Bro, how are you gonna talk about Drow and Druchii, but not MELNIBONEANS? The ancient, isolated and magical race of sadists that once ruled their world from dragon-back that George RR Martin would base the Targaryens and Valyria off of? You know, from the Elric Saga, the prototype that all modern Dark Fantasy is based off, published originally in 1961? Written by Michael Moorcock, the man who coined the term 'Multiverse' and the guy Games Workshop ripped off when they added Chaos Gods to Warhammer? People really need to give this man the props he deserves
Moorcock and his works, despite being nearly as seminal as Tolkien and Robert E. Howard (creator of Conan) to the modern fantasy genre, are unfortunately much less known, especially among the general public, but also many fantasy fans. In fact I'd say knowledge of Moorcock is one of the clearest demarcations between a casual fantasy fan and a serious fantasy geek.
The Witcher is also a rather blatant rip-off of Elric, seeing as how the author of The Wticher was one of the original translators who made the Polish version of the Elric books.
Among other famous early dark elves, I would also mention "moredhels" from Raymond E. Feist Riftwar cycle. The first book "Magician" was released in 1982. The word "moredhel" seems to be inspired by Tolkien sindarin. They too follow the common pattern - a split branch of the original elves, serving evil gods/demons and bearing a sort of a course. But Feist's moredhels are in appearance almost identical to the "good elves" and they can be, on occasions, accepted back to the ranks of their old brethren.
I read and enjoyed those books back in high school, but I didn't realize they were written in the '80s. Honestly thought they were newer fiction; guess that explains where all the other series set in that world came from all of a sudden and shows what I know. If memory serves, there were at least four types of elf in those books with the truly evil ones being aptly known as "mad ones," due to some torture inflicted upon their bloodlines by the world's original masters. These guys were fewer in number than most of their kin, but had been driven to relish their own psychopathic evil that all of them were irredeemable, kind of like the Reavers from Firefly/Serenity.
In my first big DnD world building project, I based Elves off of birds. Wood elves were song birds, brightly colored and migratory, High elves were eagles, and I based dark elves off of ravens and crows.
Eol and all Sindarin, save Thingol their king, are moriquendi. They were the last elves to fail to complete the journey to the Undying Lands. The only calaquendi to return Middle Earth are the Noldor.
I am under the impression that the only true Moriquendi were the Avari, who not only didn’t complete the journey but also refused it from the beginning. I’ll have to check again, thank you for watching!!
@@InkandFantasy The Avari are the only elves not counted among the Eldar for refusing to join the journey. When the Noldor exiles met the Sindar in Beleriand, the Sindar took offense to being called moriquendi. Thus, the Noldor exiles used Amanyar and Úmanyar instead of calaquendi and moriquendi respectively. But of course we have conflicting statements on whether Úmanyar refers just to the Sindar or all Eldar who did not complete the journey.
Refusing the journey was the right decision. The Valar were not supposed to interfere & the Maiar were only supposed to help indirectly. I think Moriquendi, living deep in the forests lived a more natural elf life without all the great cities, lords, and sea longing.
@@ZephyrOptional Except Legolas, a Wood Elf of Mirkwood, experienced the Sea Longing and ultimately journeyed to the Undying Lands, so that doesn't hold true at all. And besides the Valar had little choice but to intervene, otherwise all Elves would eventually have been captured by Melkor, brought to the bowels of Utumno, and tortured, twisted and bred into more Orcs, and then Middle Earth would have truly been lost, with the first Men set upon as soon as they awoke and enslaved or genocided, and the Dwarves and Ents as Melkor's sole opposition at best slowly losing a war of attrition against the full force of the Black Enemy: Orcs, Trolls, Wargs, Werewolves, Vampires, Dragons, Balrogs, and other Dark Things that should never have been but for Melkor's evil. And then Shadow would have fallen on Middle Earth, never to be dispersed by Light, but by the mercy of Eru Illuvatar putting it out of its misery, and maybe to start again.
Great video! As a follow up, I would also mention the more amoral Elves in Poul Anderson’s “The Broken Sword” (which was published at the same time as “Lord of the Rings” and, inspired by many of the same Norse Myths as Tolkien, it can be read as a mirror image to “The Children of Hurin” in “The Silmarillion”) and the Malniboneans in Michael Moorcock’s “Elric” stories, both of which appears on Gygax’s “Appendix N” resource for inspiration for “D&D” players. 😃
I love the art style of the image at 13:40 (an actually pretty good blending of Warhammer Dark Elf garb with more believable historical European fashions). Where did you find it? Just subscribed, btw. You do some awesome commentary on this channel!
