I like the shades of gray link but those are shades. Hues are like adding some blue, red, green, cyan, magenta, yellow, etc to a grayish color. What I'm worried about, is that the canon shifts average Drow to the plastic model's skin color. Which is a grayish skin tone with a blueish/purpleish "hue" (depends on the lighting, I don't have the model).
I know it says tends to... and I can do what I want in D&D as long as it's not emotionally harmful out of respect to other players. It's just a matter of principle. And I know I'm sounding pedantic. It's just going to be sad, when I open up a 5.5E or 6E book and there's crowds of Drow depicted with these chalky blue/purple gray colors. That's why I'm pushing back on it.
It's not well lit in the Underdark. Like you have to you have to use darkvision. In darkvision everything is a shade of gray. So yeah, hue doesn't matter. I don't know the shade of the stone in the Underdark. It's probably all kinds of shades depending on the area. It's a big place. I guess having deep black skin wouldn't always be the best camo. You would wear clothes suited for the area and paint your skin anyways.
Note that in real life, subterranean creatures almost never have solid black coloration. They tend to be pallid, pale, and honestly pigmentless, because light is mostly an accident down there and they never needed to evolve camouflage coloration since nobody uses eyes to do anything down there anyways. As was said earlier in the thread, the drow's signature coloration came from God Swapping and being cursed/"blessed(??)" by Corellon/Lolth. They have the skin/hair/eye tones they do because a god wanted them to, not because they evolved/needed it.
This just feels like clickbait. Absolutely no one anywhere told anyone ever that their drow character can't be proud to be black. It's a made up accusation inferred from other stuff. Official descriptions are just guidelines that you are free to discard and change however your table sees fit.
Beyond the ethical ramifications of "This species of sapient, self-aware humanoids, ostensibly gifted with free will and the spark of true intelligence, is 100% irredeemably Chaotic Evil and must be expunged from the Realms forever even though you can make PCs of this species"...drow are simply incredibly popular as a player option.
The drow weren't originally irredeemably evil. There were a variety of canonically documented drow of good persuasion. as far back as at /least/ 2e. My 1e lore isn't as solid, I'd have to defer to someone like Ed Greenwood, but I am pretty sure that he has Eilistraee around as early as 1e. I just don't know how canon her and her followers are in the 1e time period.
That didn't happen until 4e, when for some reason WotC made the decision that /all/ drow should be evil so that Drizzt would feel more unique. I seem to recall an interview with Perkins where that was admitted, but it was so long ago I can't source it properly any more. That's why Salvatore had to kill off Tos'un Armgo (he was no longer allowed to be good) and Cattibrie went down the path of orcs are all irredeemably evil in the books. It was all because WotC made some really stupid choices in 4e lore-wise that removed racial agency from intelligent races. That choice really hasn't aged well, and here we are, with more ham fisted retcons to fix what they shouldn't have broken in the first place...and rather than try to use a scalpel to adjust things, they use a sledge hammer for their surgery.
Honestly WotC isn't very good at lore. They're very good at crunch and mechanics, but they are utter hogwash at lore. I wish they would stop trying and let DMs and 3rd party people write that.
Lore certainly represents a regular realm of failure for WotC but wouldn't judge them so highly on mechanics. (For d&d participants who would like to aim for balance in their games, they seem to make liberal releases of new highly powered content to extents that some DMs find that they are required to formulate increasingly long lists of house rules just to cope with them all).
I grew with D&D with a view that drow are black. I don't see the point of them changing something that they've established. I love the idea of Eilistraee and others being dark-skinned forces for good and would have liked WotC to have stuck with these developing themes.
I like the shades of gray link but those are shades. Hues are like adding some blue, red, green, cyan, magenta, yellow, etc to a grayish color. What I'm worried about, is that the canon shifts average Drow to the plastic model's skin color. Which is a grayish skin tone with a blueish/purpleish "hue" (depends on the lighting, I don't have the model).
I know it says tends to... and I can do what I want in D&D as long as it's not emotionally harmful out of respect to other players. It's just a matter of principle. And I know I'm sounding pedantic. It's just going to be sad, when I open up a 5.5E or 6E book and there's crowds of Drow depicted with these chalky blue/purple gray colors. That's why I'm pushing back on it.
