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"Earth, with its humans and their technology,
must seem to Gnomes like a land of Lovecraftian horrors."
--from “The Definitive Book of The Faeries of Tirffiniol” by Yanus Holtzer
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(The following is an Excerpt from “The History of the Aishwek-Nômâân,”
Faithfully recorded by Chærôthí Lââtolâlí the Piebald in the Year of Our Mother 24,813 (2010 AD).
As translated by Hermes Silica Smith-Jones, the pseudo-sapient computer tablet
who has sworn his allegiance to Sally Anne Smith-Jones.)
(Important notes before reading: Adults Gnomes are typically about six inches tall.
They do not typically wear pointed hats, at least not in the Americas,
and very few American Gnomes have beards in the current era.)
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The underground Gnome city of Nômâls Aishwek-Nithân (or “Very Wet City” in the language of the Big Ones who live on the surface) was never a very ideal city. There were many rocks in the soil, which involved a great deal of hard work to remove or burrow around. There was little growing on the surface above them, too, which meant more of the sky-water from the Land of Ports above them made its way down to their tunnels, which involved much work from the shamans and mages to prevent the city's inhabitants from drowning every time the sky-water fell. And what did grow upon the surface was scraggly grass, not much use to the Gnomes of the city.
Furthermore, right next to the empty lot their city resided under, the Big Ones had built one of their lazy roads made of crushed rocks. Not the roads made of powdered rocks, water, and some mysterious elixir that bound these elements together, often covered in the mysterious black substance known as “asphalt,” but instead one of those not-quite-roads the Big Ones sometimes made just of crushed rocks, which made popping and cracking noises when one of their large metal beasts lumbered by on it, or when the Big Ones themselves walked upon it with their own enormous mass. This road was not oft traveled, but saw enough traffic that we had needed to get used to the noise. Plus, the city was indeed right next to one of the asphalt and concrete roads upon which many of the great metal beasts rumbled, which was another risk that resulted in far too many deaths.
So no, it was not ideal. But nobody was poisoning the land with toxic substances (or no more so than the Big Ones did to the world of Erth in general), and some of their litter was useful or interesting. We also lived near to several blackberry tangles, which were a great source of foraging for those who could go about the surface invisibly. There was also enough nature in the area for rabbits and rats and mice to go about the surface, which we occasionally hunted for their meat, or else raiding the dens of the mother rats to rear their pups for steeds or meat animals.
It had been thus for decades, perhaps not a luxurious dwelling, but the mages kept it dry enough, and the dirt kept them cool in the hot days and warm in the cold ones. So it protected them, and was their home.
Yet in the Year of Our Mother 24,812, during the second moon of the year, one of our oldest and most well respected shamans, Mother Skíulô, whose family had been shamanic elders for our people since before the Land of Ports had yet spread its borders to first encroach on our land, had visions of the future in that third moon. She first told us of past Exoduses of our people when we had been driven from our homes by the encroaching Big Ones. With that tale told, she told us the terrible news of her vision of the future: our people would be driven from our home again within a fourteen-span of moons.
Naturally this caused much consternation, with weeping and gnashing of teeth and the hot-tempered among us cursing the Big Ones for their greed, always taking more things and never having enough. There was much debate about what we would do. Some suggested the mages open a doorway to the Land Which Borders, the world of our ancestors (called Tirffiniol by the Big Ones), as it was still vast and had much room to grow. But there was much dissent on this point. Our people had come to Erth from the Land Which Borders so many twelve-span of centuries ago that the land of Erth back then had still been populated by monsters such as beavers the size of one of the metal beasts of the Big Ones, and great trumpeting behemoths with enormous, curly white fangs and great shaggy fur, monsters which shook the ground when they walked or fell down dead. This planet was our ancestral home, and the invaders would be driving us from our land yet again to build their massive cavernous buildings.
Thus, thoughts of leaving Erth were abandoned for a time, for we could not leave the land of our ancestors, even if we had long since lost track of where their bones lay. Yes, it was unsafe, a land full of terrors, full of monsters and other horrors that kill and even flatten our kin, but it is still home. But the Old Tales tell us that Erth is a land of milk and honey and peace compared to the Land Which Borders, and the New Tales we pick up from other Gnomes, or from pixies or even from the kinder of the Big Ones themselves, tell us that our kind have spread wide over the twelve-spans of centuries, and there is beginning to be warring among the Gnomes that live there for territory. (A sad tale indeed, that our cousins there have succumbed to the same greed as the Big Ones.)
