It's always tricky to have player characters from Mysterious Races that Don't Talk About Their Culture.
What should gnome PCs know about the "weird alien fey" aspects of gnomish life -- how do they arrange their society that would creep out non-gnomes, anyway?
What do PC elves know about their long absence, and return?
And how much of this should they be willing to let the other players in on?
I share this concern. My wife keeps threatening to play a Gnome, but so far I have the good fortune of saying that they're so mysterious they don't really adventure. They just goof off all day with illusion spells, licking the potion bowls, and building air ships. If she keeps hounding me, I'll also be curious how to give her some actual fluff.
Be that as it may, with the few snippets, I gather the fey realms are closer to classic lore, where one walks with respect and dread when approached by a Gnome.
Judging by the description and picture in the latest Pathfinder, I'd say gnomes are the anime otaku kids of Golarion.
I've got a gnome in the group, so I've been going over what's been provided with a fine tooth comb looking for hints and details. Basically their thing comes down to the Sanos forest. Something weird is going on there along the lines of weird religion and cultural taboo breaking. It's the sort of thing they understand, stuff they think is sacred and perfectly natural--but they're petrified of other races finding out about it and not understanding. Suddenly wave upon wave of adventurers will start showing up and invading their sacred places, and their reputation as friendly gregarious partner race will be shot. They're afraid to become another strange group of "creatures" in a place where that earns you a sword in the head. So they are deeply and hotly concerned with seeming okay and mainstreaming themselves. They will viciously deny and bury any trail that will lead attention back to their forests--to the point that they feel a lot like guilty badguys. It makes everyone really suspicious but so far no one has violated their friendship with the gnomes (which is clearly what the cost would be) by having an indignant march over there to see what's up.
Think of groups that like to seem normal but throw up a big smokescreen to try and blend into society. They seem kind of culty. Think of the way modern neopagans tend to sometimes act, or Freemasons, or Mormons and you're really on the right track. I'm your friend, and a good normal person, but there are things I believe in that get me persecuted and folks have tried to put us to the sword before--so I'm gonna' be pretty defensive of a lot of what I do and believe until I know you really well. Some stuff you will just never know and you gotta' be cool with that. I am really okay and normal though. Believe me. And most people don't. Most people are suspicious and closed minded. Sometimes this is a good thing though, cause one way or another Mansonites and Heaven's Gaters tend to say the same thing and it's hard from the outside to tell the normal but persecuted folks from the dangerous Cthulhu types.
So what are they doing? I think it's a bit like The Wickerman but with undead--or something that seems very much like undead from the rumors. It mentions "deadly and deathly" things the gnomes are covering up for, and the fact that they go to the nearby volcanic mountains and have weird rituals. That's all they've said so far.
My gold pieces are on Gnomes doing the "Burning Man," roasting people and other Druidic type stuff for Gozreh to keep the Sanos Forest lush and fertile. I think blood and sex magick, swapping partners while painting each other head-to-toe in gold paint and wearing masks, getting wild animals involved (or at least watching). At the climax of the rituals, it rains blood, which causes a frenzy to seek out the lame, diseased, and "out-of-place" to cull from their forest.
Now you've got the picture. Then they clean up, get back in their hobbit suits, and go back to town. If anyone asks what's out there, they get this kind of uncomfortable look on their faces and say "uhm...nothing...."
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Judging by the description and picture in the latest Pathfinder, I'd say gnomes are the anime otaku kids of Golarion.
Awesome! I can totally imagine gnomes as being huge anime fans, endlessly debating the pros and cons of Inu Yasha and Naruto. Oh, and they'd totally cosplay body-inappropriate characters (like, for instance, any character more than 3 feet tall). ;D
Yeah, that would rock. I'd totally want to hang out with gnomes even more, then.
My gold pieces are on Gnomes doing the "Burning Man," roasting people and other Druidic type stuff for Gozreh to keep the Sanos Forest lush and fertile. I think blood and sex magick, swapping partners while painting each other head-to-toe in gold paint and wearing masks, getting wild animals involved (or at least watching). At the climax of the rituals, it rains blood, which causes a frenzy to seek out the lame, diseased, and "out-of-place" to cull from their forest.
Your posts never fail to amuse DarkArt. I have also been wondering these same questions...and I ask Paizo folks in the know this: If you can't just answer us here and we need to wait for a Pathfinder to explain this to us, at least tell us which issue it will be?
My gold pieces are on Gnomes doing the "Burning Man," roasting people and other Druidic type stuff for Gozreh to keep the Sanos Forest lush and fertile. I think blood and sex magick, swapping partners while painting each other head-to-toe in gold paint and wearing masks, getting wild animals involved (or at least watching). At the climax of the rituals, it rains blood, which causes a frenzy to seek out the lame, diseased, and "out-of-place" to cull from their forest.