It's not well lit in the Underdark. Like you have to you have to use darkvision. In darkvision everything is a shade of gray. So yeah, hue doesn't matter. I don't know the shade of the stone in the Underdark. It's probably all kinds of shades depending on the area. It's a big place. I guess having deep black skin wouldn't always be the best camo. You would wear clothes suited for the area and paint your skin anyways.
Beyond the ethical ramifications of "This species of sapient, self-aware humanoids, ostensibly gifted with free will and the spark of true intelligence, is 100% irredeemably Chaotic Evil and must be expunged from the Realms forever even though you can make PCs of this species"...drow are simply incredibly popular as a player option.
The drow weren't originally irredeemably evil. There were a variety of canonically documented drow of good persuasion. as far back as at /least/ 2e. My 1e lore isn't as solid, I'd have to defer to someone like Ed Greenwood, but I am pretty sure that he has Eilistraee around as early as 1e. I just don't know how canon her and her followers are in the 1e time period.
That didn't happen until 4e, when for some reason WotC made the decision that /all/ drow should be evil so that Drizzt would feel more unique. I seem to recall an interview with Perkins where that was admitted, but it was so long ago I can't source it properly any more. That's why Salvatore had to kill off Tos'un Armgo (he was no longer allowed to be good) and Cattibrie went down the path of orcs are all irredeemably evil in the books. It was all because WotC made some really stupid choices in 4e lore-wise that removed racial agency from intelligent races. That choice really hasn't aged well, and here we are, with more ham fisted retcons to fix what they shouldn't have broken in the first place...and rather than try to use a scalpel to adjust things, they use a sledge hammer for their surgery.
Honestly WotC isn't very good at lore. They're very good at crunch and mechanics, but they are utter hogwash at lore. I wish they would stop trying and let DMs and 3rd party people write that.
Lore certainly represents a regular realm of failure for WotC but wouldn't judge them so highly on mechanics. (For d&d participants who would like to aim for balance in their games, they seem to make liberal releases of new highly powered content to extents that some DMs find that they are required to formulate increasingly long lists of house rules just to cope with them all).
I grew with D&D with a view that drow are black. I don't see the point of them changing something that they've established. I love the idea of Eilistraee and others being dark-skinned forces for good and would have liked WotC to have stuck with these developing themes.
My drow have always been chalk white albinos, so I don't care about this at all.
The recent errata chopping pages of lore out of Volo's is pretty irritating, though. Wish I had bought a physical copy (though Beyond doesn't seem have implemented the changes yet).
I like the shades of gray link but those are shades. Hues are like adding some blue, red, green, cyan, magenta, yellow, etc to a grayish color. What I'm worried about, is that the canon shifts average Drow to the plastic model's skin color. Which is a grayish skin tone with a blueish/purpleish "hue" (depends on the lighting, I don't have the model).
I know it says tends to... and I can do what I want in D&D as long as it's not emotionally harmful out of respect to other players. It's just a matter of principle. And I know I'm sounding pedantic. It's just going to be sad, when I open up a 5.5E or 6E book and there's crowds of Drow depicted with these chalky blue/purple gray colors. That's why I'm pushing back on it.
It's not well lit in the Underdark. Like you have to you have to use darkvision. In darkvision everything is a shade of gray. So yeah, hue doesn't matter. I don't know the shade of the stone in the Underdark. It's probably all kinds of shades depending on the area. It's a big place. I guess having deep black skin wouldn't always be the best camo. You would wear clothes suited for the area and paint your skin anyways.
Beyond the ethical ramifications of "This species of sapient, self-aware humanoids, ostensibly gifted with free will and the spark of true intelligence, is 100% irredeemably Chaotic Evil and must be expunged from the Realms forever even though you can make PCs of this species"...drow are simply incredibly popular as a player option.
The drow weren't originally irredeemably evil. There were a variety of canonically documented drow of good persuasion. as far back as at /least/ 2e. My 1e lore isn't as solid, I'd have to defer to someone like Ed Greenwood, but I am pretty sure that he has Eilistraee around as early as 1e. I just don't know how canon her and her followers are in the 1e time period.
