ITT: tell me about the dark elves in your setting

Well... That escalated quickly.

My setting is based on my interpretation of Norse and Germanic mythology.

Elves in general were made by the gods of life, the Vanir, as a servant race to tend the thriving flora and fauna of the realm of Vanaheim. They're nurturing, diplomatic, and empathic, able to share emotions and even thoughts with not only each other but members of other races as well. The main flaw with Elves, however, is that while they have an easier time reproducing than the Gods who made them, doing so requires them to sacrifice portions of their soul to animate their children with. They have only a finite essence of Maegen, life-force, and unlike humans cannot gather or regain lost Maegen. So, not only are elf children inherently weaker than their parents, but having children weakens an elf. They can live forever, but can be slain by normal means, meaning life is very, very precious to elves.

The gods brought dwarves to Midgard, the land of men, to teach mankind more potent methods of industry and smithing (mostly so they could better defend themselves against Jotun invasions without intervention, but also to make them stronger warriors when Ragnarok comes). This wound up causing a chain of events that lead to a war between the mortal races and the Fae, who were pretty much being genocided by all the mining and tree-felling needed to fuel this industrial revolution. The war was so terrible it threatened to destroy all life on Midgard, and so the gods dispatched the Elves to act as diplomats. The elves served their role beautifully, negotiated a peace that satisfied both factions, and have existed in Midgard since, pursuing an agenda to preserve not only wildlife, but also the lives of men and dwarf kind. After all, all life is precious to an elf.

1/3

Now, Midgard is fashioned from the corpse of a dead giant named Ymir. The lands his flesh, the mountains his bones, the waters his blood, etc etc etc. Beneath Midgard, at the center of a sprawling network of caverns and tunnels and canyons, is the skull of Ymir. Beneath all of that are the roots of the world tree, which anchor Midgard in place, and keep it from floating off into the rest of the world. Inside the skull of Ymir is a sacred well that waters the world-tree's roots, and the dead giant's ghost- not exactly his soul, but rather a reflection or echo of his former self, rendered in raw Maegen. This ghost slumbers, but as it slumbers it dreams. The only memory Ymir had was being woken by the giants and spurred to fight the tribes of the Aesir and Vanir, who wound up killing and butchering him, and this ghost pretty much dreams of that for all eternity. The dreaming is enough to give humans sensitive and/or near to it some really fucked up nightmares, but the hyper-empathetic elves? Yeah, it drives those poor bastards insane.

The forgotten elves live in the forgotten caverns beneath Midgard, descendants of elves who became trapped underground in the war between man and fae, and wanderers who simply come too close to the skull of Ymir. They are all irreparably traumatized by the savage violence Ymir dreams, but at the same time sustained by his Maegen. After years of constant inbreeding, the forgotten elves had grown so weak, so deprived of Maegen, they became like humans, and are able to absorb it from their surroundings. Specifically, by drinking the dew that sloughs off the roots of Yggdrassil embedded in the caverns, or by drinking of the well-water contained within the skull of Ymir. Either gives them life, but at the same time drives them further and further into vicious, violent insanity.

Occasionally, a tribe of these savage elves finds its way to the surface, though they can only go out at night for intolerance of the light of the sun. Humans, for their resemblance of the gods who slaughtered Ymir, are hated especially. Men are tortured for sport, then eaten. Dwarves are captured to be used as smith-slaves, on the (usually correct) assumption that they know a craft. Generally, these dwarves don't live all that long, because being a vital resource and providing access to tools and weapons doesn't mean an f-elf won't just decide to fucking kill you one day for no real reason than insatiable fury. Elves have it the worst, of course, as they're looked at less as food, and more as a chance to inject some precious, precious outsider's blood into the forgotten elf bloodline. They get passed around as breeding stock and I gotta tell you, it ain't fucking pretty. Just the smell of a single Elf in the area is enough for all the forgotten elves to drop whatever the fuck they're doing and head straight for that unlucky knife-ear.

They're actually pretty cool with giants, and don't mind them. The giants, of course, find the forgotten elves absolutely repulsive, and too violent/chaotic/unpredictable to have any use as allies. Mostly they'll just guide raiding parties to enemy settlements, if they're in a dickish enough mood (not all giants in the setting are dicks, just those aligned with their ancestors).