As the moons passed by and we still had nowhere to go, our people began to debate leaving Erth again. Some argued that the Wise Ones among the Gnomes, the pixies, and even among the Big Ones had been saying for many twelve-years that Erth was growing hotter, and the long-span weather was changing its patterns. We knew this to be true, not just because the Wise Ones (whose role it is to know better than others in such matters) said so, but also because we have seen the signs ourselves. The last several many-moon-spans of the hot season had been drier than ever before. These dry-spans were also lasting longer, so that even the moon-spans of the cold season were not as wet as before. Just in the last cold season we had, the rains – when they abruptly returned – had taken us by such surprise that nearly 40 of our kin had perished in the resulting flood. Yet another way in which the Big Ones cause us anguish and grief and misery.
Yet the opposition was strong. Not only is Erth our home, but it is home to many other Gnome cities. Many of us have kin who hark from other such cities within the span of the Land of Ports and even beyond, including across the Great Northern River in the distant land of Vancouver. So too we have friends and relatives across the Western River even into Beaverton and Aloha and Tigard.
There were suggestions of moving into the wild places that remain in the area, the few places that the Big Ones have decided should not yet be devoured by their greed. But one Wise One who had been through Forest Park in her youth plucked the shoot of this idea from the soil, telling us all tales of the fierce savagery with which our kin in the wilderness defended their lands from all interlopers. Suggestions of other lands to the south or to the west were similarly plucked from the soil, and given explanations. It soon became apparent to us that even the Gnomes of Erth were not immune to bad feelings between tribes, even if we had not yet taken to warring.
By far the most absurd idea was the suggestion we should war with the Big Ones to keep our land, to destroy their great metal digging-beasts when they came for us. This was actionable in theory, for we had the mages and we have invisibility-spells and great physical strength (though none so much as what the pixies possess). It was even suggested we ally with the pixies in such a war, but the shamans and other Wise Ones told us the Magical Big Ones would frown upon this activity for risking magic being exposed. They were still greatly afraid of the mundane Big Ones warring upon them if they knew magic were real, so they likely would worry naught about killing us all or forcibly relocating us.
Then it was that one of our children came up with the solution. It was a solution thought mad by most at the time, but we were running low on ideas. Time was running out, and we were becoming desperate. So we let the youth speak.
The lad told us all that he had found one of the Smart Phones of the Big Ones, which had fallen down a drain. The Big One had not noticed the loss, had been too busy to hear the clatter, and likely would have given up the phone for dead even if he had been aware of its loss. But this had been during a dry spell, and the youth had found the device sitting dry and clean upon the stone floor of the drain's egress. The youth had taken this device with him (no easy feat since the device was nearly as big as the youth himself), and while the device stopped ringing after a few days, it still worked. It had a function called wiffy, and when the gods of the wiffy deigned it in their amusement to do so, this meant the device could connect to the World-Mind of the Big Ones. The youth had used it in horrified fascination to watch moving images of the feared predator of our people, the Rat's-Bane, the Bane of Birds, the Gnome-Killer, that furry executioner the Big Ones call “cats.”
We asked him what he thought to do with this device, if in fact the magic powering it had not waned, as the devices of the mundanes almost always did eventually. The lad had told us all that he had turned the device off after watching the “cats,” terrified with nightmares that the beasts would smell the magic of the device and devour him. At this, the Wise Ones knew that the device would still work, if it had not gotten wet. If it worked, we could send out a party to carry the device around in search of the blessing of the Gods of Wiffy, and use such a blessing to send a message through the World-Mind to some kindly soul.
The only issue that then remained before such a plan could be executed was the question of who to contact, and how to contact them? For two moons we sought the advice of other Gnomes, of pixies, and even the occasional hob. It was from a hob, in fact, that we were told of the Fae Springs school in Tirffiniol. He had suggested we could ask them for refugee status and move onto the grounds, since the school was known by the hobs to have two Gnome cities on the property of its primary campus, and more such cities on other campuses.
