I do not want to overpost my Drows pic, but the one I chose actually has all that color around him when I dont grey scale it all, the one I posted up there aways actually has a bunch of blue about him.  I think that would be perfect for shadow fire.  And cold is perfect too, so cold, it burns, but instead of charring like a hot flame does to ash, this one will cause things to freeze so fast that they explode into mycro crystals.  I expect I can try and do alot of different things with shadow fire, but that will be the speciality.  Flame arrow, fireball, fire trap, fire seeds, all that kind of stuff.<br/><br/>And the shadow creatures I will be most adept at controlling will be the creatures of this shadow fire.  Elementals big and scarey.  Fire Drakes.  Maybe even eventually shadow dragons or shadowy red dragons that breath out shadow fire.  Might be something my character can build up to.<br/><br/>I am fully convicted about what you say, Xan, so therefore and with that in mind, My mage will have made a shadow staff.  A quarter staff of condensed and contained shadow energy.  He will not really be able to do anything fantastic with it.  He will be able to block most anything coming at him and hit a time or two for some negative energy discharge type o damage to his target.<br/><br/>He will focus on Magic, and just magic.  I will try and figure a unque spell or three to keep me intresting to Drows.