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I think it is more than JUST IP in this case. Paizo likely wants to make the Darklands even more distinct from the Underdark. Sure, they COULD rename the Drow and make minor adjustments and be fine. However many people would still look and say "knock-off Drow" and move on.
Paixo has a great race of servant folk with a rich history as Golarian's original civilization that was driven underground after the humans started colonizing the surface.
I love Drow, but I trust Paizo on this decision and applaud it really.
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It’s not really about a “social issue” when the bigger issue is that Paizo knows they have sown confusion around the lore of Drow in Golarion because different versions and ideas about them have been published, and efforts to set the intended lore to rest have struggled to bear fruit. People run around with a whole mix of ideas about what Drow are in Golarion, some of which are based on different developer voices, but some are based entirely on other companies (including wizards of the coast and Owlcat games) writing and lead to a lot of impassioned debates about “the canon” of Drow in Golarion.
Like serious efforts to establish a set Golarion Narrative around Drow have been going on for a decade and keep getting mixed around. With Abomination Vaults being turned into video game we’ll likely get another.
Even if default ideas around Drow in fantasy are not something that WotC can claim in court (a debatable position), the lore around them is so mixed up, and entrenched, that doing anything new with them would probably take an entire Lost Omen book to have a chance to stick, and even then it could end up just becoming the grounds if a massive law suit. If you read through James Jacobs posts, he too is a fan of Drow and wants more Drow stories, but recognizes that WotC is the company that is realistically going to reserve the rights to tell them and be so overwhelming a voice in the telling of Drow stories in Fantasy fandoms that Paizo trying to write their own is just swimming narratively upstream against the mountain of ideas people have about them.
Whereas, telling new Golarion stories about creatures that live underground is much more liberating, open ended, and doesn’t require an editor to sit over the shoulder of every freelance writer to say “no, that isn’t our dark elves.”
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This was the right move, I'm hoping they spend a little bit of space in the last section Gatewalkers justifying their disappearing from history, even if it doesn't/shouldn't provide an actual name for them (as everyone in history would have forgotten about them in the first place) and to justify Second Darkness never happening at all as a nice way to tie things up since they have the perfect opportunity since changing fate/history/timelines would wrap it all up in a nice neat little package that is easily explained.
All in all, the headaches prevented in advance far outweigh the "loss" if you could call it that, in them being absent from the official setting material for manifold reasons.
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This was the right move, I'm hoping they spend a little bit of space in the last section Gatewalkers justifying their disappearing from history, even if it doesn't/shouldn't provide an actual name for them (as everyone in history would have forgotten about them in the first place) and to justify Second Darkness never happening at all as a nice way to tie things up since they have the perfect opportunity since changing fate/history/timelines would wrap it all up in a nice neat little package that is easily explained.
James Jacobs said that volume 3 of Sky King AP was the first place they could realistically talk about the Darklands shake-up in print.
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Would the fact that intellect devourers are featured in the new D&D film pose any problems with that?Also, while not Drow, was there any mention of Intellect Devourers or Neothelids?We didn't have time for that. BUT
Intellect Devourers are still there; we're doubling down on them being aliens and part of the Dominion of the Black, but the city of Ilvarandin is still in the setting, and thus these "corpse thieves" or "body snatchers" are still there. They get a new name too that's not a "humans call them this": Xoarian. (Implying that they come from a distant planet in the Dark Tapestry called Xoar.)
Maybe, but by changing their appearance away from a quadruped brain to something else and calling them a "corpsethief" or "body snatcher", probably not.
And unlike drow, the concept of aliens stealing our bodies and/or living in our brans is not something that is solely D&D, as is the case of "underground dwelling elves with a demon-worshiping matriarchal society that have distinctive skin and hair and eye colors and rule sprawling empires in the underworld and are called drow, and one of our most famous ever characters is one of them and over the decades we've done multiple novels and game books and adventrues featuring them." All of that makes drow a much more complicated thing for us to do anything with. The whole "If they keep monster X with a name change and cosmetic change, why can't they do that with drow" argument doesn't acknowledge this fact.
