Born of the twilight and the shadow-riven world of secrets, shadow elves are the melancholy scholars and spell-torn magical masters of the elven people. Also called grey elves, shadow elves are a solemn people, having devoted themselves to the elven ideals of magical studies and the accumulation of knowledge and learning with the time afforded to them by their long lives. Where high elves are the result of elven culture at its most refined, shadow elves are the product of the elven mystic traditions, and act as living repositories of elven cultural lore from their earliest days.
Personality
Though generally good in their worldview, and preferring to use the great stores of knowledge that they accumulate for the aid of others, shadow elves have a very neutral outlook on how and when they choose to help. Knowledge, to shadow elves, is both a means to an end, and also an end in itself, and they prize it above all else, leading many of them to become quite focused in their quest for still more acquisition of information. Shadow elves tend to be soft-spoken by nature, and they are also often secretive, preferring to keep their activities private whenever possible, so as not to be forced to suffer interference from others that might disrupt their studies. Usually shadow elves are solemn, saying little, and observing events with quiet contemplation and an air of slight melancholy, as though they felt they were not allowed to participate in the flow of events, but merely to observe, record, and provide information where they can to those who will listen. But once a shadow elf has become focused on a subject, which can sometimes include other individuals, that elf can become wildly and astonishingly passionate about it to the exclusion of everything else.
Physical Description
As their name suggests, shadow elves have lost much of the vibrant, living colors found in the appearances of other elves. While their bodies are as slender and agile as that of any other elf, and they are tall like high elves, shadow elves look like mere shadows of their more vibrant high elven kin. Their skin tends to be between ashen grey and ghostly white, and their eyes are most often an all-encompassing black, though grey, silver and gold are not uncommon, and blue and violet are quite rare. The hair of shadow elves, which tends to be winter shades of black, blonde, grey, purple, or blue, is generally grown out very long in both males and females, and then elaborately styled so as to keep it from getting in the way, though a few of the more practical or active members of the race choose to simply cut it down short so as to not have to bother with it.
About Shadow Elves
As products of the musty tomes of ancient lore in which the secrets of the elven people are contained, shadow elves spend most of their time engrossed in studies of various subjects. Largely solitary, shadow elves keep themselves aloof even from other elves, choosing not to waste time with petty interpersonal relationships, and prefering the company of their subjects of study to that of other people. Scholars and mages of the highest caliber, shadow elves consider themselves the living embodiments of the elven racial memories as a whole, and take this position very seriously. For this reason, shadow elves will seldom risk their lives if they can avoid it. Nevertheless, younger members of their subrace will sometimes take an interest in studying more active subjects, such as the ways of the world that surrounds the elven people, and will set out into the world to find out what the elven place in that world might be. These shadow elves often take to adventuring as a way to gather more information, for the life of an adventurer is certainly one that involves a great deal of travel and exploration, exactly what these restless scholars want.
