Species
Gnomes
If you leave your homestead and walk in any direction as far as you can go, you will not find a land high or low that is entirely without gnomes. If you sail across the sea to a far off lands such as Vlidwinziuq or the Jungles of Fadanim, that land will invariably have gnomes. Flip any rock or shift aside the fronds in your garden and there will most likely be a little hairy creature staring up at you with a conspiratorial grin. They are camping out in your basement right now.
If you travel through the hillsides you might have the poor fortune of falling into a gnome hovel. The gnomes live in broods in these cave-dens, tricksing and snickering and sleeping in large piles. It’s terrible. It is difficult to earn knowledge of the gnomes, much less gain their trust. To surface dwellers, gnome behaviors can appear chaotic and absurd, of their ways is difficult. With their secret tunnels far under the ground and hidden altars to Gurshthrumil the Deepmother. There are many different types of gnomes in the world. Below, some of the better known gnome communities are recorded.
The Gnome Families of the Mountains of Grout
The Mountains of Grout are absolutely riddled with gnomes. They flourish in large clans and factions, enabled by the royalty in the hanging city of Octavia, who, high in their hanging palaces, have no thought to corral the dark things of the ground in any manner. These gnomes live in four major clans, each with their own predilections, and acting in their own fashion. All of the gnomes in the Mountains of Grout in live in some form in the dirt. They bicker and tease each other, and feast on mole ham and fish and stolen potatoes. Much of the key information on the nature of Groutian gnomes is provided by Octavian scholar Rayford Four-fingers.
In the east, the Meekus family pushes wide and shallow pole-boats along underground streams. Their fur is often wet and can contain many disturbing colors of algae and moss. They travel in their boats from underground sluices into the secret eddies of the Octavian River, though no one is quite sure of the exact locations of the entrances. They can be found camping in the canyon beaches along much of the Octavian, but rarely travel so far north as to fall under the shadow of the hanging city. They never cross to the mountains east of the river, and appear to maintain great superstitions on the dangers on that side.
In the west, the Longshovel family lives in the rolling foothills where the Mountains of Grout meet the Octavian Valley. These gnomes peer out over the countryside, and in the night will come down from the hills to steal livestock and raid the garden. Of these gnomes the farmers tell many stories, and scrupulous farmers may leave a potato out on the doorstep at night, so that the gnomes do not steal their children.
In the north, the Quinn family trades and deals with those merchants of Octavia. In the junkfields perpetually shadowed by the city, the gnomes emerge with their strange wares and goods. They don’t seem to pay much mind to the rubbleghouls and mudfish that haunt the bottom of the gorge. If you ever see a gnome in the basketcity, and you’d be more likely to ride your wagon right into to Olendor than to ever see such an occurrence, what with the gnomes’ terrible fear for heights, but if you were to see a gnome in these circumstances, the poor quaking creature is probably a Quinn, of some self-styled heroic nature or other foolish imaginings.
In the south, but more truly in the deep heart of the Mountains of Grout than along the coast of the Sea of Sarbir, reside the Grout family, the oldest of the region’s gnome families, and as they tell it, older than the ancient hanging city itself. Little and less is known about their mysterious hovel. For a surface-dweller, attempting to find this stronghold would be foolhardy and more than marginally dangerous. The Grout family wields wild magicks, and some of their number hold exalted status as speakers to Gurshthramil, at least the stories go. Several of the Grout family have become known to bards through their adventures and heroics, as who could forget Kurlumpki Grout, left hand of Coth the Warrior, or the gnome princesses Gremelba Grout and Dark Grunilda, who released the demon prince Kolga'akun and destroyed the Valley Haugin and the .
The Gnomes of Gnorsh
The gnomes in Gnorsh are more civilized. They live in three tall mesa drum towers of sculpted stone, protected from the harsh Western Roughlands by a wide moat and nourished by deep wells and gardens. The Gnorshan gnomes elect leaders in complicated vote tallying games in which family-held tokens of smooth basalt, known as gnomestones, are cast into rings under fig trees at the rim of the tallest mesa in the high sun. These gnomes are locked in eternal struggle with the goblins under the sparkly mountain. The gnomes will help you if you offer them a strategic upper hand or delicious food. Any number of would-be emperors seek power by way of these arid slopes, but the towers of Gnorsh stand forever, and the gnomes pay no mind to the armies that sometimes course below. The desert will claim the treacherous, and the gnomes will persevere. This is in contrast to the gnomes of Grout, who are quite treacherous, though the gnomes don't recognize the irony.