And so a fellowship of warriors and mages set out into the world in search of the blessings of Wiffy. I was on this fellowship, and so I can tell you it was not an easy task, carrying such a large and heavy device around on rat-cart, under a glamour of invisibility, around rough terrain and through high grasses, especially with the high risk of one of the Big Ones stepping on us with little to no warning, for they are frighteningly fast for beings so tall and so massive.
We were much discouraged in those first several twelve-days, for while there were many Gods of Wiffy giving blessings, the Wise Ones told us we did not know the right prayers to receive them for ourselves. We would have to find a God of Wiffy who would give their blessings freely to all who asked, or else try the much more difficult and dangerous task of seeking fellow penitents who knew the proper liturgies already, and were willing to share them with us.
The journey was long and perilous, and several tragedies befell us along the way. Dôsrôthôn the Younger was killed by a stray cat after his glamour of invisibility failed. Jisk and Pelu lost limbs retrieving his body from the maw of the beast before it could devour him, the rest of us chasing the monster away. Yet we had made so much noise fighting the creature that we attracted the attention of a Chihuahua. Though this beast was much smaller, it was much more fierce as well, and we lost Âtrôs when the beast chased him onto the road, where one of the large metal beasts trampled him to death. Though wounded, Jisk volunteered to take his body home, but Saylôk (elder sister of Âtrôs) took him instead. Our mages sealed the skin of Jisk's and Pelu's stumps, and they joined Saylôk on the perilous journey home. Unburdened by the device the rest of us still carried with us by rat-cart, they would be able to make greater haste. Jisk and Pelu, their stumps sealed, were again well enough to keep fighting should the need arise.
Humbled by our defeat, the rest of us carried on, but much more cautiously. We were slower, and traveled only at night, so that if our glamours of invisibility failed again, our gray clothing and small size would disguise us. We also avoided grass and plants, the movement of which could alert our predators, and walked instead upon the rocky paths that follow the sides of the main roads. Several of us took turns keeping an eye out behind us for the sun-bright lights radiating from the eyes of the great metal road beasts when they skulked about at night, so we could warn the others to dart into the grass when one of the beasts lumbered by.
On the third day of the fourth span of twelve-days of our journey, a pixie who traveled far and wide around the Land of Ports told us of a place called a 'library' that offered free Wiffy blessings. We had only to pledge fealty and obedience to the God of the Library Wiffy in order to receive such blessings. The pixie even offered to take us to the nearest library, for it was such a span distant from our home that it boggled the mind. The measurement called ‘foot’ by the Big Ones would be twelve feet if they were our size, as our own version of a foot – the dôrôthâls1 – is roughly one of their inches long. A ‘yard’ (three feet) is thirty-six dôrôthâls-ju2 to us. Twenty feet is 240 dôrôthâls-ju. One-hundred feet is 1200 dôrôthâls-ju. Our equivalent of a mile is the nithânâkâls – 5,184 inches; our mile is 432 of their ‘feet.’ One thousand feet is twelve thousand dôrôthâls-ju! And their mile – 5,280 feet – is 63,360 dôrôthâls-ju. If you are a Big One reading this account, imagine yourself traveling around the circumference of your planet Erth two and one-half times over, and that is what the distance the pixies took us felt like to us that day just in the one direction alone! And the distance of our first flight was in fact one and one-half miles, and thus was closer to a Big One traveling nearly four times around the planet’s circumference!
Our numbers had already been reduced from 20 to 16 by the dangers of the trek. There were two pixies to each Gnome, and four more ensuring the device made it to the library safely. But the pixies could spare none to fly beneath to catch us and thus ensure we would not die if the pixies lost their grip upon us. We suggested they do this, and when we told them our reasoning, they laughed and declared that pixies do not ever slack their grip while delivering precious cargo.
