In most DnD worlds, both Dragons and Elves are nigh-immortal, living until killed by something that isn't old age. This means these species can watch entire lesser (like Human) empires rise and fall, and potentially entire continents before succumbing to terminal ennui. Many times, these nigh-immortals adopt a human or human family as pampered pets. Other times, they treat humans and their families as research projects.
By research projects, I mean human-breeding. After all, Humans breed dogs and other animals for specific traits, so Elves and Dragons breed Humans for specific traits. Chosen One's have to be chosen for some reason, after all.
Humans are ideal for this type of breeding, because like animals, much of what makes a human a human is pure genetics, passed down from grandparents to parents to children over generations. Plus, humans have the potential to live for nearly a century, so the generations can mix and learn. All of this is in contrast to the other races, which are either too short-lived (orcs), too inconsequential (halflings), or too hard to control for (dwarves and gnomes, among others - new Dwarves are carved from living stone and new Gnomes are found among the litters of giant burrowing animals and within geodes).
Wikipedia defines a generation as "the average period, generally considered to be about 20-30 years, during which children are born and grow up, become adults, and begin to have children." DnD-land is a violent world, so we'll go with 20 years for this thought experiment. A full century is 5 generations, and five centuries is 25 generations. That is a long time to plan and breed for a specific person.
Now it isn't just subtle manipulations of arranged marriages and such, but also life events to shape the person, to include wars and raids and magic and all sorts of things. After all, a person cannot come from a long line of heroes unless their ancestors get to be heroic.
So the significant events of human history: wars, natural disasters, advances, collapses, and personal losses may have been orchestrated by these beings. All to stave off boredom.
Fucking elves, man. They are terrible beings; at least Dragons are honest in their greed and power-lust.
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Which is where the PCs come in. Presume a game where all PCs are human, but each of them is the end result of a 500 (or older) year contest among a mixed group of such nigh-immortals: Elves, Dragons, Fiends, Celestials, whatever else lives that long (maybe even stronger undead like vampires or liches). The PCs are gathered to unknowingly determine who wins the contest.
What this gathering of "Chosen Ones" is expected to do is up to individual DMs/GMs, but no doubt it is of grave import if the endstate is to decide to the results of a contest.
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This idea is not entirely my own, being influenced/inspired by Heinlein's Howard Families, Battletech's Clans, Star Trek's Dr. Bashir, and Urza's Bloodline Project, from Magic the Gathering lore. Even Star Wars Clones count as genetic engineering.
I won't discuss real world history and attempts at genetic manipulation via breeding and genocide.
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