Gnomes of the Inner Sea

Millennia ago, gnomes were among the many fey creatures cavorting about the First World, a realm of abundant light, life, and remorseless fancy. However, a long-forgotten event led to many gnomes’ fleeing from their ancestral home.

Banished to a world bound by cause and effect and physical limitations, the gnomes of Golarion struggled to adapt—not just to find food and shelter, but to retain their identity and supernatural grip on life. With their connection to the First World severed, gnomes began withering slowly, bleeding their color, curiosity, and vitality in a process known as the Bleaching. Only by engaging in new and wondrous experiences can gnomes sustain their minds and stave off this ancestral curse, recapturing just enough of the whimsy of their lost homeland to survive—and even thrive.

Although the Material Plane initially seemed lethally drab by comparison to the First World, gnomes have adapted to their new environment. In addition to their natural curiosity and creativity driving them to explore every possible niche available, gnome infants form innate connections to the supernatural features that suffuse their surroundings. Like dry sponges, gnomes absorb elements of arcane, divine, occult, or primal magic, partially filling the voids left from the absence of their connection to the First World.

These energies also shape a young gnome’s features, coloration, personality, and innate magic, often causing children to diverge dramatically from their parents’ natures based on where they grew up. Thanks to gnomes’ penchants for traveling, the majority of any gnome community can share a number of physiological traits while still having a motley assortment of appearances.

Individual gnomes’ appearance span the full range of human eye, skin, and hair colorations and beyond, including shades of green, blue, pink, purple, and other hues. The color of these features are most vibrant early in a gnome’s life, growing slightly more subdued with age.

The need for novelty drives many of a gnome’s actions. Periods of idleness are harmless and even refreshing, yet weeks, months, or years without some goal, project, or other stimulus to fuel a gnome’s imagination leaves them vulnerable to the dreaded Bleaching. Whereas on the First World, any energy lost would quickly be replaced by that plane’s ubiquitous wonders, on the Material Plane, a gnome’s innate magic gradually seeps into their surroundings in a losing battle, much as a warm body inevitably loses heat in cold weather.

Most gnomes can’t perceive this transfer as anything other than additional anxiety or stress. Engagement and activity cause a gnome to generate enough magic to counteract this loss, but once a gnome’s succumbed too far, the final stages of the Bleaching drain their remaining color over a span of several years. The process is painful and typically lethal, though a tiny fraction survives to become so-called Bleachlings, strangely calm and pale gnomes that most other gnomes view with fearful respect.

Thanks to their natural curiosity, sharp senses, stubborn resourcefulness, and sheer tenacity, gnomes make natural adventurers who thrive in a variety of roles. Combined with their long lifespans, gnomes often accumulate an eclectic array of semipractical skills that can prove unexpectedly useful, and few develop the same depths of expertise in esoteric subjects as gnomes.

Gnomes do not have traditional ethnicities as humans might categorize them. The prevailing magical forces of an area shape gnomes’ appearances and dispositions as much as conventional genetics do. As a result, a region’s gnomes drift toward common traits that are largely independent of actual lineage. In some cases, these shared features happen to overlap closely with those of other major humanoid populations—for example, the gnomes of Katapesh and Nex tend to have skin and hair reminiscent of their Keleshite and Garundi neighbors—while in others, gnomes’ bright features or uncommon complexions set them apart from everyone else.

Gnomes’ penchant for experimentation and innovation also means their culture is constantly changing. Cherished traditions are as likely to be centuries old as they are to have been fashioned the previous year, and the shifting of a settlement’s composition regularly upsets any academic understanding of that population’s customs. What’s more, gnomes often adopt local conventions, often for the simple reason of bringing variety to their own routines. Even so, there are just enough cultural similarities among gnomes of common backgrounds that they can still be categorized into ethnographic groups: fell gnomes, Feychild gnomes, glimmer gnomes, and Keenspark gnomes.

Nearly every gnome’s top priority is staving off the Bleaching. This survivalist urge is less an immediate goal as it is an inspiration for how gnomes approach their lives. Many seek out the most wondrous experiences they can, periodically uprooting and pursuing some exciting opportunity in another land. Other gnomes find depth and meaning in a craft, study, or profession, ever seeking new discoveries and minutiae to keep their minds engaged. There’s an irony that gnomes often relish particularly dangerous jobs as a way of staying in good health. This often drives gnomes to become adventurers, not just to overcome constant danger, but also to see new lands and meet eclectic companions.

Unlike halflings, who often blend into other societies, gnomes thrive when standing out, from attracting the type of trouble that makes for a good story later to establishing credentials so that they may be recognized for their achievements. As a result, gnomes are often polarizing. A magnet for mischief might be endearing to some but frustrating to others, and tales of gnome tricksters both capture the imagination and fuel misconceptions held by members of other ancestries. Dwarves are often quick to view gnome behaviors—particularly the iconoclastic antics of Feychild gnomes—as a threat to dwarven traditions, even while dwarves and gnomes often bond over their shared adoration of good craftsmanship. Elves’ shared longevity and appreciation for the natural world often help them connect with gnomes. Because halflings, half-orcs, half-elves, and goblins lack true homelands of their own, gnomes often find common ground with these peoples while exploring the world, discovering niches where they can thrive and adopting trusted comrades as surrogate families.