It was terrifying. We were at least two or three thousand dôrôthâls-ju in the air, that being four times higher in the air than the heads of the tallest of the Big Ones known to us. Brôthaik the Mute wet himself shortly upon taking flight, and I myself feared a more embarrassing accident than his would befall me. Runai, one of the berry-pickers, chided us profusely for our cowardice, for she and her sisters and brothers routinely climbed that high through the blackberry brambles, and besides which Gnomes our age had been known to fall from heights three times that span and survive, but as I explained to her later when my wits returned, at least the blackberry vines are a visible means of support. When you are higher in the air than the tallest of the Big Ones, being carried by an invisible ally who could choose to become enemy at any moment and fly you many human miles into the sky before dropping you to your death, terror is the appropriate response.
Since the pixies could not fly as fast with us as they normally fly, for fear of breaking our necks or backs at the high speeds they are capable of, and as they could not fight birds while burdened by our weight, they put glamours of invisibility over themselves instead of their usual camouflage of human litter or dried leaves. Despite the terror of this journey through the air, I would much rather fall to my death than be devoured by a great furred monster with razor-sharp claws and teeth, and eyes like lanterns.
Our trek through the air also shaved at least one or two moons from our journey, as the whole flight took only a few minutes. It was several minutes of heart-stopping terror, but at least the terror was quickly over. (Though we had the return trip to look forward to, which would be even longer.)
At this Library, there was indeed a Wiffy god offering free blessings for all who swore allegiance and obedience to Her. Her name was Multnomah County, and her rules were simple and easy to follow. We all got down on one knee, and swore our allegiance and obedience to Her, while one of the mages touched the glowing surface of the device to signal we had done so. Once this was done, we were allowed onto the World-Mind.
Using the World-Mind was not easy. We started at the library's 'web site,' none of us knowing what to do with it. We had not brought the youth whose idea it was, for the journey was too perilous for one so young. The mages argued for an hour about what to do, until one of the pixies got tired of the bickering. Invisible, the pixie flew into the library behind one of the Big Ones. Several minutes later, it came out with a book called “Internet For Newbies.” The pixie could read the Big Ones' language of Inglitch, as it had lived near a school and liked to read newspapers and magazines discarded by the Big Ones. With great difficulty (since it took several pixies and Gnomes to hold the book open and turn the pages, and it was dark in the bushes in which we hid), the book told us the rituals and liturgies necessary to use the World-Mind.
Using this information, the mages were able to find the web site for Fae Springs Private Academy. Its web site disguises the fact it is magical and resides in another world, but we knew the truth. We found an 'email address' to contact them at. We had need of starting an email account first. We went first to the Gee Mail, but we lacked several things necessary to complete the process. We tried again at Mail Dot Com, and found success. With the help of the pixies to translate our message into Inglitch, we wrote them an email missive, explaining our plight as succinctly as we could, since writing on the device was somewhat tedious and difficult.
Our missive sent, we waited several hours for a response. In that time, we did not receive one. The mages feared the device would lose its magic if we left it on, so they turned it off and we made camp for the night. We tried again in the morning, first reaffirming our allegiance to Multnomah County, and checked for a response. We had one, but it was not promising. The responder had asked if we were joking, and had further wondered how Gnomes could send any kind of World-Mind message.
We responded that we were quite earnest in our supplication, explaining how we had acquired a smart phone and were using Multnomah County Wiffy at the library. Less than an hour later, we received a new response. The sender thought our story so absurd that it must be true, and so promised to seek a new home for us. She would contact us again in three days to check in. We sent back our thanks and told her we would await her response.
We turned the device off to conserve its magic, and set up camp by burrowing into the ground. Our burrow was just big enough for the 14 of us in our party, and that much wearied us greatly. The pixies, feeling pity for us at the sight of our exhaustion, zipped away for several minutes and returned with a freshly-killed rat for us. We thanked them, and they left, first promising to return three days hence.
Wild rats living within human cities tend to be not very safe to eat, being mostly a food of lean and desperate times, as they required great alchemical processing to be safely consumed, and by then the meat is too soft and tastes more peculiar than ever. Still, three hours later the mages had a thin Rat Stew to fill our bellies with. The stew was so foul that for dessert, we ate grass to get the taste out of our mouths, and settle our stomachs. This, however, turned out to be a mistake, for something in the grass made us all very ill with fever and chills and retching. The best I can say of this experience is that the stew tasted better on the way back out than it had on the way in. We would have been better off taking our chances with unprocessed, roasted rat.