Not a word about the Seelie & Unseelie Sidhe. sad. Svartalves are just dwarves. We get modern elves from Tolkien's combination of Light Elves and Fay. Tolkien brought fay elements more in line with the norse elves. Once he did that, though, it was a simple matter for other authors to take the Unseelie and combine them with an inverse of tolkienesque elves.
You made a mistake talking about Tolkien, the Moriquendi is an umbrella term that cover the Avar, Silvan and Sindarin, but lots of people get confused and think it's just the Avari. The fact that Leogolas is actually a Dark Elf throws people for a loop. Dark Elves in Anime have a very different history however, starting with Record of Lodos War and going down to War on Geminar and then Gate. They are more similar to the Avar then the Drow and their literary descendants.
Yeah Dark Elves were mostly similar to D&D Dark Elves in the Lodoss War/Sword World setting, but quickly branched out and by the 2010s at the latest became literally just Sylvan Elves with dark humanlike skin tones, and an emphasis on fanservice, mostly. Funny enough a large part of this can be traced back to the character Pirotess, who was an original character created specifically for the OVAs with no direct novel equivalent (yes, Record of Lodoss War was originally a light novel series, like Slayers, Vampire Hunter D and countless others), and the sympathy she garnered from audiences for being loyal to a fault to her human love the Dark Knight Ashram, and for being smoking hot.
It's awesome thinking how JRR Tolkien changed the culture with his stories. Created an entire new mythology, races, languages and archetypes. Only a genius could do that. Of course he didn't do It himself alone, as he got some help from many people(inspiring them aswell) like CS Lewis for example. But, beyond popularizing fantasy genre and role playing games, he reinforced the myth of good x evil and the following of a virtuous/sainted path in the minds of all modern western culture.
Fun fact: nobody really knows who created their version first (both's first published appearance was around the same time IIRC), which is why neither company ever sued the other.
I have to admit that when it comes to dark elves, the Druchii will always be my preferred depiction. Admittedly I'm not an Elder Scrolls fan so I can't say much of the Dunmer but the Drow...are kinda pathetic. They talk a big game about their superiority over the surface races and how they plan to have their revenge, but they can't seem to do a simple raid without a conspiracy being hatched and their own god planning to screw them over. No matter how many times Malekith fails to take over Ulthuan and has to take his armies home to Naggoroth, it always feels like the Druchii are working towards achieving their goal. They are an entire nation constantly being refined into a deadlier engine of war; the Drow come across as a few city-states with a terminal case of "stabbing each other in the foot" disease. Reading from the perspective of Drow I want to smack them all upside the head and tell them to lock in on the goal at hand. In the Malus Darkblade series, the most in-depth look we get at day-to-day Druchii society in the same way Drizzit Do'Urden does for the Drow, the titular character spends a good chunk of the last two books having grown out of that attitude and being fed up with that kind of petty politicking. The Drow think they're the Druchii when they act like a poor man's Skaven.
I didn't know there was a competition between dark elves from different authors. I know in my early D&D campaigns, Drow were constant villains, scheming, ruthless and deviant, as well as fighting to survive against their arch-enemies the illithid, and so many other subterranean races. Their matriarchal society and the reverse of human morphology with stronger, taller females made any trip into Drow territory an alien experience for my players. As for Drow city-states stabbing each other in the back...all my races did the same, whether above or below ground. It's the nature of power and the intrigues megalomaniacs on thrones play against one another. I never read Forgotten Realms based novels, nor played in that world, or played Warhammer. All our stuff was based on Gygax's Greyhawk.
@@rikk319 A fair enough point, and I'm speaking more as a matter of preference than of objective truth. I don't think the Drow are necessarily bad or uninteresting, but I feel like you're always waiting for the other shoe to drop. They come across as shortsightedly opportunistic to me, snatching defeat from the jaws of victory mostly because Lolth revels in seeing her own followers suffer and reinforce their dependence on her. And this betrayal isn't just between city-states but inside them. Each noble family is its own house of cards that gets purposefully knocked by Lolth because she thinks it's funny. For Malekith, the Witch-king of the Druchii, these setbacks are treated like setbacks instead of a part of their so-called "perfect society". Druchii treat treachery like a problem, for Drow it's a feature.
