Elven Genetics

Or why the world is falling apart

My clever daughter is currently studying genetics in biology at school. It’s an interesting enough topic, and she’s been using our family as test subjects- pointing out some of our physical characteristics that are the product of dominant and recessive genes.

Do you know that we share 99 percent of our DNA with chimpanzees? And we share 8 percent of our DNA with bananas?

T’other day while we were discussing genes my four year old son was playing with our big box of unScaped D and D figures. He likes them a lot and he stands them in great long rows of armies facing each other. He did that for a while and then moved on and my daughter told him that she would do the picking up.

But she did not pick up. She began dividing the figures into genetic groupings. She started with the obvious and then connected the groups by probable lineage.

There were the reptiles and dragons, various mammals, elementals and a few creatures that had been created by divine interventions. There was a large pile of undead. And then there were those two old races, the dwarves and the elves.

We know from myths that elves interbred with anything they could- resulting in half elves, drow, etc. Doesn’t say much about elven ethics, does it?

The elven genetic line itself has many splits and folds in it. Supposedly the elves are an ancient race. They have many splits and off-shoots- they don’t seem to be very stable genetically.

My daughter, who actually likes elves, suggested that humans are actually evolved from elves. If you disagree with this, consider that the Asian and African elephant – very similar animals- cannot produce viable offspring. Yet humans and elves can- this suggests that we are nearly genetically identical.

Using the figures we have, my daughter created a flow like this:


The half elves are an interesting case. Some stories have it that they can choose to be either elven or human. The elf parts seem to be recessive, while the human genes are dominant- hence our vast proliferation across this planet.

Genetically a half elf would have the genes of both elf (ee) and human (EE) Any offspring of two half elves could have any of the following possible genetic compositions:

EE (full human)
ee (full elf)
Ee (half elf)
eE (half elf)

So you see two half elves could genetically produce more half elves, an elf, or a human. Again, elves and human seem to be almost identical genetically. Dare I see we are actually elven?

Now we’ll compare the degenerating elven line to that of the dwarves:

Dwarf-----------------------------------------------------------

Culturally we know the dwarves don’t breed with other species, but throughout history we must accept that in wars and crimes the unspeakable must have occurred and yet there are no half –dwarves. Therefore it must be that dwarves are too biologically different for there to be viable offspring. We are not related to dwarves. They are a separate species.

There is some rare anecdotal evidence of half-dwarves but they were not present in our test figure population, so they were not considered.

I may be a known elf hater but I will concede that as a species they seemed to start out okay- but of course we just have their word for that. As time has passed genetically they have mutated and interbred producing nasty things. Elves tend towards evil.

As the world changes and mutations occur evolution weeds out the species that can no longer compete. It is said the elves and dwarves have fallen away. But closer examination suggests that the elven line is still with us, in fact, we are of elven lineage and the continuing destruction of this world and corruption of our DNA is a direct result of the amoral actions of the degenerate elves of old.

So now you know why the world is falling apart- why there is such hate, fighting and sin – we are all the descendants of elves.