That didn't happen until 4e, when for some reason WotC made the decision that /all/ drow should be evil so that Drizzt would feel more unique. I seem to recall an interview with Perkins where that was admitted, but it was so long ago I can't source it properly any more. That's why Salvatore had to kill off Tos'un Armgo (he was no longer allowed to be good) and Cattibrie went down the path of orcs are all irredeemably evil in the books. It was all because WotC made some really stupid choices in 4e lore-wise that removed racial agency from intelligent races. That choice really hasn't aged well, and here we are, with more ham fisted retcons to fix what they shouldn't have broken in the first place...and rather than try to use a scalpel to adjust things, they use a sledge hammer for their surgery.
Honestly WotC isn't very good at lore. They're very good at crunch and mechanics, but they are utter hogwash at lore. I wish they would stop trying and let DMs and 3rd party people write that.
Lore certainly represents a regular realm of failure for WotC but wouldn't judge them so highly on mechanics. (For d&d participants who would like to aim for balance in their games, they seem to make liberal releases of new highly powered content to extents that some DMs find that they are required to formulate increasingly long lists of house rules just to cope with them all).
I grew with D&D with a view that drow are black. I don't see the point of them changing something that they've established. I love the idea of Eilistraee and others being dark-skinned forces for good and would have liked WotC to have stuck with these developing themes.
I like the shades of gray link but those are shades. Hues are like adding some blue, red, green, cyan, magenta, yellow, etc to a grayish color. What I'm worried about, is that the canon shifts average Drow to the plastic model's skin color. Which is a grayish skin tone with a blueish/purpleish "hue" (depends on the lighting, I don't have the model).
I know it says tends to... and I can do what I want in D&D as long as it's not emotionally harmful out of respect to other players. It's just a matter of principle. And I know I'm sounding pedantic. It's just going to be sad, when I open up a 5.5E or 6E book and there's crowds of Drow depicted with these chalky blue/purple gray colors. That's why I'm pushing back on it.
It's not well lit in the Underdark. Like you have to you have to use darkvision. In darkvision everything is a shade of gray. So yeah, hue doesn't matter. I don't know the shade of the stone in the Underdark. It's probably all kinds of shades depending on the area. It's a big place. I guess having deep black skin wouldn't always be the best camo. You would wear clothes suited for the area and paint your skin anyways.
Beyond the ethical ramifications of "This species of sapient, self-aware humanoids, ostensibly gifted with free will and the spark of true intelligence, is 100% irredeemably Chaotic Evil and must be expunged from the Realms forever even though you can make PCs of this species"...drow are simply incredibly popular as a player option.
The drow weren't originally irredeemably evil. There were a variety of canonically documented drow of good persuasion. as far back as at /least/ 2e. My 1e lore isn't as solid, I'd have to defer to someone like Ed Greenwood, but I am pretty sure that he has Eilistraee around as early as 1e. I just don't know how canon her and her followers are in the 1e time period.
That didn't happen until 4e, when for some reason WotC made the decision that /all/ drow should be evil so that Drizzt would feel more unique. I seem to recall an interview with Perkins where that was admitted, but it was so long ago I can't source it properly any more. That's why Salvatore had to kill off Tos'un Armgo (he was no longer allowed to be good) and Cattibrie went down the path of orcs are all irredeemably evil in the books. It was all because WotC made some really stupid choices in 4e lore-wise that removed racial agency from intelligent races. That choice really hasn't aged well, and here we are, with more ham fisted retcons to fix what they shouldn't have broken in the first place...and rather than try to use a scalpel to adjust things, they use a sledge hammer for their surgery.
Honestly WotC isn't very good at lore. They're very good at crunch and mechanics, but they are utter hogwash at lore. I wish they would stop trying and let DMs and 3rd party people write that.
Lore certainly represents a regular realm of failure for WotC but wouldn't judge them so highly on mechanics. (For d&d participants who would like to aim for balance in their games, they seem to make liberal releases of new highly powered content to extents that some DMs find that they are required to formulate increasingly long lists of house rules just to cope with them all).
I grew with D&D with a view that drow are black. I don't see the point of them changing something that they've established. I love the idea of Eilistraee and others being dark-skinned forces for good and would have liked WotC to have stuck with these developing themes.
My assumption about original intent for drow color is either
Photographic negative.
Skin the color of a black widow carapace, hair the color of spider silk.
