Elf, Aquatic

Sea Elves are reclusive and distrust most land-dwelling civilizations. This is true even for other breeds of elves. While able to breathe on land, these elves typically live underwater and are more likely to ally with Triton and Merfolk than any of the “boat-riders” that live above the waves. Any good they do for the surface dwellers is usually an unintended consequence of their actions. However, despite being extremely cautious, they were also extremely curious, and aquatic elves near the shore would often spend a significant amount time secretly observing the land-bound races.

Basic Information

Anatomy

Due to their gills, aquatic elves were amphibious. However, the amount of time aquatic elves could leave the water without doing harm to themselves seemed to vary. For some it would be mere hours while some seemed to have no limitation on their time away from water at all. This variation was consistently inconsistent, even among the same tribes.
Additionally, the result of going beyond these limits varied. Some would begin to "drown" on land after a short duration, while others simply experienced a loss of vitality due to drying out and could remain on land indefinitely, remaining healthy if they took the time to soak for an hour every day.

Biological Traits

Aquatic Elves usually have blue or light green skin, often with stripes and patches of discoloration. They are robust and tall with long limbs. Their thick skin gives them protection from the cold of deep water, keeping them comfortable at just above freezing temperatures. Their fingers and toes have a thick webbing between them.
Their most distinctive feature was the gills visible in their necks and over their ribs. These gills aren't always visible, and flare up during emotional moments. Compared to other elves, aquatic elves have deep voices and are larger and heavier.   Aquatic Elves usually have blue or light green skin, often with stripes and patches of discoloration. They are robust and tall with long limbs. Their thick skin gives them protection from the cold of deep water, keeping them comfortable at just above freezing temperatures. Their fingers and toes have a thick webbing between them. 
Aquatic elves can have eye colors including turquoise, white, black, blue, green, and rarely silver. Their hair is usually thick and somewhat stringy, and some aquatic elves had a rough hair texture. It could be blue-green, emerald green, blue, black, silver, or red. Warriors clipped their hair short, but other aquatic elves wore it long and flowing. Females in particular sometimes grew their hair up to 4 feet long.

Ecology and Habitats

Aquatic elves generally build settlements in calm waters that supported coral reefs or seaweed forests. These settlements usually had populations between 100 and 400, though communities both significantly larger and smaller existed. Aquatic elven communities were almost entirely self-sufficient, trading with others rarely and then only for luxuries. They subside on kelp grown on their farms and fish they hunt. Wandering heralds who would deliver oral messages between communities.
Aquatic elf cities are wonders to behold, crafted as they are of living coral just as many elf cities on land are made from still-living trees. They gleam with mother of pearl and shells scoured bright, and among them swim fish of a thousand colors. The borders of these cities are guarded by soldiers with tridents, spears, and nets, as are the hunter-gatherer parties sent out to retrieve food among the fish and carefully cultivated fields of food plants nearby.

Additional Information

Social Structure

Aquatic elven society was based on family and clan. Noble families and monarchs ruled, but in a benign and loose fashion rather than with an iron fist. While women could and did have positions of power, aquatic elven society was largely patriarchal and inheritance ran first through the eldest son.
Deep Sashelas's clergy serve as the advisors of the aquatic elf people, often acting as counselors, healers, mediators, and defenders of their communities.

Perception and Sensory Capabilities

Aquatic elves are the least magical of the elven subraces and have fewer innate magical gifts. However, they are deeply in touch with their environment, even more so than other elves. They can detect minute changes in the currents of the water and could hear sounds underwater that surface dwellers can not perceive.

Civilization and Culture

Naming Traditions

Each aquatic elf clan has a name that is often translated into Common around non-elves, similar to the surnames of other elves. Personal names are given at birth and maintained throughout the life of the aquatic elf.

