Barin's Adventures Redux

My spouse Hani has asked me a few days ago to play again in our old one-on-one D&D campaign centered around Barin, a Dwarven alchemist, and his adventures. Our old game began around 2008 using D&D 3.0E, where Barin was a Dwarf Wizard (with an NPC Cleric played by me). We got tired of the paperwork involved with 3.0E (especially when prepping) in 2009 and thus moved to BFRPG, which fit my prep style much more closely; then I house-ruled that Barin could still be a Magic-User, despite being a Dwarf. We had fun with it until my burn-out in 2010.

So now we're planning to re-imagine and re-start this campaign. I think we'll be using Lamentations of the Flame Princess: Grindhouse Edition as I simply LOVE these rules, even if this won't be a honest-to-Cthulhu 100% weird-fantasy game as the rules assume but rather a hybrid of "regular" D&D with weird fantasy.

One question I have is how to handle Barin. One way would simply to make him a Magic User as per the rules, with NO Dwarf traits - after all he spent his time in the laboratory and library rather than in the deep mine. Another option would be to create a modified version of the Elf class, called Dwarven Alchemist, with Elf XP progression and HP and Dwarven traits rather than Elven ones (Architecture rather than Stealth, for example). What do you think would be optimal?

Another thing I'll have to think about is the campaign itself. Last time we explored an abandoned Dwarven city. My idea is to explore a Dark Elf city this time, with all the attendant sword & sorcery implications (Cthulhu-type gods, strange temples, even stranger labs and so on). Of course, the way I usually use Dark Elves in my campaign is as a more shades-of-grey culture rather than the 100% Evil(tm) D&D version - sure, they worship weird gods and have slaves (but so did Rome), but are not frothing in the mouth villains, rather being more like the Dunmer from Morrowind (one of my favorite computer games).

So he'll be sent by Gelin, the Dwarven queen, to the remote village of Surabka in the allied human kingdom of Valiesk where Dark Elven ruins have been uncovered; Barin's job, scholar that he is, would be to explore the ruins and return whatever relics and secrets it might hold for the glory of the Dwarven Realm of Argexia.

Note that the Dark Elven city will actually have a significant surface component, as we've already dealt with megadungeons, and surface exploration would be a welcome change.

Ideas would be welcome.