Well, I tend to prefer to stay on the mechanical side of steampunk, because too many times I've seen the good old 'Ever replicating biological warmachine of the apocalypse' scenario happen, which kinds of ruins things for me, making war eternal without taking account of things like moral, supply lines, etc. So I'd have to know more about the implementation and be certain that it will keep sentience involved and won't spread like a plague. Make it something special rather than your bread and butter and toaster and... you get the idea.

As for races, I'm even less certain, for two simple reasons: One, Homogenous and completely isolated races make for nearly impossible spying action to get going, since if you're a nation of say gnomes and me humans, it's impossible to infiltrate one another and two, very specific forms of racism and eventually of genocides tend to arise when one race is so different from the other its another thing entirely. Can't say 'Everyone is equal... except for elves, these motherfuckers live for a thousand years and are naturally more intelligent. Fuck elves'.