>Elves.
Immortal. Wise. Impossibly beautiful.
Standing a foot taller than man, and stronger, swifter, and more gifted with magicks and academia than practically any other race.
Their people, though less numerous than others, are a byword for intellectualism, chivalry, beauty, grace, perfection, passion, devotion, and the strong values to be found in conservatism and tradition.
So why do they all dress so sluttily?
Well, there's actually quite an interesting reason.
Contrary to popular belief, elves physically mature at the same rate as humans. Basically matured by 16, and undeniably physically adults by 25, before they 'cease ageing'.
Nor do they lack libidos.
What inevitably follows their entry into adulthood is a LOT of what can be generally categorized as 'lewd behavior, misadventures, and misbehaving'.
Orgies, adventures, bacchanalia's, dances and party crawls. Growing more and more depraved, degenerate, and extreme as the participants acclimate and seek further and further pleasures, darker and more obscene fetishes. Though, fortunately for their image, mostly this degeneracy is kept inside their own lands.
It's a reliable fact that young adult elves will frequently learn and employ flesh sculpting magic to change their bodies. Bigger tits, fatter ass, longer legs, different ears, hair, eyes. All inevitably leading into the 'supernatural beauty' many ascribe to their kind. For exactly the same reasons as any other sapient creature would.
Similarly, they'll inevitably clad themselves in the finest jewelry they can devise. The finest fabrics, the sluttiest clothes, the sultriest makeup, and the most tempting mannerisms.
Given the vitality, knowledge, experience, and extremely long lives of elves, these shows of pleasure-pursuit can last for extremely long periods of time, and can be so extensive and extreme as to genuinely endanger lesser species, or last the majority of their remaining lives.
Also, given how culturally entrenched these practices have been in elf society, elf society has gotten extremely experienced in their practice, and equally as normalized to it as, though it is kept to some checks, what is wrong with spending an immortal life in the pursuit of pleasure?
The physical/mental/magical/spiritual risks of these 'activities' and awareness that the extreme fetishes and sheer proficiency in this subject would be labeled as 'appallingly degenerate' both, are two reasons why most elven cities are secreted away, and only those deemed 'worthy' by the elves are given the key to finding them. Understanding and vitality are not a given in shorter-lived, more awkward races after all.
Though of course, different cities might have different policies on this, as there are so many potential experiences to explore with humans, orcs, goblins, centaurs or whathaveyou.
However, even for Elves, the nature of these 'shallow' pleasures is that they are fleeting.
And after 100-200 years of constant degeneracy, even the great libraries of the elves can't keep it interesting forever.
Kinks and desires once thought daring become plain and overdone. Acts that once made their pulse race become normalized and kinda uninteresting. What's the point of walking through the party bare ass naked by this point? It's doing nothing for you, it's nothing notable for anyone else.
Of course, elves adapt. Customized outfits that are more provocative than simple nudity. Increasingly perverse behaviors. Oh no I've gotten stuck in a tentacle plant cave for twenty years as a seed bed. Maybe even finding a less 'jaded' individual, and exposing them to these acts and feeding sympathetically on their pleasure and/or pain.
But generally, for most of those, even they lose their pleasure, and post cortical clarity reveals them to be... kinda sad, after the fact. As what pleasures can be found will be outweighed by the immoralities or sorrows of said acts.
This is what formed the myth that an elf is only an adult past the century mark. As while elves typically take anywhere up to four centuries to truly loose interest, after a century most elves typically gain awareness that shallow pleasures are fleeting, and garner the first shard of the inevitable wisdom that will come over the next few centuries as their once all-consuming passion for pleasure burns out as the extents of sensation, pleasure and pain become 'known things'.
All things considered, it's something of a less on time, pleasure, and the elven condition of immortality. It can be extremely depressing, difficult, and sees some to suicide. Though those who go through it, find the whole thing grants them considerable wisdom in hindsight.
By 400 (assuming they live that long of course) elves will have definitely abandoned the pursuit of 'shallow' pleasures, in favour of personal passions, academia, and self-betterment. While these offer less of a pleasure response, they do not diminish so readily. Here is where the blademasters, scribes, wizards, artificers, priests, druids, chefs, and mastersmiths of myth and legend will inevitably find themselves as unless the elf is slain in some more active manner, they will only grow more knowledgeable and skilled in their passion.
It is also where the true elvish 'gift' for manners and fine etiquette is developed as, with ever-mounting wisdom, the functional and personal benefits to poise, elocution, mannerisms and good noble bearing become more plainly understood.
Though, inevitably, some find the pursuit of carnal or physical sensation as passion, it is typically more academic, and less wild.
Actual interactions do still take place, as the desires to beauty, companionship and stimulus are all there still. But they're always much more about emotion, romance or friendship than anything physical, as like with their passions, these do not diminish so readily over the years.
Now, when we consider that the 'champions' that Kings call upon in desperation. The Great Sages, Sword-Saints, Arch-Priestess' and High Druidess'. We must remember these ancient beings, when they're persuaded to leave their training yards, towers and comfortable seats on magical oaks, are often over a thousand, or thousands, of years old.
This means over a thousand years of wisdom, experience, and many many lifetimes of expert scholars almost entirely spent, down to the second, on the subject in which they are expert in. As well as a thousand years of self-discovery, self-betterment, and etiquette-perfecting.
However, it does also mean a thousand years of refinement of their form and outward appearance, desensitization to erotica or sexual activities, societal normalization of their style of dress. And more than likely, 600 to 900 years of not really thinking much about it at all.
So yes, while the great Sage of Gaia is undoubtedly; the best in her field, carries herself with faultless poise, grace, elegance and almost radiates with nobility and gentle maternity because she believes in its importance, she is undoubtedly going to sashay that body into the court in an outfit a brothel whore would flush in shame at, and not really think anything of it.