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I notice that dark elves in Battlespire (and some in Daggerfall: http://uesp.net/wiki/Daggerfall:Helseth) have brown skin and red eyes, rather than gray skin and red eyes, which more closely matches a lot of other fantasy lore for dark elves. In Skyrim, I often use mods to make my dark elf characters brown-skinned. And then, there are a couple dark elves even in vanilla Oblivion that had this skin color: http://uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:Arvin_Dalvilu which appears to be a blend of brown and green. I don't see that in other fantasy lore. Don't over-interpret it. Just making some observations.

If I recall correctly, there was a patch for Daggerfall that actually changed the skin color of some races. I didn't play Daggerfall much, so I can't say definitively, but I believe it was in order to distinguish them from the darker skinned of the Bosmer, which could look very similar to brown skinned dark elves. Again, not 100% on this, that's just my personal observation.

In Battlespire, dark elves have brown skin, high elves have gold skin, while wood elves are fair skinned. http://uesp.net/wiki/Battlespire:Races