No illustration will give a person truly black skin, because it just looks like a blot on the page; you need to give it darker and lighter areas, with highlights, so you can see anything at all.
I like the shades of gray link but those are shades. Hues are like adding some blue, red, green, cyan, magenta, yellow, etc to a grayish color. What I'm worried about, is that the canon shifts average Drow to the plastic model's skin color. Which is a grayish skin tone with a blueish/purpleish "hue" (depends on the lighting, I don't have the model).
I know it says tends to... and I can do what I want in D&D as long as it's not emotionally harmful out of respect to other players. It's just a matter of principle. And I know I'm sounding pedantic. It's just going to be sad, when I open up a 5.5E or 6E book and there's crowds of Drow depicted with these chalky blue/purple gray colors. That's why I'm pushing back on it.
It's not well lit in the Underdark. Like you have to you have to use darkvision. In darkvision everything is a shade of gray. So yeah, hue doesn't matter. I don't know the shade of the stone in the Underdark. It's probably all kinds of shades depending on the area. It's a big place. I guess having deep black skin wouldn't always be the best camo. You would wear clothes suited for the area and paint your skin anyways.
Beyond the ethical ramifications of "This species of sapient, self-aware humanoids, ostensibly gifted with free will and the spark of true intelligence, is 100% irredeemably Chaotic Evil and must be expunged from the Realms forever even though you can make PCs of this species"...drow are simply incredibly popular as a player option.
The drow weren't originally irredeemably evil. There were a variety of canonically documented drow of good persuasion. as far back as at /least/ 2e. My 1e lore isn't as solid, I'd have to defer to someone like Ed Greenwood, but I am pretty sure that he has Eilistraee around as early as 1e. I just don't know how canon her and her followers are in the 1e time period.
That didn't happen until 4e, when for some reason WotC made the decision that /all/ drow should be evil so that Drizzt would feel more unique. I seem to recall an interview with Perkins where that was admitted, but it was so long ago I can't source it properly any more. That's why Salvatore had to kill off Tos'un Armgo (he was no longer allowed to be good) and Cattibrie went down the path of orcs are all irredeemably evil in the books. It was all because WotC made some really stupid choices in 4e lore-wise that removed racial agency from intelligent races. That choice really hasn't aged well, and here we are, with more ham fisted retcons to fix what they shouldn't have broken in the first place...and rather than try to use a scalpel to adjust things, they use a sledge hammer for their surgery.
Honestly WotC isn't very good at lore. They're very good at crunch and mechanics, but they are utter hogwash at lore. I wish they would stop trying and let DMs and 3rd party people write that.
Lore certainly represents a regular realm of failure for WotC but wouldn't judge them so highly on mechanics. (For d&d participants who would like to aim for balance in their games, they seem to make liberal releases of new highly powered content to extents that some DMs find that they are required to formulate increasingly long lists of house rules just to cope with them all).
I grew with D&D with a view that drow are black. I don't see the point of them changing something that they've established. I love the idea of Eilistraee and others being dark-skinned forces for good and would have liked WotC to have stuck with these developing themes.
You want them to be so black they suck the eyeballs out of anyone else's head just through sheer vacuum pressure from the absence of light they don't reflect? Do that.
You want them to be every color of the greynbow? Do that.
You want them to be My Little Pony-colored rainbow hues with cutie marks stamped on their cheeks? Do that.
Why this has to be such a huge hairy croaking deal, I simply do not know.
Didn't read it, but it seemed to be making a strong case that there are fifty different shades of grey to choose from. I'm sure out of those there should be plenty to choose from to make everyone happy :)
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My assumption about original intent for drow color is either
Photographic negative.
Skin the color of a black widow carapace, hair the color of spider silk.
No illustration will give a person truly black skin, because it just looks like a blot on the page; you need to give it darker and lighter areas, with highlights, so you can see anything at all.
Actually on the Vault of the Drow 6th and 7th printings, the cover was full color and the Drow female on the cover was clearly black skinned.
Just checked, and no -- it's black ink with lighter grey to white highlights. Which is not black.
The errata in question is this??? "Your kin tend to have stark white hair and grayish skin of many hues"
Do you know what grayish skin of many hues... like, actually means??
Hue is the full range of colors and the black/grey/white scale combined. If something is is "greyish" that means on the color wheel it isn't the ones you'd describe as colorful. Instead, they'd be on the darker and colorless scales.