If you ever decide to remake this, I would advice to change the sentence at around 3:47. I don't know how it is in the other countries, but among the "germanic" ones, I can guarantee you that elves barely appear in any traditional folk or fairy tales of Germany, even actual fairies are far more common. I hard scholars talk about the Alb or Alf, but those cause nightmares and even those, I have not yet seen in folk or fairy tales here. The times that I have encountered elves I can still count on one hand, even fairies are more common and both only occur the closer you get to france or denmark respectively, just like the nachzehrer becomes more common the closer you get to the slavic countries. Now dwarves, no matter what names, on the other hand, they are all over the place, there is no shortage of them or other short humanoid beings whether they live underground, in woods or in houses.
Besides the trend of evil elf civilization, another popular trope in modern fantasy is to make all elves scary and untrustworthy (a lot of 'faerie' fantasy does this too). Discworld and The Witcher, I think, depicts their elves as such. I'm more interested in seeing a fantasy setting where all elves (light and dark) are good (or neutral) and their light/dark designation simply refers to what biome they inhabit. Just as there are legends and ballads about dangerous elves, there are also folktales of friendly and beneficient elves that do not even fall into the light/dark dichotomy. Netflix's Hilda is one example where the elves are just chill
Isn't that...just Lord of the Rings? I mean, the vast majority of "dark elves" or Moriquendi are pretty chill(with a few exceptions), as with the vast majority of Elves in Arda(again, with a few exceptions like Celegorm, Curufin, Eol, and Maeglin).
@@KaiHung-wv3ul I thought most people already know Middle Earth elves (at least the 2nd and 3rd age ones) as generally benevolent so I omitted mention of them. I'm saying that more Middle Earth style or just nicer and more down-to-earth elves would be very welcome
@@mon_moi They would be indeed! However, I'm not entirely sure how they would fare, removed from the philosophical and theological context of Tolkien's original works. I just hope it captures some of the magic that the professor imbued in his elves, and not just make them "a better version of humans".
Other beings will leave u for dead. White elves though naughty, and can be evil, dont. Once they give self, its a promise to bind to your cells forever.
They dont look much different than there spiritual form. Still very skinny most. Beautiful. Quiet. I wish they knew how to reserch there insides more. Maybe now i will speak. What i see.
They keep you forever. Thats for sure. The white elves. And are very protective and even jealous. European women are close to kin with them. Ive slept with them before and vision them in sleep. You wake up and look at woman. Who looks back confused. Boy are u loaded i wanted to say.
@@gunjfur8633 The ancient Greeks are the pure, cool older cousin to European high society. The Persians were their equally-influential rival, and are themselves the pure, cool older cousin to the Europeans' main rival. It's a familiar dynamic in European storytelling is all
Seriously, you try to somehow invent a dnd inspiration for WHF delfs? And not a word about the 75% Elric and 25% 80s hair metal that actually went into their creation?
At least Gygax gave Michael Moorcock credit for his influence on D&D. There wouldn't be multiple planes without Moorcock, or intelligent swords, or the miscibility of potions...or the gibbering mouther. Or The Witcher.
Another great video, glad to see you venture out of Lord of the Rings again - always interesting!
Bro, how are you gonna talk about Drow and Druchii, but not MELNIBONEANS? The ancient, isolated and magical race of sadists that once ruled their world from dragon-back that George RR Martin would base the Targaryens and Valyria off of?
You know, from the Elric Saga, the prototype that all modern Dark Fantasy is based off, published originally in 1961?
Written by Michael Moorcock, the man who coined the term 'Multiverse' and the guy Games Workshop ripped off when they added Chaos Gods to Warhammer?
People really need to give this man the props he deserves
His work just isn't as know
Moorcock and his works, despite being nearly as seminal as Tolkien and Robert E. Howard (creator of Conan) to the modern fantasy genre, are unfortunately much less known, especially among the general public, but also many fantasy fans. In fact I'd say knowledge of Moorcock is one of the clearest demarcations between a casual fantasy fan and a serious fantasy geek.
The Witcher is also a rather blatant rip-off of Elric, seeing as how the author of The Wticher was one of the original translators who made the Polish version of the Elric books.