Bleachlings

Those gnomes with the debatable fortune to survive the Bleaching awaken as Bleachlings, pale reflections of their former selves drained of color and strong emotion. Despite the fearful stigma that most gnomes have for Bleachlings, the latter seem utterly at peace with their new condition. If anything, Bleachlings are attuned to nature in a way that exceeds their brethren’s natural affinity, speaking to animals with ease and reaching a magical equilibrium with their surroundings.

Fell Gnomes

While light and laughter suffuse much of the First World, the plane is also home to more sinister fey of blood, spite, and shadows. When gnomes come of age near an area of darker magical forces, their physiology seems to absorb some of these foreboding elements as if activating some recessive genes. Known as fell gnomes, these children boast eerily exaggerated features, such as spindly fingers, too-wide grins, and exaggerated eyes. Fell gnomes also tend to favor dark humor that thoroughly disquiets bystanders, particularly when combined with chilling magic that shatters preconceptions that gnomes are inherently bright creatures.

Though fell gnomes are not intrinsically cruel or morose, many enjoy leveraging their disquieting characteristics in social settings. To this end, fell gnomes often favor darker colors, asymmetrical clothing, and imposing garments. Fell gnomes often reside near occult nexuses, such as those found in Cheliax, Druma, and Ustalav.

Fell gnomes often have the umbral gnome or wellspring gnome (occult) heritage, though the sensate gnome and chameleon gnome heritages are also common.

Feychild Gnomes

Most numerous of the gnomes, Feychild gnomes also have the strongest connection to their ancestral homeland, the First World. Having developed a bond to a mighty natural feature or primal source, these gnomes are the most likely to display naturally bright and fantastic features—including bright hair and eyes that include yellow, green, orange, blue, and pink hues, among others—and tend toward tan, pale, or green skin.

Despite having the most natural magical foundation, these gnomes’ fey connection is considered the least stable and most in need of stimulus. As a result, Feychild gnomes are often capricious and emotive, regularly seeking new experiences, playing pranks, and fueling countless gnome stereotypes.

However, their intense First World connection also often grants Feychild gnomes a rapport with animals and plants, ensuring they never want for friends. Elves usually respect these gnomes’ fey aspect, albeit often through a somewhat paternalistic lens.

Feychild gnomes are most common in Andoran, the Lands of the Linnorm Kings, the Mwangi Expanse, and the River Kingdoms.

Feychild gnomes frequently have the fey-touched gnome heritage, though some gnomes express their connection to the First World with the chameleon gnome, sensate gnome, or vivacious gnome heritages.

Glimmer Gnomes

Golarion is a tapestry of divine scars where the gods have made their marks through cataclysms and miracles, and these sites retain a magical resonance that shapes nearby gnome populations.

This world-shattering power combines with gnomes’ ancestral First World origins to grant the gnomes a degree of influence over existence itself. These glimmer gnomes (a corruption of the original name “glamour gnomes”) possess a natural talent for illusion and reality-warping magic, sometimes causing bystanders to mistake them for godlings—or members of the Eldest—in their own right.

It’s an easy mistake to make, given these gnomes’ slightly translucent hair that seems to glow in the light and the warm, metallic irises of their eyes. Most perturbing of all, though, is a glimmer gnome’s penchant for appearing and disappearing unpredictably, like mischievous tricksters who always seem to emerge or vanish at the most advantageous times.

Glimmer gnomes are most common where there are powerful religious connections. Small groups are associated with Nidal’s obedience to Zon-Kuthon, Osirion’s reverence of Nethys, and Casmaron’s accursed Pit of Gormuz where Rovagug is sealed.

A significant population of these gnomes have ties to Absalom’s Starstone Cathedral, where their population is evenly split between gnomes who play up their divinely inspired origins through extravagant clothing and those who resent visitors’ fawning admiration and dress to avoid undue attention.

Many glimmer gnomes have the chameleon gnome, vivacious gnome, or wellspring gnome (divine) heritage.

Keenspark Gnomes

Some gnomes aren’t content to soak in the world’s wonders; they possess an especially strong drive to create their own. Dedicated to innovation, Keenspark gnomes regularly prod at the edges of reality and possibility alike, not only inventing strange devices and pioneering new magical theories, but also challenging long-held beliefs and religious assumptions. As a result, these iconoclasts and innovators are the gnomes most likely to come across as perfectionistic, dismissive, controlling, or outright irritating, leading to their gnome kin jokingly referring to them as “sour gnomes.” However, their knowledge is a boon in a wide variety of fields, and Keenspark gnomes are among the foremost wizards, engineers, philosophers, and craftspeople.

Compared to their colorful kin, Keenspark gnomes have comparably drab skin, hair, and eye coloration that closely mirrors common human hues. These gnomes are most common in areas of intense arcane innovation or utter eldritch devastation. As a result, Nex and the Mana Wastes are home to substantial populations of Keenspark gnomes, particularly in Quantium’s laboratories. Likewise, Absalom’s arcane universities attract and shape a healthy Keenspark population. Perhaps more oddly, Rahadoum’s small gnome population is overwhelmingly Keenspark in nature, perhaps due to the country’s longstanding rebuke of divine influence.

Keenspark gnomes usually have the wellspring gnome (arcane) heritage, though some who work in fields that favor the senses instead have the sensate gnome heritage.