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| There will be landscapes like this one, from here. |
I was preparing for a game I ran last year when I learned about the Gnomus. I wanted to have some kind of familiar mythical being in the adventure I was writing up, but I wanted to reimagine it and take it in a different direction so might be a surprise instead of just another whatever it usually was. For some reason or another I thought about looking into Gnomes, and after some research was very happily surprised by what I learned about them. The original ideas behind them were delightfully insane.
What were eventually called “Gnomes” were first called “Gnomus” when first described by the great and learned philosopher, physician, and occultist Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim, also called Paracelsus, in the 16th century. He described a number of other beings that existed analogously to humans throughout the world. The Gnomus lived in the earth, but there were also the Undina, Sylvestris, and Vulcanus in the other various elements as well. He described what they all looked like, their usual personalities, and even a bit of their social structures, and what they sometimes sought from mankind, and thought of them as well.
So I created something from those ideas of Paracelsus, and I made a dark underground place to put it in. I threw in some other historical figures and a grim situation to round things out as well. Unfortunately the game fell apart, and I never got to use all of my materials. This old post about cave passages was actually a part of that, but there’s a whole lot more I never got around to presenting. I’ve been polishing it up now for quite a while though, since I couldn’t get it out of my head, and it’s now growing into something.
It’s called “Deformation in Subterranea” (DIS, for short). It’s an adventure set in England, around the time of the dissolution of the monasteries, or even after that. There will be ways to be suddenly transformed in the dark by unknowable and unseen forces, a number of possible encounters with the mysterious Gnomus, and even hostile centipedes which will surely interfere with the pursuit of all the earthly treasures found within.
Once it’s ready I’ll be putting it out into the world as a complete product (and before then I'll be play testing it), but until then I’ll be sharing pieces of it. Here’s something about the Gnomus, to give you a bit of an idea of what they’ll be like.
The Gnomus lives in the same world as humans do, but they live in it differently. Earth stops or slows human movement, but it is as “chaos” for the Gnomus, and they pass through it like we do the air, which is our chaos. The form the water takes for them is as the earth, which provides food for them as the earth does for us as it also stops their movement. What we’ve felt as fire is their water, with the vast burning underworld being like oceans for them. Air is their fire, which gives them a light that is visible through any minerals, as the sun is seen through any air for us. Through the transparency of the earth around them the world is lit with the glow of thin air through the fissures and cracks of the earth, and they swim through underground infernos and walk through stone to seek out flavorful pools water. Vast underground aquifers form for them what would be like fertile hills and valleys for us, then. They know of Humans, but Humans are seen by them only when they enter the earth for mining, or when they live inside caves. Gnomus could not tolerate the overwhelming brightness of the atmosphere beyond that, nor for them the roaring heat of the atmosphere. Humans to their eyes are a miraculous blend of both earth and water, we are seen carrying thirst-quenching vessels of fire through glowing stalks of brightness. The craft of mining to the Gnomus would seem like us gathering pieces of the sky, like carving up a breeze and carrying it away.
Humans know of them also, but the human mind sees humanity wherever it goes, as when it sees faces in trees, and so our image of the Gnomus is perhaps a great distortion. They are seen by us as kinds of tiny almost-men which are only two hands tall, near-transparent and so only barely visible when they peek out from the stones, and gaze at us in the hot fog of oxygen with their small faces wrinkled with awe, wonder, and envy.
Their envy is because humans are known by them as the things which carry an eternal spark of life, a soul. This theory has been proposed by Gnomic scholars, based upon the observation that while single humans do not last for long (or are gone when the air comes down on them in mine collapses) they are always replaced by others, while Gnomus have always been as they are, and no new Gnomus have appeared (unlike the humans, who have multiplied). It is proposed that Gnomus might not exist forever as well, and although the notion confuses them and causes great dread many Gnomus feel it to be true.
It is rumored among the Gnomus that one might find a way to live forever, as the humans do, if the proper union could be achieved with one. This is only a folktale for them, so only the most courageous or mad of Gnomus might approach humans and seek to speak with them about this, but it does indeed occur. It is also true that a union between man and Gnomus can in fact be achieved, in very certain circumstances.
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