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| Smurfs | |
| Also Known As | Schtroumpfs, Pitufos, Schlumpfe, Puffo, other names depending on the language Species 0002 (Psychelian species designation code) Progenitors (Polaris Psyche's personal reference) |
| Race Type | Humanoid |
| Existence | Real in-universe |
| Residence | Smurf Village |
| Population | A little over 100 known Smurfs currently |
| First Appearance | EMPATH: The Luckiest Smurf (novel) |
- See the article Smurfs (race) at Smurfs Wiki for the version of the characters that appear in other Smurfs fanfiction.
The Smurfs are the main group of characters that are central to the Empath: The Luckiest Smurf story series. They live in a village hidden within a forest, the location of which is known only to the Smurfs. It is presumed that their nation of origin is Belgium, where they are known by their French name Schtroumpfs, as documented by Peyo in the 20th century.
Physical Makeup
See also Smurfs (Empath stories)/Physiology.
Physically, a Smurf is usually no more than "three apples tall" (in human measure, probably around 3 inches) and has a pear-shaped body with an oval-shaped head, springy legs, and limber arms, with a short stubby tail sticking out from his or her buttocks. The springy legs allow a Smurf to jump to high places or across rocks and branches rather easily. It is estimated that a Smurf can run up to 10 feet per second and has a vertical leap of 4 to 12 inches.
In the Empath: The Luckiest Smurf story series, Smurfs are naturally born both male and female with a reproductive cycle similar to humans, though gestation usually takes from seven to nine months. However, the relative absence of female Smurfs within Empath's generation has given the impression to some observers, including Empath, that the Smurfs were really a single-gendered race that do not physically reproduce, a legend that in this particular universe has been passed down and made part of the official legend in the modern-day world through the comic book stories and cartoon shows.
The male Smurf is mostly bald and relatively hairless. He does not begin to sprout facial hair (a beard and/or moustache) until sometime around his early 300s. Grandpa Smurf, being in his 1000s, is the only known male Smurf at present who also has head hair growing around the back of his head, indicating that additional hair growth may be a sign of advancing age for a male Smurf. Because of the lack of head hair, male Smurfs wear hats on their heads. Besides that, male Smurfs also only wear pants, though a few Smurfs do wear clothing on their torsos; the most likely reason for this is that a Smurf's blue skin is able to keep a Smurf's body within normal body temperatures (within the range of 36.3 - 37.1 °C (97.3 - 98.8 °F) for males, 36.5 - 37.3 °C (97.7 - 99.1 °F) for females).
Smurfs tend to age slower than humans and thus live longer than humans. A Smurf reaching his 100 years of age is usually considered an adult, with relative mental maturity of humans somewhere between mid-adolescence and early twenties. It is rare for a Smurf to live to around 1000 years of age, as Grandpa Smurf has done. The Psyche Master, who secretly is a Smurf, has succeeded in living for more than 2000 years, most likely because of his developing mental abilities in the creation of the Psyches.
The Smurfs in the EMPATH story series are mostly vegetarians, though there are rare occasions where some Smurfs are seen eating meat-based products, such as Hefty with his hot dog in "King Smurf". (It is most likely that these meat-based products are actually meat substitutes that were created by the Smurfs.) A few plants that are essential to their diets are sarsaparilla leaves and smurfberries.
General Intelligence
The general intelligence of the Smurf race in whole seems to be based on a level of obliviousness. Examples of that can be found in stories like "The Purple Smurfs", where Handy Smurf carries an infected Smurf over his shoulder, leaving himself wide open for that infected Smurf to bite him and infect him as well. Or when the Smurfs have succeeded to capture an infected Smurf and bring him to Papa Smurf's lab, but only Papa Smurf was smart enough to flee the scene when that infected Smurf escapes while all the others just go "He bit me!" and basically let themselves be infected. Another common fault of the Smurfs is that they always fall for Jokey Smurf's joke with the exploding gifts, no matter how many times they received one before. Empath, being raised among the Psyches, eventually calls out his fellow Smurfs for their rather oblivious and selfish behavior in regards to treating him as their idol without letting him have any chance to speak for himself.
