It might help to look at layering the hate here. Like, say, the Vietnamese and Chinese gangs hate each other, but the Asian neighborhoods will form a fairly united front against the mostly-black gangs on the other side of the highway, which also feud between themselves but can come to a truce when it comes to the Asians muscling in on their turf. So think about gangs in a city, and how they interact; each has their own turf, there may be larger alliances, there may be temporary truces, there may be wars.
Cities are often places of trade; there will be rules for how the hating factions can meet up and trade and so on. IT's towns and countryside where you don't know where the border is this week that can really screw you over. A city - even a larger town - has peace and trade in its own interest, a small town will ride you out on a rail though.
For medieval settings with hate, it's fun to look at religions in human history. Is this town PRotestant or Catholic this month, and how hard are they cracking down on the minorities this year? Are the Jews funding one side or the other, or have they been run out of town? (And have the Protestant-Catholic hate folks been able to agree that we all hate the Jews, or are they being used as pawns?) Elf merchants may be allowed into the city and to do commerce, but they aren't allowed to run a business within the old walls, and can't own land, and pay higher taxes. Dwarves carved out a loophole for existing businesses of theirs because the human king at the time was indebted to his eyeballs to their miners, but they can't form new businesses, which is why the dwarf "bar" over there is a bar, restaurant, hotel, moneychanger, appraiser, repair forge, and temple now, all crammed into what used to be one inn. Halflings were until recently treated pretty well by the human kings, they had their own "quarter" within the walls as well as lower tax rates on some of their trade, but since the halfling war forty years ago, the halflings were driven out and now the quarter is mostly troop quarters and criminals, and the king is debating whether to raze it or give it to the mariner elves, who would cut him some trade concessions for it, but his humans really hate elf pagans right now so it would be awkward politics. In all this, we can't always see that the elves have three different factions, the dwarves five, and the halflings lost the war because the ones traditionally allied to the woods elves refused to fight for a king from the wrong family line. But those alliances seethe beneath the surface, and can affect things strongly.
no subject
Cities are often places of trade; there will be rules for how the hating factions can meet up and trade and so on. IT's towns and countryside where you don't know where the border is this week that can really screw you over. A city - even a larger town - has peace and trade in its own interest, a small town will ride you out on a rail though.
For medieval settings with hate, it's fun to look at religions in human history. Is this town PRotestant or Catholic this month, and how hard are they cracking down on the minorities this year? Are the Jews funding one side or the other, or have they been run out of town? (And have the Protestant-Catholic hate folks been able to agree that we all hate the Jews, or are they being used as pawns?) Elf merchants may be allowed into the city and to do commerce, but they aren't allowed to run a business within the old walls, and can't own land, and pay higher taxes. Dwarves carved out a loophole for existing businesses of theirs because the human king at the time was indebted to his eyeballs to their miners, but they can't form new businesses, which is why the dwarf "bar" over there is a bar, restaurant, hotel, moneychanger, appraiser, repair forge, and temple now, all crammed into what used to be one inn. Halflings were until recently treated pretty well by the human kings, they had their own "quarter" within the walls as well as lower tax rates on some of their trade, but since the halfling war forty years ago, the halflings were driven out and now the quarter is mostly troop quarters and criminals, and the king is debating whether to raze it or give it to the mariner elves, who would cut him some trade concessions for it, but his humans really hate elf pagans right now so it would be awkward politics. In all this, we can't always see that the elves have three different factions, the dwarves five, and the halflings lost the war because the ones traditionally allied to the woods elves refused to fight for a king from the wrong family line. But those alliances seethe beneath the surface, and can affect things strongly.