Gnomes love and embrace all of the attributes that most races would see as inherent disadvantages. They are small in stature, slight of frame, youthful in appearance, and warm of disposition—and they wouldn’t change a thing, even if they could.
Their size makes them exceptionally nimble and allows them to live in small, easily defensible tunnels. Their diminutive frames and youthful faces make it almost effortless for them to adopt an unassuming air and put others at ease. And their warm disposition makes all kinds of social interactions, from cutthroat negotiations to interpersonal relationships, incredibly easy.
Appearance
Gnomes tend to have a flushed pink, red, or brown complexion and light brown or reddish hair—which, when combined with their predilection for pastel colors, tends to make them look perpetually cheerful. Gnomes are the smallest of the fair races, even shorter than dwarves and much more slight of build.
Society
Burrow Gnomes gather into large matriarchal bands that function almost like a huge extended family. Each township is ruled by a chieftain, who in turn rules over the leaders of the various clans. Duties are most commonly divided by clan, with the homesteads within each working cooperatively to carry out the needs of their township. All serve at least one year with their township’s militia, which patrols borders, defends tunnels, and occasionally conducts raids against surrounding enemies.
Wanderer Gnomes, on the other hand, rarely have a fixed home. Either singly or in large communal caravans, they instead roam all over Mennara as traders, performers, and occasionally even laborers in local farms and smithies.
The Gnomes of Isheim, also known as the Onoit, are perhaps the rarest of Gnomes. In these frozen lands they have developed a unique society based around the sentient canines of this land and the magical abilities of their shamans.
Culture
Thanks to the combination of their jovial nature and tight living quarters, most Gnomes tend to possess the paradoxical contradiction of being friendly, and being people who may not think twice about taking the money or any other items not currently being used right out of a person’s pocket. It’s not that they are deliberately intending to be troublesome; they just come from a world where people live in such tight quarters and with such accommodating attitudes that everyone helps themselves to everything when it’s needed—including coins or any possessions laying about.
Maybe that’s the cause of Gnomish reclusiveness—or maybe it’s a product of it—but regardless, it unquestionably affects their tendency to keep to themselves. When they do venture out among the other races, they are frequently greeted with an interesting combination of joy and suspicion. The Onoit of Isheim themselves are even more suspicious and wary, though, when they encounter outsiders, especially those who dare venture into their sacred regions. Those strangers who tread farther than the boundary stones are met with deadly force.
Names
Gnomes treat names as mutable and disposable, to be discarded when no longer convenient and adapted to fit a changing situation. They are inveterate nicknamers, and over time a gnome may acquire a dozen or more nicknames, each used within a different social circle. Burrow gnomes, however, consider their family name inviolate, to be preserved through all other changes to their forenames.
Burrow Gnomes
Burrow Gnomes are those who have mostly abandoned interactions with the other races. When they do leave their quaint homes, it is typically for trade, alliance building, espionage, or, of course, the lure of adventure.
Burrow gnomes live in comfortable underground homes, hidden in isolated communities of peaceful farmers. They prefer a quiet life, untroubled by the outside world.
Of course, the world is a dangerous place, and to achieve the peace and quiet they so crave, burrow gnomes must always remain ready to repel invaders and police their borders. Would-be troublemakers who discount the gnomes due to their size soon discover that few things are as deadly as a gnome on their own turf, using every burrow and tree to best advantage.
Every burrow gnome serves a term with the militia, getting enough of a taste of the world outside to throw the comforts of home into stark relief. Most find the small taste more than enough and soon return home to tend their gardens and live quiet lives with good food and good neighbors. But some few get a taste for adventure. They get "itchy feet", as the gnomes say, and must go out to see more of the world. Even these adventurers usually return home in time, where they remain an object of curiosity and gossip until the end of their days.
Burrow gnomes hardly ever interact with the other races. They welcome the occasional wanderer gnome into their settlements for trade and news of the outside world, but regard even their cousins as odd sorts who aren't quite properly gnomish.
Wanderer Gnomes
Rather than claiming a single homeland, wanderer gnomes have made a life for themselves living alongside the larger races. They are welcome everywhere from the deep holds of Dunwarr to the elegant havens of the Aymhelin, which is just how the wanderers like it.
The wanderers make their living in portable trades, living as tinkers or merchants or traveling performers, but also sometimes as seasonal farm labor or by selling more esoteric expertise. Some distrust them as smugglers and thieves, but this is (usually) untrue and unfair, or at least when it is true there is seldom any serious harm done.
The wanderer gnomes tend to travel in small groups, in goat-cart caravans, or even alone, gathering only for semi-regular festivals. The festivals seem to happen at random and with no warning for the big folk, but the gnomes always know when and where to turn up. During a festival, the wanderer gnomes trade, swap knowledge, make arrangements for apprenticeships and marriages, boast, and generally celebrate.
Some wanderers settle down for a few years at a time. - often to raise their young children - but they always return to the wandering lifestyle eventually. To a wanderer gnome, there's no reason to keep looking at the same people and places day after day, not when there's a whole world to explore!
Wanderer gnomes get along well with all other races. Some have been surprised to see them even traveling alongside orc tribes.
Onoit Gnomes
The Onoit of Isheim live as one with their surroundings and the Ulfen, their shamans able to listen to the voice of the land and translate its wisdom for their people. Onoit settlements are constructed with the landscape in mind, the ice-hewn shelters and huts worked into the plains or forests so that they are practically invisible until one walks among them. The largest Onoit holdfast, Ukirlu, nestles in the heart of the Greenwood and is one of the few true havens in all of Isheim.
The Onoit do not take well to outsiders trespassing upon their sacred places. In cases of burial sites and magical cairns, shamans and Ulfen war dogs are seldom far away, ready to see off intruders. At other sites, the stones themselves are the only barrier between the foolish and their own demise.
The diminutive Onoit shamans are one of Isheim’s many mysteries. Ostensibly, they are part of the nomadic Gnomish tribes. Clad in cloaks of bark and moss, they are frequently seen moving among their people, healing and dispensing wisdom. Yet, they often travel alone in their sled-tents, drawn across the tundra by packs of trusty Ulfen. A society unto themselves, the Onoit shamans serve as guardians of the lost Salishwyrd empire. When the Elves retreated to the Green Vale, they entrusted the keeping of their abandoned cities and tombs to the Onoit shamans, granting each one a spark of elemental magic to light their way. Since that time, those sparks have been passed from shaman to shaman.
Onoit shamans are enemies of the Rime Storm and the White Death it brings. Heroes traversing their lands might be recruited by these traveling Gnome mystics in their war against winter’s soldiers—ice wyrms, wendigo, and ice-blood warriors. Equally, those who seek to plunder the lost realm of the Salishwyrd will find the land and sky set against them, as the shamans bend the elements to their will to make an icy tomb for any would-be looters.
References
- Realms of Terrinoth
- Legacy of Dragonholt