#ice elves

[nodensart]

Snow elf Thorfen started his life in Pillars of Eternity, but now he travels around the worlds of the DnD universe!

Commission portrait for Typhon 🤍

[redalorn-blog]

[adrianecarday]

"A Chill in the Air" by adrianecarday on INPRNT

[vintagerpg]

Argh, more elves? WTF? This is Ice Elves (1985). The cover is a recycled Boris Vallejo painting. It was originally used for Michael Moorcock’s novel The Ice Schooner. This module basically revolves around arctic survival and ice schoonering.

Look, as the late, great, Kenny Rogers once said, “You got know when to hold ‘em, know when to fold ‘em, know when to walk away, know when to run.” I’m gonna run. I don’t get paid enough for elves.

[pardoxysm]

I just had a dumb headcanon of how in a evolutionary standpoint, Ice Bears came to be.

(NOTE: I'm new to the fandom and basically anime watcher, so if the HC sounds stupid it might be because of that, sorry)

So, I noticed some things that I find really interesting in terms of visual and behaviors of the bears, as someone who loves bears a lot and once in a while try to learn about them.

One thing I noticed is that... despite being ice bears and white their body resembles more of a Grizzly (round wide head, hump on the back ) , but also they don't have the very droopy and far more protruding lips that Grizzlies do but yes a odd in between which makes their snout feel a bit more canine like and note as much protuding like a Polar bear snout is, making me realize that...Ice Bears are Golar/Pizzly Bears (Polar+Grizzly Hybrids), plus another thing that can prove it further is how Tank when he was alive, had a "mane" with brownish coloration that also made it's back hump stand out.

This leads to my theory: Ice Elves REALLY established themselves as the new Apex being and almost drew the local, once normal bears to extinction, leading them to hybridize in order to adapt (which is a thing that actually happens btw) and got mutated by the local magic that the Ice Elves brought.

You see, it has been established that Ice Elves have a brutal and ruthless hunting culture and that they ARE the Apex of the biome where the bears were and them killing them is something that happens often.

Now think about it. There WAS a point where the biome was just a normal place where Polars and Grizzlies lived in tandem and were the Boone's apex being, that is until the whole magic rifts happened and magic got introduced to the world... including the Ice Elves.

You can see this was at first a MASSIVE Hydrogen Bomb and Coughing Baby situation, with the Elves knocking down the Apex status of the bears and driving them to near extinction.

With that, of course, the local bears attempted to adapt out of desperation through hybridization , which may sound like nothing but actually, it really made some WAY MORE LETHAL bears, you see you have Grizzly Bears, absolute powerhouses in terms of strength, and even speed and intelligence, as Grizzlies have a astoundingly impressive memory that they even pass down previously known knowledge through generations, and overall they have a remarkable intelligence that actually leads to occasions of tool usage and even being able to learn commands. And then we have Polar Bears, who are MASSIVE and are known to have a intelligence factor that Grizzlies tend to lack, tactical calculation, which makes them efficient hunters at killing animals twice their own size, not to talk about their brutal resilience, their impressive scent and tracking/orientation skills.

Basically even in a nature standpoint, a hybrid of a grizzly and a polar bear is a HORRIFYING idea because that's just cracking up all dangerous aspects that bears already have to 100, basically making them a resilient, really smart, really strong and maybe away bigger bear, that WILL track you down.

And that's not all, with the introduction of Ice Elves to the biome, so arrived magic which came from them, and so basically mutated some bears to fit their survival adaptations which pretty much made what is already considered an absurdly powerful bear in concept, a complete juggernaut since magic pretty much made them much bigger than they should be and possibly enhanced many other aspects (while also maybe somehow changing them enough to allow actually successful generational hybrids turning Ice Bears officially their own species?), now here's the interesting thing that may be a bit overlooked because well, there are a ton of beasts that use magic and aren't... necessarily "smart", but I find it interesting to mention none the less, magic in general in order to be mastered requires intelligence, and according to some wikis: "Ice Bears despite their feral and brutish appearance have a very tactical Battle style, using their ice magic to their own advantage to disable their enemy." Which makes me wonder...How smart are these bears exactly to actually be using magic in a tactical manner.

