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Message: <blockquote data-quote="touc" data-source="post: 9828252" data-attributes="member: 19270">Interviews with the artifact's namesake Tim Kask gives some clues, though he never actually says what Kwalish was. Most of this is taken from his years-long Q&A on the Dragonfoot forums:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Kask was a first employee and early and prominent editor for O(School)D&D back in the 1970s-1980s (he was responsible for magic missiles never missing among other things).</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">He was once responsible for getting out Dragon Magazine and wrote an <a href="https://www.dragonsfoot.org/forums/search.php?keywords=kwalish&t=23223&sf=msgonly&sid=585ec1e7b6c2e3ff126002bf88d93c31" target="_blank">article under the pseudonym Omar Kwalish</a> (Dragon Issue #7, about when you forget your dice, a popular article he said was created under a bong haze the night before the magazine needed a full page of something). (2008 answer).</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">In 1974, Kask ran a campaign for his friends in which <a href="https://www.dragonsfoot.org/forums/search.php?keywords=kwalish&t=23223&sf=msgonly&sid=585ec1e7b6c2e3ff126002bf88d93c31" target="_blank">the bad guy was called "Kwalish."</a> (2013 answer). <ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Kask added that many of the artifacts were named after themselves or things from their campaigns (a precursor to "easter eggs" in video games). When someone needed a name for their crawdad contraption, Kwalish came up. (The Sword of Kas<s>k</s> was also named for him).</li> </ul></li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul"><a href="https://www.dragonsfoot.org/forums/search.php?keywords=kwalish&t=23223&sf=msgonly&sid=585ec1e7b6c2e3ff126002bf88d93c31" target="_blank">Kwalish started out as Kask's PC when he was in high school.</a> However, he rarely got to play, so Kwalish became a go-to NPC that other players could hire or for magical services. (2008 answer).<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Kwalish owned several cool magical apparatuses and items. </li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Kask didn't DM a ton, but he planned on doing a convention adventure The Hall of Wonders, a place where the powerful mage Kwalish stored his cache of cool items.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">In a 2007 answer, Kask said Kwalish was his 1st PC. He then turned him into a mythical NPC during college for his gamers, in the Kwalishar Ruins. He says (in small print) that user "grodog" may have campaign notes.</li> </ul></li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">As referenced by [USER=8461]@Alzrius[/USER], the link provides some more lore and Kwalish references. One of our own mods in 2016 visualized Kwalish as a gnome despite the game rules that, at the time, didn't allow for it to fit a high-level enchanter. </li> </ul>Here's where I argue that Kwalish wasn't a gnome, absent Mr. Kask saying otherwise. In OD&D, gnomes could NOT be the class Magic-User. Instead, there was a separate class called the Illusionist that they could advance in (usually multi-classed because demihumans often capped out before level 20). You wouldn't use the two interchangeably. If you were playing a magic user, you wouldn't be playing a gnome. If you wanted to advance to level 20 as a caster (and with the description of Kwalish as an ultra powerful caster), you'd have to play a Human. Further, the item was originally described in the DMG (p137) as being fitted for "two human-sized persons" (not gnome-sized). Also, in OD&D, gnomes weren't inventors and craftsmen. That didn't come till later, so Kwalish as a gnome is more a modern take than an original take.That all said, it probably really doesn't matter except to perhaps Mr. Kask, but to answer the original question, I don't see it ever being covered specifically in any prior edition.</blockquote>

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