned up by unpleasant sorts.

Far be it from me to wiffle on about consistency...

Anyways, have to dash onto another thread and outrage a few folks.
 
satyre said:
As a thought, how far do we want to slide from established Slaine cosmology with this setting? Do we want to slide at all?

Given the current incarnation of fomorians as headgear (yes I know, not your usual aquaphibians this lot) there are some gaps which the comics have and which the game setting would be readier to bring into play.

In addition, the goblins seem to have shifted from cowardly assassins and incompetant warriors (Diceman 1) to brutish El-beast warriors summoned up by unpleasant sorts.

Consistency is not too tricky with Slaine, as the core setting for the game is in the past of the current strip. We basically have a reasonably free reign to fill in the gaps (this is particularly noticeable with books like the Finians, which I've just completed -- the comic gives almost no information on them other than that their capital is Finias, king is Gann, and weapon is the Spear of the Sun!

As for the current fomorians, I just assumed that was a technique a few fomorian sorcerers had uncovered, rather than a radical alteration to the role of the fomorians in general.

The goblins have various roles in the comics, though they've always been Els (they're from the same El world as the mysterious Elves). They're summoned in Slaine: The Horned God, but yes they do occasionally appear in a very different role in Diceman and elsewhere.
 
would it be possible to have a slayer type guide to slaine creatures like goblins and dwarves as are differant from published types
 
toothill man said:
would it be possible to have a slayer type guide to slaine creatures like goblins and dwarves as are differant from published types

I suspect if it happens at all, it'll happen in the magazine. I'm not sure enough Slaine fans would be interested in it to make it viable as a separate book.
 
Maybe I'm missing something, but I thought that the standard fomorians still exist. Their seemed to be standard formorians in the Moloch story as well as the ones Slaine describes as Quinataurs. I admit that I'm not that that conversant with the Slaine comments as I only recently started reading 2000AD (drawn in by Judge Dredd d20 no less) but to me no inconsistancy has been made.
 
as after a brilliant holiday in cornwall came back with tons of ideas for slaine have used the dwarves as tin mining faeire folk the most frendly of the fey but still fey and so never really trusted by most simple clanfolk who always belive the worst a race can do is the norm.
 
think that dwarves can start with profession(tin miner) as a starting skill having gained this before learning theiving skills too get away from the mines :)
 
Well just to bring this thread back (hopefully) has anyone statted out Elves? Or are just using the drow or normal elves from the Monster manual/Players Guide? I don't think I myself would use them but they maybe great to introduce one or two later on in a campaign to really throw a gang of Celts.

:x "What tha Hell is that?!"

:x "Dunno, looks frail and weak!"

(Celt Warriors Look at once another and lick their lips with pleasure :twisted: :evil: ) "KILL IT!!!!"

Elf: :shock: "Ahhhhh!! I was suppose to bring you news of great Wea-AAAAGGHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!"

<Spray of Crimson and there is much rejoicing.>

:D "YAY!!! :D
 
good idea :D but when I need cannon fodder dwarves and drunes make great practice :D remember a kick a day stops your dwarf from getting in the way :wink:
 
This is true but has anyone used these critters? I don't really remember them doing much in the world of Slaine and other than being an El creature were Slaine Elves different from the typical elf?

Just some questions to clarify since I'm really not as familliar with them in the comic books. :wink:
 
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