Did I mention that a band of forgotten elves just being near someone is enough for them to have terrible nightmares as they sleep? That being touched by one provides a glimpse of the Death of Ymir, from Ymir's own fucking perspective?

TL;DR is that they're actually an awful lot like the Falmer from Skyrim, except an awful lot less organized, and an awful lot more terrifying. They're a race of bogeymen.

The dark elves are basically the reskinned ISIS, except the suicide troopers are human slaves. They use egyptian Isis gos trappings, but none of the players have gotten it yet.

They're biologically indistinct from the other Elves. "Dark Elf" is an awkward mistranslation into not!English. The Elven nations that are affiliated with the Humans generally refer to the Eastern Elves using the expression Noq-Altai. Individually, those words mean "Dark" and "Elf", but the placement and emphasis should really be translated as "Elves that are unseen" or "Foreigner". Terms like "High Elf" or "Wood Elf" are derived from similar misunderstandings of "Elves that Stand Apart"(isolationist) and "Elves that seek Peace"(diplomat). A bunch of Elven racial slurs are also a result of this. The Elves were the first "civilised" race and so Altai, the word commonly used to mean "Elf" is really just their root-word for "person". When non-Elves started showing up and developing their own civilisations, the Elves applied Altai to them too. So the word for "Human" in the old Elven laguange is Goj-Altai, which can be translated to mean "Mud Elf" when it really just means "Elves that work the Earth" or "Farmer-folk".

The Dark Elves are, however, culturally distinct. A good real world example of the schism between the fractious Western Elves and united Eastern Elves would be the late Roman Empire. For centuries, the Elves ruled the dominant Empire on the Continent. Time and distance eventually made it impractical to govern the Empire from one location and a ruling partnership was devised. The Western Empire was eventually consumed by internal rebellion and foreign invasion (primarily Humans). In the East, the Elves learned well the follies of the west and enacted brutal regimes over all non-Elves. Since then, the "Dark Elves" have consistently been massive douchebags to everyone that isn't an Elf. But their empire is gradually failing.
There's not all that much more about them, really. I've spent more time fleshing out the Western Elves, their culture and language. The "Dark Elves" are just a potential big-bad on the horizon, same as Dragons and Orcs.

They're all dead and gone. Their language is indecipherable and what remains of their settlements is steeped in a fungal miasma. Their entire civilisation is shrouded in mystery and rumours, end game content for late campaign sessions.

Their actual history is of a civilisation of booming trade. With the use of magic they tethered connections to a demonic plane and began to trade goods & services between the two. Slaves, minerals, weapons etc etc. Not particularly different from trade between the modern nations of the setting, just involving more demons and blood sacrifice. One misinformed importation of toxic shrooms led to a black plague situation that wiped the place out in a matter of months.

An ethnic branch of Alvians, lived underground and stayed xenophobic and solitary up until they could afford it.

These days you can find them in any large town, both in a pure variant and mixed with other Alvians, like trolls, orcs and other elves.

You're starving, for days
No end in sight, nothing to eat, nothing you can live on anywhere
Then, a kind stranger offers you a morsel, shows you how to make it yourself, teaches you where to find more. Introduces you to his friends

Now replace food with Mana, and understand he was a demon, and you get where they're coming from

There's like, five of them.

Dark Elves in my setting are semi independent subgroup of Elves which accept the supreme authority of the High Elves and they regularly pay them tribute in slaves, but otherwise they are allowed to rule themselves. They are notorious pirates and they constantly raid human coastal towns (and sometimes cities). Being Dark Elf is not about blood but choice. Anyone who wishes can join the Dark Elf crews and they can also leave when they desire. Most of their cities' wealth comes from loot and slave trade.

A million years ago, primordial man emerged from Not!Africa, and was immediately killed and eaten by Elves.

Elves, a divergent evolutionary offshoot of the Homo line who, by a quirk of genetics and the influence of magic, had gained conditional immortality, saw the migratory patterns of the humans as an invasion. They responded the way they have traditionally responded to invasions: By periodically raiding their settlements, killing and eating all the men, and raping all the women.

