Dark elf

Dark elves, a culture of elves, with a few eladrin among their number, known as Ssri-tel-quessir in the elven tongue, are frequently confused with drow. It doesn't help that the two terms are often times used interchangeably, even by elves themselves.

Dark elves have dark brown skin, as opposed to the ebony skin that drow have. They also have black hair instead of white and no darkvision. Dark elves are also not tainted with Wendonai's blood.

History
The Tel'Quessir races are not native to Faerûn. Rather, they emigrated from the plane of Feywild (the plane of Faerie) roughly twenty-five millenia ago. The first wave of Tel'Quessir to arrive were the green elves, the lythari, and the avariel. The dark elves arrived in the second wave of emigration, along with the sun elves and moon elves. Later, the aquatic elves appeared in the Great Sea.

The dark elves were the most successful of these eladrin emigrants, and settled into two major eladrin nations. Miyeritar was located in what is now the High Moor, and consisted primarily of green elves and dark elves. Ilythiir was an eladrin realm of predominently dark elves, and they lived farther south-east.

Wendonai is a balor lord who, in -11500 DR was tasked by Lolth to seduce the Sethomiir clan, rulers of the Ilythiiri into her worship and grant them evil magics. He succeeded and was probably the greatest (but by no means the only) influence on the fall of the dark elves.

In -10,500 DR, during the Crown Wars, the Dark Disaster completely destroyed the ealdrin nation of Miyeritar, changing that eladrin realm into a large swampy expanse. It is not fully known who the culprits were, but it is strongly suspected that it was a group of sun elves using elven high magic.

During the First Crown War, the Ilythiiri made several unsuccessful attempts to conquer Faerûn (although they conquered Southern Faerûn up to Shantel Othreier), and at the time of the Fourth Crown War, they turned to Lloth and the other outcast Seldarine in the Demonweb Pits who gave them powerful magic and fiendish allies as a reward for allegiance. After many malicious acts and abuses of elven magic, Corellon Larethian banished the "Dhaerow" (traitors) whom Lolth used to be responsible for (and most of whom still secretly worshiped her) to the Underdark. It was at this time that all dark elves were physically transformed into Drow, their skin becoming much darker.

In 1374 DR, Khelben "Blackstaff" Arunsun brought together many powerful mages in order to restore the denizens of the lost city of Miyeritaar's High Mages and cleanse part of the High Moor. In order to make the magic permanent, he and the Grand Mage Ualair the Silent sacrificed their lives to restore Rhymanthiin, the Hidden City of Hope.

More recently, Eilistraee has managed (through her death) to redeem those drow that were not tainted with Wendonai's blood. They physically reverted to their brown-skinned dark elf form, and their fate was from that point on their own to make. Drizzt is not among these "redeemed dark elves," and his skin is still ebony and runs with the taint of Wendonai's blood.