Elves are quite wiry-thin, with high metabolisms and low body fat percentages. They may not be tall, but males are seldom shorter than 5'8", and females seldom shorter than 5'4". Their eyes are almond-shaped but rather large, and are generally in the green-yellow-brown color range. They are not typically very strong, but their perception is fairly good. They have no facial hair.
Half-elves (of human and elven stock) look very much like a combination of their parent races. They can be shorter than elves and may grow facial hair. They have a predilection for magic, but also favor nature and are much better at attunement magic.
The Elves of New Washington are a peculiar race. It is possible (but not proven) that they are descended from the faerie races. Scientists postulate that the elves may be human and faerie spawn, but most elves find this hypothesis highly offensive. Elves have been around for a very long time, though their numbers were very thin in the magicless ages. Unlike many of the elves in legend and writing, modern elves are not attuned with nature at all. Their magical affinity is quite high, but it is far from natural. Despite this, many still have a great love for nature.
Elves are nearly immortal, living hundreds of years before actually growing old. It takes nearly twenty years for an elf to hit puberty, and their aging and development continue slowly. The oldest recorded age of an elf before death by disease, 'old age' or mishap is 827, but few live past 400. As though a counterweight to their natural longevity, elves suffer from a racial memory loss. Any events before the Snowfall or more than a hundred years in the past begins to fade and become cloudy. This loss is a significant source of stress and angst to many elves, especially those who were ostensibly alive before the Snowfall.
There is also a sub-race of Elves known as High Elves.
High Elves are quite similar in appearance to elves, but are from a purer stock. Having pulled away from their faerie roots and evolved independently, High Elves are a touch stockier than their cousins but are also paler. All High Elves have blond or white hair, and their eyes are usually a color of grey. They have pale skin and are exceedingly beautiful.
High Elves are magical adepts and born pioneers. They are as close to magic as they are removed from nature, and it is said that it is a high elf who first established the four-element system around which the basis of elven incantation and rune magic was built. Unlike elves, high elves are reasonably good with technology, though the art of technomancy, being a type of attunement magic, is very far beyond them. High elves value knowledge and power over all else, and many end up working in corporate venues because they are well-suited to it. Almost all high elves are aristocratic-class; they tend to equate a lack of wealth with a lack of competence.
High Elves suffer the same lack of memory that their thinner-blooded cousins do, but it is said that more 'ancestral memory' is retained. Very old High Elves are very enigmatic and knowledgeable.