Over time, the humans who had left their ancestral homeland came to resemble the Elves in phenotype, though they were still human. This confused the Elves, to whom it had never occurred that you could have sex with something once and impregnate it, and in confusion they gradually retreated, allowing a buffer-zone of quasi-elvish rape babies to form in between them and Not!Africa.

This is the current state of affairs, with Neanderthal Super-Aryans occupying the Far North, original black humans occupying the South, and ye standard white medieval Europeans in between. The in-betweeners have a lasting cultural memory of "The Dark Elves" from ancient times, who used to terrorize their communities and eat their parents, and they frequently fear that they might return someday.

What they don't know is that their friendly elvish neighbors ARE the Dark Elves, they just realized that the whole "pillage and rape" thing wasn't an effective tactic. It was far better to get the humans to fight each other. Their fear is that humans will eventually start invading their lands again. When that eventually occurs, they intend to be ready for it, and that means they need time. Time measured in tens of generations. Then the Dark Elves really will return, with terror and slaughter.

...

Fucking losers that was forced to dwell in the dark places.

If you don't mind my asking, where the exactly does the light the moons are reflecting come from?

that's pretty good

They're the only elves and they're a bit mixed wih wood elves.

I am going to steal this. Kudos.

they're like elves, but darker

Enjoy. Remember to play up that Elves can not only sense but share emotions and thoughts, and that these ones have heads full of nothing but violent trauma and nightmares, which they're all too eager to broadcast to other people while they're on the hunt. After all, fear seasons the meat.

In Burning Wheel dark elves aren't a society, rather they're elves whose reaction to the decline of the world (standard Tolkien style elven 'the mortal races are fucking up the world' type stuff) wasn't to try and fix it, or to sail west to elfland, but rather 'fuck it, if it's all going downhill anyway may as well burn it all down'. Essentially instead of getting sad about when they see humans, dwarves and orcs doing terrible things to each other, they either get angry about it or join in, depending on their particular bent. So all Burning Wheel dark elves start out as regular elves, thus there are no dark elf societies or cultures.

Dark Elves are a hedonistic society. The new generation of high elves, particularly woman, often adopt the customs and looks of dark elves as a form of rebellion against there repressive culture.

Also dark elves are gyaru and ganguro.

The first elves were made by a few of the gods as their chosen people, with a lifespan up to about a thousand years. A subgroup of these first elves took it upon themselves to try achieve divinity. Of course, the gods see this as an insult to their creation, and banish them to a bleak, magically deficient plane. This act split the life span of the elves as a whole, so naturally the first elves generally despise them.

Their plane was akin to a time-out corner, or prison really, and it began to alter them physically, leaving them with a dark purple to blue hue, and lowering their proficiency with magic, as their exposure to it was also limited.

What the gods hadn't forseen, in foresight, was that they hadn't bound this plane into position, nor had they shielded it entirely away from any form of magical exposure. So despite having limited magic as an essence, a type of crystal began to grow through a sort of background radiation effect. These crystals were able to store magic, akin to a form of battery, and would be unique to this plane, which spurred their economy upon their eventual return to the realm of man.

Utilizing these crystals was how they channeled magic almost exclusively, storing magic over time, then channeling from magic batteries when needed.

There are a few divisions of ideology, the first being vehement in their belief that due to the gods abrupt punishment, they must have been close to their goal, and plan to unify the elves back into a single race to re-attempt apotheosis.
A second branch are basically apologists, who want to make it back into the good graces of the gods and undo this punishment, in a similar vein to the first, but less focused on 'becoming the first elves again' and more on just getting out of their 'prison plane.'
The third are almost flagellant in accepting their punishment.

Despite the relatively barren nature of their plane, they had enough to survive, if barely, with a limited population. Their structures were rather intriquite, and had the sense of being ornate, despite the drained palette of colour, and limited materials. Their craving for beauty is a throwback to their origins as part of the first elves, as they had quite exquisite decoration, both in architecture and fashion.

(I may still be severely underestimating the character limit, I know I did first time.)

See this is how you do a species that lives for several human generations
I love the idea of them shifting between nice and evil as the centuries roll on.

