The Techgnomes are a people of the gnome, not a separate lineage — a civilization defined by their lost mechanical mastery, scattered survivors of the ruin their craft brought down, shaped by history rather than by blood.
The Techgnomes were once the finest engineers on Alaria, and in a narrow sense they still are; there are simply almost none of them left. Their holds ran on machines no one else could build, and their masterwork was the mechwurm, a mountain-sized engine they raised to guard their cities from below. It turned on them. The mechwurm broke its purpose and pulled their whole civilization down, and it is still moving under the mountains of the world, tearing apart cities that have nothing to do with the people who made it.
The survivors did not rebuild. They scattered, and the few Techgnomes left walk Alaria carrying broken devices and scraps of knowledge no living gnome can fully reassemble. Most of them carry something heavier than that. Every Techgnome knows that the thing still gutting the world was their forebears' triumph, and many walk in open shame for it, refusing the old name or answering to it only with an apology. They remain the sharpest mechanical minds on the continent. The trouble is that the last great thing their craft produced is the reason their craft is feared.
A growing number have made their way to Xi Chin, the city built into a fallen Mira sphere in the Tethryn Mountains. The wreck is the largest piece of made machinery on Alaria that no one understands, and to a Techgnome that is impossible to resist. They climb the Wister Road knowing the city's aura will not let them leave again, and they go anyway. What gathers there is not a homeland but the largest number of Techgnomes in one place since the fall, a few dozen at most, bent over a machine older than their own ruin and trying to read it. Some of them are looking for nothing more than understanding. Some are looking for a way to stop the mechwurm.
Aspects
- Last of a lost age
- Technology's double edge