This includes gray. This includes black. This includes dark blues and purples. All sorts of gray-tones. What exactly is there to freak out about this isn't a change to Drow appearances they've always been this way.
It is apparently so hard to program Aberrant Mind and Clockwork Soul spell-swapping into dndbeyond they had to remake the game without it rather than implement it.
Incidentally, has there ever been discussion of the color of drow blood? Actual spider blood is blue, because they use hemocyanin rather than hemoglobin, and giving them literal blue blood would be amusing.
The errata in question is this??? "Your kin tend to have stark white hair and grayish skin of many hues"
Do you know what grayish skin of many hues... like, actually means??
Hue is the full range of colors and the black/grey/white scale combined. If something is is "greyish" that means on the color wheel it isn't the ones you'd describe as colorful. Instead, they'd be on the darker and colorless scales.
This includes gray. This includes black. This includes dark blues and purples. All sorts of gray-tones. What exactly is there to freak out about this isn't a change to Drow appearances they've always been this way.
The black-skinned drow had one of their early appearances in the late-stage module, Queen of the Demonweb Pits.
Three of the preceding modules formed the Against the Giants trilogy. The giants were described as giant, but maybe now we can describe them as any height from dwarvish to giant. We can still give them the same stat block, just change the flavour.
Many of the arguments presented boil down to, "so that matters to you - well it doesn't matter to me - so it doesn't matter".
It could just as easily be boiled down to "I've decided all drow have the exact same Vantablack skin tone and if your drow is different I'm going to raise a giant stink until you change it to match my specific, narrow, rigid interpretation of what drow are".
If you like the older lore? Use the older lore. Nobody's stopping you. DDB's chopping the books, yes, and a lot of people are pissed about that. There's an argument to be made there, but the older text is still available, and most of the people arguing about drow skin tones here are arguing it from forty year old material they haven't touched in literal decades. If you still have that material and want to use it? Go for it. I prefer a little more subtlety and nuance in my worldbuilding than "BLACK ELVES EVIL, WHITE ELVES GUD", but who am I to say what happens at your table?
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I'm replying to a number of posts here:
I like the shades of gray link but those are shades. Hues are like adding some blue, red, green, cyan, magenta, yellow, etc to a grayish color. What I'm worried about, is that the canon shifts average Drow to the plastic model's skin color. Which is a grayish skin tone with a blueish/purpleish "hue" (depends on the lighting, I don't have the model).
I know it says tends to... and I can do what I want in D&D as long as it's not emotionally harmful out of respect to other players. It's just a matter of principle. And I know I'm sounding pedantic. It's just going to be sad, when I open up a 5.5E or 6E book and there's crowds of Drow depicted with these chalky blue/purple gray colors. That's why I'm pushing back on it.
It's not well lit in the Underdark. Like you have to you have to use darkvision. In darkvision everything is a shade of gray. So yeah, hue doesn't matter. I don't know the shade of the stone in the Underdark. It's probably all kinds of shades depending on the area. It's a big place. I guess having deep black skin wouldn't always be the best camo. You would wear clothes suited for the area and paint your skin anyways.
Note that in real life, subterranean creatures almost never have solid black coloration. They tend to be pallid, pale, and honestly pigmentless, because light is mostly an accident down there and they never needed to evolve camouflage coloration since nobody uses eyes to do anything down there anyways. As was said earlier in the thread, the drow's signature coloration came from God Swapping and being cursed/"blessed(??)" by Corellon/Lolth. They have the skin/hair/eye tones they do because a god wanted them to, not because they evolved/needed it.
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This just feels like clickbait. Absolutely no one anywhere told anyone ever that their drow character can't be proud to be black. It's a made up accusation inferred from other stuff. Official descriptions are just guidelines that you are free to discard and change however your table sees fit.
My homebrew subclasses (full list here)
(Artificer) Swordmage | Glasswright | (Barbarian) Path of the Savage Embrace
(Bard) College of Dance | (Fighter) Warlord | Cannoneer
(Monk) Way of the Elements | (Ranger) Blade Dancer
(Rogue) DaggerMaster | Inquisitor | (Sorcerer) Riftwalker | Spellfist
(Warlock) The Swarm
Lore certainly represents a regular realm of failure for WotC but wouldn't judge them so highly on mechanics. (For d&d participants who would like to aim for balance in their games, they seem to make liberal releases of new highly powered content to extents that some DMs find that they are required to formulate increasingly long lists of house rules just to cope with them all).