Now focusing on behavior change which is what I consider the most interesting aspect of everything that I've already stated. You see another thing that surprised me was the fact that these bears live in packs. This is actually way more interesting than it seems because...the social nature of bears in general have been pretty odd and ambiguous, with many of them being solitary due to the seriously competitive nature of survival that they have, with the only occasions of socialization being in mating season, once in a season event like salmon runs or whales going ashore (in Polar bear occasions) and mainly family meetings. (Note: there are occasional exceptions to what I listed, like how male polar bears once in a while play wrestle and other odd things, again, the social nature of the bear is still pretty ambiguous to this day, there is STILL a lot to learn about of how social these animals are, usually odd situations of sociability occurs when there isn't competition for food or mating.)

The reason I put Family Meetings in italics is due to how it actually makes sense for them to adapt a wolf like social structure , not because well...bears and canids had some very far away relatives but how the ACCURATE wolf social structure ( without the whole alpha beta omega stuff which is very inaccurate) is based on pretty much just caring about your family and taking care of the most vulnerable concidering that numbers are power when dealing with a powerful enemy, and you sure as hell you don't want to lose allies.

I believe that the bears adapted a pack-like system due to taking reference of the Elves themselves as they hunt in group, and to adapt such system provides took a while concidering that they had to shake off the whole idea of in species competition, although with the whole Polar Bear aspect it probably was a bit more easier considering that they are relatively more social than Grizzlies as they engage in play fight and occasional food sharing? (Note: yes I'm aware that the Manhua and Anime use the outdated pack structure as they mention that "Tank was the pack's Alpha" but I like to imagine a more likely outcome, and yeah not being the "alpha" doesn't mean he wasn't the strongest of the pack, he definitely is.) (I also HC that a group of Ice Bears is called a Blizzard, just for fun lol).

Now with the pack system it sure did help to increase their numbers but...it's not enough, the scar that the introduction of the Ice Elves really affected them as a Tiger affects the habitat of a Sloth Bear, what does that mean? It means they are super territorial and if they see anything remotely resembling an Ice Elf it's on sight. You see, the fact that Sloth Bears have to share their territory with Tigers, the few animals that can be considered equal in terms of power and maybe intelligence to Bears, implies a brutal fight against an ambushing enemy for the Apex status leading them to be VERY aggressive to anything remotely threatening and instantly attempting to kill them and if not, severely disfigure them, which guess what, it's the same thing that's going on between Ice Elves and Ice Bears. And now here comes the most interesting part, bears in general have powerful senses... except their vision, their vision is miserable, but they make up for it with their scent sense which is SO MUCH more powerful than a bloodhound's , which means yeah, Ice Bears with no exception, now, I believe with their mutations, that they are capable to sense magic with their scent in order to track Ice Elves since their vision doesn't help them much, now, what happens to also be bipedal and have magic? Humans. Hunters specifically. Which now justifies why they are so brutally aggressive towards humans, because they confuse them with Ice Elves as their scent and magic may have some similarities.

So TL;DR: Jinwoo has a whole ass army of Bears that are so jacked up that can barely be considered bears at this point and are possibly way more smarter and useful than we give credit for and also despite them evolving themselves to be absolute juggernauts, it's not enough to dethrone the Apex status of Ice Elves, which begs the horrifying question: How Powerful Ice Elves actually are.

Thanks for coming to my crazy bear talk.

[rizzonen]

Elfbruary, eh?

Presenting Frostie (Y2K Elf edition). He might be awkward but he does have drip ❄️

[elvencantation]

me too buddy me too. that was a freaky ass noise that ice elf made 😬

[nessacousland]

Cenwen and Aryn - Spellforce: The Breath of Winter

In the days when the world was young, a dragon reigned over the skies. A dragon white as winter itself. The elves called him Aryn the Frostweaver because the world froze to ice under the mighty flap of his wings. No army in the world could defeat him, only the song of an elf queen could warm his heart."