Elves are an enigma to many folk; aloof, dispassionate, and logical, they seem almost divorced from the mortal experience, which has led to stories of them being fantastically long-lived or having some sort of connection to eldritch beings. In truth, they just feel emotions less strongly than most. This makes them more prone to considering problems logically and gives rise to their reputation for being cold and heartless, but it also makes them treasure anything and anyone who can make them feel strong positive emotions.
Elves have a supernatural talent for translating text, imbued into their bone and blood at some point before the Godswar. They are able to read all of the known languages in the world, though this does not extend to their ability to write them fluently, read magical texts, or to decode intentional encryption, only to translating alphabets and normal language into the Common tongue. It’s known (amongst elves, at least) that using this knack to translate text written in the Elder Tongues of the Old Gods can lead to madness.
What this means mechanically is that, If you are playing an Elf and come across a piece of text written in a non-English alphabet that has a tag or number on it identifying it as being produced by Wheelhouse, you can bring it to Wheelhouse and ask to translate it. Provided that the identifying tag or number is legible and matches with Wheelhouse’s records, Wheelhouse will provide you an English-alphabet version of the text to copy into your own notes. If the text is one of the Old God scripts, your character will suffer a roleplaying effect and gain a permanent point of Scriptural Madness, with each point of Scriptural Madness amplifying the severity of any further roleplay effects you gain from translating Old God texts. The To Read The Undecipherable ritual can shield your character’s mind and prevent this from occurring.
You can also come to Wheelhouse to request access to a codex of the various in-game alphabets that will allow you to translate a text written in one of them into the English alphabet, even if the text you’re translating doesn’t have a Wheelhouse tag or number on it. Note that the Elven gift only allows you to translate the alphabet; if the text is intentionally encrypted, you’ll only be able to reveal the encrypted English version of the text, and will need to decrypt it on your own.
Elves have swirling lines of two or three contrasting colors (determined by their Sublineage) stretching from the outside corner of their eyes towards their ears. They also have long and pointed ears (represented by latex or rubber prosthetics), which can be Glamoured away if need be. Each Sublineage has a specific shade of supernaturally saturated eye color that its members can sometimes display; this is represented via colored contact lenses, and can be Glamoured away if need be.
Elves are dispassionate, in that they don’t feel emotions as strongly as other mortals do. This does not mean that they don’t care about other people or things, just that whenever someone of another Lineage would feel an emotion, an Elf in the same circumstance would feel it less powerfully. They hold tightly to the things that do make them feel strongly, such as friends and family, good food and drink, moving performances and stories, and so on.
For roleplaying purposes, this means that you should try to control how much you emote — smile slightly instead of grinning, frown a little instead of scowling, keep your voice controlled instead of shouting or cheering, that kind of thing. Whatever emotion you-the-player are experiencing as your character, try to act as if you were feeling it at 25% or 50% of its actual intensity. Try to decide your course of action with as little emotional drive behind it as possible, relying on logic and dispassionate assessment rather than your gut or how you feel about something.
Don’t think you need to turn this into acting like a robot or be completely emotionless, though; elves still feel, they just don’t feel as strongly. In fact, one good way of roleplaying your character is to figure out what they do feel strongly about, and then be very protective of that thing or experience, whatever it is. (If you want an example in media, the character Frieren, protagonist of Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End, is a decent case study of a character who still feels emotions but not always as strongly as the people around her.)
Long-lived. Elves live for about 5 years longer than humans, on average, not the centuries that they are sometimes rumored to.
Emotionless. Elves don’t feel emotions as strongly as other Lineages, but they still feel them. They are not unfeeling automatons, and are not driven purely by logic; they do tend to find it easier to resist emotional urges, but that doesn’t mean that they are inherently dedicated to logic as a solution to everything.
Elegant and refined. Elves are affected by the culture around them just as any other Lineage is; elves brought up in a rough-and-tumble frontier Hold in Iskaldur or Steading in Aurendale are going to rough around the edges just like their human neighbors, while those who grow up in the halls of a Cerulean academic Schola or in a rich Rivermark House are going to be as refined and polite as any humans brought up in that environment would be.
The Elven Sublineages each originated from one the five Dread Empires, tailored by their Old God master to fit into and serve their empire’s needs. That was over three millennia ago, however, and many Elves have migrated to other parts of the Continent in the ages since the Godswar. While Elves in some areas are more likely to be of a particular Sublineage (such as Snow Elves in Iskaldur, or Sun Elves in the Cerulean League), there has been so much cross-migration over the centuries that it’s not at all uncommon to find any Sublineage of Elf anywhere on the Continent. (You can play any Sublineage of Elf in any nation; do not feel as if you must play an Elf of a specific Sublineage based on which nation you are a member of.)
Each Elven Sublineage also has a mechanical trait granting resistance to the effects of specific Old Gods, which interacts with some of the Arcanum Progenia rituals.