Just passing by...
What is the setting intended to be? Novel? Roll-playing? I like your races by the way. Maybe the thing the baddie made a deal with was the elven ancestors or the collective elven power, making him/her its living incarnation. A source of power like that has a potentionall to be incredibly benevolent, in the right hands, altough if the person to who it was ganted is corrupted by the power or was immoral from the start... Regarding the "immortality" of the baddies luitenants: The baddie could have borrowed them his own immortality and some of his powers in order to keep them loyal. Kill me and you'll lose you'r cool powers... and your life...
Glad to help you more if you need and I might have come up with a better idea by then...
Too many comparisons to other works. It shouldn't be incumbent on the reader to have read those other works, just to fully understand yours.
The protagonists needing to defeat an existing dark overlord is neither unusual nor particularly uncommon, and is a necessary component of a 'rebellion' storyline. However, seeing a guerilla war play out between your standard long-lived elves... A human war would consist of major battles every few weeks, an appropriate time given the relatively short lives of humans. Would an elf war be fought over centuries, with years or even decades between skirmishes?
I would make the Orcs an artificial race, created by the Elves in a rushed need for footsoldiers. Otherwise you'd have to explain why and how they A) willingly came to work for an obviously evil archetype when B) the Elves are literal invaders on their continent, in a way that would make it more sensible for them to fight the existing human/dwarf league.
Likewise, the Dwarves. Distant evolutionary cousins of the Elves, and recognized as such in social hierarchy. That would keep them from simply withdrawing from Elf society and daring them to follow into the deep. Guerilla warfare is asymmetric in force but ultimately two-dimensional in practice; the Dwarves can simply add a third dimension. Elves paint; Dwarves sculpt.
The Humans would need to find some tremendous power they don't already have, if they were defeated long ago and remain defeated in the present. Not magic - they posses more resilient stamina and immune systems, making them more capable of surviving? Every other race needs to wear a facemask of some sort, to cut down on their chance of catching some irritating disease in the roughlands... Elves take a couple of years to get over a cold, whereas Humans get over a couple of colds a year.
I notice there's no aerial component yet.
Exploring settings where the Dark Lord is already in power rather than currently trying to take over the world is one of the more common subversions of epic fantasy (Sanderson’s Mistborn, arguably the first arc of Cook’s Black Company', the second arc of Donaldson’s Thomas Covenant, the Midnight and Dark Sun settings for D&D, Kay’s Tigana has two Dark Lords for the price of one, etc.) but it can be done with a number of different twists, depending on the story you want to tell and the kind of Dark Lord you want to depict (contrast Kay’s nuanced, even rather tragic King Brandin with Donaldson’s archetypically evil Lord Foul). I’ve even tried a hand at it a bit myself, with my Avatar: The Last Airbender AU fic Fall of the Fire Empire. Now I’m considering putting my own spin on things in an original world, mixing in some elements I used in Fot FE, some twists on typical fantasy archetypes, and my persistent fascination with the dark elf archetype. Here are some basic ideas about the setting and interpretations of "classic" fantasy races; these are just some ideas I was tossing around, and I'm looking for suggestions and feedback. So far, mostly been thinking in general terms and most names are generic placeholders.
Basic Premise
So, several centuries ago (precise time to be determined – no less than five hundred years, and no more than two thousand), the elves (I’m open to using a different name but still keeping them recognizably in the “elf” archetype, a la Williams’s Sithi or Erikson’s Tiste) arrived on the mainland, refugees from a destroyed homeland. They soon entered into conflict with the indigenous humans and dwarves, and a prolonged and nasty war erupted. Finally, one elf managed to make a deal with… something (details to be determined – evil force, prefer to avoid either an obvious Satanic Archetype or the cliché tentacled horror) and was ascended to a state of near-godhood, becoming the Emperor-in-Shadow. I’m half-tempted to make him an “evil Isildur” sort of character – ie, someone who actually defeated the evil force, took its source of power, but survived to be corrupted by it instead of dying – but I’d worry it’s a bit too close to the Lord Ruler’s backstory in Mistborn. The Emperor-in-Shadow made an alliance with the orcs of the north, and together the elves and orcs crushed the humans and dwarves and founded their empire, which has endured ever since. The Emperor-in-Shadow, being immortal, still reigns (though even regular elves live for centuries) alongside his handpicked lieutenants – all are elves save for the orc commander-general, who got a seat on the council in return for his loyalty. Elves are the ruling class, orcs compose the bulk of the military, humans and dwarves are slaves. At some point a faction of the elves grew disenchanted with the Emperor-in-Shadow and broke away; they still exist as hunted guerilla rebels. The story picks up in this world, beginning with two main POV characters (a young elf woman from a mid-ranking noble house and a human rebel, each holding down their own subplot) but potentially picking up more as the story expands.