Society Structure And Culture
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| Papa Smurf, the leader of the Smurf Village |
The Smurfs are led by a single adult Smurf of advanced years, who happens to be Papa Smurf, who is around 547 years old at the time of the Empath: The Luckiest Smurf novel. He functions as both a village leader and a father figure, directing them in their daily tasks and serving as a mediator in disputes, using his skills, wisdom, intelligence, and power with benevolence. Each Smurf is given a name that's usually based on a talent, an occupation, or a dominant personality trait exhibited by that Smurf; the name can define that Smurf's particular role in their society, though at times a Smurf may seek to expand his range of talents and abilities or to outgrow certain traits they are named after. Sometimes a foreman would be selected among the young Smurfs to direct the other Smurfs in their tasks, such as Hefty. The clothing colors of the Smurfs were initially a different color for each male adult Smurf to indicate that Smurf's own family line, with the children and unmarried female Smurfs wearing white. However, as Papa Smurf became the only survivor of his generation of Smurfs, his red colored suit simply became a symbol of leader status.
The Smurfs' community generally takes the form of a cooperative, sharing and kind environment based on the principle that each Smurf has something he or she is good at, and thus contributes it to Smurf society as he or she can. In return, each Smurf appears to be given their necessities of life, from housing and clothes to food. The Smurfs have very little use for money, though at times they may trade something valuable to outsiders in order to get something they need, as Wooly has done in "Wild And Wooly".
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| The Smurf Village |
The Smurf community at the present time of their adventures consists of a little over 100 Smurfs, which includes Papa Smurf, Smurfette, 95 male Smurfs of around 150 years old, Baby Smurf, three young boy Smurflings of 50 years old, Sassette, Grandpa Smurf, Wild, and Nanny. Some additional residents of their village include pets such as Puppy, a 1000-year-old dog that Homnibus the wizard had given to the Smurfs, Smoogle, a pink marsupial-type animal that has been a companion of Nanny, and Feathers, a crane pet of the Smurfs and a mode of transportation,
Smurfs communicate in a language that they call Smurf, which is just basically a variation of a human language where the word "smurf" is used to substitute for a noun, verb, adjective, or adverb. The language is rather intuitive since only Smurfs can understand what each other are really saying in Smurf. At this point, Empath is the only Smurf unable to fluently speak in Smurf, as his native language is Psychelian. Painter, being a descendant of the Schtroumpf clan, is one of the few Smurfs able to speak in Schtroumpf, which to humans is identical to French, though he mostly speaks a few key phrases in that particular language. Smurf names are also recorded in Schtroumpf when a Smurf is born or becomes a Smurf through other means.
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| The Smurfs doing the Dance Of 100 Smurfs during a celebration |
Smurfs celebrate birthdays and holidays, including some that are rather indigenous to the Smurf community at large. They also enjoy various recreational activities as well as arts and music, including their local sport of smurfball. Smurfs usually sing the Smurf song whenever they're happy doing something (or just happy).
Smurfs tend to be nature-based in their belief system (though some do hold to the concept of a "heaven" and a "hell", as demonstrated in "Heavenly Smurfs"), and have certain rituals that involve elements in nature. Particular in the Empath: The Luckiest Smurf story series is their reverence for their ancestors, since some of their rituals such as Redemption Day are based on them.
Smurfs are generally seen by the Psyches as being a savage race not worthy of any emulation and are referred to among the Psyches as Species 0002. Polaris Psyche, who eventually lived with the Smurfs and discovered that the Psyches were a genetically-engineered race based on the Smurfs, refers to them as Progenitors.
History
Early History
Originally the Smurfs started off as one group of people with a multitude of different languages that were similar to that of human languages, and thus were split into various clans: one clan was Smurf, another was Schtroumpf, a third was Pitufo, a fourth was Schlumpf, a fifth was Puffo, and so forth. Because of the diversity of languages, no Smurf was really able to understand each other until one Smurf came up with the universal symbol of Smurf that became part of the written language of Smurf. This symbol would be adopted into all of the known languages of the Smurfs to indicate who they were, and the word "smurf" would take on a whole series of other meanings until Smurf became the dominant language of the Smurfs, with Schtroumpf as a secondary language used mostly for recording Smurf names.
