Bye, Bye Avendrow! Hello Dark Elves.

[Leema Har'gachi]

Over the last three week I have been working on taking what I've already wrote and creating a condensed Basic game to help players learn how to play, the idea being I'm going to take six of the species/subspecies and the six core classes, make a smaller book that will cover the 1st 5 class levels and will feature a small Adventure Module for 1st level characters. So I'm planning on taking only one subrace from the Dragonsouls, Dwarves, Elves, Halflings, Half-Dragons, and humans and have a more new player friendly character creation character, while including six pregenerated characters for those who don't want to make their own characters and just going in. The subrace I'm using to represents the elves is of course the dark elves and this is to show off how things will look in the basic game. Italic text is used to detonate the names of spells or narrative/setting text.

Dark Elves
For tens of thousands of years, the dark elves had been corrupted by the evil goddess L’Jallil D’Vhid through the chaos curse into the drow. The dark depravity she had bred into them over the millennia of their cursed existence under her vile grip made the drow the most despised species in the cosmos. However, over the years the innate destructive and murderous tendencies the chaos curse forced the drow to commit had begun to wane. The goddess T’puuli An’ar had been trying to free the drow for her evil mother’s grasp for untold millennia, but with the curse having weakened and the number of drow worshippers empowering her, she was finally able to break the curse on the drow, turning them back into true dark elves. Unfortunately, this transformation was limited to her worshippers which was quite significant in numbers, though now that she knows she has the power to remove the curse from the drow, she has begun to work hard with the help of her faithful to give drow the option to return to how they should be without her mother’s evil curse.
Personality: Dark elves are a very passionate people, whether it be in celebration, war, or love, they live to feel. They protect those they love and fight hard to redeem evil in all its forms, but be careful not to anger a dark elf or worse yet, make them your enemy for that is a battle in which only a few could hope to win. They dislike slavery and abuse in all its forms and view the wellbeing of others as the foremost priority. They value individuality as well as art and skill, dark elves tend to view other by their actions and not how they look. Dark elves tend be very open with sex as well as their feels for other, while they may not be polygamous, they are not above open relationships.
Physical Description: Dark elves are the shortest race of elves with males being both short and lighter than females, though both tend to be well toned, with females being quite voluptuous very often. Males tend to be any where from 4’1” to 5’ weighing 72 to 88 pounds, while females tend to be 4’6” to 5’4” weighing 90 to 120 pounds. They have skin of light black, dark brown, light tan, very light violet, pitch-black or obsidian color, with eyes of pale greens, deep blues, dark brown, black, with the rare gold or silver color being possible. Dark elves have hair on their head, eye brows, and eye lashes, but lack facial and body hair of every kind. Their hair tends to be black, dark blond, or. any shade of brown, with the rare silver or white hair color.
Alignment: Like most elves, the dark elves are very individualistic, knowing first hand the oppression that can happen with a strong group focused society and while they do have very strong community, their communities focus on the individuals strongest traits, rather than trying to adapt them to the communities needs like what is found in the drow. The dark elves strongest trait however is their strong sense of morality, they value the life and wellbeing of all sentient beings and passionately defend other from evil in all its forms, especially against slavery and abuse. Dark elves tend to be good or neutral alignments with a focus or tendency towards chaos, evil aligned dark elves are almost unheard of with they always having neutral tendencies, thus Chaotic Good, Neutral Good, Lawful Good, Chaotic Neutral, Chaotic (Neutral tendency) Good, Neutral (Chaotic tendency) Good, Lawful (Neutral tendency) Good, Chaotic Neutral (Good tendency), and Chaotic (neutral tendency) Neutral are common alignments with Lawful Neutral, Lawful Neutral (Good tendency), Neutral (Good tendency), Neutral Evil, and Neutral Evil (Neutral tendency) being rare possibilities.
Homeland: All elves can trace themselves back to the plane of Faerie where they had long ago migrated to the material plane from. The dark elves like the high, grey, and wood elves had choose to settle in the massive forest called Iyllithial, which the original dark elves formed their kingdom in the north west section of before being banished to the dark realm after being afflicted by the chaos curse. Since taking up the worship of T’puuli An’ar they had returned to their old forest kind to act as their base during their hardships before being redeemed back into dark elves, once they were freed of their curse, not only did they doubled down on reclaiming their old kingdom, but they made improvement to many of their cities so that they now extend into the dark realm with under cities that give them direct access to the dark realm and make it easier for them to protect the surface from the terrors of the subterrain world.
The capital of the dark elf newly reformed kingdom is called Uhraapuulitolaru which roughly translates to city of the silver hope. The dark elves are led by a matriarchal society lead by a council of high priestess with citizens of all gender forming a senate which vote on all issues. The council functions as chair and moderator for the senate, while lower ranking clergy act as help for senate member, passing paper, making sure no immoral act is committed while within the senate building. Everyone’s voice is hear before voting is commenced. The cities and villages use trees as buildings with the largest building being in the center of the city, that being the temple dedicated to the dark lady. The city’s undercity has building sculpted from the cave itself that connect to the city above.