OK..you have put a frightening amount of thought into this... :)
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My guess for the elves is that they had a lot of knowledge, and accumulated power and time on their hands and just kept on experimenting, and pushing things and just seeing where little logic puzzles led until the point where a critical mass of little mistakes and not spotting the interactions between things had people crying out; "Oh no! what have we done?!" by which point it was far too late and the Other Things were already coming out of the mirror...
Thanks for everyone' appreciation for my own musings.
I have had much personal research into Druidism and the occult, and I had been working hard on my homebrew campaign where my take on Druids were in a manifestation that they embodied the cruel, remorseless realm of nature to heart. A hierorphant Druid takes their status for life, and that any upstart must defeat the current one in a ritual duel. In fact, to keep up with the idea of culling the weak, old, lame, and infirm, it was expected that a hierorphant should receive challenges. Upon defeat, the ousted is imprisoned in a bier made in the shape of a man and burned alive. The nearby grove comes alive, and the spiritual frenzy suddenly calls forth the Spirit of the Hunt who takes all night to kill those that deserve to feed nature.
I've come across stories where Druids conducted augeries through live entrails (much like the Pathfinder Journal), or that Druids were rumored to evoke rains of blood.
I'm sure much should be taken under the caveat that they were written under the filter of the Roman Empire that stamped their traditions out, but it's all still very interesting.
I then ad hoc combined my take with the movies "Eyes Wide Shut" and "Goldfinger" on the fly for this post, hee hee. Both bring to mind the ideas of secret goings-on and passwords into realms of delightful danger.
Well I gotta say, you pretty much put your finger on the sort of stuff I have imagined for the Sanos forest. I like the idea that they've got this really creepy, weird, extreme stuff in their closet and they never let on to any of it. I love that.
Are there any species who actually cull their weak, elderly and/or infirm; or is this idea just taking "red in tooth and claw" to an extreme?
Were is it said that gnomes are kind of dark?
Don't get me wrong, I like the idea of the burning man, but I'm not sure where this is inspired from.
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Are there any species who actually cull their weak, elderly and/or infirm; or is this idea just taking "red in tooth and claw" to an extreme?
After the drones mate with the queen bee, the worker bees force them from the hive, since they're surplus to requirements at that point.
Among sharks, the first to hatch will eat those that haven't, though I'm unsure if this is because psuedoplacenta smells good to them, or because they don't want the competition for prey.
Were is it said that gnomes are kind of dark?Well it's really a synthesis of a lot of things. There's a sidebar section in Pathfinder 3 in the mini-gazeteer that talks about the different races in Golarion. Regarding gnomes it says:
"While gnomes are generally no more evil than the other races, their alien thought processes and adherence to an unconventional moral code tend to make other races uneasy."
So yeah, they make people uneasy. Their moral code makes people uncomfortable. They tend to have different attitudes and ideas about things than other folk. The sense is that while they aren't usually any more evil than other races, there's a sense that one might make that mistake. That seems to cast them in a bit of a dark light. Not like ogre-kin or nuthin' but darker and more mysterious. Likewise there seems to be a tight lipped code of silence regarding what happens in their Sanos Forest home. No one has been willing to risk their friendship with the gnomes enough to check it out, but there's rumors of "deadly and deathly" creatures there--rumors the gnomes vigorously deny. This last part is listed in the Sanos Forest description in the same issue.
Are there any species who actually cull their weak, elderly and/or infirm; or is this idea just taking "red in tooth and claw" to an extreme?Were is it said that gnomes are kind of dark?
Well, what is the connection between gnomes and spriggans in Golarion? There's a lot of speculation in other settings, but few hard facts.
Perhaps in Golarion, spriggans are gnomes who "went too far." They got too caught up in whatever secret the gnomes are keeping and were changed. Of course, in their minds, the rest of the gnomes are unfit weaklings who lack the courage to walk the "True Path."
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I think I've just had a horrible moment of realisation.
Why are Paizo hiding gnomes and elves away and not letting us see them?
Gnomes are an NPC/monster race in 4e.
Traditional elves are diverging into Elves (forest-types) and Eldarin (mysterious, cultured types) in 4e.
Paizo will have to go 4e unless the release is a complete disaster.