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Gotta say... really excited. Looking forward to whatever is coming! Long overdue.
Not because I don't like the D&D drow or whatever, but b/c the Golarion ones were too samey - particularly when Golarion elves are weird space-aliens.
Whatever the changes are, bring'em on.
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That’s not an Paizo poster that’s an imitation.
Sorry just saw John Carpenter The Thing yesterday and could not resist .
Call them Intellectual Property Devourers, or something.
I am absolutely adapting the classic "rats in the tavern cellar" plot hook to be "local printing press wants you to clean out the intellectual property devourer infestation."
I just have to figure out what they look like.
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Call them Intellectual Property Devourers, or something.I am absolutely adapting the classic "rats in the tavern cellar" plot hook to be "local printing press wants you to clean out the intellectual property devourer infestation."
I just have to figure out what they look like.
They look a lot like rats, but they're yellow with red cheeks.
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Maybe they look like adorable mice wearing suspenders annd have impossibly big round ears. They claim that all the ideas are theirs.
Or the giant rats from the B-movie the Food of the Gods.
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The potential new look for intellect devourers (which will likely be referred to as "corpse thieves" or "body snatchers" and by their own name for their kind: Xoarian) that I've proposed is a five-limbed octopus type thing, with the body being something that'd fit into a skull all comfy, and with each of the five limbs being devoted to controlling one of the body's five senses. We'll see though if that route sticks or if we go some other direction, of course.
For the record, the new look for intellect devourers (which will likely be referred to as "corpse thieves" or "body snatchers" and by their own name for their kind: Xoarian) that I've proposed is a five-limbed octopus type thing, with the body being something that'd fit into a skull all comfy, and with each of the five limbs being devoted to controlling one of the body's five senses. We'll see though if that route sticks or if we go some other direction, of course.
*might have done a hedgehog tumor familiar in PF1 located at the base of the skull with the Figment archetype so it could burrow in when the host was unconscious*
... Which is to say, I'm looking forward to this version a lot. XD
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The potential new look for intellect devourers (which will likely be referred to as "corpse thieves" or "body snatchers" and by their own name for their kind: Xoarian) that I've proposed is a five-limbed octopus type thing, with the body being something that'd fit into a skull all comfy, and with each of the five limbs being devoted to controlling one of the body's five senses. We'll see though if that route sticks or if we go some other direction, of course.Assuming it makes a return, wouldn't those names potentially clash with the bodythief?
When you have as many monsters as we do, there will be similarities. That may result in us going with "corpse thief" instead of "body snatcher". It may result in us never updating the bodythief (which is for sure an option—we won't be able to update every 1E monster into 2E). Or it might just be that we have two similarly named creatures in the setting. Which is fine as well.
I'm hoping we get the Bodythief back...I always like it when Paizo pulls from horror film history.
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Is Second Darkness getting retconned any different from all the other APs having canon results different from every home table?
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Additionally we've also had official comments there that Abomination Vaults will remain printed under OGL, not be rewritten that "those drow are fine"; which means they will now apparently be the only drow in existence. The AP doesn't support discovering a whole new ancestry like that; the PCs are expected to know what they are and typically represent.
Well, it can be explained away by them coming from a dimensional rift (not a planar portal, an actual dimensional rift from a completely different universe) and consequently being outright wiped out as a result of the canon ending of the AP.
After all, if they were able to do something like this for Reign of Winter (which is how we know how to date Pathfinder in regards to our own date system), I can't see why a similar thing couldn't happen here.
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Paizo can't retcon your characters or your stories.
Like Paizo can print as many adventures set in Westcrown as they want, but that's not going to change the fact that in our game the Glorious Reclamation (a thing that's still active) holds the city, as our Hell's Vengeance game ended in "The Party decided they disliked Thrune more than their ostensible enemies, and betrayed Cheliax in as spectacular a fashion as they could manage." There's just a cease fire brought on by the events of "Tar-Baphon's back".
