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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Chaosmancer" data-source="post: 8697772" data-attributes="member: 6801228">Gnomes were the first race I really went all in on re-writing the lore for, alongside the Yuan-Ti. But, from the various media I've engaged in if you want gnomes to "work" in your setting you only need two things. 1) A willingness to have renaissance or steampunk technology in your gameworld2) Allow the gnomes to be competent. I remember one gnome NPC I came up with who was a shut-in, and so had rigged his house with pnumatic tubes powered by wind magic. The tubes allowed for things to be delivered into or out of his house without him needing to meet people, and he had speaking tubes to talk to them if they insisted. Pretty simple, but very "gnomish" as most other races wouldn't make something like that. But for my homebrew world, I went a bit deeper. [SPOILER="Origin of Gnomes"]I went back to the creation myth for Gnomes about Garl Glittergold laughing and gnomes springing from gemstones. I was looking for a way to integrate the "Lost Sisters" and when I read the account I noticed something odd. It had said that Garl led the gnomes through deep caverns until they exited from the Golden Hills. The Golden Hills are the Gnomish heaven. Now, it was possible this was a mis-print or something, but it got my attention and gave me a view of Gnomes that is utterly unique. Then I just looked back at my tendency to pair races with an "enemy" or a "threat" and came up with the following. Garl before he was Glittergold worked for the Slaadi Empire, a cosmic spanning empire which has taken on the role of an "Elder Evil" in that it destroyed and stripped its original world and has set out into the strangeness of the Far Realms to find other worlds to plunder. Unlike the Hive Mind of the Illithid or the existence of the Deep Father, the Slaadi are individuals,  but their birth requires the insertion of specialized gemstones into a creature. Some slaadi have evolved into terriyfing forms, but the vast majority of them are the "Red" and "Blue" Slaadi, which are their foot soldiers. However, the Slaadi in traveling the Far Realms heard of a strange force called "magic" and that it offered immense power to those who wielded it. They sought this power and found it greatly enhanced their soldiers, and they hungered for more. Garl was tasked with researching this magic, finding a way to tap into it so that the Slaadi did not need raids and captives, but could manipulate the force directly. And Garl, the master researcher he was, figured it out. And the beauty of the rainbow lights he created as he first dipped into magic caused him to burst into laughter, the first joyous laughter that had been heard in the halls of the Slaadi fortress for millenia. This caused the magic to surge, infecting the gems of the unborn Slaadi that he had been tasked with. But it also opened his eyes. This wondrous force would be nothing more than a battery to the Ruling Council, and would be destroyed as they destroyed everything. They could never get his research. And then the first gnomes started stirring in their gems. Garl and the firstborn gnomes fled, traveling dark paths through the Far Realms. Places where sight was impossible. And, as more gnomes were born into this darkness, Garl taught them of magic, of wonder, and most importantly, he never let them see themselves. With magic in their veins and walking through the malleable reality of the Far Realms, the gnomes lost their original selves, and became as we see them today. And when their journey came to an end, they exited into the Prime Material plane. A place of beauty and wonder. A place so beautiful, and so full of endless mysteries that the gnomes never wished to leave, and so their Goddess of Death constructed a device, and locked gnomish souls to this plane. This world, this endlessly shifting and swirling world of magic, ideas, and other races, is the Gnome's heaven. They are a race of joy, because how could they not be joyous in this place? Some turn to the natural world, hoping to explore everything that every plant and beast has to offer, boiling together concotions and mastering illusory magic so to hide and observe, or display their findings to others. Others turned to physics, the math of the world, which to their crystal-minds is a joy and at times a hilarious joke, and they take those theories and turn them into realities, like taking a dream and working it from stone and metal and wood. And they make weapons. Because Heaven is under siege by forces that would destroy it, and so they must protect this world, lest they lose it forever. [/SPOILER]</blockquote>

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