Descendants of the Trees. Long ago they had been elves who committed a cardinal sin. Their leader, blinded by passion, took an angel for his consort. The god took vengeance on the king and all his people by cursing them and their land. No longer would they breed or live as mortals. Instead these elves are born from the Trees they loved. The Trees need the blood of sentience to live and the elves, their immortality and health now tied these trees are forced to raid and pillage to feed the insatiable hunger of their sire. Should the tree wither all born of its fallen leaves likewise die. A tree can only support so many before it's demands become too high. At this point future elves are cast out and sacrificed to plant a new tree and the cycle continues.

Robbed of the pleasures of the flesh by their curse they look upon mortals with envy and hatred. Their skin, once fair, has gone as black as their intent. The Dark Elves are like a plague of powerful locust that must be culled and defended against vigorously lest their hunger wipe all life from the world.

america if america wasnt fat and had an orgy with the starship troopers government

Wait, is the implication that white humans in this setting only exist because their ancestors were repeatedly raped by elves?

Decent book Starship Troopers government, or horrible nonsensical movie Starship Troopers government?

Elves aren’t quite the generic DnD pointy eared humans in my setting. They’re abnormally tall (9ft and upwards), thin as tree branches, pale skin bordering on translucent, big black glassy eyes and generally a very alien vibe to them.
Drow are the remenants of several lost Courts of Elves. Long ago these Courts assembled to put the rest the largest issue in Elven society: how to stop dying like those pesky men-folk and ascend to godhood. Engaging in centuries of selective breeding and various magical experiments, the Drow succeeded. Somewhat.

While they did become functionally immortal (spare death at the hands of disease or steel), the Drow missed godhood by a mile. Their experiments warped them until they became brings that, while lacking proper forms of their own, could shape and mould their bodies at will.

Now inhabiting a large portion of the mountain ranges of the East, Drow lurk in the shadows and conspire with each other on plots no mortal can comprehend. They will often take the guise of travelers to sneak into villages and kidnap subjects for their experiments. Occasionally some will escape. One even rarer occurrences, an infant Half-Drow will be found on the edge of the village. Where they come from and how they are born is unknown, but it is likely it is an experience as horrific as the Drow themselves.

Scopophobic cosmic prop ninjas. They were the "stagehands" of the Gentry's plays, and now that they've been forced to be people they live their lives isolated and in the dark because they really hate being seen and/or acknowledged

>Decent book Starship Troopers government
weren't they literally fascists?

Were enslaved by demonic forces five centuries prior, nowadays are known as hardy survivalists who don't blink at even the most desperate measures to keep on living. Seem kind of weird since they worship old, bizarre gods that are known to be dead or lost. Seen as backwards and unpredictable, even by other elves, but get along well with orcs and goblins who tolerate their somber, pessimistic outlook on life.

"Things usually go wrong." is their universal motto.

They're dark doppelgangers of normal elves who reside in a parallel dimension that's basically a dark mockery of the main setting, and their ultimate goal is to hitch a ride into the mainline dimension and "replace" their elf counterparts by murdering them and assuming their identity.

The kicker is, they're just a myth and they don't actually exist. Just a boogeyman to keep elf children from being bad.

There aren't any.

The only elves in the setting are a handful left in hiding, waiting the day that "The Last City" will return to the normal time stream. They're seeking the firelances, and setting up as many wars as possible from behind the scenes to sow chaos and pave the way for elves to rebuild and re-enslave humanity.

>weren't they literally fascists?
And ?

>all this high concept nonsense

theyre elves who were underground when the doors broke so now theyre evil for being neglected in the ass end of the world

>complaining about people putting time and passion into their setting

What was it like when you first had fun? Was it terrible?

Wikipedia researched "must join army to become citizen" after friend suggested it

They're embroiled in a religious war with an alien cult of heretical drow from offworld. The followers of the New Gods are smaller in number, but they are waging a brutal geurilla campaign against Lolth's children. Worryingly, their numbers seem to be growing.

>weren't they literally fascists?
Yes, and?

Not the guy you're posting to, but i would guess a relatively near by quasar, them bastards are bright as fuck

Yo, I actually love the Fallen and everything i learn about them

They're a partially subterranean race that also live in mountainous regions and volcanic landscapes.