Common Etiquette Rules

The concept of private property, for the most part, did not exist among aquatic elves. Whatever given aquatic elf currently carried on their person could be considered theirs, but everything else belonged to the community.
This particularly applied to tools, weapons, and other practical items. Any aquatic elf could take one of these items whenever it was needed and regardless of who had possessed it previously, although individuals were allowed to keep relatively private dwellings. Such communal ownership meant theft was almost unknown.
The exceptions to this were monarchs, who often had large and elaborate homes with limited access and many personal items. However, aquatic elven rulers were a reflection of their people and usually remained rather generous.
The freedom to borrow items at will was not extended to outsiders, and surfacers were often watched carefully to make sure they did not try to take advantage of the cultural practice.

Culture and Cultural Heritage

Clerical magic is much more common among aquatic elves than arcane magic. Most revere Deep Sashelas, the elven sea god of knowledge and creation. It is considered a great honor for a member of an aquatic elven family to be a priest of Deep Sashelas. The elves of generally formed their temples to Deep Sashelas from living coral, or natural stone into sprawling temples shaped like sea shells. These temples are cultural centers for the aquatic elves, serving both secular and spiritual purposes.

Common Customs, Traditions and Rituals

The creatures aquatic elves have the closest relationship with are dolphins, the chosen animal of Deep Sashelas. Any large group of aquatic elves has a 50% chance of being accompanied by a number of dolphins. 
They hold whales in great reverence as well, with many of their settlements being built on whale migration routes so that they can interact with the creatures regularly. Young aquatic elves will even travel with a whale pod for a year as a sort of pilgrimage.
Hippocampi and giant sea horses were the favored mounts of aquatic elves.[14] Many other marine creatures were also tamed as mounts, beasts of burden, and pets.

Common Taboos

Aquatic elves held promises sacred and would rather die than fail to complete something they had sworn to do. If they died in the process, their kin took over the responsibility to complete it. The slightest implication that an aquatic elf wouldn't keep his word was deeply offensive. However, promises received from non-elves were highly suspect, both because aquatic elves knew that other races won't honor the promises of their dead and because only other elves had the lifespan to complete any serious task.

Interspecies Relations and Assumptions

While it was unclear why arcane magic was so uncommon among the aquatic elves, it was rumored that the drow were somehow responsible for taking this ability from them, and this was part of the reason the aquatic elves held such a grudge against them.
A Sea Elf's trust does not extend far beyond their clan and others of their kind, and their communities were very tightly-knit. Surface dwellers are rarely accepted and universally treated as liars, thieves, or worse by default. Some tribes were so extremely isolationist. that they did not even know that the surface existed, let alone a whole world beyond it. 
Even other underwater races are generally kept at a distance, regardless of alignment. Aquatic elves fought fiercely against evil races and did not see the point of mingling with their shorter-lived neighbors even if they shared similar goals.
Aquatic elves HATE sahuagin and sharks more than any other creature and often attack them on sight. They were driven to destroy them at every opportunity. Aquatic elven societies were occasionally infiltrated by a certain type of mutated sahuagin that looked almost exactly like them, known as a malenti. Interestingly, normal sahuagin only spawned malenti when they lived in close proximity to aquatic elven communities. 
Tritons believed that this was because the two races were related, the sahuagin having been created by drow experiments upon aquatic elven captives. The elves flatly deny this shared origin, and in fact many believed that malenti do not exist at all.
Aquatic elves maintain neutral relations with merfolk and locathah. Tritons and marine storm giants sometimes live in harmony with aquatic elven settlements. 
Aquatic elves sometimes took in water genasi children to raise, although in general the genasi secretly pitied the elves for not being able to leave the water for long periods. Water genasi who served Deep Sashelas sometimes worked as emissaries between aquatic elves and their surface cousins.
Strangely, one of the few aquatic races that seem get along with the Aquatic Elves without issue are the Aventi. The haughty Aventi share the same sense of duty and religious devotion as the Sea Elves, and have earned the respect of the Elves by fighting against the same hated foes, the Sahuagin.

Lifespan

750 years

Average Height

Male: 5′ ‒ 6′6″ (150 ‒ 200 cm) Female: 4′7″ ‒ 6′1″ (140 ‒190 cm)

Average Weight

Male: 104 ‒ 260 lb (47.2 ‒ 120 kg) Female: 84 ‒ 240 lb (38 ‒ 110 kg)