Saturday January 16th, 1999
A frequent Topic of conversation on the mailing list is the differences between the elves and their dark cousins. Ray posted this message to clear up any confusion:
The physical thing is more an issue of gene drift, and adaptation, over ages. Just as there are blond Italians up in the north and dark ones in the south of Italy.
And it has no more significance than that.
I'm juggling here, as Steve and I have a basic difference on what 'dark evles' are, going back to the original game. He sees them as a separate race, which was news to me by the time I'd finished the Riftwar. I had thought them difference branches of the same family.
So some of the stuff I wrote in Krondor: the Betrayal is an attempt to shoehorn those concepts central to Steve's feelings about the moredhel into my creation. There were dark elves in Midkemia, very 'drow-like' before we ever read about the drow.But they were cardboard characters for players to knock down, like kobalds, orcs, and gobblins. Writing about them required different things.
So, I have Gorath explain in passing that the changes in the races is so profound that an elven woman can't have a child with a moredhel male. Sort of 'non-human' pyschic/magic juju for making elven babies. One can assume the reverse is true, though we all know elves would never rape a moredhel woman.
So we have what I hope is a satisfactory compromise, my view of the elves as one species separated by magic, attitude, and living apart from one another, coupled with the original idea they were different critters.
