Gnome Studies 2:

Rebuilding the Gnome

or

Giving the Gnome his own Place in the World

The gnome has a lot of unrealized potential. They are the only common race that has such a natural inclination to the arcane arts. Gnomes can speak with many of the natural animals around their homes, and they manage to keep their homes safe without the need of huge armies and kingdoms. How many other races do that?

I am going to offend the sensibilities of more than a few gamers when I say that gnomes are the most magical of the PC races. This is hardly an original view, but it is not a commonly held one. Most players think of elves when they think of innate spellcasters, but almost every gnome can do a few cantrips, and almost every gnome can talk to animals, showing that they are also in tune with the natural world.

Most campaigns place the elf as being the most innately magical major race, and give them the honor of being the most in-tune with nature. I think that the elves and the gnomes are two divergent paths of this harmony with nature. Elves are hunters, even if they are often portrayed as being nearly vegetarian in sensiblity, they have the proper disposition and natural talents. Elves are good with bows. They have very keen eysight, and they are from a martial culture.

Gnomes, on the other hand, are prey. They are small, allowing them to hide better and take cover in places where larger beings would get stuck. They have keen hearing, which would be of obvious benefit to a prey creature, and they also have an overdeveloped sense of smell, which doesn't give them a game-mechanic justification to be better at avoiding danger, but it seems sensible.

All of this elf-comparison has a point. Elves may be more visible (and romantic) than gnomes, but gnomes are still just as closely linked to the natural world as the elves. While elves may see themselves as the ambassadors and guardians of nature, or at least the forests, gnomes see themselves as a natural part of that world. They are not the green clad figures keeping the orcs and men at bay, they know that they will never be a great warrior race, but niether is the rabbit a mighty hunter, and yet he is still as much a part of the field as the fox.

This doesn't mean that all gnomes are naive little tree-tenders, out scouring the forests for lost critters and other sugar-sweet deeds. The gnome is just as capable of moving to the big city, studying up on accounting, or other 'civilized' pursuits, but many do remain in thier small home villages for the majority of their existance.

Since few gnome villages are of any great size or scale, the gnomes have a culture all their own. Many gnome villages number under a hundred or two-hundred gnomes, and have few, or more commonly none, of the other races mixed in their populace. Gnomes do move away to the towns and cities of the other races, but outsiders find gnome life uncomfortable at best.

The way that gnome towns function is a little different than in other cultures. They tend to subtely discourage travellers and foriegn merchants from staying or conducting business there. Public houses are typically scaled perfectly for gnomes, rarely being spacious enough for bigger races, and also insuring that invaders would place little value on the buildings themselves, meaning that although they may raze the structures, they will not occupy the town.

Gnomes also tend to situate their towns away from strategically important features and roads. The lack of good roads means fewer outsiders, and fewer invaders, and the military forces that do come tend to be lighter in nature.

An important characteristic of gnomes abroad is a general tight-lipped attitude toward their homes. Few of the large races think about the realativily unpopulous gnomes, and often march right past them on conquest, unaware that a small hamlet even exists nearby.

Symbiotic relationships between small, gnome villages, and larger non-gnome towns are common however. All gnome settlements tend to be self-sufficient as far as food, and shelter go, but they often must trade for other things. This is where the merchants come in.

Gnome merchants take up a routes between the small gnome places and larger towns. In these large towns will exist a network of gnome craftsmen who build things for the local human populace and make things that they sell to the gnome merchants, who travel between there and dozens of tiny gnome villages in the area. Some of these villages may be made up of only four or five families, while the largest will be a few hundred, but in all, this network of villages and the gnome enclave in the larger town make up a single extended community, informally called a province by gnomes.

The merchants also carry news and letters and occasionally act as guides to other gnomes making their way to another village or the large town. These merchants are very vital to the entire local gnome population as a whole, and any attack on one is viewed as an attack on the province.

Gnomes are very social, and several times a year will have large gathering of gnomes from all over the province. These events easily draw the attention of the other races, so they are usually held in a neutral location, typically an empty field nowhere near an existing gnome town. Some of the comforts of a real town are constructed, like a few simple large buildings which are raised in only a day or two, and local human farmers have often converted these to barns or even homes after the gnomes have left. A tent city will arise for a week, then disappear just as quickly, and in a few weeks little sign is left of the event. This temporary city will be given a unique name, and a mayor or king will be elected as if it were a functioning government, but the leadership is nothing more than an honorary title.

The mayor or gnome-king will plan the next meeting of the province, and will settle any disputes which arise during the course of the current event. On the last day of the festival, he is given a gift by the heads of each local village, usually food-stuffs, clothing, or a fine cap, and a momento of his reign over the gnomes, usually a small scepter with a few small gems on it which is provided by the merchants of the area.

Most communities of gnomes owe allegience to a much-larger nation of non-gnomes, but they rarely serve any significant role in national politics, war, or the economy. To a king, the most useful thing about his gnome subjects is their ability to use magic, but few gnomes who practice the higher arts of arcane spellcasting have spells that are directly applicable to the battlefield, although in the last generation, the number of battle-ready gnome wizards has increased a bit.

These greater powers that rule over gnomes are relatively ignored by the gnomes themselves. The gnome citizens of a good kingdom rarely have any need to petition the king for any favors, as they are, in all, self reliant. In turn, the kingdom is likely to ignore the gnome subjects it rules over except in the matters of taxation, and common defense of the homeland.

This arrangement suits the gnomes of good kingdoms fine. In essence, they pay "taxes" to buy the protection of a well trained military. In less benevolent kingdoms, gnomes tend to be even more reclusive, and in extreme cases, conspiritorial.

Read RayNolanEssayGnomes1 RayNolanEssayGnomes3