The Races
The Elves: In this world, what we might call “dark elves” are actually the standard elves, with the “wood elf” equivalent being rebels who’ve turned against the majority of their culture and no “high elves” (at least, not nice ones – the mainline elven culture might also be seen as evil high elves) in sight. As refugees from a destroyed homeland who immediately launch a war of imperial conquest upon landing in a new continent, they’re also a somewhat dark twist on the Numenoreans of Middle-earth. Physically, they’re fairly straightforward – tall, graceful humanoids with pale skin (alabaster white, really, just a bit too light to be human) jet black hair, and pointy ears (wanted to avoid the “drow” look!) Typically dress in dark colors (black, purple, dark red, etc.) very elegantly; weapons and armor are also very graceful in design. Socially, they don’t draw much distinction between the sexes, though both men and women are expected to make politically advantageous marriages and sire/bear children to perpetuate their race. Family loyalty is their paramount virtue; betray and backstab anyone else you want, but kinslaying is arguably the worst crime in their society, with other crimes against family being close behind. As such, noble houses are tightly knit internally but viciously rival each other. The Emperor-in-Shadow and his lieutenants have no house. Elves typically fill government and religious roles within the empire, though some also form elite units within the imperial military.
The rebel elves are a much rougher, less refined people – their affinity for nature is less a sacred belief and more a matter of survival against their better organized, better equipped cousins. They’ve been fighting a running guerilla war for the last few centuries and are losing – and are painfully aware of it. Though they share a common enemy, human and dwarf rebels don’t trust them and rarely work with them; after all, they see one elf as being much the same as another. Their leader is a woman, name yet to be determined, who opposed the Emperor-in-Shadow when he came to power and got cast out for it. In some ways a Galadriel figure, but much more raggedy and wary than the elegant Lady of Lorien, befitting their different positions in their worlds. The rebel elves probably won’t play a direct role in things until later in the story.
The Orcs: Modern fantasy orcs tend to get portrayed either as animalistic brutes or noble savages, neither of which really resembles their predecessors from Lot R (indeed, Tolkien orcs, who essentially embody the dehumanizing nature of the modern industrial war machine, are more or less the exact opposite of noble savages). My orcs are meant to hearken back more to Tolkien’s, while also putting my own spin on them. Physically, they’re fairly typical bestial humanoids, though they tend towards lean rather than bulky and are usually slightly taller than humans. These orcs, however, are not stupid brutes, and neither are they noble warriors. They’re a highly disciplined, highly militarized, well-organized society, forming arguably the most efficient military machine the world has ever known. Though typically taciturn, they’re as intelligent as humans or elves and can be eloquent when they wish. Though they serve as the soldiers and enforcers of the elves’ empire, thanks to a pact between their commander-general and the Emperor-in-Shadow centuries ago, their loyalty is still to their own hierarchy first and they certainly don’t see themselves as slaves, but as allies who support the elves for their own purposes. There are always rumors swirling around that the commander-general has plans to unseat the Emperor-in-Shadow and rule in his place; neither the emperor nor the commander-general have weighed in on the issue, but everyone agrees that the orc leader at least acts loyal. They’re not as long-lived as the elves, but have a few centuries in them (assuming they don’t die violently, which many do). The commander-general, like all of the Emperor’s lieutenants, is apparently immortal.
The Dwarves: While the typical “dwarf” archetype (short, bearded, lives underground, excellent craftsman) is so pervasive it’s hard to escape and still get a recognizably dwarven character, I definitely want to avoid the “drunken Scotsman” stereotype, the reasons for whose pervasiveness eludes me. I’m picturing a very somber culture with a heavy focus on ritual and history, though I don’t have much in the way of concrete ideas beyond that. Most dwarves have been enslaved by the elves and put to work as miners or blacksmiths, but a few dwarven city-states still cling to independence in the mountains to the north and east and have been known to smuggle weapons and resources to human and dwarven rebels within the empire. I don’t anticipate their playing a huge role in the story to being with, but they’ll come in eventually.
The Humans: The most numerous race on the continent where the story takes place, and form the bulk of the empire’s people – unfortunately, mostly as serfs and slaves (humans also may get used as expendable grunts in the imperial military, and it’s not unknown for one of them who survives long enough to claw their way to an officer’s rank if they manage to earn the – grudging – respect of the orcs, but there’s no guarantee that way). Most humans have been ground beneath the elven heel so long they barely remember anything else, though as a day-to-day matter the elves typically have little to do with the control of their subjects, leaving that to orcish overseers. Once a diverse patchwork of kingdoms, they’re now nearly universally a conquered people – but their pride isn’t entirely broken yet, and resistance groups spring up almost as quickly as the elves and orcs can stamp them down, though, as of yet, they’ve accomplished little but annoying the empire.
This is what I’ve got for now – questions, comments, general input? Remember that this is mostly me brainstorming, so most ideas are open to change or reinterpretation. Before long I may do another post with thoughts on characters and magic.