Re: [Zen Elves?]

On Sun, 1 Oct 2000, ThatOtherGuy wrote:

> > Heres a query involving 3e or the CB of elves: Why in the world would elves
> > not sleep?  Either set of rules has elves doing a Zen meditation thing.
> Its
> > rather cool storywise, but I cannot find any mythological or fantasy
> > reference.  Is this an actual original idea by TSR/WotC?
>
> I think it originated with RA Salvatore's, "The Crystal Shard" (the first and
> best of the Drizzt books).  I have vague recollections of seeing it somewhere
> before that, however.  Overall I rather like it, reliving your memories each
> night in order to stay sane across 2 millennia.  Just remember elves lack true
> dreams (as in the ones that come when you sleep) in this case, however, so
> they are more likely to recognize signs from their gods and such and have a
> great affinity for certain types of dream magic (as they actually interact at
> a different level of consciousness), on the other hand they have no chance of
> encountering minor dream effects (for good or ill) and they often lack the
> purpose that dreaming of a thing (vs just desiring it) gives us.  I tend to
> make them less spacially imaginative (as in able to see something they've
> never encountered in their minds) which effects certain spells also.

Actually, I suspect it was "borrowed" (read:  stolen outright) from
Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay.  In the _Apocraphya Now_ supplement, it
describes elves as engaging in something called the bran wa shin, where
they review all of their memories and discard the ones they don't want (it
helps a near-immortal race cope with the finite amount of memory storage
they have).  Since the White Dwarf article which got reprinted in AN
predates the CBoElves *and* Drizzit do'Urden by several years, I find the
coincidence suspect.

Richard Gant
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