A Different Type of Morality

 Welcome everyone!

I’ve talked in the past about how I wanted to use The Fire of Elves (Project X) to improve my writing skills. I also wanted to use it to improve my world-building skills as well. I have future projects in mind beyond The Hunter’s Rose Series, and when the time comes to begin those projects, I want to be ready.

A key component of world-building is creating unique cultures. In The Hunter’s Rose series, I have the culture of Vitalba village. It’s small, tight-knit, and based largely on late medieval/early Renaissance France, Germany, and Switzerland. 

For the Fire of Elves (FoE), I wanted something different. That is, not just a different human culture, but an entirely unique culture that would seem strange or unsettling in certain ways. Since my new book was a novelette, I didn’t have time to fully flesh out a culture. So instead, I chose to have their system or morals based on one single idea: the value of life.

Elves in FoE treasure all forms of life. Whether it is the trees of the forest, the animals that cross their paths, or even the humans who hate them, the Elves avoid inflicting death whenever possible. Even self defense against a living creature is a terrible moral dilemma for them, and they will take every opportunity to disengage or disarm an enemy rather than take a life.

So that posed a bit of a problem for me as a writer. What about all the monsters in my setting like the triglods, kavtors, and scathains? The solution became apparent. What’s the opposite of producing life? Consuming it. So the monsters in my setting only consume, they don’t replenish. When they die, their carcasses poison the ground so that everything in that spot dies. When they reproduce, it’s through cloning like starfish, aphids, or whiptail lizards. They just create more consumption without even replenishing the soil with their remains.

Thus, to the elves, they’re not really life. They are unlife. As such, the elves feel justified in killing them to prevent their reproduction. 

The humans, on the other hand, have no qualms about taking life. It’s a natural part of their world view. So when the main character, Saben, comes into contact with Elves, he struggles with their sense of morals. He doesn’t fully adopt them until… well, I don’t want to spoil it for you. You’ll have to read the book to find out!

Until next time, take care of each other.

Peace,

-Troy