Wait, that leaves me needing to ask: do dwarves, halflings, elves, and other such races have their own distinct racial groups like humans (beyond political divisions of dark vs high elves and equivalents) or do they all look pretty much Caucasian+?
Some art appears to have darker skinned dwarfs and halflings now and again, but that could be ascribed to tans and the like, potentially. Or not! It's harder for physiological differences to show up as a result of phenotype evolution over time when you don't really have as high a reproductive drive and pregnancy/birth cycle as a human does, I guess. Thousands of generations of humans could be like, just a hundred generations of elves, or even less than that. Elves were created and popped up specifically on Ulthuan as their main place, and afterwards had some colonies here and there, but the crafting of the Old Ones bypassed a lot of the sort of generational changes and divergences that would be found IRL in human ancestors and the like. Same for dwarfs. There's been no evidence that the southern dwarf clans and holds closest to the Southlands are inherently darker skinned or whatever.
Like, racial issues between different shades of white were one thing in Europe, then they encountered Africa and Asia more regularly and widely, and then...yeah. But Elves are, literally, as a whole race and existence, completely cognizant of arising on Ulthuan and they never have, and never will, encounter a 'different' racial group of elves because they simply can't. There's no such thing as a European elf traveling to America and encountering 'strange savage American' elves utterly different to their 'civilized European' culture and race and sensibilities, or strange differently colored African elves, or any of the kind of tensions and 'otherness' that humans have for each other. The 'different groups' between the elves, Asur, Druchii, Asrai, and Eonir, all originated from Ulthuan. And more than that, those separations occurred after thousands of years of cultural continuity and unity amongst the 'elves' as a group. It would be like the British Empire doing all their colonizing, except that there
aren't any natives in these colonized lands that are themselves also elves. There is not an Indian subcontinent of elves that do not wish to be colonized. There are no Native Americans who wish the Pilgrims to leave.
There is
just the elves of the British Empire. Do you get what I mean?
Same thing for the dwarfs. They remember the Ancestor Gods raising them up, their pinnacles, doing their things, and
then after the Ancestor Gods who ruled and ran things for longer than any other human civilization ever existed in continuity ever, they had some people head outwards...and still pay homage to the High King. Or not, in the case of the Norse Dwarfs, who's last 'higher power' was literally God/Jesus/Holy Spirit personified. But they were still part of that single, linked, continuing civilization, people, culture, race, etc.
It's a wholly different existence from humanity in that regard. Humans of the Empire can go oh wow, the Cathayans look sort of like us, but are not quite us, but are human like us, same with the Southlanders, and the Indan peoples, and Khuresh, and Nippon, and even sort of maybe those Bretonnians!
Elves go 'yes, those are elves, like we are elves, it's literally only been five thousand years what are you talking about 'different racial groups'? Is this some kind of inferior human concept and issue that we are too superior to understand'?
Even the Chaos Dwarfs do not regard themselves as a different racial group, not really. They regard themselves as the true dwarfs, certainly, they're dwarf supremacists but only their specific flavor of dwarf, but it has nothing to do with race and everything to do with religion. That religion happens to cause physical mutations and alterations, but that's not the issue so much as the purely religious difference.
Lizardmen don't have different racial groups, they're pre-programmed meat robots that are spawned in accordance with space-time scheduling as put down by the Old Ones from their pools into clearly defined castes and designs meant for specific purposes. Differences in coloration are specifically a matter of blessings from the Old Ones, which is which depending on the color and the like.
At the end of the day, it was a game designed by British people a long, long time ago, or so I hear.
Humanity has racial groups.
Other races have groups based upon doctrine, religion, course, and cause, but nothing specifically biological inherently differentiating them disregarding stuff like Hashut/Chaos mutations, Dhar affectation, and the wiggly symbiotic relationship between Wood Elves and nature.
Why *are* beards so significant to Dwarves in Warhammer anyway? Is it "just" a measure of how old/experienced you are, only significant because Dwarves value elders? Or is it something else?
Because they are, it seems. It just does. Ingrained pride, appreciation/regard for a physical appearance part, and while it seems like male dwarfs can indeed go bald, they are naturally inclined to grow big beards. For dwarfs, hair clearly does not thin upon aging like it does for humans. It's a different follicle situation entirely. The Ancestor Gods were the best of the best, they were the oldest, the culture of the dwarfs was set down to venerate elders, beard or hair length is quick identifier of age and grows more enshrined and culturally important as well. A good dwarf keeps their hair groomed and well-tended, a bad dwarf can't handle that much. The sheer sight of a truly magnificent beard can literally improve morale amongst dwarfs. In Total War Warhammer, a pure-beard option is a beard that is so pure and magnificent and well-kept that it actively reduces the corruption of skaven or Chaos in a province, available to all dwarf lords. When they talk about the White Dwarf in Warhammer, one of the things that repeatedly comes up is that oh, man, his huge thick long magnificent white beard is sooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo amazing, all dwarfs are forced to acknowledge its greatness and feel heartened by it and inspired and woooooooooooooo.
