The Burning Trial

Gnomes of PÈRYL are made; they are not born. Among the other species of PÈRYL, gnomes are considered to be akin to but different from dwarves. Few outside of dwarven communities truly understand what this means. Gnomes are merely dwarves who have been raised on a strict diet and trained in the mystical arts from a very young age. The process shapes their morphology, psychology, and makes them distinct from their dwarf kin. Although it is unclear whether or not dwarves consider them to be a subspecies or a separate species entirely, gnome adults are born as dwarf children.
The Burning Trial is a rite of passage that produces adult dwarf males and gnomes. Only the former is a successful outcome of the trial.
A child that gives off signs (see below) will be selected and examined by leaders in the community—dwarven monks, gnomish masters, occasionally dwarven nobility if the child in question is from that number—and after the examination is completed, the leaders decide how to proceed.
If the signs are seemingly innocuous, then the child is allowed to continue until subsequent signs appear. If that happens then the Burning Trial is required immediately. If no further sign is detected, then the trial will resume on the cusp of puberty as it does with all "normal" children.
If the signs are not innocuous, the Burning Trial may not be held at all and the child in immediately exiled from the community and forced to live on its margins in the hold of the gnomes. There he—gnomes are always male, this is a paternalistic line—is raised by the gnome collective and fed a specific diet and his training begins.
The Burning Trial is different for each subethnicity among the dwarf tribes. Rheddait and Illaohh and all the clans that make them up, have very different versions of the Trial. However, the basic format is the same: a child is taken by tongueless monks who serve the semi-divine figure of the Kingsmith who governs the forges of the community. The monks take the child, who is usually accompanied by older males of his family who have already passed the Trial. Usually his father. Sometimes uncles. Occasionally, older cousins or brothers. No more than three may accompany the child.
In an obscure occult place known only to those who have been through the trial and secreted from womenfolk, an ersatz hut or tent or similar such temporary structure is built. The child is then told to enter and it is sealed behind them. Inside they will find various small rooms and objects. The structure is then set ablaze and the child has to figure out how to leave it safely or die.
Dependent on the actions and choices made, the child will be deemed to have passed the Trial and into dawning manhood, or failed the Trial and deemed to be merely a gnome, destined for social exile. Or the child will be burned to death.

History

The Burning Trial is as old as dwarven cultural memory, although it dates back to the ancient days of the people, il-Orah, in the ancient tongue. The il-Orah schism shunted the Daozvorah from the other dwarves. The Burning Trial developed among the remains dwarves of the il-Orah before they too split into the Orahredaz and il-Horah, thus all their descendants, the Rheddaitéin, the Òrennéii, and the Illaohhéin have variations on the Burning Ritual.
The descendants of the Daozvorah, the Svor, do not have a culture of separating the magically inclined and have no gnomes per se, lack any ritual remotely similar to the Burning Trial.

Execution

The age of the boys tested by the Burning Trials is not fixed. When there are signs of inclinations in a male child, be it to heroic warrior class, or otherwise, his parents or guardians will submit him. Given that failure of the Trial can result in death, or worse: familial shame, most guardians postpone the ritual for as long as is possible. Tongueless warrior-monks are the stewards of the ritual. Their presence in the community signify that a child is due. If a boy has not been submitted for the test by late adolescence the tongueless monks will lurk prominently in the vicinity of the child's familial hold. Mute, stalwart, emotionless, expressionless: their mere presence will begin to shame the families. It has happened that boys too young have been submitted by nervous parents after the tongueless monks came into the common hall of their clan, when the intended child was not even theirs.
It is likely that such boys were lost in the ritual, but at least they did not shame their families.
Shame comes in the form of the boys who are successful, but choose the wrong means of escape and completion of the trial. If they take the lefthand path, they are then taken from their parents and banished to the Gnomes who live at the outskirts of the city. Successful boys are thenceforth men and are fêted by their clan. They are now dwarf warriors of their kingdom.
Parents and guardians of gnomes often hold ersatz funerals for their "dead" sons. Boys who die in the test—although rare to uncommon—are treated as being sacrifices for the good of the community, tribe, and nation, and are mourned with great fanfare and feasts, having ascended into the ancestral plane.
And whilst the secret of the Burning Trial is kept from boys as yet untested, boys learn where the gnomes of their kingdom come from (to an extent) and are loathe to be so identified. They may not know what the day of the Trial will play out, what it is, or when it will come, but they know their is barrier in their lives that filters out the unrighteous.