Religion: Before the dark elves had been redeemed from the drow they had worship T’puuli An’ar the silver dancer as their goddess, having been drawn away by evil action of the faithful of L’Barra and L’Jallil D’Vhid. Once they had been reborn as dark elves, they decided to worship the Dark Lady as their patron deity, but the original elven gods the L’Lodias D’Tauren revealed that they admired the new dark elves decision to shed their dark path and stated that if ask they would assist them in rejoining the other surface species and so the L’Lodias D’Tauren started getting some worship from the dark elves (around 20% give some minor form of worship to them). However, several of the none evil drow deities where getting some worship by the dark elves, the Masked Lady is a goddess of magic and thieves, she is very appealing option to those who have a fun loving sense of attitude and she get worshipped by about 8% of dark elves. T’puuli An’ar’s once mortal daughter Anistrial the drow goddess of Marriage, sex, pleasure, and love get a significant amount of worship from most dark elves (around 34%) with everyone giving her some kind of worship every now and then. Only about 2% of dark elves worship a none elven deity.
Racial Traits
Type: Humanoid (Elf)
Ability Score Adjustment: +1 to Dexterity and Charisma, -1 to Constitution.
Size: Medium, 4’1” to 5’4” with 4’7” average.
Movement Speed: 120 feet.
Dark Elven Resistance: Dark elves are innately resistant to spells and things that replicate the effects of spells, this unique genetic factor makes them very difficult to fight with magic, but it also doesn’t prevent them from using magic themselves. When you make a saving throw vs spell, area of effect, wand, staves, or rods against spells or spell-like abilities, you gain a +2 bonus on that saving throw.
Dark Elf Two-Weapons Fighting: Dark elves are so unnaturally coordinated with their hands that using a weapon each hand come very naturally to them and dark elf society has learned to make use of this natural affinity by teaching their children two-weapons fighting from a very young age. When you wield a one handed weapon in each of your hands and you are proficient with both weapons you are using, you can fight with both weapons without your off-hand weapon being either a dagger, dirk, or hand axe and you do not suffer any penalties on your attack rolls with either hand, you also add your dexterity modifier to your off-hand attack roll as normal, but you do not suffer the restriction of it not being able to increase your attack roll bonus past +0 (this also applies to weapons with the double weapon property). Thus, a dark elf can fight with any two weapons so as long as each weapon can easily be used with one hand, even range weapons, but any weapon that must be loaded to fire cannot have a loading time longer than an free action. Any time a dark elf fights with two-weapon that they are proficient with, while wearing light armor or no armor, they gain a +1 shield bonus to their armor class.
Elven Constitution: Elves have a very alien biological make up, despite them being very fragile physically with an immune system that is somewhat more susceptible to illnesses than most humans, they live for a much longer time than humans, are resistant to mental effects, and are immune to magical sleep as well as from the ghoul’s bite which makes them a vary unusual species. You are immune to the sleep spell including magical effects that cause sleep or renders creatures unconscious and you are immune to the paralysis effect of the ghoul’s bite. All elves are resistant to charms and compulsions including the charm and dominate spells and other charm-like effects like suggestion, fascinate, and thrall. When a charm or compulsion effect would affect you, you have a 90% chance of resisting the effect; before rolling any saving throws vs charms or compulsions roll a percentage dice (d100), on a result of 90% or less you are completely unaffected by that charm or compulsion effect. If it manages to bypass your resistance, then you roll your saving throw normally, but with a +2 on the saving throw
Elven Breath Weapon Dodge: Elves before the dragonwar, had many conflicts with dragons when they first migrated from the plane of Faerie and they had to learn how to depend themselves from the most powerful weapon a dragon has, their breath, though their has long been peace between the elves and dragons since the end of the dragonwar they still practice the art of dragon dodging. When within the area of effect of a creature’s breath weapon that allows a saving throw vs breath weapon for half damage, you take one forth damage on a successful save and half damage on a failed save. Creatures like a shadow dragon whose breath weapon doesn’t deal damage, but has a reduced effect on a successful saving throw is affected by this ability. A shadow dragon breath weapon normally reduces a creature’s maximum hit points to 25% on a failed saving throw and to 50% on a successful saving throw when caught within its cloud of darkness, but an elf has their maximum hit points reduce to 50% on a failed save and 75% on a successful save.
Elven Sense: All elves are born with heightened senses, being able to see and hear things in a much higher level of detail than other species and since a lot of elven architecture is designed to blend into nature they have a fine eye for identifying concealed doors and portals. When you use any of the fallowing general skills you gain a +2 bonus: listen, search, and spot; and when you use the core skill find/disarm traps when not under intense stress to search for traps, you gain a +10% bonus on the check. Whenever you are within 10 feet of a secret or concealed door / portal, you are allowed a general skill search check as if you were actively looking for it, but your DM may choose to roll this in secret if they wish.
