Hello @Athena42, person of no color but I just want to quickly address a point your comment missed or ignored.
As I understand it, @Crunchy Bit Games please correct me if I'm wrong, but the original skin color of the Lekumba is pale or white, they have color because they value the sun as evidence of their freedom, so they are sunburned badly or baked brown even though they are in fact white or pale at birth.
My question then becomes with all this potion brewing how is sunblock not a thing with them? If they truly are that changed by the time spent enslaved underground then I would expect sun exposure to be painful and result in skin issues like melanoma.
So color is not the issue that I see here, the masks and the architecture are where I can see race being a factor. But the concept of ancient tribal people with powerful magic and technology they don't remember because of slavery, this is neat.
So maybe try to make it more clear that they are actually Asian pygmy inspired and just dark from spending too much time in the sun. Maybe think about changing the skin color to a red tinged brown, like amber beer, that might convey your point more strongly.
Missions and item purchase could also further reflect this, give them an interest in obtaining skin ointments and tinctures related to sunburnt skin and skin related medical conditions, maybe some of them would have eye problems as well unless the mask takes care of that.
Now I have only started playing this game so maybe I will find something that changes my opinion but I say just own it and admit that you were inspired by mask wearing Pygmy tribal people because they are neat and you thought it would make an interesting contrast with them once having been even more advanced than the dwarves.
Honestly though I am loving the characters so far and can see myself quickly becoming lost in your fantasy world, really looking forward to the next chapters, especially if things remain as creatively fresh as what I'm seeing thus far.