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[Thorik]

Why do my dwarves always get burnt umber skin?  Also always some wacky eye color, like rusty eyes or something.

[LMeire]

Well they're dwarves, stones and metals are sacred to them. So they named all their colors and months and things after minerals.

[Blastbeard]

I think skin color may be tied with parent civilization. Makes sense when you think about it, skin color linking into genetics and all that. When I was playing human fortresses I noticed every human from the same civ had the same skin color. Everyone from civ A had ecru skin, everyone from civ B light brown, civ C cinnamon, etc.

[ShadowHammer]

I once had a fort where literally every dwarf had silver eyes. No idea why, but after I noticed it in a few guys, I went through virtually the whole population checking their pref screens, and all their eyes were silver. It was weird.

[Lalasa]

All of my dwarves are pretty much the same skin color and eye color.  Aka, they are all of the same nationality.

[Tirion]

Why do my dwarves always get burnt umber skin?

They like booze and brawls, live in a world with strange megaprojects, hell they would probably yell THE KING IN THE NORTH! if they could. They feel spiritual kinship to Greatjon "The bloody Wall will melt before an Umber marches behind a Glover! I'll lead the van, or I take my men, and march them home!" Umber

[Brelic]

Each civ gets a different set of physical features.

[Geldrin]

Once I had a fort where everyone had dark brown skin. One day I've got a message: "Urist mcVictim has been found dead, drained of blood". Months later I've caught the vampire, carved a cell for him exlusively to imprison him for all eternity. When I checked his personality page, something caught my attention:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Urist mcEvilGuy has Pale white skin.

I laughed as I imagined the situation: the dwarves gathering around the victim, while everybody looks worried about the murder.
"Brothers, I think we have a vampire beneath our walls. We must strenghten our souls, and take care of each other!"
"For Armok's beard, how do we find the killer? There's no clue for the culprit!"
(Everybody looks to Urist McSnowWhite)
"Take it easy guys! You can rule me out, I was picking plump helmets all the time!"
 

[kero42]

Yeah, most of my dwarves have the same physical characteristics each world I gen. One had the same eye colour (golden) skin colour (like yours, burnt umber) and nose bridge shape (convex). Things like how sunken the eyes are tends to vary though.

Once I had a fort where everyone had dark brown skin. One day I've got a message: "Urist mcVictim has been found dead, drained of blood". Months later I've caught the vampire, carved a cell for him exlusively to inprison him for all eternity. When I checked his personality page, something caught my attention:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Urist mcEvilGuy has Pale white skin.

I laughed as I imagined the situation: the dwarves gathering around the victim, everybody looks worried about murder.
"Brothers, I think we have a vampire beneath our walls. We must strenghten our souls, and take care of each other!"
"For Armok beard, how do we find the killer? There's no clue for the culprit!"
(Everybody looks to Urist McSnowWhite)
"Take it easy guys! You can rule me out, I was picking plump helmets all the time!"
 

lol, I wonder how they missed it for so long.

[CaptainArchmage]

Dwarven civilizations normally have about the same hair, eye, and skin color. However, this is not always the case. I've had civilizations where there was variation, and I had both dwarves with peach or pink skin and dwarves with brown and umber skin on embark.

In unmodded dwarf fortress, this appears to always be cosmetic. However, if you are using a mod it might work to identify certain dwarves to the player.