It's just that if an adventure touches on Chellish politics it will require significant retrofitting if we're going to run those.
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clearly the disappearance of the drow is a result of the
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They don’t have to explain any of it!!!! They already published that material and they own those stories.
If they want to go back and write new stories that build upon 2nd dark or abomination vaults, etc, AND publish them under the ORC license, they won’t reference Drow in them. They might tell some new version of what happened, or make a mystery of it, ir present a different perspective.
Golarion is not 1 unified world or universe. It becomes each tables version when you play adventures that happen there. There are millions of different Golarion’s out there. You can can use any of the existing material to tell the story of yours, or even make up new stuff, or combine in proprietary adventures from dozens of other companies however you see fit…Paizo is not going to do that with theirs though, and they are not telling new stories about some of their old material. That is all this means.
Except they're already playing with the idea that Second Darkness will no longer be canon. And such changes also retcons our characters - unless you rewrite the hypothetical sequel, but why run an AP if you have to do the work to restore table canon, if that's even possible and you aren't creating plot holes by doing so?
Additionally we've also had official comments there that Abomination Vaults will remain printed under OGL, not be rewritten that "those drow are fine"; which means they will now apparently be the only drow in existence. The AP doesn't support discovering a whole new ancestry like that; the PCs are expected to know what they are and typically represent.
I think you are reading a little too much into James Jacobs responses to people asking him questions about what he would do if he was going to try to run x drow heavy adventure path in a world consistent with the new ORC license. Your Golarion will remain your Golarion and if you ran Second Darkness as written, you can still have its outcomes canon in your own world. No one is going to tell you your game is wrong or broken. You don't have to throw away your old save. Nothing moving forward is going to interact with Drow. There will likely be some material revisiting some of the locations from past APs that used to have Drow in them. Whenever you go back, they are not going to be there. That is the biggest possible extent of "Retconned out of existence" that is going to happen.
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The potential new look for intellect devourers (which will likely be referred to as "corpse thieves" or "body snatchers" and by their own name for their kind: Xoarian) that I've proposed is a five-limbed octopus type thing, with the body being something that'd fit into a skull all comfy, and with each of the five limbs being devoted to controlling one of the body's five senses. We'll see though if that route sticks or if we go some other direction, of course.
Right now I hope it sticks. It is very flavourful, and it has mechanical implications (i.e. cut off a tentacle, and that sense is denied the Xoarian).
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"Canon" here is being taken to absurd extremes.
Some of the APs have had chosen outcomes that have been written forward into future material. Very many of the APs have not, because things are supposed to be open-ended and you don't need to play the APs in specific orders, with specific outcomes to play pathfinder. This is not some Massive Multi-player video game where the game world as a whole has to advance with exactly the same outcome every year, or season, or all is lost.
At the end of PF1 there were a string of APs that really set some of the other APs as settled events in the world. The only aspect of second darkness really needed for Golarion to continue is that the net consequence of that AP having happened or not in your game is that a second earthfall never happened. Most people in Golarion didn't know that was a possibility in the first place, so 2nd Dark is an example of a low stakes AP to the overall metaplot. Same with very many other APs over the years. Sometimes we get little crumbs of past characters and events, and we could even still get some of that from 2nd Darkness, because the only thing from second darkness needed, moving forward is that there was not a major planet shattering catastrophe. That is it! Everything else going on in this thread is essentially people who have been writing fan fiction with their friends potentially having some of those stories possibly disrupted a little bit by a change in direction with future material.
You don't have to make all your drow go away. You can either keep yours around and work them into any future stories that are set in places you have them, or you can have your own Drowpocalypse in world, it is really up to you.
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Want a great example of how bad this is: Star Wars pre-disney had 10s if not 100s of books that were canon and greatly expanded on the lore. Post-disney all of those stories are not-canon, did not happen, and anything based on those events is now purely fan-fiction.
Not a great example, because those books were considered second tier canon and often ended up contradicting each other or even core canon material in various ways, with people just sort of pick and choosing their favorite elements.
