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Message: <blockquote data-quote="GreenTengu" data-source="post: 6856334" data-attributes="member: 6777454">Well, Dwarves already have their evil aspects, it just tends to be romanticized or underplayed.Dwarves are greedy. Endlessly greedy. They cannot possibly possess enough gold and gems. They dig and dig and dig into the earth all in order to enrich themselves and, as a result, are the ones primarily responsible for stirring the eldritch horrors that lie inside.Dwarves also love violence and war. They engage in violence, even with each other, as a pass time. Their love for drinking is because it dulls their senses and allows them all the more excuses to engage in brawls with one another.They live in a highly political, very strict clan-based society where it is likely one doesn't need to do much to get executed and if you are in a clan that is in powerplay, you can expect your political rivals to dishonor you and destroy and either kill or banish you. It is probably where most dwarven adventurers come from-- for nothing about the dwarf as presented would lead one to believe they would ever leave their homeland and venture to the surface willingly. Bet you most of the dwarfs on the surface are "criminals" who were banished, even if their crimes were either overblown or entirely fabricated.And, finally, Dwarfs hold grudged forever and swear bloody vengeance over the most innocuous and mundane of things. If you great grandfather wronged the father of a Dwarf in some way that hardly seems important, it would not be surprising if he attempts to kill you over it... again and again until either he succeeds or dies.Halflings... well, Halflings are commoners. They live in these small hamlets that are almost certainly taxed by human authorities... probably to a greater extreme than humans would be. Halflings to get out of that situation likely harbor a slight grudge and are going to probably tend towards being outlaws or, at least, swindlers. Its why they are so prevalent in thieves guilds and the like. To survive as anything but a serf, Halflings probably need to be cut-throat and ready to betray anyone at a moment's notice.... after all, they know they likely aren't valued and others are probably going to turn their backs on them at any given moment ("you don't need to outrun the dragon, just the halfling").It isn't about just being bleak or dark though. It is actually trying to come up with feasible explanations as to why things in the world are the way they are and treating the various peoples that inhabit the world as though they were well... peoples... rather than saying "these ones are all good and perfect and not a one of them would ever do anything wrong and those ones are evil and every single one of them looks to do evil with every action they take."Those allied with humans and opposed to humans need not change, but just put a bit more thought into the idea of "well, if this is how things appear on the surface, but this cannot possibly work under remotely realistic circumstances... what could possibly ACTUALLY be going on to explain how one could end up with things looking like this?"The elven society I described above would still consider itself morally superior and condemn everyone for their faults and consider themselves perfect... but it adds an excuse for their secrecy as well as they understand that lesser races could not possibly understand how their way of life is just. They wouldn't be evil in all ways, they just have blindspots in regards to certain actions their society takes in order to allow them to live the lives they live. They would still behave just as they always have in all other circumstances.Its just how all societies throughout all of history have always worked. No matter the society, the higher it reached the more you can be certain there was something uncomfortable and unspeakable happening to allow them to exist. And every time the people of the society found it easy to ignore it... or just rationalize it. It happens even today. Bet you don't want to really know how the computer you are typing on, the energy it is running on and what you ate today really came from. Or, if you know, you just don't think about it.</blockquote>

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