Among other famous early dark elves, I would also mention "moredhels" from Raymond E. Feist Riftwar cycle. The first book "Magician" was released in 1982. The word "moredhel" seems to be inspired by Tolkien sindarin. They too follow the common pattern - a split branch of the original elves, serving evil gods/demons and bearing a sort of a course. But Feist's moredhels are in appearance almost identical to the "good elves" and they can be, on occasions, accepted back to the ranks of their old brethren.
I read and enjoyed those books back in high school, but I didn't realize they were written in the '80s. Honestly thought they were newer fiction; guess that explains where all the other series set in that world came from all of a sudden and shows what I know. If memory serves, there were at least four types of elf in those books with the truly evil ones being aptly known as "mad ones," due to some torture inflicted upon their bloodlines by the world's original masters. These guys were fewer in number than most of their kin, but had been driven to relish their own psychopathic evil that all of them were irredeemable, kind of like the Reavers from Firefly/Serenity.
In my first big DnD world building project, I based Elves off of birds. Wood elves were song birds, brightly colored and migratory, High elves were eagles, and I based dark elves off of ravens and crows.
You should have included the Melniboneans from Elric. That is definitely the first dark elves in a fantasy context
Eol and all Sindarin, save Thingol their king, are moriquendi. They were the last elves to fail to complete the journey to the Undying Lands. The only calaquendi to return Middle Earth are the Noldor.
I am under the impression that the only true Moriquendi were the Avari, who not only didn’t complete the journey but also refused it from the beginning. I’ll have to check again, thank you for watching!!
@@InkandFantasy The Avari are the only elves not counted among the Eldar for refusing to join the journey. When the Noldor exiles met the Sindar in Beleriand, the Sindar took offense to being called moriquendi. Thus, the Noldor exiles used Amanyar and Úmanyar instead of calaquendi and moriquendi respectively. But of course we have conflicting statements on whether Úmanyar refers just to the Sindar or all Eldar who did not complete the journey.
Refusing the journey was the right decision. The Valar were not supposed to interfere & the Maiar were only supposed to help indirectly. I think Moriquendi, living deep in the forests lived a more natural elf life without all the great cities, lords, and sea longing.
@@ZephyrOptional Except Legolas, a Wood Elf of Mirkwood, experienced the Sea Longing and ultimately journeyed to the Undying Lands, so that doesn't hold true at all.
And besides the Valar had little choice but to intervene, otherwise all Elves would eventually have been captured by Melkor, brought to the bowels of Utumno, and tortured, twisted and bred into more Orcs, and then Middle Earth would have truly been lost, with the first Men set upon as soon as they awoke and enslaved or genocided, and the Dwarves and Ents as Melkor's sole opposition at best slowly losing a war of attrition against the full force of the Black Enemy: Orcs, Trolls, Wargs, Werewolves, Vampires, Dragons, Balrogs, and other Dark Things that should never have been but for Melkor's evil.
And then Shadow would have fallen on Middle Earth, never to be dispersed by Light, but by the mercy of Eru Illuvatar putting it out of its misery, and maybe to start again.
@@ZephyrOptional Tolkien meant the sea longing for all elves, and you can see it when Legolas, a Moriquendi himself, fell in love with the sea.
Great video! As a follow up, I would also mention the more amoral Elves in Poul Anderson’s “The Broken Sword” (which was published at the same time as “Lord of the Rings” and, inspired by many of the same Norse Myths as Tolkien, it can be read as a mirror image to “The Children of Hurin” in “The Silmarillion”) and the Malniboneans in Michael Moorcock’s “Elric” stories, both of which appears on Gygax’s “Appendix N” resource for inspiration for “D&D” players. 😃
I read the Broken Sword! Very good also it was confirmed that the books was an influence on the Warhammer Elves.
Melniboneans are described by fans as dark elves.
Worth mentioning as another precursor.
Are you sure they have pointy ears?
@@lucabarbieri6943 and the Tolkien elves have them?
What a grand and intoxicating innocence.
I love the art style of the image at 13:40 (an actually pretty good blending of Warhammer Dark Elf garb with more believable historical European fashions). Where did you find it?
Just subscribed, btw. You do some awesome commentary on this channel!
It is Sons of Naggarond by Michele Boceda!
Thank you for the support!!
I was surprised you didn’t mention the "good" dark elf of R.A. Salvatore's Drizzt series.
Good stuff, keep'em coming!
