Firstly, as I said earlier, HG, you don't automatically suffer penalties from having a Consequence. The sort of -2 you're adding in only applies if the Consequence is being invoked and you are receiving a fate point for it happening (or if it's being invoked for free directly after its creation, like any other Aspect). This means that your roll results are respectively Great/+4 and Average/+1.<br/><br/>Also, as you rolled a -3 on your second roll and Fate Point expenditures occur after the dice land, I would suggest re-rolling rather than adding 2 to the result. If you re-roll, you will usually gain (or lose) shifts of success back towards the average of +/-0. This would gain you 3 shifts in this circumstance (on average), compared to the 2 that the flat increase gets you.<br/><br/>Also, given that anyone can make a mediocre roll of any sort at any time (there are no "restricted" skills), simply having someone else make the same attempt probably wouldn't be a terrible idea. Spending a fate point would be advisable, though, given that rolling +2 is somewhat unusual.<br/><br/>--<br/><br/>The information on Wood Elves is quite good, and does a fair job of explaining their relatively marginal presence on the regional scale. The structure you've explained sounds very useful for low-friction internal organization, but not for large-scale mobilization, as human societies often specialize in. The lack of written media is, of course, somewhat of a concern for reasons unrelated to record-keeping: messages must rely entirely on the memory and trustworthiness of the individual carrying it. I am somewhat curious about how conflicts are resolved, if no precedents or authority figures exist. Low-scale human societies (e.g. hunter-gatherer bands) are notoriously violent in part because of the lack of mutually-acceptable conflict resolution methods. While they may be significantly less common than in human societies, how do Wood Elves handle significant grudges or personal vendettas? Are the same spirits used for historical knowledge recruited to resolve such disputes, and what occurs when an elf refuses to accept whatever resolution is settled upon?