Components and tools

As would be expected for disparate groups of dwarvenkind, the Burning Trial has regional, historical, and cultural variants among its practitioners. Recall that it is not practiced among the Svor.
However, the principles are the same:

1. boys who are at the cusp of manhood, are taken by tongueless monks to a secret location.
2. the location is a sacred site known only to men who have been tested. there is a potentially deadly test which has various possible solutions.
3. one solution will confer the status of an adult male, another solution will demonstrate to the proctors that the boy is in fact not a true dwarf, but a gnome. All other solutions—or failure to solve the test—will result in death.
4. successful resolution will have the newly anointed man feted by his community and he can begin his apprenticeship, his service to the nation, and take a full adult name.
5. failure to resolve the test results in the gnome, taken to his family's crypt where he will be given the opportunity to prostrate himself before his ancestors and beg their forgiveness, before being cast out.*

Among the Illaohhéin, the trial involves escaping a burning hut ritualistically constructed for each child at the site of the most sacred space in their kingdom, the Winter Hall. It is believed that the Illaohhéin version is closest to the original rite given that the name implies literal burning. However, the Rheddait variants rarely involve fire. Instead, the boy to be tested is taken into the sacred space—e.g. a cliffside overlooking surging sea, or a deep cavern—and therein he will encounter a heavily armoured and armed warrior wearing a demon mask.** Various tools are scattered in each case—Illaohhéin, Rheddaitéin—and how the child acts, which tools they choose, and how they use them are the components of the test.
The Rheddaitéin version at its most basic is the offer of a sword or the means to flee (e.g. a knotted rope out of the cave; a visible waterway to swim to safety etc.). If the boy takes the weapon and stands his ground, he will be successful, although if he does not engage, he might be given a good scar. Should he flee, he will have failed. Although, the most binary and simplistic, this model minimizes the chance of death. The warriors will not actually attack the child with the intent to kill.

Participants

The primary deity of most dwarves is the god of the forge, Gréighnor, but he is not invoked in the Burning Trial because among His other spheres are mercy, peace, compassion, and protection. The Burning Trial is of the punitive, purgative goddess of the angry volcano and trembling earth, Bacchiah, who will burn away the impure... or so it is thought. The primary administrators of the Burning Trial are the tongueless monks who are agents of the kingsmith who is the figurehead of each dwarf community.
In times of war, the tongueless monks are seen more commonly in dwarven communities serving the cause of elite troops. Interbellum periods the tongueless monks are only ever seen collecting boys to bring them to the Trial, or those rare times when dwarves descend into the deepest parts of their cities to visit the kingsmith and their the tonguelss monks are his personal guard.

Observance

When the Trial happens depends on its necessity. Should a child show "signs" at a young age, the Trial will occur earlier. Ideally, the Burning Trial is to happen at the dawning of puberty, before the child's body begins to become an adult. Because being a gnome is considered shameful, undesirable, and a familial burden, younger children are often tested thus to assure that their shame does not haunt the family for longer than is absolutely necessary.
The signs are: spontaneous magical/inexplicable occurrences, gender atypical behaviour, same-sex attraction, dislike of gender typical behaviour, insolence with elders, fondness for the arcane, interests in magical stories, lack of martial aptitude or interest. An effeminate boy is likely to be tested at a very young age, and in the most perfunctory way.
Gnomes are not all queer, but all queers are gnomes. No "true" dwarf could possibly be same-sex attracted.
Dwarf society is exceedingly heterosexist and patriarchal. Similarly, magical aptitude is othered among the very superstitious dwarves. It is also considered dangerous. Gender variance and magic present an existential threat in this milieu. The Burning Trial exists because queerness and magic are conflated.
The conflation stems from the lack of concern that Svor have for gender and sexual variance and their innate leanings towards magic. Sphor, the common dwarf slur for their cousin race, alludes to both magic and sexuality.

Primary Related Location

Gruthe

Important Locations

• Illaohh
• Rheddait

Related Ethnicities

• Rheddaitéin

*Gnomes can no longer legally claim any ties to the ancestors and returning to familial crypt is a capital crime, because their mere presence alone defiles sacred space. Gnomes are not welcome in any crypts. After a night of penitence, the new gnome boy is then escorted by the tongueless monks to the outskirts of his community—shamed by anyone who sees him, his family members will not speak to or acknowledge him—and given to the gnome headmaster.

**The dwarves of the realm fear most familial shame and condemnation in the ancestral plane, where it is said they will be reborn as a turtle-snake-like demon called a tanva. Given the import of the ritual, the masks worn by Rheddaitéin warriors are evocative of the tanva. Alternately called "two-tailed-tanva"—the tanvas have two serpentine tails instead of legs—the masked warrior often has a bifurcated cloak or cape that suggests the tails.