And I do this sort of thing for giggles...

What sort of timescale are you looking at, because canon elves can live upwards of a thousand years - long generations there.

I'm going with Kadzar on the Dwarves - Enlightenment rather than entity. If you want some sort of personage, I'd go with great teachers-as-saints. The question then being what sort of afterlife to they envision? Becoming one again with the light? The Inner Light of their home plane being the light of their ancestors, pouring their wisdom and their warmth unto their descendants?

The nice thing here is that you can use the inner spark of divinity as their spark of inspiration - their motivation to build. This would be a way to tie the traditional dwarven crafting into the philosophy. And monks. Dwarven Monks.


Gnomes - the strong Fey and spirit connections make me think Shinto. Sites are sacred. the world is sacred. The humor - levity, jokes - and anger - emotions are important. Something dark and oppressive from wherever they were? Some sort of evil, soul-sucking gloom?


Goblinoids: I've always wanted to do Roman goblins. Hobs seem to have that sort of organization to them, and the goblin = plebeian sort of works (though goblin = citizen, anything else = plebeian, or slave, or dead fits better). ...anyhow, some sort of civil heirarchy would be a good starting point - somewhere between Greco-Roman and the Celestial Bureaucracy. A hodge-podge of gods mirroring the goblin society (or the goblinoid society modeling that of the gods). Somewhere along the line, they started a lot of fighting, which started to skew priorities a bit - the rolling expansion, or the continued moving - strips away the finer areas, leaving what is most essential for a warring lifestyle. War gods are elevated, the concept of the chief moves from benevolent lord to mad despot, darker gods with promises of faster power insinuate into the structure. If you want to make them really complex, also have them acquire gods with their expansions - brought into the fold, conquered with their worshippers - or freed from their inferior petitioners to serve a truly right and noble species. A Holy war to save the divine from inadequate followers.

Halflings: Teenagers. The conservative authority is now the stifling tyranny, and the ne'er-do-wells and tricksters are the good guys. Chaotic (Good) vs. Lawful (Evil) - at least from their perspective. Determinism vs. Free Will. Do they value chance, or consider it letting things fall by Fate? If they choose not do decide, have they still made a choice?
Hmmm... Apotheosis of the Revolutionaries? The free-thinking leader, the writer of their manifesto, the sneaky spy, the fat drunk one who somehow got all the ladies, the scout who found the way out, the quilting bee of wise women who take the scraps of broken Fate, and sew together a harlequin future for Those Who Chose to Leave. The bad guys are a mad tyrant king, some manner of governor/jailer (chains being a strong image here), and some sort of smothering mother - weaving themes appropriate here. They do not like spiders.