Talk:Kelson Darktreader

CYOA
Wait, there is an FR Choose Your Own Adventure book? ~ Lhynard (talk) 22:31, November 30, 2016 (UTC)
 * Apparently, there are two gamebooks. Spawn of Dragonspear and Knight of the Living Dead. Both seem to be fairly rare, unfortunately. --Ir&#39;revrykal (talk) 04:45, December 1, 2016 (UTC)


 * Ah, so they aren't exactly Choose Your Own Adventure books. I used to read those all the time as a kid. ~ Lhynard (talk) 06:10, December 1, 2016 (UTC)

Wood-Elf, Moon-Elf & Sun-Elf
Page 136 of "Ghosts of Dragonspear Castle" identifies Kelson as follows: "Half-Wood (Moon) Elf Male Ranger" Now, what can be taken away from this is that Elorfindar's late wife (the mother of Darfin, Shalendra, Elorshin, and most importantly, Filvendor) was a Wood Elf; Filvendor in turn took after his mother to some extend and passed on his Wood-Elven traits to his sons: Kelson and Filarion. Now, the reason that I don't just add this detail to Kelson and Filarion's pages is the (Moon) part of their description: Filarion being described as the following on Page 137 in the same book: Wood (Moon) Elf Male Rogue. Since the Floshin family is specifically described as Sun Elves, it must be assumed that the (Moon)-descriptor is a mistake and should have said either (High) or (Sun), since Kelson's mother was Human and Filarion's almost certainly a Wood Elf to have him turn out fully Wood Elf.

For this reason I'd like to request that anyone who knows how to add NOTE sections to pages add this inconsistency to their pages (I would do so myself, but I do not know how to make those sections). MadHatter-Himself (talk) 06:17, July 27, 2017 (UTC)

I looked into the issue, and came up with this family tree:

Things that we know:
 * Elorfindar was a sun elf, and so was his wife (explicitly stated)
 * Elorfindar had other children who were half-elves
 * Darfin was a sun elf
 * Elorfindar has a great-granddaughter named Kira who was a sun/moon mix
 * Filvendor was a "full elf"
 * Filvendor was "the most like his father"
 * Kelson had blonde hair as a youth, but it started turning silver at age 73
 * Kelson's mother was human, Filarion's a moon elf

The problem comes from Ghosts of Dragonspear Castle where Kelson is described as wood (moon) half-elf, and his brother as a mood/moon elf. This implies that Filvendor was a wood/moon elf himself, which cannot be true since he is Elorfindar's son. We are left with a few possibilities:


 * It's stated that Elorfindar's wife died 200 years ago, and that he since then took 3 human wives, and kept moon elves in his retinue. It's possible that Filvendor was the child of one of these moon elves, but it is not stated,
 * Like you said, it's possible Elorfindar's wife was a wood elf, at least in part. However, this is never stated, in fact it is made clear that she is a sun elf and that Filvendor is most like his father, who is a full sun elf. This could have been retconned behind the scenes, of course.
 * The author made a mistake. This seems likely, especially since Kelson now mysteriously looks like a moon elf when nothing of the sort has been implied before (other than his hair turning from blonde to silver as he aged).
 * Ed Greenwood/some other person sitting on a lore bible for the Daggerford area which goes into more detail and explains why Kelson is suddenly both a wood and moon elf. This is possible, but difficult for us to know about.

I know for a fact Kelson appears in at least one more product, Spawn of Dragonspear, which might have more information, but sadly it is extremely rare and expensive. --Ir&#39;revrykal (talk) 09:40, July 27, 2017 (UTC)
 * This Candlekeep thread contains two posts from Ed Greenwood (through proxy), detailing the lore of the Floshin family. There's too many details to list here, but it seems Ed believes Filvendor to be a full sun elf, meaning the wood/moon elf business from Ghosts of Dragonspear Castle is likely in error. --Ir&#39;revrykal (talk) 09:47, July 27, 2017 (UTC)
 * Urgh. The further I dig into this, the bigger the mess. Eric L. Boyd has a write-up attempting to marry Ed's post to the lore found in Spawn of Dragonspear and Under Illefarn, but it's very clearly not official information. I also think this is the source of the moon elf business, as Boyd decided to make Kelson a sun/moon elf, with the human mother not being his biological mother. In his post, Ed contradicts several details already known from Spawn of Dragonspear (such as Kelson's mother's name). All in all, straightening all this out is going to take a lot of work. I think the best bet here is to stick to our own canon policy, and assume the moon/wood elf business from Ghosts is a simple error. That way we can rely on the older official sources (The North, Under Illefarn, Spawn of Dragonspear, and Ed's post), which all seem to be somewhat in agreement. The discrepancy still needs to be explained in a note, of course. --Ir&#39;revrykal (talk) 10:12, July 27, 2017 (UTC)


 * (Yay! Someone used the family tree code. :) ~ Lhynard (talk) 16:02, July 27, 2017 (UTC))


 * There is no way I could do justice to that explanation, so I added an example Note to the article for one of you guys to fill in. Just replace my text with yours and it should work just fine. &mdash;Moviesign (talk) 16:20, July 27, 2017 (UTC)


 * Ed's lore is only canon until WotC contradicts it. Ed wrote about the Floshin Family in May 2007. The recent sources about the family, contradicting this lore, listing Kelson as a half-moon elf, were published in 2013. The details are also based on Eric Boyd's Under Illefarn Anew lorebook, which is not the only material that details the family. Incidentally, he is listed as "wood (moon)" for game rules reasons, not because he is somehow both a half-moon elf and a half-wood elf. In the playtest material for Ghosts, moon elves hadn't been mentioned yet - there were high elves, wood elves and drow - that was it (high elves had not yet been associated with moon elves like they were once the Player's Handbook came out a year later). Ghosts of Dragonspear was the first 5e source mentioning moon elves. -hashtalk 20:59, August 2, 2017 (UTC)
 * Sure, but since Under Illefarn is unpublished, the entire rationale behind Kelson's race change is missing. It seems more appropriate to go with the consistent explanation from older sources than the single-line race change with 0 explanation from Ghosts. --Ir&#39;revrykal (talk) 03:25, August 3, 2017 (UTC)