Canonfire!

Thu Mar 21, 2013 5:09 pm Gnomish Migrations

The gnomes are meant to have been herders and trappers in the northern reaches prior to migrating south centuries ago (I have a date of -722CY noted down but I'm not sure why!)

Has anyone had any thoughts as to why they migrated south en masse and suddenly started living in hills instead of the northern forests?

I'm not sure if there are any canon reasons but thoughts I've had include their abuse at the hands of Keraptis or maybe the humans due to their connection to Keraptis.

Or maybe as a result of a chain reaction of migrations due to the encroaching Black Ice. Perhaps as the ice started to appear and move south it pushed battling quaggoth and human tribes south and east into the northern forests displacing the gnomes. Although there is little information about Nuria I thought that maybe the quaggoth hordes could be involved with Nuria's fall, raiding the land until the elves in the Fellreev mounted a massacre forcing the quaggoth north of the Fellreev into the Forlorn Forest (forcing more gnomes to migrate).

Fri Mar 22, 2013 9:16 am

Don't know about the Land of Black Ice... gnomes don't seem to have much connection with Blackmoor.

Rather, we know pre-Cataclysm gnomes resided in or near Tenh (as Keraptis was able to recruit a tribe there). By the 570s the gnomish population of that area appears extinct. Perhaps Keraptis' human victims drove them all off or worse.

Fri Mar 22, 2013 1:38 pm

What the Living Greyhawk Gazetteer says is that gnomes first migrated south from the remote north a few centuries before the Invoked Devastation. -722 CY would be precisely three centuries prior to the cataclysm, so that sounds like it could be about right.

The tyranny of Keraptis lasted approximately between -1,500 CY to -1,100 CY, so it's probably a bit early to explain the gnomish migration.

The War of Extermination between the elves and quaggoths happened when the elves were still new to the Flanaess, so we're talking at the dawn of the elven calendar 5,000 years ago at the latest (my own inclination is that this happened tens of thousands of years before that), so if there was an elven massacre of quaggoths coinciding with the gnome migrations it must have been a much later one.

From what I understand, Nuria was intended to comprise what is now northern Nyrond and the Pale.

My thought was that there were two major tribes of rock gnomes, each with a different culture. The Kron Hills gnomes were driven to their present homeland (from Telchuria, conceivably) by the coming of the Land of Black Ice, while the Flinty Hills gnomes were driven to their present homeland by the creation of the Burning Cliffs. There are many more gnomish lands than that, but I'm thinking mainly of an east/west division.

Sun Mar 24, 2013 7:31 am

I definitely support the idea of their being more than one gnomish culture. I've never liked the way that demi-humans get homogenised. I know that the gnomes of the Dragonshead Peninsula posed a quandry to the -722CY migration date so I'd justified it with a north / south cultural divide as opposed to east / west but either works well.

I see one group being more of a tinkering type of gnome the other descended from the herders and trappers with almost a Saami vibe going on. With the migrations there was a lot of cultural blending but some areas still retain some cultural 'purity' perhaps.

With the quaggoth dates so early it looks like that wont tie in but then with the encroaching Black Ice that in itself, if tied to around -722CY would be enough as would the creation of the Burning Cliffs.

I'd always thought of Nuria as being north of Rookroost, around the region of the Wastes. Of course I have nothing canon to substantiate that - it's just guess work!

Sun Mar 24, 2013 2:28 pm

There isn't really anything in canon about Nuria's location. The Pale/Nyrond connection is just what Gary Holian told me his intentions were.

There are definitely more than two gnome cultures - for example, the svirfneblin have a different culture and origin. The Dragonshead gnomes might have belonged to a different subrace, rather than being rock gnomes. There are plenty of obscure ones in various sources - they might be chaos gnomes, whisper gnomes, or arcane gnomes. Exactly how the histories of these subraces interrelate is unclear, but it was only the rock gnomes who migrated from the north a few centuries prior to the Twin Cataclysms.

Tue Mar 26, 2013 3:36 am

I have reinvented a little bit the histories of the semihumans in my campaign.
Dwarves were born as dvergar, maggots in the flesh of the titans deep below the earth, in a land called Svartalfheim, probably in some fading land connected to Ysgard. Moradin brought the dwarves to Jotunheim (the Oerik continent) where their culture mixed with that of the frost giants (that culture was subsequently brought to the thillronian peninsula by the dwarves and giants from Jotunheim).
I was also considering having different origins for the elves as I don't like the Tolkien elves on Greyhawk, it is much possible some elves are from Alfheim in Ysgard (the grey wleves maybe) while the high elves are diminutive, 4 or 5 foot tall faeries from a land between Oerth and the Faerie Court (that of Oberon etc.).
Coming to the noniz, I believe they fit perfect to the "viking" culture of Jotunheim, while others could be half-faerie like the elves.

Tue Mar 26, 2013 7:51 pm

I think the important question that we're missing is just what were those gnomes herding in ancient times? Jackalopes? Wiener dogs? Flumphs?

Tue Mar 26, 2013 8:01 pm

Wed Mar 27, 2013 7:10 am

Wed Mar 27, 2013 11:34 am

Yes indeed. Good point. Rock gnomes would have been herding...pet rocks...

Wed Mar 27, 2013 5:19 pm