Our dwarves are different

[Pragmatic]

Since there's a lot of threads about dwarves, I thought I'd make my own to get inspiration...

I'm getting a pretty good handle on how I want elves to be. EVERYONE talks about elves, so it's easy to "data mine" (plagiarize) from dozens of sources.

Spoiler:  

I'm thinking of a mix between Wen Spencer's Elfhome, and pre-Lloth elven kingdoms (Forgotten Realms).

Elfhome: It's a backstory kind of like Riftwar's Dragon Lords and the elves. There was a race of proto-elves who discovered how to use magic to tinker with genetics, the Skin Clan. They used their power to conquer the world, slaughtering some clans, enslaving most. They used their magic to tinker with the proto-elves, giving them all the classic elven traits. And they tinkered with themselves, turning themselves nearly godlike. Eventually, the now-elves rose up in rebellion, and kicked them out. And the Skin Clan keeps trying to get back in control.

Pre-Lloth elven kingdoms, there's the various types of elves (haughty Sun elves, gregarious Moon elves, etc., even the not-yet-Drow Dusk elves). I liked the histories, because in the Crown Wars, it wasn't the proto-Drow who started the atrocities, but a Gold elf kingdom, attacking a Green/Dusk kingdom. So I'd want different kingdoms to have different mixes of sub-races.

I'm still trying to figure out how to get the Blue/Orange morality and the Summer/Winter split into this mix...

But what about dwarves? What makes dwarves unique in your universe? How did they come to be? What defines them? How are they different from "short humans, lives underground, likes gold, gruff, Scottish accent"?