So... I'm deducing that JJ and co. are holding back on these races so that they can deal with the new 4e status of Elves and Gnomes. Especially as the third AP (which is when they'll have to decide if Galorian is going 4e) has this blurb;
The elves of the Mierani Forest have been hiding something from outside eyes for hundreds of years, but now, this sinister secret has escaped. What at first seems to be a sudden uprising in unsanctioned banditry in the Riddleport hinterlands is in fact something altogether more menacing—the dark elves have come to Varisia. Yet the threat presented by the drow from below may be nothing compared to a new threat from the skies above. Can a new group of heroes save the world from the Second Darkness?
A cataclysmic introduction of Drow might also be a window for introducing Eldarin...
Can anyone at Paizo tell me if i'm totally off track here?
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So... I'm deducing that JJ and co. are holding back on these races so that they can deal with the new 4e status of Elves and Gnomes...
Which seems like a very astute idea, to me. Whether it's true or not , who knows, but apart from anything else, this flavour is far more palatable, since it's been built into the setting from the ground up.
Far better than introducing 3E-flavour elves and gnomes, then having to trash the setting next year.
I think I've just had a horrible moment of realisation.
Why are Paizo hiding gnomes and elves away and not letting us see them?
Gnomes are an NPC/monster race in 4e.
Traditional elves are diverging into Elves (forest-types) and Eldarin (mysterious, cultured types) in 4e.
Paizo will have to go 4e unless the release is a complete disaster.
So... I'm deducing that JJ and co. are holding back on these races so that they can deal with the new 4e status of Elves and Gnomes. Especially as the third AP (which is when they'll have to decide if Galorian is going 4e) has this blurb;
The elves of the Mierani Forest have been hiding something from outside eyes for hundreds of years, but now, this sinister secret has escaped. What at first seems to be a sudden uprising in unsanctioned banditry in the Riddleport hinterlands is in fact something altogether more menacing—the dark elves have come to Varisia. Yet the threat presented by the drow from below may be nothing compared to a new threat from the skies above. Can a new group of heroes save the world from the Second Darkness?A cataclysmic introduction of Drow might also be a window for introducing Eldarin...
Can anyone at Paizo tell me if i'm totally off track here?
They've been no more secretive or informative on Gnomes and Elves as they have been with Dwarves, which is my personal interest. HMM didn't expand that much that was already mentioned in the RotR Players' Guide. I was hoping for more detail on Dwarves than just that they all come from Janderhoff. I'm interested in their culture. The new icon suggests that the character of typical Dwarves remains similar to the notion of Dwarves being big drinkers of mass quantities (as in the icon exists as a stark contrast to that to keep his senses sharp), but are the Dwarves organized in clans, how do they marry, do they have guilds, etc.?
I also linked the Gnomes as such because it fit well with inserting a Dungeon adventure along the path from the Lost Coast to Turtleback Ferry. I put in Dramsburg (just calling it the city of 'Dram') that had been recently savaged by a bizarre beast (which I upscaled to a Displacer Beast). I changed the local religion from Cuthbert to Erastil, and the ancient runes beneath the church to an ancient Elven, Druid ritual to appease Gozreh with a human sacrifice. The site of the standing circle of stones, there are recently placed statues of solid gold animals hidden in alcoves on each stone. I have thusly fused that since I placed Dram in Sanos Forest, that Gnomes have taken over much of the old Elvish rites to Gozreh, and perhaps drove the Elves away. I therefore linked that as the reason why Elves have been driven away from Celwynvian as well. The Gnomes have got this notion that Elves became too uppitty and fell out of favor with Gozreh, taking it upon themselves as the new chosen race of the amoral god of nature. It were the Gnomes that crafted these golden idols and are leaving Dram alone to see where the chips fall before deciding if they should stay or leave Sanos Forest. Since the PC's persuaded the townsfolk to complete the ritual, the Gnomes have so far decided to let them have another year, but they didn't like that the PC's took the idols. There will be a part two I'll need to arrange later.
God I hope not. Pathfinder's treatments of the gnomes so far have made me like them. I used to not like gnomes at all, but now they're one of my favorite races.
I don't think you need fear too much. The vibe I get from every statement made by the Paizo guys on 4e is that they're not looking to accept D&D's take on everything. They will probably use the mechanics, as sort of a courtesy to help modernise their game to the new standard--but only insomuch as the new rules don't alter what Golarion is. They've made it pretty clear that they like Golarion, and do not plan on cramming it full of tieflings or whatever just because the books say so.
I would imagine that would go in spades for any of their reinvisionings of classical D&D stuff. Kobolds are staying the same, goblins are staying the same, and ogres...heaven help'm...are staying the same. It nearly goes without saying that gnomes and elves and other PC races will be exactly as they are after 4e, with nary a hair mussed. Pathfinder might use 4e, but it will never BE 4e.