One of the grimm brothers described the dark elves as being dingy, pale, gloomy, not necessarily blacker than pitch in favor of three types of elves
Not a word about the Seelie & Unseelie Sidhe. sad.
Svartalves are just dwarves.
We get modern elves from Tolkien's combination of Light Elves and Fay. Tolkien brought fay elements more in line with the norse elves. Once he did that, though, it was a simple matter for other authors to take the Unseelie and combine them with an inverse of tolkienesque elves.
Freyr was a vanir god
Wow, WFB was 1983? Now I i feel old! 😄
You made a mistake talking about Tolkien, the Moriquendi is an umbrella term that cover the Avar, Silvan and Sindarin, but lots of people get confused and think it's just the Avari. The fact that Leogolas is actually a Dark Elf throws people for a loop.
Dark Elves in Anime have a very different history however, starting with Record of Lodos War and going down to War on Geminar and then Gate. They are more similar to the Avar then the Drow and their literary descendants.
mithrandirolorin.blogspot.com/2024/01/dark-elves-in-anime-are-nothing-like.html
Yeah Dark Elves were mostly similar to D&D Dark Elves in the Lodoss War/Sword World setting, but quickly branched out and by the 2010s at the latest became literally just Sylvan Elves with dark humanlike skin tones, and an emphasis on fanservice, mostly. Funny enough a large part of this can be traced back to the character Pirotess, who was an original character created specifically for the OVAs with no direct novel equivalent (yes, Record of Lodoss War was originally a light novel series, like Slayers, Vampire Hunter D and countless others), and the sympathy she garnered from audiences for being loyal to a fault to her human love the Dark Knight Ashram, and for being smoking hot.
It's awesome thinking how JRR Tolkien changed the culture with his stories. Created an entire new mythology, races, languages and archetypes.
Only a genius could do that. Of course he didn't do It himself alone, as he got some help from many people(inspiring them aswell) like CS Lewis for example.
But, beyond popularizing fantasy genre and role playing games, he reinforced the myth of good x evil and the following of a virtuous/sainted path in the minds of all modern western culture.
10:36 not malekith the accursed from marvels thor
Fun fact: nobody really knows who created their version first (both's first published appearance was around the same time IIRC), which is why neither company ever sued the other.
I have to admit that when it comes to dark elves, the Druchii will always be my preferred depiction. Admittedly I'm not an Elder Scrolls fan so I can't say much of the Dunmer but the Drow...are kinda pathetic. They talk a big game about their superiority over the surface races and how they plan to have their revenge, but they can't seem to do a simple raid without a conspiracy being hatched and their own god planning to screw them over. No matter how many times Malekith fails to take over Ulthuan and has to take his armies home to Naggoroth, it always feels like the Druchii are working towards achieving their goal. They are an entire nation constantly being refined into a deadlier engine of war; the Drow come across as a few city-states with a terminal case of "stabbing each other in the foot" disease. Reading from the perspective of Drow I want to smack them all upside the head and tell them to lock in on the goal at hand. In the Malus Darkblade series, the most in-depth look we get at day-to-day Druchii society in the same way Drizzit Do'Urden does for the Drow, the titular character spends a good chunk of the last two books having grown out of that attitude and being fed up with that kind of petty politicking. The Drow think they're the Druchii when they act like a poor man's Skaven.
I didn't know there was a competition between dark elves from different authors. I know in my early D&D campaigns, Drow were constant villains, scheming, ruthless and deviant, as well as fighting to survive against their arch-enemies the illithid, and so many other subterranean races. Their matriarchal society and the reverse of human morphology with stronger, taller females made any trip into Drow territory an alien experience for my players. As for Drow city-states stabbing each other in the back...all my races did the same, whether above or below ground. It's the nature of power and the intrigues megalomaniacs on thrones play against one another.
I never read Forgotten Realms based novels, nor played in that world, or played Warhammer. All our stuff was based on Gygax's Greyhawk.
@@rikk319 A fair enough point, and I'm speaking more as a matter of preference than of objective truth. I don't think the Drow are necessarily bad or uninteresting, but I feel like you're always waiting for the other shoe to drop. They come across as shortsightedly opportunistic to me, snatching defeat from the jaws of victory mostly because Lolth revels in seeing her own followers suffer and reinforce their dependence on her. And this betrayal isn't just between city-states but inside them. Each noble family is its own house of cards that gets purposefully knocked by Lolth because she thinks it's funny. For Malekith, the Witch-king of the Druchii, these setbacks are treated like setbacks instead of a part of their so-called "perfect society". Druchii treat treachery like a problem, for Drow it's a feature.