Elves
The elves say they live forever, but all elves die eventually. That’s probably why they hide in shadowy wooded fortresses alongside their ancient treasures and coveted wisdoms, only coming out when compelled by some unknown quest or because of inter-elf relationship drama. They say when you live forever your perspective shifts so that all events are perceived as equally momentous and equally frivolous. Thus the elves spend comparable time pursuing heroic events of deep relevancy or otherwise basking in their pleasure gardens. Through the eons they had a lot of time to stylize, so they are no doubt beautiful, alien, graceful, hygienic, better than you (and aware of it), wise, and incredibly petty. It must be torture.
There are no roads to Olendor, so the saying goes. The elves live in the forest in an ancient city on the edge of a shimmering lake as far back as anyone can remember. In their estimation they were there even before the Dark Age, though further inquiry as to how or why becomes murkier. You can’t go there, unless you’re an elf.
Attempts to enter Olendor through the concomitantly named Forests of Olendor or by travel across the lake consistently lead to the disappearance of those spearheading those attempts, so not much is known about how one would access the wonders of the elven city. Rumor has it if you make it to the pleasure gardens, the elves aren’t even mad, just impressed. The good news is that you can see an elf once every ten years, when they slink in their silent longboats north across the lake to dock at the small border town of Vit-Pip for trade and to get an update on the geopolitical tales of the land.
If you see an elf in the city streets or in borderlands in a bandit camp or otherwise attempting to join an adventuring party as a ranger, you are talking to a half-elf. Imagine what a human would want to look like if they were an elf. Pointy ears, fortunate bone structure. That is a half-elf. Elves look like what elves wish they looked like, which is so to say, super weird. Elves don’t use metal and also are not compelled by interests with human comprehension, so you can use that as a quick way to differentiate the two.
Dwarves
The dwarves are all gone, a myth, you might say. They were all killed off during the Dark Age. Or otherwise they took on extended hibernation during the that time and then chose to keep it that way once it was over. As the period of time between the gasp of peace at end of the Dark Age and the replunging of the world into total warfare was regrettably brief, the dwarves isolationist stance would be understandable. No one will stop you from looking for them though.
Goblins
What is a goblin? One thing is for sure, they definitely aren’t gnomes. They aren’t humans either. There are lots of types of goblins. Many have skin of interesting colors, like green, grey, dusty red, and faded blue.
There is a goblin city under a mountain of shiny rock in the Western Roughlands, some call it the city of Gurk, or Snefgurk. The goblins live and toil in the dark tunnels under the mountains, but their territory spans across the nearby caves and mud flats, where they build thatch huts. They have wild and chaotic rumpus elections in which lifelong rulership is given to the individual who can, at the agreed upon time, demonstrate ownership of the largest amount of small jade goblin statues, out of a set of 13. Apparently most were lost a long time ago. Half the goblin kings and queens elected in this manner turn out to be warmongers and all are cunning.
These are not the only goblins. Far to the north, beyond the Icewater and even past the great golden fields of the horselords, there are countless goblins and hobgoblins inhabiting a great hilled wilderness called the Roll, living with ogres and giants and trolls and anything else you could imagine. Sometimes armies from the north stream across the Icewater into a torn land known as the Choke, hoping to gain access to the Octavian Valley. Sometimes they are goblins, but is hard to tell if they come from the Roll or somewhere else. Brave soldiers of Octavia garrison in keeps and forts in the safer parts of the Choke, and will unflinchingly repel any foreign army, regardless of origin.
The goblins living in Octavia are often caught in the rigid spatial-class structure imposed by the cascading weight transfers and increased likelihood that something will drip on you the further down you go. Many goblins live in hammocks at the furthest bottom fringe of the city with nothing between them and the gorge-floor far below. Nervously they maintain the fraying strings attaching them to the doleful baskets above and pray that the residents of those basket maintain their charity. Goblins living this way were central to the Buncher Panic of 823.
Halflings
Halfling is a term most usually describing a creature that is some part human and some part gnome. Or some part goblin and some part human, or something else. The truth is the most humans are part gnome or elf or goblin and no one is quite sure what humans are anyway, but humans definitely will pointy ears like an elf, or rounded ears like gnome, or potentially no ears like a triton or something, the latter still being regarded as slightly unfortunate. Half-elves are certainly halflings, but it annoys them when you refer to them in that way. Some gnomes have taken living under grassy hills in extended communities called shires and referring to themselves as halflings or potentially as hobbits. These are actually just gnomes with individualized property law, not to be confused with the more general understanding of halfling.