150 Years Ago...
As far as it is revealed in the Empath: The Luckiest Smurf story series, Papa Smurf and his generation of male and female Smurfs had married and given birth to a generation of mostly male baby Smurfs. Papa Smurf in particular was the father of Empath, whom he had with his wife Lillithina. His son's display of telekinetic powers, however, had become a cause of concern for his wife, who feared that Empath would be ostracized among his fellow Smurfs for having these powers. Papa Smurf, wondering about to do about the situation, took Empath to Psychelia, where the Psyche Master offered to train Empath in his abilities, but Papa Smurf was forced to leave him behind in Psychelia. As Papa Smurf had left Psychelia, the Psyche Master made it appear as though Empath had died, though in reality he had merely erased Empath's memory. Fearing the worst, Papa Smurf went home to tell his wife the bad news, which caused her to leave him only to reside with their friend Aristotle Smurf, who gave her another son named Brainy.
Papa Smurf lived in isolation from his fellow Smurfs for almost 50 years, until an unknown disease had struck his fellow Smurfs, causing them to die one by one. Unable to prevent the spread of the disease, Papa Smurf was left with the care of 97 young Smurflings which he had to raise all by himself. Some of the more talented young Smurfs helped Papa Smurf unite the village together so that they could keep it functioning the best way they knew how, causing Papa Smurf to grow into the role of the village leader and father figure until the young Smurflings were able to run things with very little supervision from him. About 20 years later, Papa Smurf received word from the Psyche Master that his son Empath was still alive and doing well in Psychelia. However, Papa Smurf was not pleased that his son now regarded him as a "savage being", unknowing in the ways of the Smurfs. Through an arrangement with the Psyche Master, Papa Smurf allowed Empath to visit the Smurf Village for one year every ten years until his 150th birthday, when he would be permanently released from Psychelia. During those visits, Empath learned about his true nature and heritage as a Smurf. For the rest of the young Smurfs, they eventually had forgotten about their parents and came to accept Papa Smurf as their one and only father.
5 Years Before Present Time...
- Related article: The Smurfs And The Magic Flute (film) at Smurfs Wiki.
- NOTE: Most if not all of the episodes from the Smurfs cartoon show up to before Season 6 took place in this universe of stories.
Five years prior to Empath's final return from Psychelia, Papa Smurf had the Smurfs search high and low for a magic flute that the Smurfs once possessed that somehow got lost and fell among human hands. The flute first came into possession of a young entertainer named Peewit, who used it to make people dance when he found out about its power. However, a thief named Matthew McCreep stole the flute and used it for robbing the townsfolk of their valuable possessions. Homnibus helped Peewit and his older companion Sir Johan find the Smurfs through a technique called "hypno-kinesis", which created magical copies of the two heroes that were transported into the Smurf forest close enough to find the Smurfs. They helped Johan and Peewit retrieve the stolen flute by creating a new magic flute that Peewit could use against McCreep to defeat him. With McCreep captured and turned over to the law along with his accomplice Earl Flatbroke, Johan and Peewit returned the magic flutes to the Smurfs. It would be the first of many encounters the Smurfs would have over the years with the two humans.
Also five years prior to Empath's final return from Psychelia, Gargamel the evil wizard had captured a single Smurf and planned to use him in order to capture more so that he could complete his formula for turning base metals to gold. The other Smurfs came to that Smurf's rescue, which greatly infuriated Gargamel to the point where he would study the Smurfs in order to get his revenge on them. Realizing that they were without female Smurfs in order to create another generation of Smurfs, Gargamel created the Smurfette as his weapon to destroy them through their hearts. However, Smurfette eventually wanted nothing to do with her creator's wishes and had Papa Smurf transform her through magic into a real Smurf. This transformation would make her a constant target for her former master to capture her time and again in order to draw the other Smurfs toward him so he could capture them, but his plans were always foiled, causing Gargamel to continuously rant and rave that he will get the Smurfs if that's the last thing he'll do.
