The Birthday Elf
On your birthday, a Birthday Elf is waiting in the village square on a small folding stool with a single balloon and a clipboard bearing your name. It uses your profile birthday — the same date the Owl Post reads — so it will not ask you twice, and if you never set one, it never comes. Talk to it and Management's records, it explains, indicate you were issued once and have failed to stop existing ever since. Today is the anniversary of the issuing. There is, regrettably, a gift.
How It Works
- Guaranteed, and personal. No dice, and no second form: it reuses your profile birthday. Set one on your profile (or the Owl Post page — same date) and the elf is in the square on the day, every time you arrive.
- It waits up to two weeks. Your birthday is a real date and you might be elsewhere for it. The elf gives the longest grace window of the three — log in within a couple of weeks and it's still there, balloon slightly sadder, cake admittedly stale, having waited anyway. Don't read anything into it.
- Once per year. One collection per birthday.
What It Brings
- The most gold of any elf, scaled up by your level, handed over the way you give someone a thing you've decided they deserve.
- Birthday Spirits — a buff that both mends you and sharpens your attacks for a good while.
- Sometimes two gems, "because it's a milestone, probably. They're all milestones. That's the trouble with years."
It also reads your days-played off the clipboard, circles the number, and writes "wow." Decline if you like; it won't move, and it points out, reasonably, that the gold has already been allocated and the paperwork to un-allocate it would outlive you both.
Privacy
The Birthday Elf, unlike its seasonal colleagues, never announces that it came — no village news, no broadcast, nothing. It reads your profile birthday only to know when to show up; how that birthday or your age appears on your profile is up to your profile, not the elf. See also the Christmas Elf and the Halloween Elf.