The Adventuring Gnome

 “It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don't keep your feet, there's no knowing where you might be swept off to.” - Bilbo Baggins

So far I've described a Gnome at home in the woods; tied to nature, attuned to the rhythm of the living world, breathing to the wind in the treetops. A Gnome in his or her element is exactly where they should be - but it's no epic story in the making. If a Gnome is so ideally posited as a loner, or part of a small community of fosters, what on earth would inspire one to go adventuring?

Fortunately we have a literary precedent, in the form of Cloudberry, a Gnome at the heart of B.B's The Little Grey Men. Unlike his brothers Dodder, Sneezewort and Baldmoney, Cloudberry is, as his name suggests, something of a spiritual wanderer and is gripped with wanderlust. Of his own volition, and against the counsel of his brothers, he leaves Folly Brook and goes off 'up river', adventuring with a flock of high flying geese ('heaven Hounds') to distant lands. Like Bilbo and Frodo in the quote above, he returns to his brothers, never the same again.

Despite this cautionary example (Cloudberry is at the last a dangerous dreamer, and at worst... much worse), we can at least say we have one - and it's useful in noting the 'change' that occurs in Cloudberry afterwards. he is ever restless, unable to think or talk of anything else but his travels, and schemes to find a way to rejoin them. A player character Gnome needn't be so pathologically obsessed, but the curiosity is a handy hook. Everything else is detail, although my preference, if it hasn't been obvious already, is to start out keeping things simple. A beginner Gnome adventurer ought to have their own hand-crafted tools and weapons, and little armour, perhaps collecting the more usual trappings along the way. The life of a wandering Gnome among fellow drifters of other races need have little more, but change is inevitable. If you seek to play a Gnome adventurer, expect change.