In the years following, the Smurfs adopted a baby Smurf that had come from Smurfling Island, which had possessed miraculous magical powers that very few Smurfs knew about, if at all. Although there was a dispute between the Smurfs in the village and the Baby Smurf's parents from Smurfling Island over custody of the child, Smurfette made an impassioned plea to let the child stay with her as she and her fellow Smurfs would be responsible for his upbringing. Realizing that the child cannot stay on Smurfling Island if he cannot grow to be an adult Smurf, the parents allowed the Smurfs in the Smurf Village to have custody of Baby Smurf. Some years following, a few young Smurflings also came from Smurfling Island with a runaway puppy that Homnibus had owned. The Smurflings came to find out what happened to Baby Smurf and found him raised among many adult Smurfs. Deciding to stay in the village, the Smurflings also helped Papa Smurf settle matters with Homnibus about his dog, only to find out that the dog was intended to be a gift to the Smurfs for them to take care of. The Smurflings freed a young female Smurfling named Sassette who had been trapped in a crystal for about 100 years, only for her to become attached to Gargamel as she assumed from the Smurfs' telling of her origin that the evil wizard was her creator.
Present Time
- Related article: Empath: The Luckiest Smurf (novel)
By the time Empath had returned for good from Psychelia, Gargamel had unwillingly adopted a young runaway named Scruple who was a troublemaker at the guild of sorcerers and was dumped on the evil wizard by the guild's dean to be his apprentice. Gargamel had captured Papa Smurf and intended to use him for his evil purposes to get his hands on the Smurfs, Empath had rescued him from the evil wizard's grasp, causing him to study on the Smurfs to find out this new Smurf's weakness, which turned out to be magic. Using the Gauntlets of Gantharros, Gargamel had attacked the village and captured about 50 Smurfs to use for his experiments, easily defeating Empath and threatening the remaining Smurfs to surrender. Instead, they formed an army and attacked Gargamel in his hovel, freeing the captured Smurfs and allowing Empath to use his mindlink ability to overpower Gargamel and to defeat him, sending him, his cat, and his apprentice fleeing out of the forest for good.
A short while following Empath's return, Empath found it hard to adjust to living in the Smurf Village when he now had a few additional Smurfs to deal with, including Smurfette, whom he found himself attracted to but didn't know what exactly to say to her as he had never dealt with a female Smurf before. He also discovered the true nature of his relationship with Papa Smurf, which, along with most of the other Smurfs wanting to use Empath as their champion against Gargamel in a perverted form of worship, made him decide to leave the village to commit suicide. However, his abduction of Baby Smurf and threatening to also have the infant die with him as well was used as a test of character to prove whether Papa Smurf was truly sorry for his abandoning Empath in Psychelia for all those years apart. After a near-fatal fall into a volcano which Papa Smurf risked his life saving both Empath and Brainy before also coming out of it alive, Empath and Papa Smurf forgave each other and the village no longer treated Empath in a manner that didn't respect his desire to not be elevated above them.
The 10 Years
During the ten years between Empath's final return from Psychelia and his marriage to Smurfette, Empath and the Smurfs had encountered various beings and races and dealt with many threats to their village. A year after Empath left Psychelia, Polaris Psyche ran away from that place and sought asylum among the Smurfs as an exile, which the Psyche Master had reluctantly granted through Empath's negotiations. A few other Smurfs also came into the village during that period: Grandpa Smurf, who had come home from a 500-year journey around the world to replenish the power of the Neverstone on Smurfling Island with pure samples of the four known primal elements; Wild Smurf, who like Empath had spent years apart from his fellow Smurfs being raised by squirrels; and Nanny Smurf, who was trapped in a haunted castle for 500 years while she went out into the forest to search for Grandpa Smurf. Empath had created a personal assistant for Papa Smurf called the HoloSmurf that contained all the knowledge of Papa Smurf but very little of his personality, though Papa Smurf hardly used him at all and left him sitting on a shelf in his laboratory. Handy had upgraded Clockwork Smurf to his latest form, and after Clockwork Smurfette was upgraded, the two of them had built together an offspring companion named Baby Clockwork.