I grew with D&D with a view that drow are black. I don't see the point of them changing something that they've established. I love the idea of Eilistraee and others being dark-skinned forces for good and would have liked WotC to have stuck with these developing themes.
My dark elves are dark. It's in the name.
Tints of grey: https://www.colorhexa.com/353839.png and https://www.colorhexa.com/333333.png and https://www.colorhexa.com/1f2022.png. Amongst others.
My drow have always been chalk white albinos, so I don't care about this at all.
The recent errata chopping pages of lore out of Volo's is pretty irritating, though. Wish I had bought a physical copy (though Beyond doesn't seem have implemented the changes yet).
As I said, "I grew with D&D with a view that drow are black. I don't see the point of them changing something that they've established."
It's retconning past lore which for me is unnecessary and unwelcome.
If you would have clicked the links you would have noticed that the colours are dark. You're just arguing semantics.

My assumption about original intent for drow color is either
No illustration will give a person truly black skin, because it just looks like a blot on the page; you need to give it darker and lighter areas, with highlights, so you can see anything at all.
Well done. You have selected 3 shades of dark grey. If WotC had specified dark grey that would have been something.
Look.
Drow can be whatever color you want them to be.
You want them to be so black they suck the eyeballs out of anyone else's head just through sheer vacuum pressure from the absence of light they don't reflect? Do that.
You want them to be every color of the greynbow? Do that.
You want them to be My Little Pony-colored rainbow hues with cutie marks stamped on their cheeks? Do that.
Why this has to be such a huge hairy croaking deal, I simply do not know.
Please do not contact or message me.
There was a book about this once.
Didn't read it, but it seemed to be making a strong case that there are fifty different shades of grey to choose from. I'm sure out of those there should be plenty to choose from to make everyone happy :)
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Look.
I don't have to welcome a retconning of past lore. My position regards:
If you feel differently, you do you.
Just checked, and no -- it's black ink with lighter grey to white highlights. Which is not black.
“Your kin tend to have stark white hair and grayish skin of many hues.”
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The errata in question is this??? "Your kin tend to have stark white hair and grayish skin of many hues"
Do you know what grayish skin of many hues... like, actually means??
Hue is the full range of colors and the black/grey/white scale combined. If something is is "greyish" that means on the color wheel it isn't the ones you'd describe as colorful. Instead, they'd be on the darker and colorless scales.
This includes gray. This includes black. This includes dark blues and purples. All sorts of gray-tones. What exactly is there to freak out about this isn't a change to Drow appearances they've always been this way.
I'm probably laughing.
It is apparently so hard to program Aberrant Mind and Clockwork Soul spell-swapping into dndbeyond they had to remake the game without it rather than implement it.
Incidentally, has there ever been discussion of the color of drow blood? Actual spider blood is blue, because they use hemocyanin rather than hemoglobin, and giving them literal blue blood would be amusing.
The black-skinned drow had one of their early appearances in the late-stage module, Queen of the Demonweb Pits.
Three of the preceding modules formed the Against the Giants trilogy. The giants were described as giant, but maybe now we can describe them as any height from dwarvish to giant. We can still give them the same stat block, just change the flavour.
Many of the arguments presented boil down to, "so that matters to you - well it doesn't matter to me - so it doesn't matter".
It could just as easily be boiled down to "I've decided all drow have the exact same Vantablack skin tone and if your drow is different I'm going to raise a giant stink until you change it to match my specific, narrow, rigid interpretation of what drow are".
If you like the older lore? Use the older lore. Nobody's stopping you. DDB's chopping the books, yes, and a lot of people are pissed about that. There's an argument to be made there, but the older text is still available, and most of the people arguing about drow skin tones here are arguing it from forty year old material they haven't touched in literal decades. If you still have that material and want to use it? Go for it. I prefer a little more subtlety and nuance in my worldbuilding than "BLACK ELVES EVIL, WHITE ELVES GUD", but who am I to say what happens at your table?
Please do not contact or message me.