Kind of like what you can do here.
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...I think you are reading a little too much into James Jacobs responses to people asking him questions about what he would do if he was going to try to run x drow heavy adventure path in a world consistent with the new ORC license. Your Golarion will remain your Golarion and if you ran Second Darkness as written, you can still have its outcomes canon in your own world.They don’t have to explain any of it!!!! They already published that material and they own those stories.
If they want to go back and write new stories that build upon 2nd dark or abomination vaults, etc, AND publish them under the ORC license, they won’t reference Drow in them. They might tell some new version of what happened, or make a mystery of it, ir present a different perspective.
Golarion is not 1 unified world or universe. It becomes each tables version when you play adventures that happen there. There are millions of different Golarion’s out there. You can can use any of the existing material to tell the story of yours, or even make up new stuff, or combine in proprietary adventures from dozens of other companies however you see fit…Paizo is not going to do that with theirs though, and they are not telling new stories about some of their old material. That is all this means.
Except they're already playing with the idea that Second Darkness will no longer be canon. And such changes also retcons our characters - unless you rewrite the hypothetical sequel, but why run an AP if you have to do the work to restore table canon, if that's even possible and you aren't creating plot holes by doing so?
Additionally we've also had official comments there that Abomination Vaults will remain printed under OGL, not be rewritten that "those drow are fine"; which means they will now apparently be the only drow in existence. The AP doesn't support discovering a whole new ancestry like that; the PCs are expected to know what they are and typically represent.
Your table is *always* going to be different from the main canon. Something you do will be different. So now your table has drow, main canon doesn't. That doesn't make your table any less real for your group. Yes, it means you won't have any official followups to your adventure path run. But there are very few APs that get that anyway, so how is that different from me not ever having a follow up to Wrath of the Righteous?
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In my most recently completed campaign, the party TPK'd towards the end of Outlaws of Alkenstar, and we decided to let it rest that the really bad thing happened there, because all the heroes that could stop it died. Is that likely to ever be the consequence of what happens in Golarion? No. But in all the other games I play with that same group, we are going to keep running with "Alkenstar has serious problems," right up until we all have some reason to want to play some material where that would make things less fun for us. When that happens, we will either come up with a work around, or just let our vision go. It is really not that big of a deal to think of Golarion as a multiverse of planets instead of just one, where everything written in every single splat book has to define exactly how you are allowed to play pathfinder.
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Your table is *always* going to be different from the main canon. Something you do will be different. So now your table has drow, main canon doesn't. That doesn't make your table any less real for your group. Yes, it means you won't have any official followups to your adventure path run. But there are very few APs that get that anyway, so how is that different from me not ever having a follow up to Wrath of the Righteous?
I'm pretty sure that's not really the complaint here.
Sure, tables don't always follow canon, but they do follow published adventures, and people will definitely be disappointed that there will be no more work done with that type of content, not to mention that I imagine if they try to homebrew something, it won't be anywhere near to the caliber of Paizo's work, nor would it be time-respective (that is, the amount of effort and time spent generating the story would be of an extreme level to even come close to matching Paizo's work).
Spending grueling hours on something to be subpar compared to the previously ran adventure(s) is definitely a feelsbad moment for the table and the GM, and I'm not going to expect every GM to be able to sink in the time and effort and ingenuity that Paizo does for their adventures; it's an unrealistic expectation. Consequently, telling everyone that they won't do any more Drow-related work, while understandable, is still certainly a swift kick to the groin.
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"Canon" here is being taken to absurd extremes.
Some of the APs have had chosen outcomes that have been written forward into future material. Very many of the APs have not, because things are supposed to be open-ended and you don't need to play the APs in specific orders, with specific outcomes to play pathfinder. This is not some Massive Multi-player video game where the game world as a whole has to advance with exactly the same outcome every year, or season, or all is lost.