The Lost Year
- Related article: The Lost Year
The Lost Year was the name of the year that took place between Empath's 155th and 156th birthdays, when all of the Smurfs except for Empath and his friend Polaris Psyche were accidentally taken away from the present-time Smurf Village by way of the Key Of Chronos that was used to transport a baby dinosaur back to his own time period. The year was a tragic one for Empath, as he had to deal with not being with his fellow Smurfs for a second time in his life, particularly Smurfette. He and Polaris traveled around the world to find a way that they could bring the other Smurfs back home, only to come across a buried copy of the Key Of Chronos somewhere in northeastern America. By getting the key's crystals that somehow fell into the possession of the Schliphargons and inserting them back into the key, the portal was reopened and the Smurfs made it safely back home, though it nearly cost Empath his life. They quickly transported themselves back to the Smurf Village and helped Empath recover in time to deal with a traveling missionary who was using his mesmerizing power to turn the Smurfs against him when he awakened.
Marriage And Beyond
After 10 years of a growing relationship between them, Empath and Smurfette decided to get married, which made most of their fellow Smurfs upset because it meant nobody but Empath could have her now as her true love, but eventually they got over it and made the couple's wedding a success. Five years after the wedding, Empath and Smurfette had their first child, a young female Smurf named Psycheliana who inherited her father's telekinetic and telepathic abilities. It is also around that time that the Smurfs discovered a Smurfette Village that consisted of mostly gender-flipped versions of themselves, all of whom they fell in love with and had married to produce a new generation of offspring. Sometime after his 700th birthday, Papa Smurf finally succumbed to the same illness that befell his fellow Smurfs years ago and passed away, leaving the future of the Smurf Village in his son Empath's hands.
The Smurf Village continued to exist hidden away in the forest until the 1800s, when disaster struck and killed the many Smurfs that were left in it, including Empath's half-brother Brainy (who was the only other surviving member of Empath's generation). Only Empath and his great-grandson, who would become Traveler Smurf, had lived through it, but were forced to live underground as the forest was eventually taken over by the humans and reshaped by increasing industrialization and expanding human population. By the early 2000s, Empath had passed on the knowledge he accumulated over the years to his great-grandson before his death, which resulted in the transformation into Traveler Smurf, whose goal was to be the protector of Smurf history.
The Legend
- Related article: Peyo (Empath stories)
In the 20th century, a Belgian cartoonist by the name of Pierre Culliford, who used the pen name Peyo, had learned of the legend of the Smurfs (which in his native language are known as Schtroumpfs, the same name as one of their clans and languages) and created a comic book featuring them called The Smurfs And The Magic Flute. Eventually the popularity of the Smurfs in the form of entertainment took off, spawning both an animated movie and a cartoon show. Only one person, Gerry Royeaux, knew that the legend of the Smurfs was real because he possessed actual evidence in the form of Clockwork Smurf, a robot Smurf created by Handy Smurf that became King Gerard's adviser and was eventually passed down through the Royeaux family line to Gerry, who showed the evidence to Empath when he accidentally traveled to the early 21st century and met the young teenager.
Notes
- When the EMPATH: The Luckiest Smurf novel was first conceived in 1986, the Smurf characters in that universe consisted mostly of those from the cartoon show introduced up until 1986, with only one character from the comic books, Sculptor. When it was eventually expanded into a series, a few additional characters were added, such as Tapper and the comic book version of Greedy's counterpart Nabby. As of 2011, pretty much all the Smurf characters from the cartoon show are included, plus a handful from the comic books and three from the 2011 Smurfs movie.
Trivia
- Contrary to popular belief, the phrase that is often used to describe the height of most Smurfs ("three apples high," the direct translation of the French idiom "haut comme trois pommes") was never a precise scientific measurement. It means that something is really small, and an English equivalent would be "knee-high to a grasshopper"