They're a more powerful version of NOT Drow from DnD, Dark Elves from Warhammer Fantasy, and Dunmer from Elder Scrolls, but more intelligent and less cliche evil

In my setting, they're pretty much regular across the board with most tropes for them.
Unfriendly, general dislike for the overworld, they like spiders and snakes as their pets, somewhat tribal, longstanding racism against Orcs and Kobolds and the like. My major difference is that their god is a prank that was pulled by the High Elves long ago.

So they've created an entire religion and lifestyle around what they perceived to be their God and devote everything to him. They perform ritual sacrifice and never venture from their caves simply because they were ordered not to. It's a great honor to be sacrificed on the altar.

>Lolth caught wind of Beelzebub and decides she's in the mood for that juicy demon powered fly goo that makes the belly and soul feel so goo'-goo'.
>Sends her followers on missions to find/capture Beelzebub and his followers
>Beelzebub is suddenly really willing to ask for help in less conventional methods, warlocks and other followers suddenly find themselves occupied with missions to stop the dark elves
>Failure pretty much means demonically empowered dark elves as enemies and a LOT of upheaval in Hell

Don't have any elves. I have frog jews though.

they are commonly mistaken as some sort of tall goblin and they were given the nickname hobgoblin or pseudo goblin, the males have more masculine features than other elven subraces

The dark elves are model citizens and ideal neighbors. They've adopted almost all Nisahari cultural norms and maintain good trade relations. The only reason they haven't been absorbed into the empire is because both sides mutually agree separate but equal is preferable.

The cultural norms are the same because the Dark elves have been manipulating the neighboring human society for millennia in subtle ways, yet the humans think the culture is of their own origin. And no human dares venture into the sacred grounds in the deepest darkest part of the jungle. That is where the dreamer sleeps, and where the elves must keep him sleeping by feeding him the dreams of their own criminals and political dissidents, until they wander the dark undergrowth with dementia and senility. The dreamer guides the King of the Elves, tells him secrets of men that he sees in his dreams. And so the Elf King sends his agents to do as the dreamer says, thus shepherding the destiny of the Empire of men, while the elves, their vassals, profit without war.

its all g. I like these threads, but I subscribe to the less is more concept.

Moon phase obsessed elves from deep in the woods/sometimes caves connected to the not!underdark who only emerge to steal mortals for brutal rituals to spite the gods as instructed by the ancient evil that lives underground too was a mouthful to explain to my players. So now theyre evil cave elves.

Forgot to reply to OP

Dark Elves are also known as, Grey-Skins to the commoners that know little about them though they have a light Blueish hue to their complexion. They are master manipulators and are also known as Changelings due to their rituals that can mask their appearance for a period of time.

During the Great Sundering where the Elves were split into the different sub-races, the leader of the Dark Elves, a power hungry Matron, killed the wife of a High Elven King and bore him a son. After which she killed the father and ruled in the name of her Child-King until her plot was discovered.

Thousands of years later, the High Elves still refuse to trust their dark kin.

Dark Elves are not only deceptive, but possess a high capacity for grand Strategy in War and upon the battlefield. They are the best assassins in the world and may be willing to lend their abilities to human Lords, for a price. They're magic and martial prowess generally surpasses what men consider standard or normal.

Their society, while certainly brutal, is highly organized and functional. Working in a system similar to Feudalism, but less centered around political marriages and more around Royal Families.They're willing to cooperate with humanity, they legally buy their eunuch slaves that have been accused of murder or rape, instead of seizing them in raids like savages.

Some thousand years ago, a sect of elves seeked to end the current government system and defied the triumvirate, essentially becoming jihadists. The emperors got really pissed off and cursed them, leaving a mark that would forever remind people of their crimes. Then they had a exhodus to bumfuck nowhere in the middle of a mountain range (just like the Andes) and started weird cults to minor earthly gods and nature phenomena based on sacrifices. Oh, and they also invented blood magic.
Nowadays they are kind of like the Aztecs in behaviour and architecture only. Slavery is common, and they feed the lower-class citizens with a strange, mass-produced fungus that is cultivated underground. There is a deep hatred between the dark and the regular elves.