At the end of PF1 there were a string of APs that really set some of the other APs as settled events in the world. The only aspect of second darkness really needed for Golarion to continue is that the net consequence of that AP having happened or not in your game is that a second earthfall never happened. Most people in Golarion didn't know that was a possibility in the first place, so 2nd Dark is an example of a low stakes AP to the overall metaplot. Same with very many other APs over the years. Sometimes we get little crumbs of past characters and events, and we could even still get some of that from 2nd Darkness, because the only thing from second darkness needed, moving forward is that there was not a major planet shattering catastrophe. That is it! Everything else going on in this thread is essentially people who have been writing fan fiction with their friends potentially having some of those stories possibly disrupted a little bit by a change in direction with future material.
You don't have to make all your drow go away. You can either keep yours around and work them into any future stories that are set in places you have them, or you can have your own Drowpocalypse in world, it is really up to you.
I could rant ALL. DAY. about how fandom obsesses WAY too much on the concept of "canon." ESPECIALLY in a tabletop roleplaying game, "canon" is the history of your game, and canon ends when your game ends.
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I'm still hoping to hear something about Shraen:
the city of Drow who got ousted from Zirnakaynin for worshiping Urgathoa instead of a demon lord, traveled to Vask, transformed themselves into undead along the way, and have a new city.
Like, a significant portion of their backstory is based on getting ousted from Zirnakaynin. Just up and replacing them with Sekmin, even undead Sekmin, loses a lot of development from the Extinction Curse AP.
It's a really cool city, and I'm just worried it's going to lose a ton of appeal in the transition, whatever that ends up looking like.
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I love the idea of using Serpentfolk as the primary Darklands antagonist, and while I 100% understand the current stance on Drow it is a little heartbreaking because I love dark elves in general. My only problem is the seeming stance that right now PAIZO is committing to not have dark elves at all, if they are remaking svirfneblin into Drathnelar and duergar into Hryngar to separate them from the WOTC properties why do the drow get the same treatment? I know that because of how popular the history of drow in FR has become any major change will upset people because they can only conceive of any dark elf as ebony skinned, white haired, matriarchal spider worshipers, but we've already started the process of moving past that. What I personally would love to see is them eventually coming back, perhaps as an extremely rare ancestry whom the Serpentfolk are making to look bad, have them work as a sort of Darklands guerilla force working to prevent the Serpentfolk from getting back to the surface. The group presented in Second Darkness could be the single small clan that does worship Demons, turning to evil ad a means to fight against the oppressive regime of the Sekmin empire. The handful of other clans perhaps fear the surface because they know this clan is the only one that has had any interactions and they fear being mistaken for their horrid cousins.
I'm just spitballing but I think that eventually we could have an answer to dark elves and I dislike the stance of pretending they don't exist.
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I'm still hoping to hear something about Shraen:
the city of Drow who got ousted from Zirnakaynin for worshiping Urgathoa instead of a demon lord, traveled to Vask, transformed themselves into undead along the way, and have a new city.Like, a significant portion of their backstory is based on getting ousted from Zirnakaynin. Just up and replacing them with Sekmin, even undead Sekmin, loses a lot of development from the Extinction Curse AP.
It's a really cool city, and I'm just worried it's going to lose a ton of appeal in the transition, whatever that ends up looking like.
Personally, whatever happens, I'm going to continue to say its a city of undead cavern elves and leave it at that. I do kinda hope Paizo does the same, since its a super neat location and I think keeping that one city of elves could work with some retconning... but I won't fault them if they don't. Undead snake mummies has its appeal too.
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I'm still hoping to hear something about Shraen:
the city of Drow who got ousted from Zirnakaynin for worshiping Urgathoa instead of a demon lord, traveled to Vask, transformed themselves into undead along the way, and have a new city.Like, a significant portion of their backstory is based on getting ousted from Zirnakaynin. Just up and replacing them with Sekmin, even undead Sekmin, loses a lot of development from the Extinction Curse AP.
It's a really cool city, and I'm just worried it's going to lose a ton of appeal in the transition, whatever that ends up looking like.
