What happened to the Dark Elves?

[Woofy]

Do they appear in any mods? or AoW4? I thought they were kind of fun.

[Iguana-on-a-stick]

In lore: They kissed and made up with the other (Sylvan) Elves. (Literally. Julia got married to the Dark Elf head-honcho and Sundren is their kid.)

That is why the Elves are now named "High elves" and have both Sylvan style units and Dark Elf style units. (Storm priestesses.)

There are some mods that add Dark Elves back as a separate faction, but I never tried them so won't recommend any.

[Woofy]

Thanks, I liked the Dark Elf Double Swordsman and Horse rider with lifesteal. I forgot about that elven history, or I just wanted Merlin and Julia to get together.

[Fay]

I believe this is a callback of sorts to the Age of Wonders 1 intro cinematic which, if memory serves, describes how the arrival of the violent humans caused the original high elves to split into wood and dark elves.

[TirAsleen]

The vanilla version of AoW3 shipped with 6 races, down from 12 of vanilla AoW1 and AoW2.

The AoW3 races did come with less high Tier racial units, too.

3 more races were added with 2 expansions.

High Elf units have the stormsisters that reminded of stormpriest of AoW1, but have not the same sinister looks.

The rogue class has the shadow stalker and succubus units, those are former T3 Dark Elven units, retaining their proper dark elven aesthetics.

[Gladen]

The unofficial expansion on the Workshop, The Shadow Realm Expansion adds "Shadow Elves" which is the evolved "Dark Elves" that mended in the Shadow Realm and thus became that instead like the High Elves mending on Athla.

The Shadow Realm Expansion also adds a Dark Elf Dwelling, which is found underground. It consist of 6 different units all inspired from the previous installments. Dark Elf Bladedancer, Shade, Sharpshooter, Matriach, Exterminator and of course the Storm Priest all with various new abilities to make them unique.

Several race mods that added the Dark Elves as race on steam workshop, is essentially a "new" release of the "Template" race mod made especially for mod makers as a way to introduce their own race mods. That is Arnouts: "Dark Elf Template Mod (v1.2)" and the sad thing about those Dark Elves mods on the Workshop is that they are released with either no changes or very, very minor tweaks. They even release them with the same bugs introduced in the template. But yeah, everyone is different, and nothing is actually stopping people from playing the template itself either. :)

[Jonathan Hunt]

Originally posted by Woofy:

Thanks, I liked the Dark Elf Double Swordsman and Horse rider with lifesteal. I forgot about that elven history, or I just wanted Merlin and Julia to get together.

I wanted Merlin and Julia to be together too

[GreyHuntr]

Originally posted by Fay:

I believe this is a callback of sorts to the Age of Wonders 1 intro cinematic which, if memory serves, describes how the arrival of the violent humans caused the original high elves to split into wood and dark elves.

Technically in the original AoW1 timeline the Dark Elves existed prior to that, but were few and hidden. The human sacking of the Elven Court caused Meandor and others to join them.

Early lore suggested Dark Elves were the result of severe trauma, like the elven form of PTSD. The Mending was a a magical ceremony that healed them. I think the Isle of Last Goodbye may have also played into healing Dark Elves before that, but can't recall exactly.

Later lore with 4 kinda makes things ambiguous, with how leaders influence their races.

[Fay]

Ah yeah I have no idea what 4's lore is, my only interaction with 4 was playing a bit when it was temporarily free to play (but not keep).

[Northstar1989]

In lore, the Dark Elves ceased to exist when they merged with the rest of elvenkind in some sort of giant mating ceremony. This is literally presented in the first (non-tutorial) mission of the elven campaign...