They are the remnants of an ancient elvish empire that collapsed due to magic rituals. Pretty much
>Elves rule almost the entire world
>After a terrible military campaign lesser races such as humans and dwarves begin to rise up
>In an attempt to use magic to destroy them their capital and the surrounding area is covered in eternal night and has a large number of horrible monsters created
>Elves either slaughtered in droves by monsters or flee underground
>Rest of Elvish empire collapses under the weight of dozens of rebellions, elves are slaughtered in droves with only a few pockets under the rule of local princes remaining

So pretty much Dark Elves fled underground, high elves live in actual minor kingdoms and city states, and wood elves live within other nations in isolated tribes.

They take trophy slaves. These slaves lead fairly good lives and are treated well for their service, since a disobedient slave is a bad slave. They get trotted out at parties and put on display like a dog or pony show. One of the things they do at parties is ask the slaves about their former lives, who then describe how they used to be princesses or the wives of powerful merchants. The more elaborate your background the higher value in entertainment. Disobedient slaves get sold to lower classes, who are happy to just have a slave and will slap their shit if they mess up.

A High Elf fell into a pit of magical magma while exploring the new underground cavern that was created by a recent earthquake.
Said magical magma contains the essence of life and creation within it as it is the blood of the now imprisoned God of All Creation that now serves as the planet's core. The planet being his prison as well as the campaign setting.
Said magical magma destroys the High Elf but uses it as a basis, a mold of sorts, to create a new race as it somehow needs to expel it's creative energy.
The result is a Dark Elf, named such because they look alike to High Elves, except burnt and charred, at least in terms of skintone as well as hair and eye color.

The government in SST was a Military Republic. Civilians had rights and protection of law, and civilian government instruments existed. They just didn't have enfranchisement.

> Creation happens
> Devils are first to acknowledge that this was a very bad idea and ought to have been avoided
> Devils breed elves out of the stubby cavemen found on a rock in the middle of nowhere
> As creation keeps stubbornly getting along, devils task elves with keeping the other mortal races in line while they're away, as it's preferable to have a giant mess in one location rather than spread out where it's difficult to deal with
> Devils finish hammering out creation, Creation admits temporary defeat and slinks away
> Tired from their efforts, the devils call the whole thing a wash and decide to take a nap until they can figure out a solution to the whole existence problem
> Elves think they've been forgotten
> Wage a bloody civil war amongst themselves, with godless mages and warlocks wielding the power of creation on one side and clerics and paladins on the other
> Mages and warlocks win, proving that
> Half the elves trickle down to pits in the depths of the world, convinced the others are going to find and slaughter them
> Begin building fortresses downwards, growing spikier and more like literal hells on earth, preparing for a counterattack that would never come, as the high elves preferred frolicking with pleasure demons to the gritty business of finishing the war
> Society resembles ancient Sparta with the politics of Soviet Russia and the nudity taboos of Ancient Egypt
> Everything revolves around the concept of defensive genocide
> Lawful Evil to the point where sophistry is second only to death by assassination as the preferred means of settling disputes
> Unsurprisingly excellent lawyers, assassins, torturers and priests
> Surprisingly good druids, all things considered

Seconding this, SST's Fed was not "Fascist" in the strictest sense of the word, it was more like a normalized military junta.

As far as I can tell there was no merger of state and corporate power except insofar as only citizens could get certain licenses. It wasn't Fascism in the Italian or German sense. I've never actually seen a fictional representation of fascism that was actually fascism except for the Helghast in Killzone, where an explicit point was made that the state had quasi-nationalized all industry and made industrial magnates members of government, like Jorhan Stahl.

I had a pretty good conversation about this with the other guys at Uni, and I came to the sudden realization that by most peoples' definition of "Fascism," Mussolini's Italy wasn't Fascist, and both the USSR and the United States under Roosevelt were. Basically the colloquial definition of fascism is so at odds with history that if realistically applied, it only includes one, perhaps two actual fascist countries.

Basically normies cannot into basic political science and think entirely in shallow banner slogans.

Elves and other fey are the closest agents most of the gods have to the mortal realm. Dark elves exist for whatever evil or destructive force the gods wish to inflict on mortals.

However, fey have their own agency as well. Dark elves will more readily serve gods who will more regularly employ them. IE, a god of murder is probably going to have more dark elves in his service than a god of travel.