Have nothing to reveal about Shraen yet, but my gut feeling is to find a way to have it still be Urgathoa worshiping elves who end up there. They don't have to be drow, since the story of them here is not about them being drow and playing to the OGL tropes that we can no longer use in print once we switch to ORC products.
Whether they are cavern elves, or an Urgathoa cult who fled Kyonin or Celwynvian, or potentailly even aquatic elves or something wild like that... dunno. I wouldn't expect to hear much more from us on this specific topic for a while, though.
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...I think you are reading a little too much into James Jacobs responses to people asking him questions about what he would do if he was going to try to run x drow heavy adventure path in a world consistent with the new ORC license. Your Golarion will remain your Golarion and if you ran Second Darkness as written,They don’t have to explain any of it!!!! They already published that material and they own those stories.
If they want to go back and write new stories that build upon 2nd dark or abomination vaults, etc, AND publish them under the ORC license, they won’t reference Drow in them. They might tell some new version of what happened, or make a mystery of it, ir present a different perspective.
Golarion is not 1 unified world or universe. It becomes each tables version when you play adventures that happen there. There are millions of different Golarion’s out there. You can can use any of the existing material to tell the story of yours, or even make up new stuff, or combine in proprietary adventures from dozens of other companies however you see fit…Paizo is not going to do that with theirs though, and they are not telling new stories about some of their old material. That is all this means.
Except they're already playing with the idea that Second Darkness will no longer be canon. And such changes also retcons our characters - unless you rewrite the hypothetical sequel, but why run an AP if you have to do the work to restore table canon, if that's even possible and you aren't creating plot holes by doing so?
Additionally we've also had official comments there that Abomination Vaults will remain printed under OGL, not be rewritten that "those drow are fine"; which means they will now apparently be the only drow in existence. The AP doesn't support discovering a whole new ancestry like that; the PCs are expected to know what they are and typically represent.
I mean this isn't the first nor will it likely be the last time something is removed from the setting (Paladins of Asmodeus say hi) this one is slightly bigger, but really the ramifications aren't that big. And it still doesn't change the canon for *your* table. You're given two options, you either just don't use drow anymore, or you homebrew. If you don't think your stuff is up to snuff with Paizo, then practice so that it is.
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Exactly they are already renaming a bunch of things and saying its fine. But somehow Drow, which Pathfinder Drow are very different overall, is for some reason getting straight up deleted.
Heck Paizo specifically added woodland elves and say nothing about retconning those. Nothing about retconning goblins, dwarfs, gnomes. Nothing about retconning domains. Nothing about retconning bard abilities.
It feels like Drow and Wizard were specifically targeted. For as much as I believe Jason, and I do believe him, it also feels like the OGL stuff is just an excuse and he got out voted.
Pathfinder Drow aren’t really different at all is the thing. How are they different?
Those random creatures and abilities you bring up are not remotely the same. “Why aren’t you changing these thing aren’t under fire and don’t need to be changed” answers itself.
You’re running on conspiracy fumes and victimhood for… some absurd reason.
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I love the idea of using Serpentfolk as the primary Darklands antagonist, and while I 100% understand the current stance on Drow it is a little heartbreaking because I love dark elves in general. My only problem is the seeming stance that right now PAIZO is committing to not have dark elves at all, if they are remaking svirfneblin into Drathnelar and duergar into Hryngar to separate them from the WOTC properties why do the drow get the same treatment? I know that because of how popular the history of drow in FR has become any major change will upset people because they can only conceive of any dark elf as ebony skinned, white haired, matriarchal spider worshipers, but we've already started the process of moving past that. What I personally would love to see is them eventually coming back, perhaps as an extremely rare ancestry whom the Serpentfolk are making to look bad, have them work as a sort of Darklands guerilla force working to prevent the Serpentfolk from getting back to the surface. The group presented in Second Darkness could be the single small clan that does worship Demons, turning to evil ad a means to fight against the oppressive regime of the Sekmin empire. The handful of other clans perhaps fear the surface because they know this clan is the only one that has had any interactions and they fear being mistaken for their horrid cousins.