They feel something when i look. They stare with those bright blue eyes. In confusion. There spirits do not leave. At all. Period.
If you ever decide to remake this, I would advice to change the sentence at around 3:47. I don't know how it is in the other countries, but among the "germanic" ones, I can guarantee you that elves barely appear in any traditional folk or fairy tales of Germany, even actual fairies are far more common. I hard scholars talk about the Alb or Alf, but those cause nightmares and even those, I have not yet seen in folk or fairy tales here. The times that I have encountered elves I can still count on one hand, even fairies are more common and both only occur the closer you get to france or denmark respectively, just like the nachzehrer becomes more common the closer you get to the slavic countries. Now dwarves, no matter what names, on the other hand, they are all over the place, there is no shortage of them or other short humanoid beings whether they live underground, in woods or in houses.
1:22 dwarves
Don't forget elves from thor
Avari
No gods no master
The most well-known elf in the norse sagas is wayland the smith
Dagoth ur>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Or elves from God of war
And the witcher franchises
You forgot about the dark elves from thor, god of war and the witcher
Unfortunately you missed most popular and fantasy fiction that are key to modern fantasy today, and seemed to stick to just the most popular things
just tell us about the crystals
seen any elves?
Besides the trend of evil elf civilization, another popular trope in modern fantasy is to make all elves scary and untrustworthy (a lot of 'faerie' fantasy does this too). Discworld and The Witcher, I think, depicts their elves as such. I'm more interested in seeing a fantasy setting where all elves (light and dark) are good (or neutral) and their light/dark designation simply refers to what biome they inhabit. Just as there are legends and ballads about dangerous elves, there are also folktales of friendly and beneficient elves that do not even fall into the light/dark dichotomy. Netflix's Hilda is one example where the elves are just chill
Isn't that...just Lord of the Rings? I mean, the vast majority of "dark elves" or Moriquendi are pretty chill(with a few exceptions), as with the vast majority of Elves in Arda(again, with a few exceptions like Celegorm, Curufin, Eol, and Maeglin).
@@KaiHung-wv3ul I thought most people already know Middle Earth elves (at least the 2nd and 3rd age ones) as generally benevolent so I omitted mention of them. I'm saying that more Middle Earth style or just nicer and more down-to-earth elves would be very welcome
@@mon_moi They would be indeed! However, I'm not entirely sure how they would fare, removed from the philosophical and theological context of Tolkien's original works. I just hope it captures some of the magic that the professor imbued in his elves, and not just make them "a better version of humans".
Other beings will leave u for dead. White elves though naughty, and can be evil, dont. Once they give self, its a promise to bind to your cells forever.
🎉
They dont look much different than there spiritual form. Still very skinny most. Beautiful. Quiet. I wish they knew how to reserch there insides more. Maybe now i will speak. What i see.
They keep you forever. Thats for sure. The white elves. And are very protective and even jealous. European women are close to kin with them. Ive slept with them before and vision them in sleep. You wake up and look at woman. Who looks back confused. Boy are u loaded i wanted to say.
Ink and fantasy, are you Catholic?
I am Orthodox!
@@InkandFantasy super cool!
I feel like archetypally Light Elves VS Dark Elves is a medieval fantasy stand-in for Greeks VS Persians
How so?
@@gunjfur8633 The ancient Greeks are the pure, cool older cousin to European high society. The Persians were their equally-influential rival, and are themselves the pure, cool older cousin to the Europeans' main rival.
It's a familiar dynamic in European storytelling is all
@samwallaceart288 nah your just pulling bs out your ass
@@elliotvernon7971 Fair point
Seriously, you try to somehow invent a dnd inspiration for WHF delfs? And not a word about the 75% Elric and 25% 80s hair metal that actually went into their creation?
At least Gygax gave Michael Moorcock credit for his influence on D&D. There wouldn't be multiple planes without Moorcock, or intelligent swords, or the miscibility of potions...or the gibbering mouther. Or The Witcher.
Elves that dwell underground should be extremely pale and blind IMO. Black skinned elves should be from hot, sunny climates. Just like humans IRL.
Fantasy creatures are not real life, thankfully, or they'd bore people to tears.
1:42 dwarves