No, I don't plan on having elves be playable.

Me dark elves came about because their reproductive rate was similar to humans, but lived on a small land mass. They rebelled under the banner of a disgruntled old war hero because they had nature protection laws and a lack of jobs, because the older guys lived for a thousand years

The Dark Elves became this way due to the long-term exposure to the natural magical silver in their mountain hideouts. They have a long-term fellowship with the Dwarven Mountain-Kingdoms to the east, and have animosities to the Crystal Elves to the far west of the continent. Instead of focusing on spellcasting, their strengths are in artifice and magitech.

Elves essentially draw their magic from natural sources, such as trees that are nurtured with mana-enriched water (you can't really get the mana from water, since it's too far diffused), crystals, and silver. Over time, this would cause some changes in their bodies, such as rigid dermal plates, greyish skin tone, or sharper features.

The dark elves of Telurra are those who have taken the martial traditions of the elves wholeheartedly, forming a warrior culture. Highly disciplined and trained to fight as soon as they can walk, your average dark elf is a fearsome and dauntless warrior. Their king wins his position by fighting their predecessor and besting them in a fair fight. Their current king is Tarelon Ren, who's defended his title nineteen times over and is regarded as the strongest dark elf who has been born in the last several generations.

*my elves

Kind of sort of based of of Tsarist Russia, and the main city has a world renowned fighting pit. Non-nobles are pretty chill but there are a lot of shenanigans that go on with the nobility with each one jockeying for power.

Noble stripped of titles and priviledges for being on the wrong sight of a court intrigue. Took his household, and subjects to another land.
Dealing with orc raids, and itinerant dragons has lead their descendants to become hardnosed and suspicious of others.
Typically enslaving their 'traitorous' cousins whenever they find them but otherwise trying to keep others well away.

Dead. They choose to assail the Pale Queen and so learned to their misery what the death of mysticism looks like. Even their wicked magics are works of art in their own right. No dark elf could envision a time where every human gnat would bear an enchanted blade, and instead of days worth of work such blades are produced en-mass by a human with more power then sense perversely imitating their highest crafts

Depends how you define "Dark" Elves.

Dark-skinned elves? The Sun Elves are tropical jungle-dwelling Amazons whose culture revels in strength, passion and valor, because only the fiercest, most cunning and bold will win the right to sup the herbal elixirs they use to reproduce since their menfolk died off.

Dark-themed elves? The Moon Elves are an dying race of gloom-riddled pale elves who live on the moon, surrounding themselves with robots powered by the dreaming souls of their dead kin, worshipping their departed ancestors and determined to die fighting to the last against alien invasions.

Sexy chocolate coloured gypsies, of the Disney variety, not real-life variety.

Dark Elves in my setting are broken into 2 groups, deep elves and scourge elves.

Deep elves originated from a civilisation of magically advanced elves that warred, and lost against a rival civilisation. That forced them to flee deep underground to avoid genocide. There they found evils buried beneath - the spiders. The spiders saw these elves as servants and cattle, the elves saw them as salvation and safety. Pretty symbiotic relationship.

Over times the spiders taught the most powerful females (because spiders are like that) powerful magic. The elves then worshipped a deity that was an amalgamation of elf and spider.

Over time these Deep Elves migrated to other parts of mountains, then to other mountains, then other mountain ranges. Each time there is an overland migration, its a big fckign deal.

THEY
WUZ
KINGS

Mine used to be part of the 'regular' elven community living in the forestrealm of the East. However my setting has a pantheon based on 20 gods, using the ten Divine Domains of the Cleric class in DnD 5e (including the unearthed arcana). Each domain has a light and a dark counterpart. Worship of the dark counterparts is in many parts of my setting illegal or frowned upon. Within the elves of the east, a cult started to rise that saw the benefits of worshipping the dark. This cult grew, but was not excepted by the elvish leaders, who cast the cult out. The cult left the forest and went to the cold north where they created a city in a mountaincavernsystem. Under the influence of their new divine worshipping and environment, their appearance altered into a drow elf. Sheltered from the world they grew a society in their city, only letting in trusted traders and absolutely hating all elves besides themselves. They usually only go outside to provide services in the form of assassins, spies or mercenaries.