I'm just spitballing but I think that eventually we could have an answer to dark elves and I dislike the stance of pretending they don't exist.Exactly they are already renaming a bunch of things and saying its fine. But somehow Drow, which Pathfinder Drow are very different overall, is for some reason getting straight up deleted.
Heck Paizo specifically added woodland elves and say nothing about retconning those. Nothing about retconning goblins, dwarfs, gnomes. Nothing about retconning domains. Nothing about retconning bard abilities.
It feels like Drow and Wizard were specifically targeted. For as much as I believe...
I am not sure which Jason you are referencing, but James Jacobs made it pretty clear that none of the other creatures that folks here have been talking about are as clearly tied to D&D Lore as Drow are. If you read through these threads, many, many people don't seem to have a clear vision of how a Golarion Drow is different than a D&D Drow here, not to mention which version of Golarion lore applies to the Drow that they are thinking about.
I think Drow are probably just too convoluted to try to keep because players are going to project so much onto them and keep calling them Drow. These conversations have really made it clear to me why this decision makes so much sense.
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From looking at the lore, Pathfinder Drow do not seem to be very different from their Dungeons and Dragons counterparts. Also, the drow are a major component of WoTC adventures, books, and miniatures. So, the ambiguity makes it easier for WoTC to claim copyright infringement. Pathfinder drow do not follow an evil spider demon-goddess but still are matriarchal evil societies with many demon worshippers. Many of the abilities are the same, and changing the Pathfinder drow into something that a copyright lawyer would be comfortable defending might be well-nigh impossible.
I imagine that some of the conversations between Paizo people and the attorneys might have gone something like this:
Paizo Person: "We need to change Pathfinder drow if we keep them. What about having them follow the old ones and have staves that have tentacles?"
Attorney: "That was fun for Vault of the Drow in the 1970s."
Paiso Person: "How about making them imperialistic greedy people. Wait, we are doing that for the revamp of the duergar, who are less problematic."
Attorney: "Cavern elves are okay. The Norse version was not particularly evil. Part of the problem is making an evil elven race a major villain -- which is a major WoTC theme."
Paizo Person: "We could make them concerned with following deities of earth, wealth, and trade. Wait, that might tip them towards neutrality and worship of deities like Gozreh and Abadar."
I think that a lot of thought went into the decision not to do anything more with the drow. The legal risks are high. Changing the drow into something different and still keep their role as a major adversary would be a hard task . Worse, it might prompt Hasbro/WoTC to sue. Even if Hasbro/WotC lost the legal battle, Paizo might not want to have a legal fight with a multi-billion dollar corporation that has attempted to repeal the OGL.
So, my hope is that cavern elves can be made into something interesting. There is no reason why you can't have a character that is a cavern elf (maybe with something else thrown in) who looks a lot like the Pathfinder drow. (I imagine that there will be a variety of colors of skin and hair just as there are in human populations as well as many cultural groups. Perhaps one even has a story of cavern elves who went very bad.)
Before Drizzt Do'Urden appeared, drow were still a bit part of WoTC intellectual property. (Drizzt is an example of going against type, which I saw with a mother and daughter who had neutrally aligned drow priestess of a nature goddess who helped take over a trade city. Regardless of what option players or authors chose, there is a longstanding canon of drow in D&D generally being evil demon worshippers and most players and authors try to have characters that oppose such societies) I suspect that the best legal advice that Paizo got was to move on from the drow. Paizo is giving up the drow to the company that originated them, and would likely sue over them. If I have to choose between h Pathfinder and no drow, or having Pathfinder with drow and the likelihood of threats of legal action. I choose the first option. So would anyone who would want Paizo and Pathfinder to be going concerns.
Perhaps Paizo can do an upcoming preview of the elves with an emphasis on cavern elves. As for Darklands villains, serpent folk that harken back to H.P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard will not likely cause a harshly worded letter from Hasbro's attorneys.