Why are drow black and not albinos?

Why are drow black and not albinos?

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I would say natural camouflage with their rocky home environment (because they are more grey than black usually) but honestly I don't think by D&D's lore drow skin colour has anything to do with evolution at all. They just are that colour, it's not an adaptive thing.

Drow were originally written as the "evil" counter to your traditional dungeon-delving party. This means inverting the color scheme of black hair, blue-eyed white guy into black-skinned, white hair and red eyes.

Divine curse by Lolth to mark them as her property.

light aesthetics = good
dark aesthetics = evil

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It's because they worship Lolth, who is a black widow spider goddess.

I think it's supposed to be a curse or blessing from some elf god or another. An alternate explanation could be that the Underdark is full of weird magic radiation and the dark pigment protects them from that. This would also explain how you get such a relatively dense and diverse ecosystem deep underground where the sun is only a myth.

Probably this. Although, pale with black hair is also pretty common. Like most vampires or Drukhari in 40k.

Because D&D was never looking for something that felt natural, they wanted fantasy for the sake of fantasy. Not my cup of tea, but there you go.

Curse by Corellon Larethian, actually.

>You're black now
>This is a curse

>You're genderfluid
>This is a blessing

Oh my god, user! You can't just ask someone why they're black!

Pale skin doesn't necessarily have to interfere with dark aesthetics.

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Actual reason: "Black-Skinned Nords" are an old Lost World/Deepest Africa trope that DnD swiped. Read e.g. Oroonoko sometime, or actually don't because that book sucks.

In-lore reason: Lloth cursed them with black skin.

In-lore reason, retconned version: the degenerate upper class of elves who became the Drow were always that color. Maybe.

>"Black-Skinned Nords" are an old Lost World/Deepest Africa trope that DnD swiped. Read e.g. Oroonoko sometime, or actually don't because that book sucks.
But Drow are based on Trow, a Scottish-Norse mixed fairytale creature.

>Oroonoko sometime, or actually don't because that book sucks.

>Oroonoko
>Book written by the first successful Western female writer
>It's about blacks

elves have pale skin, dark hair, and green eyes
invert that for dark skin, light hair, and red eyes

but I agree, they should be albino vampire looking things

And? The Underdark is still hugely derived from the Lost World genre. Things can have more than one influence!

I suspect it was successful on the strength of the play adaptation, where they didn't have glaring plotholes.

I was just making fun of the fact the first major female writer in Europe was lusting after BBC. Seems like your women were always like this.

Haha, good one, here's a shekel.

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>In-lore reason, retconned version
That wasn't a retcon you nigger. Drow were brown-skinned before Corellon and Lolth had their Hatefuck-Session. In fact they are the only Elven Race native to Toril, stomped many of the Scalie-Empires back in the day. The reason why they got cursed by Corellon in the first place is not because they started to listen to his bitchwife but because they started to genocide all the other Elven Races at her behest.

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.....
Can I have one too?

NO! Hands off goy, become useful first and I'll consider it.

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>Goy
>Become useful

Well I hope you die right back

This but also Sun Elves were on opposite side of the mountains wrecking the other elves and getting the rest to support them into cursing the drow because they were afraid ilythiiri were going to wreck their shit after dark disaster went down.

Demon tainted elves were going full on war machine across the continent before conclave got together and cursed them into the descent.

Because they are literally the niggers of elves

What does a half-drow look like?

Ashen-skinned. Probably a light colour of hair, like sand or blonde.

Probably to help distinguish them from vampires and other elves

I mean they are unnaturally keen eyed, dexterous, hate the sun, powerful ones are often equally powerful magicians, extremely long lived, inclined to evil and always have some kind of scheme going.

If the art in the OP were pale instead of ebon it would literally just be Sorin, Grim Nemesis in a slightly different pose.

except they can run a civilization.

Because they aren't African, they're literally a purplish black color because of a curse.

Their appearance isn't a natural evolution, you should keep that in mind OP.

They would be pure white if they evolved in caves.

Stripped of the curse, they're brown with semi-dark hair. The word 'dhaerrow' is literally a slang curse for them because they're hated by every other subset of elves save moon elves.

Well I've never seen anyone leave their bike unattended in the Underdark.

You've never seen a bike in the underdark period.

Well yeah, they keep getting stolen.

Because 90% of my setting is cute albino girls and I need something to make it look like that's a coincidence.