I am beginning a SC campaign...and I'm curious as to how some DM's chose to handle a starting gnome character given the city of Jzadirune and the Vanishing. I just wanted to hear your thoughts about how you may have or may not have tied the character into that particular part of the plot.
Well, being younger than 75 years old would probably be a good start; that way, the gnome could be the descendant of a resident of Jzadirune. Or, it could be a relative from out of town of Ghelve or Skie.
Tangentially related, so you can see how this kind of thing can work, somebody in my campaign is playing a dwarf who was raised by the elves. He wanted there to be a reason for the PC to have been fostered to the elves, so I gave him one.
He was a young dwarf in the Malachite Fortress when Zenith decided to take the fight to the denizens of the Underdark. When Zenith took off with all of his best fighters, he dragged along a few pages to polish armor and fetch water, including our hero. After a while of laying waste to the Forces of Evil, Zenith realized they were running short on supplies and needed more crossbow bolts and weapon hafts and food, so they found a tunnel that opened out into the jungle and began cutting down trees to make more weapons. The madness of Adimarchus fell upon them, and soon they found they had cut down enough trees to make a wood-storage shed, a lumber mill, and a smithy.
Then the elves arrived to bury their recently-deceased king in the sacred grove...
Not wanting to extend his genocidal war vs. the evil creatures of the Underdark to include a genocidal war vs. the Elves (although some of his warriors were okay with that), Zenith decided to call a truce and hand over his favorite page to be raised as a fosterling by the Elves. Time passes and the dwarf, now an adult dwarven ranger (archer) (have you ever tried to find a miniature for a dwarven archer? It aint easy...) sets out in search of his fortune and heads back to Cauldron in hopes of finding his way back to the Malachite Fortress, only to find that the only known entrance from Cauldron was collapsed when the fortress fell, many years ago...
That's a cool backstory for the dwarf character.
As for your original question, in my Shackled City campaign, one of the players decided to play a young female gnome rogue, Garnett "Glittergold" Ghelve. Her family had fled the Vanishing to a gnome community near Cauldron, and all she remembered about the Vanshing time was spooky tales and the fear in the adults' eyes when the subject was mentioned (which was seldom as it was taboo to mention it).
Her Uncle Keygan, though, was one of the few gnomes who remained behind selling locks out of store that used to be one of the major gnome magical markets, where magic items crafted in Jzadirune were sold to surface folk.
Garnett's parents sent her to "see the world" and be trained by Uncle Keygan in crafting locks. When she arrived in town to visit her uncle, her uncle discreetly gave her a note that he was in trouble and she needed to go get help. When she went to the Church of St. Cuthbert, where a group of heroes was gathering to heed the call to search for the orphans, she enlisted the help of those other heroes, who decided that maybe this would yield a clue about the orphans. That was the genesis of the Seekers of Cauldron, the adventuring party in our campaign.
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Time passes and the dwarf, now an adult dwarven ranger (archer) (have you ever tried to find a miniature for a dwarven archer? It aint easy...) sets out in search of his fortune and heads back to Cauldron...
Try Games Workshop's Lord of the Rings range.
There's several poses of dwarf archers in Balin's retinue.For those who don't like GW Warhammer dwarves (who are, admittedly, barrels with feet), the LOR range has a scale and proportion that is more realistic and in keeping with D&D dwarves.