Fantasy City Project: Racial Make up and relations

I put up the Alchemie Guild material and I'm expanding on one or two character references I placed there.

Let's 'deTolkeinize' the setting a bit. We'll still have the usual assortment of favorite races, but let's tweak them a bit. Make them a bit more memorable by breaking stereotype.

Specifically, I see elves as the bad guys here. Not inherently evil or demon worshiping or anything classifiable as absolute damnable evil, but they aren't benefactors and they don't mind if the other guy loses so long as they win. They just used to be top of the food chain hereabouts until a human/dwarven alliance shunted away a good deal of their political power. Quite a few elves remember when they had their boot on the neck of the Gnomes and the other races kowtowed to them, and they LIKED it like that.

There are certainly exceptions, noble champions and kind mentor types, but by and large elves are aristocratic, rich, old guard and expect the other (inferior) races to know their place.

Specifically, up until about 40 years ago, Gnomes were largely slaves of the Elves. The cause of this was a war dating back more than 400 years ago.

While they are not quite as strong politically in the city, they have wealth, traditional power and an old boys network dating back 3 millenia.