Ancestral Technologies

Drow/Dyar: animal breeding through magic. Think Yuuzhan Vong. They have whips that pump ichor throughout, tipped in stingers with venom sacs. Armor grown of bone, with tight tendons and musculature still woven through, lending strength to the wearer. Mounts, pets, and familiars all modified. Their ambient magic - lighting, air, filtration, etc. are all based on living meat. There are giant breeding pits, spawning pools, everything is kind of Zerg-ian in appearance.

Elves: plant-based. Ambulatory bushes like shambling mounds act as beasts of burden. Enchanted vines are infrastructure, plant-based food is everywhere. Armor and weapons are hardened wood. Everything that can be wood, is. Things that traditionally cannot be wood are enchanted plants, instead. Huge arboretums and enchanted hothouses are common, and gardens are designed both for beauty and for function, pairing plants that get along well together.

The elves and drow actually split on the subject of plants vs. animals way back. Part of the dictates of Llolth is that the strong prey upon the weak, and that is not wrong. The circle of life necessarily includes death, and preserving the butterfly starves the spider. There is nothing wrong in bending lesser creatures to your will, especially if they are bred for subservience. And to the drow, all creatures are lesser creatures. The drow have a matriarchy not because Llolth is female, but because women incubate, and therefore choose who to mate with, and are therefore the arbiters of what has value, in their culture. They are expected to be careful and exacting in their mating, and love doesn't come into it. It's a deeply ill culture, where breeding is social currency.

Gnomes: tinkerers extraordinaire. They work with clockworks, springs, cogs, etc. These are, naturally, magically assisted by arcane power sources, alchemical solutions and lubricants, and downright magical trickery where necessary. These devices are often unique: gnomes value new discoveries built on old principles, and a gnome is unlikely to undertake precisely the same project twice, though they may have, for example, sixty slightly different versions of a hot-air balloon. The assembly line is anathema to the spirit of experimentation that infuses their work. If a thing is on an assembly line, how can you perfect and expand and refine it?

Halflings: alchemists, even to a greater degree than the gnomes. While gnomes might tinker with alchemy to produce a particular result or to see a new outcome, halflings love the finesse of the process. Their knack for baking and cooking translates naturally to alchemical work. Because they befriend everyone they often work alongside the gnomes and dwarves on joint projects. The halflings are also particularly well-known for glasswork, which is never in the volumes of the dwarven glass-forges, but is always of superb quality. Halflings could be thought of as bespoke chemical and materials engineers, making fine things from raw materials.

Humans: assembly lines. Humans seek efficiency and synergy like no one else. They take the tools of the gnomes to the works of the gnomes and fuse them with dwarven efficiency to produce more in volume and quantity than anyone would have thought possible, in a short span. The product will never match up, but the ability to give sophisticated items and goods to a huge number of people is not to be undervalued. Theirs are the ideals of the Roman Empire: steal blatantly, improve where necessary.

Dwarves: stone and metal. Dwarves make the best masons, civil engineers, smiths, carvers and sculptors, glass-blowers, etc. Their gods infused them with the desire to hone their crafts, and access to the raw tools to do so. They make things that, on their surface, appear mundane but that are the epitome of function. They are also known for their brevity of ornamentation: nothing will be wrapped with scrollwork and lace, but everything will be of such clear quality that its beauty is evident in form alone.

Dragonborn: known for their painting, calligraphy, and ornamentation. Dwarven and gnommish designs are often sent to dragonborn masters to be finished in gold and silver leaf, scrollwork, and color. While they are no more adept with their tools than other races, they have an innate eye for attraction. They inherently know what would look good atop a hoard of gold, essentially.