Elf Replacement: Moon Folks

A hodge-podge post in presenting various, somewhat disparate idea for a 'Moon Folks' race, drawing inspiration from the Lunarian of Final Fantasy IV, Celestrian of Etrian Odyssey V and Soratami of Magic: The Gathering and other disparate sources. Mind you, the idea of associating elves with the moon or another planet is by now old hat and has been done before in Golarion, Pathfinder's setting, where Elves originally came from their equivalent of Venus. The idea was also brought up by Joseph Manola at Against The Wicked City, among many others that can't be recalled right now but swear I've read before. I figured I'd give it my own spin as well as slowly shape my ideas for a JRPG-esque setting, as highlighted here and here.

Tamiyo the Moon Sage by Eric Deschamps

The Moon Folks

The being called Moon Folks do not call themselves that. What they call themselves no one knows, but they have been around in history from time to time, never gathering in one place on The Planet to form any coherent nation but enough for archaeological records to show they were around. Most Moon Folks who come down to The Planet tend to be broadly split into a few categories. There are the agents (who serve some higher power or political figure), who tend to want to set themselves up as advisors to powerful individuals (think like Merlin) or as some wandering magician serving some higher power (sort of like Gandalf). Then there are the exiles, who flee due to some crushing defeat of either themselves or their allies and who abandon their homeland to become land-dwelling mortals. Some of them can be great heroes (or at least sire them) but others are foul villains with sinister agendas.

As a race, the Moon Folks do not fall anywhere on the Good or Evil side: if they fall on any side it is most likely beyond human comprehension. They never really side with any cosmic force of absolute destruction, however, safe for some fallen and twisted individuals. They live for centuries and when they die their bodies turn to light and vanish to grow into Moon-Pearls at the bottom of their lunar seas. While capable of reproduction, for the most part their society is one of reincarnated spirits made flesh, living off in their crystalline cities tended by magical homoculi and other weird things which would populate a late-game JRPG city on the moon. Moon-Folks are notoriously disconnected from nature, as they live in the bizarre and mostly-sterile landscape of the moon.

Physically, the Moon-Folks vary greatly in appearance, which is shaped by arcane forces and bizarre eldritch rules only known to themselves. While a sizeable portion of them do look like ethereal and beautiful humans with light pastel or white hair, some displays odd traits like truly elongated, almost rabbit-like ears (think 'anime elf ears'), horns, feathers for hair, three eyes or seven fingers and toes. They rarely look monstrously deformed as these alien features tend to be delicate and well-formed...but they certainly look alien and weird.

Moon Folks Adventurers

Most Moon Folks encountered on The Planet are adventurers: the rare few who aren't generally have managed to earn themselves a rather cozy spot from which they can either observe or influence the world, such as the aforementioned court magicians, prophets or sages. Questing moon-knights and wandering sorcerers travel far and wide in search of purpose and hidden truths and only rarely do the Moon Folks ever create a village or outpost for themselves: these tend to be secret bases and hidden villages built to guard places of great power or pathways between the planet and the moon.

Magnolia, from Bravely Second.

Just how wise Moon Folks are really is...up to debate. Most are ill-prepared for life on The Planet, even if their past incarnations have gone 'down there' before. In fact, odds are that whatever a specific Moon Folk remember is centuries out of date anyway. In spite of their smugness many of them fumble at basic tasks, which can amuse humans. Every generation there are a few Moon Folks who fall in love with mortals and produce offspring.

There tend to be two paths which appeal to the Moon Folks: that of the spellcaster and that of the hybrid jack-of-all-trades. In systems which use multi-classing, Moon Folks should be encouraged to multiclass: a reflection of their many lives and the phases of the moon. It is in Moon Folk nature to diversify their skill set and fighting style. Some do it because they feel the strong pull of a past life while others do it to distance themselves from a past life, such as one who was a Fighter in a previous life now having the Rogue class as this current incarnation is much more two-faced and doesn't really feel like being a master swordsman. Especially if the past incarnation got stabbed in the face by a goblin. This conveniently allows the Moon Folks to use the Elf class from systems where such a thing exist or to use Magic-User with maybe a tweak or two.

Moon Maidens

Cecil Harvey from FF IV, the ORIGINAL
'brooding bishonen' of the franchise.

For the most part, Moon Folks don't reproduce the 'old fashioned way'. Those who reproduce with don't have to produce an offspring which is female...but if you ever needed some mysterious, mystically-gifted and impossibly cute and sweet  blue-haired girl to drive the plot it would most likely be a Moon Maiden. Lacking the wisdom of other Moon Folks, the Moon Maidens are often cruelly exploited and manipulated. Reproducing with humans yield a human offspring (albeit often quite lovely in appearance or magically-gifted but otherwise human) while two Moon Folks reproducing together brings to life an entirely new Moon Folk soul, which grows as a pearl in the moon sea as any other. Often called Moon Maidens, Moon Princess or something equally fancy they don't automatically have to be female.

Some Moon Maidens come into being on their own as part of vague, ill-defined prophecies without having any parents while others still occur when a moon pearl fall to the planet early in it's infancy, birthing a Moon Folk (initially) disconnected from past lives. A few rarer Moon Maidens are born of human parents either due to, again, ill-defined prophecies or the mother being exposed to the moon pearl which transfer the unborn life to the unsuspecting woman or, in some cases, a man whose next child will be a Moon Maiden. These Moon Maidens born of human parents tend to share some resemblance to the parent but tend to have some odd, tell-tale sign of their inhuman heritage.