Elves have plenty of characteristics that can make them grim-dark

Whatever feature I can think of is more lightheartedly "grimderp" than grimdark like their obsession with following their own set of mos maiorum, or how serious they take grudges and vows, which often result in, well, memes.

perhaps the most strikingly grimdark characteristic is their history: dwarves/dwarfs had it pretty rough, not with just a few cataclysmic events, but with a slow and costant downfall made of uncountable meatgrinders and untold tragedies; their future inevitably holds not much hope either; and they know this.
you could say it's no true grimdark as the dwarfs fight on with the noble determination, but the truth is that every fall can be traced on their own backs as much as on their enemies' and yet they refuse to aknowledge the errors on their part.

If I had to make dwarfs more grimdark somewhere else it would be with how they punish the enemies and how they interact with magic.

That sounds shit.

for the first part: the dwarfs have a rather straightforward understanding of duty to the point the right for freedom could be considered an inexistent concept in front of their laws, I'm not referring to just prison, but also slavery and "inhuman" punishments; I have no difficulty imagining a more grimdark dwarf king who chains up the dragon of an enemy in very constricting plates and harnesses, cuts off its wings, builds a large statue of himself or an ancestor as weight to place over the back/neck of said dragon and condemns it to pay for the years it has posed a danger on his hold by being a slave-guardian; or for an another example, inters alive the enemies who are damaging the walls of his hold to fill the apertures or again, treats a captured enemy mage as alchemical component for the runesmiths' forges.

now for the second element, magic: to continue with the dwarfs propensity to willingly walk their own path of damnation and expand on their racial trait of turning into stone with the use of magic, I would suggest that the petrification may have different ways of manifesting, either in body or in mind, I'm referring to various forms of madness and retardation caused a psyche growing ill (and perhaps cancerous-rocky formations growing in their brains); you could have old runemasters who dedicate their sanity to their duty and instruct their apprentices how to "use" him as he ages, becoming more and more a crazy automaton as he proportionally becomes better and better at harnessing magic in runes and through himself; you could have half petrified runesmiths smithing runes in their own petrified flesh or full on statues of ancestral masters of the arts forcefully animated back into the fray.

I'm only now realising the thread may not be about warhammer dwarfs only tho.

Good one

KYS

> The first Dwarves were formed from clay in ages long since passed, used as labour and as living libraries due to near-perfect memories
> Almost immune to magic due to the damping effects of their clay flesh
> The great civilization that fostered them is destroyed by an angry god, and their cities buried
> The Dwarves dig out a cavern around the cities, preserving their function of maintaining it
> Defend it viciously and at all costs against any intruders
> programming warps over time, dwarves pick up on concepts like grudges and laziness from the world around them
> They begin raiding the surface for slaves, and wreaking terrible vengeance on peoples who wronged them in millennia past

Go for a more Mesopotamian aesthetic, names for cities like Hattusha and Ur

> The dwarves have no need for slaves as labour, they never tire even if they loath to expend effort in the modern age
> The greatest of the dwarves, equivalent to kings, expend slaves in a pointless quest to understand the nature of the world
> Thousands die in unimaginable suffering at the tools of the dwarven masters, subject to the mastery of physical science
> But the dwarves have no ability to manipulate or interact with the arcane, and so can never reach their creators goal of true understanding

Speaking of Dwarf Fortress, that reminds me of aother way to make it grimdark...

They use weapons made of obsidian which encased their dead and executed.

I'll admit, that one spawned from another Boatmurdered-style DF LP, but still...

The dwarves never reached the surface until recently. Instead, they lived for millennia in the darkness with only small fires to supply them with light.

In the deep earth they faced mutations of their own species - regular dwarves turned into mutated beings with twisted forms who were judged as total evil and were thus promptly exterminated, leading to a deep-seated hatred of all things not dwarven.

After finally reaching the surface, they face other races and start a genocidal campaign after not quite realizing how large the aboveground world is.

The dwarves dug too greedily and too deep into the mountain. You know what they awoke in the darkness? Shadow and flame.

Basically, the dwarves awaken an ancient demon and either become enslaved by him or make some sort of pact.

Show them when they run out of alcohol.

This is pretty easy. They live in steampunk dystopia with no clean air and pollution killing off working class by age of dirty. Also only the ruling elite get to venture outside the mines meaning average dwarf has never seen the sun. Besides that even alcohol is banned for commoners and thus they have to rely on really disgusting dangerous illegal brews like prison pruno. Prostitution is allowed though, but all prostitutes are old bearded dwarven women that look like men and are packed with veneral diseases because technocratic dwarven elite doesn't care about dwarves having shit tier genes. Also low-born dwarves who refuse to be slaves are sentenced gladiatorial fights to amuse the elite.

This really is too easy and I could go on forever.