Gnomes
Gnomes are most often good. Those who tend toward law are sages, engineers, researchers, scholars, investigators, or inventors. Those who tend toward chaos are minstrels, tricksters, wanderers, or fanciful jewelers. Gnomes are good-hearted, and even the tricksters among them are more playful than vicious.
Forest gnomes have innate magical ability, letting them create simple illusions. They practice the use of illusion magic from an early age. Most forest gnome communities include a full-fledged illusionist and an apprentice or two, and they use their talents in service of the community - designing longer-lasting or larger-scale illusions that help the community stay hidden from the world.
Gnomes use illusions for practically any reason - as a game, for defense, or for communication - and sometimes times for no reason other than artistic considerations. A simple illusion can often express a complex idea, such as when the memory of a location is triggered by the illusory sound of a babbling brook that runs through the place. A storytelling session conducted by a group of forest gnomes is a riot of sounds and images that helps give meaning and intensity to the tale being told. It is a kind of entertainment unfathomable by most other races, whose stories and performances are limited by whatever materials are on hand.
The forest gnomes' playful nature shows through in the illusions they create, even those that have a serious purpose. (An illusion that conceals the entrance to a tunnel by making it look like solid earth might not amuse other folk, but the gnomes get a good laugh out of it.) Forest gnomes spend their spare time experimenting with the creation of never-before-seen illusions, or embellishing the images and sounds they already know how to produce.
The number of ways in which forest gnomes use illusions to have fun is nearly limitless. A few examples: visual enhancements to a mythic tale told by an elder, new and interesting sounds, and false doors and hallways to fool intruders and lead them into traps.
Personality Trait
2 You live life like a leaf on the breeze, letting it take you where it will.
4 You study your friends and take notes about how they act, jotting down things they say that interest you. Your curiosity is so wide-ranging that you sometimes have trouble concentrating on any one thing.
5 You like to make little objects and creatures out of twigs and give them to friends.
Ideal
1 Love. You love little (and big) critters and go out of your way to help them.
4 Compassion. You never turn down a plea for help.
5 Helpfulness. Whether you see a broken heart, you have to try to fix it.
Flaw
2 You prefer to hide during a fight.
Basic Information
Growth Rate & Stages
Gnomes reach adulthood by around age 40.
Ecology and Habitats
As the companions of nature and its animals, forest gnomes learn from their surroundings as if from a master teacher. They evade incursions into their wooded realm by great numbers of other races, but they aid individuals and small groups whom they deem worthy of their help. They create lovely gardens, organic sculptures, and wondrous emerald jewelry - that precious green stone being their favorite of all gems.
Forest gnomes are good at making their homes vanish into the landscape. It helps that they are small folk, and that they fashion their homes by digging down and living within rather than building up and living above. Like the badgers and raccoons that are often their companions, they live in the hollows of trees and warrens dug into hillsides, each home connected to the others in the community by elaborate burrows.
Beyond the secret doors into their houses, the homes of forest gnomes are gaily decorated, tidy spaces that take advantage of natural features. A great glass bowl swimming with fish and frogs might serve as a skylight for a gnome burrow, while appearing to the world above as a small pond. The gnarled and tangled roots of a tree might be used for shelves, seats, tables, and bed spaces. Such houses often have many little channels open to the outside, allowing scraps of sunlight to dapple the walls and floors and providing a means ofegress for the many animals that live with the gnomes. Similar small openings are used for their cleverly hidden chimneys, disguised as tree branches, which carry smoke from their small fires high into the treetops, reducing it to little more than a haze before it disperses.
Additional Information
Domestication
Forest gnomes can communicate with many of the small animals of the woods. Squirrels, raccoons, foxes, weasels, owls, rabbits, robins, hummingbirds, and more are their allies and friends. Outsiders often think of these creatures as the gnomes' pets, but the gnomes treat them more like trusted neighbors.
When strangers approach a woodland inhabited by forest gnomes, the gnomes often know about it while such visitors are still miles away. Speedy squirrels run through the treetops, each trying to be the first to warn the gnomes and earn a sweet treat. Birds trill a special call that alerts the gnomes to danger. At night, nocturnal animals such as owls and bats carry word to the gnomes during times when they should be on their guard.
Geographic Origin and Distribution
Gnomes come from the Feywild, however, many can also be found living in the Material Plane near fey portals. When a fey portal opens up, gnomes are often the first fey to settle on the other side, though few creatures on the Material Plane get to see their hidden settlements.
Civilization and Culture
Interspecies Relations and Assumptions
Forest gnome settlements often escape notice. Roving hunters can wander through without ever suspecting they are walking through anything but wilderness. A community of eladrin might be surprised to discover they have been neighbors of a forest gnome village for years. This elusiveness is a survival strategy, since many of the fey they share their lands with are far more powerful and dangerous than any gnome. In particular, their tendency towards goodness and kindness makes them favourite targets of many hags, so it's best to avoid the attention of these powerful and malicious fey.
Lifespan
They can live 350 to almost 500 years.
Average Height
3 - 4 feet tall
Average Weight
around 40 pounds
Related Ethnicities
Remove these ads. Join the Worldbuilders Guild
Comments