Hello, Students
It's been a while since I've done one of these, and now after watching through both the Hobbit & LOTR trilogies I thought now would be a good time to talk about Elrohir.
Thing is I'm not sure where to start or what to really say about him. It's hard to express how important he is in the development of the world of PSA. To do that you have to talk about the Dökkálfar and their creation, which then you start to talk a lot less about Elrohir. And then you end up having to talk about the Svartálfar because the two races are so integrally linked. Which then naturally leads into discussion of the development of the other Elven races. But I will do my best to keep this focused on Elrohir and solely his development. I'm a big Tolkien fan, let's just make that known. And a big LOTR fan, which I think is obvious looking at Elrohir. While writing PSA (the novel) I hit about the halfway point and realized, I hadn't used really my favorite fantasy race yet to any meaningful capacity. I had introduced Malachi, but he wasn't a central character, nor was he likable. And I didn't want to do generic creatures and races. At this point I was solely trying to pull from real world legends, hence why the only ones from that former category mentioned are the "Flying Monkeys" which I retroactively turned into a race of my own creation (sort of you'll find out what I mean if you hang around the Chimp Gang enough). Anyways, the "Dark Elves" came to mind, which then lead me down a very long, and frankly complicated rabbit hole at times. Since there is virtually no information about the Dökkálfar specifically, I just had to make stuff up on my own. And this is why Elrohir is so important, because he was the first one, he laid the ground work. So I borrowed things from modern fantasy, Tolkien, and my own imagination to create their culture and history. Which also all served to explain our real world mythology about them and why it's so unclear and sometimes contradictory. Back to Elrohir. Being I'm such a big LOTR fan I sort of used that as a guide. I suppose, sort of unconsciously I wanted Elrohir to make players/readers feel how Legolas makes me feel. So the player/reader sort of takes on the role of PSA's Aragorn, with Johnny McCree serving as its Gimli. Again I don't really recall this being intentional, so as a reason I could introduce a Cactus Cat in a fun way. I believe the thought process was, "Elves traditionally like animals, so what if he's an aid to a Cactus Cat." Again sort of being like Legolas in that way by helping others. Though my Dökkálfar ended up having nothing to do with animals and actually turned out arguably kind of the opposite of Tolkien's Elves. Which was intentionally, I wanted to do the opposite of what people may expect. So I kind of turned Elrohir into an outlier shown through the use of Idril, Elandorr, and Eldrin, was well as Malachi, who all represent the more common type of Dökkálfar and Hvítálfar respectively. I don't want to get into Elrohir's backstory because I do think part of his charm and pursuing a relationship with him is unraveling who exactly he is. So to share it all here would just diminish the first initial experience with him. What is important to note, is that like I said before Elrohir doesn't really represent his people as a whole, he's much closer to a Svartálfar. Design wise, Elrohir's borrows a lot from modern fantasy, his clothes should actually look very familiar to those of you enjoy LOTR like I do. I went with red eyes because we as a species have seemed to agreed Dark Elves should have red eyes. And the same goes for the hair. Elrohir I don't think is particular special on his own, he is sort of the basic Elven archetype. But he was the first character to be drawn for PSA, and he was the first of the Dökkálfar to be written and introduced. Which has it's own merits in my opinion. I feel like he's character that right now no one really cares much about, he's just kind of there. But once everyone has the chance to experience that relationship with him whether friendly or romantic; he'll become a favorite. At least that's what I'm theorizing. PSA has such a large cast of characters and I do aim to make every single one evenly fleshed out. I think where that definition differs is in the manner. I think some characters become more fleshed out sort of "emotionally" meaning you know who they are fundamentally; I could give you the rights to write for them and you'd know exactly how to do it. Those characters typically I guess probably have less historical information, like Elrohir. I didn't give you this century long list of the events in his life. I give you the key ones that really matter, Elrohir it's more about him as a person and his philosophies. I don't think this makes him any less of a character, maybe in a way it makes him even better because your free to come up with that history yourself.
So that's a little bit about Elrohir and his development. I hope you found it at least a little insightful. And I am so excited for you all to get to know him better when the game finally releases.
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