Elven Trance: For an untold millennia, elves have using meditation and other forms of mental exercise as a form of rest and relaxation, this has become such a common practice that over the millennia that it has become second nature to them to the point that many elves simple trance to rest rather than actually sleeping, though there is nothing stopping any elf from sleeping. Elves can spend 4 hours in the deep meditative trance like state instead of sleeping, for every 4 hours of trance the elf gain the benefit of 8 hours of sleep, this allows them regain lost spell slots and recover from minor injuries much quicker than other creatures. While within this trance, they do not dream, rather they engage in a dream-like mental exercise that is very relaxing and helps them regain focus. A elf may still sleep if they wish, though they do not have to sleep normally unless they were recently reduced to -3 or less hit points, in which case they must spend at least 24 hours resting before they can use trance to rest. This must include sleeping, but do not need to be 24 consecutive hours of rest. Elven magic-users need only 4 hours of trance to be properly rested to prepare their 1st – 8th level spells.
Infravision: While the elves eyes can see like a normal human in light only with greater level of detail, when a dark elf is in lower levels of light their eyes adjust into seeing into the infra-red spectrum, allowing them to not only see in the dark, but also the body heat of creatures. While in dim light or darkness, a dark elf can see heat from the environment, objects, and even creatures in the infra-red spectrum from up to 60 feet away. They can make out shapes of an object, but only sharply if there is a distinguishing difference in temperature between the environment and the object in question. They cannot make out the color of the object itself while using their infravision, but they can make out general differences in an object’s structure. When in dim light an elf can choose to switch between their low-light vision and infravision at any time as a reaction.
Low-light Vision: Elves have a much better level of low-light vision than humans allowing them to see in lower light levels while still maintaining the ability the ability to see color and details. While within an area of dim light, a elf can see in dim light as if it were bright light from up to 120 feet away. They can see color perfectly fine while using low-light vision, but they still need a source of light to see using it.
The Silver Dancer’s Chosen: Ever since the goddess T’puuli An’ar had removed the chaos curse from the drow who had worshipped her, creating the newest generation of dark elves, they have taken to integrating as much of the dark lady into their lives as possible. Even going so far as to teach the use of bastard sword and bows to their children at an early age as well as singing and dancing, the Silver Dancer has rewarded this dedication by empowering them with a special gift when they fallow her teachings by joining her elite clerics the sword dancer. All dark elves have proficiency with bastard swords, chainmail, and short bows; they also start with apprentice level of mastery in the general skill dancing and singing as well as proficiency in these general skill as if they were class skill. Anytime a dark elf sword dancer uses a bastard sword, the dark lady’s divine power fills the blade as long as the sword dancer grasps the sword, this turns a nonmagical bastard sword in a +1 bastard sword while a magical sword becomes immune to breaking, rust, other kinds of damage, and its normal weapon speed of 3 becomes 1 instead.
T'puuli An’ar’s Blessing: When the dark lady had freed the dark elves from the chaos curse that turned them into drow, she gifted them all with a piece of herself. This blessing allowed them to make use of her sacred moonfire without being one of her clerics naturally and effectively permanently connecting the new dark elves to her protecting them for any future attempt her mother might make to corrupt them ever again. The dark elves all possess a divine gift from the goddess T’puuli, this allows them to oncer per day as a swift actions summon forth her sacred silver flame of moonlight called moonfire. This moonfire functions as a light spell of 1st level shedding dim light up to a 10 feet diameter centered from the point of emanation on the dark elf’s body and is a supernatural ability. The dark elf can choose where on their body to have the moonfire emanate from, which can be their hand or any other part of their body that they choose. The moonfire lasts for up to one minute per level using the dark elf’s highest class level or until it is used for its touch powers in which case the ability is discharged regardless of success. If the dark elf wants, they can attempt to touch the moonfire to the wound of a single willing living creature or to their own wound, in which the divine energy of the moonfire will mend the wound healing the creature touched of 1d6 + the dark elf’s charisma modifier points of damage.
At 3rd level, the dark elf can attempt to use the moonfire to attack a creature regardless of its willingness, instead of healing them by making a touch attack roll against it which consumes the use of moonfire whether the attack succeeds or fails. On a successful attack, the moonfire deals 1d6 + the dark elf’s charisma modifier points of cold damage
At 5th level, the dark elf gains a second use of moonfire per day for a total of two times day and the moonfire’s effect on a creature touched increases by a additional 1d6 to 2d6 points of damage or healing.
Traditional Elven Training: Elves have had a long standing tradition of training the younger elves in the use in armor, history, and the practice of stealth. These traditions are shard among all the various races of elves, though some of the training might be more of less sightly different between race. All elves have proficiency in chain shirt, leather armor, and two of the fallowing general skills: Hide, Knowledge (Arcane or Nature), Listen, Move Silently, Search, or sport.
Languages: The dark elf can read, speak, and write Common, Drowic, Elven, and Undercommon, as well as a number of additional languages of their choice equal to their intelligence modifier.