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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Gez" data-source="post: 2250586" data-attributes="member: 1328">If you want to go back to mythical traditions, then you can have elves and dwarves be the same race (dwarves just being underground elves, and the Nibelungen's king's name, Alberich, is basically Alb Rich, or Elf King). And you can have gnomes as the undisputed masters of alchemy, knowing everything about transmutation of metals. (One of them, the shady Rumpelstitskin, was able to transmute straw into gold.)And you can have gorgons be the three Serpent Sisters and be a variant of the catoblepas (which is, after all, just a drunkard's depiction of a wildebeast) at the same time.Mythical tradition is far from being a single common ground. What's a mythical elf? A sidhe? An alf? A sylph? Danu, Ogma, Boand, and Lir; or Titania, Oberon, Puck and Queen Mab; or Elrond, Galadriel, and Legolas?It's known that Tolkien first named the Noldor Gnomes, before he coined the term "noldor", afraid of the "wee folk from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" baggage that was associated to them. Tolkien was already somewhat unhappy of using elf and dwarf (which is why he pluralized them elves and dwarves rather than elfs and dwarfs), wanting to move beyond the mawkish Walt-Disneyesque imagery of happy prancing fairies. He also disliked, from what I've read, the Shakespearian vision of fay.Me, I like gnomes. They're the yodas of my setting. Physically weak, but mentally strong, wise and skilled in magic. And while they can behave in a silly fashion, it's an act to hide the true extent of their power and wisdom from strangers. (Again, see Yoda when Luke first meet him. Really a silly little creature.)</blockquote>

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