We were all recovered by the middle of the following day. Very hungry now, we searched in vain through the nearby garbage bins for food scraps. Three of our number eventually used magic to lure a corvid down to speak with us. Some of us wished to kill and eat the black-feathered bird, but wiser heads prevailed. One of the mages knew Raven Speech, and swore on his life that if the corvid could bring us enough food to last us the day, he would give them whatever boon they felt worth the exchange. After much discussion with the raven and its flock, the ravens agreed to help them in exchange for the secret of invisibility. The mage taught them the spell right then and there, and when they found it worked, they flew off into the day, one of their number remaining behind to reassure us of their honor.
An hour later, the ravens returned and showered us with many gifts. There were half-eaten 'hot dogs,' bits of 'hamburgers,' nuts and berries, individual 'potato chips,' and even an entire slice of bread. One of the ravens had even used its invisibility to steal an entire package of unsalted peanuts from a 'convenience store' to give us. The mage, translating, said that they enjoyed the invisibility so much that they promised to find us food for all the days we would be in the area. We all thanked them profusely and dined with our new feathery friends.
The food they brought us was excellent, and our previous abdominal pains of sickness were replaced by the pleasant discomfort of full bellies. With their help, we feasted for three days. We saved the peanuts for later, for they were new and sealed, and would be a good travel food for us. We feared this would disappoint the ravens, but they had their own such package, having stolen two of them.
On the third day, we checked our messages again, and had a response. The sender had asked the Principal of the school if his family would take us in as refugees, first explaining the situation to him. He refused; his family do not like faeries, and he himself had no room for us in either the school or his own home. The sender did not seem too surprised by this, and so had asked another family in the same neighborhood, the Ravenstone family, if they would take in refugee Gnomes. According to the message, the family readily agreed, stating that their children were very excited by the idea.
The message went on to ask for details. The Ravenstone family needed to know how many Gnomes were in our city, so they could bring big enough metal beasts to transport us all. We told them the number of our people last we had heard, not anticipating it being any higher in that brief time. We did not know the location, but after we described to the pixies where we lived, one of them flew away and returned minutes later with the nearest street address.
The ravens were so pleased by their new power that they offered to fly us back home. We would likely fly either way, so we took them up on the offer, the pixies following behind with the smart phone. We told our people of the good news. The shaman who had foreseen our imminent expulsion from our land saw also the goodness of the Ravenstones and the truth of their words. The news had come just in time, too, for the Big Ones were already beginning to fence in the area above our city in preparation for bringing in the big metal digging beasts.
Over the next two days, we packed all of our belongings, anything we could not bear to replace, and prepared for the latest exodus. And on the third day, around midnight, two of the large metal beasts parked on the great road by our city. One of the Ravenstones came out of the beast and opened its many mouths, setting down ramps for us to journey up. It took an hour to get half of our people and their belongings into the great beasts; even with stacked platforms inside of the monstrous devices, there was very little room. The beasts rumbled and lumbered away, and we waited.
Another two hours later the beasts returned, and took on the rest of our people and possessions, along with the shaman returning to reassure us we were not all going to our doom. I was on that second journey, and I looked out the back window of the great device, looking one last time upon the only home I had known since I was a babe.
The Ravenstone home was farther from our home than the library was from our home, and up great mountains that the Big Ones called merely 'large hills,' for such steepness is as nothing to them in their vast height. The homes of the Big Ones in the area were all much nicer than the ones surrounding our now vacant city, even we could tell. The Ravenstones warned us to stay away from the blackberry tangle in their yard, for it is a dangerous predator, and its berries are lures.
We thought we would be living in the yard where they had a great many dangerous plants, or the one in the back with the garden. But instead, we were led to a great wooden structure in the back yard. Inside was a very tall stone and wood doorway into the Land Which Borders. They told us that the hill on the other side was in their demesne, and had no Gnomes yet because prior to their stewardship of the land, the hillside had been covered in dangerous flowers deadly to us. But all such things had been cleared from the land, they had spent the last few days making certain of this. Thus, it seemed we would be returning to the land of our ancestors after all.
However, we were also told that there were no Gnomes in the Erth side neighborhood either, and so we could settle there instead if we wished. Whichever we chose, we were free to spread our numbers from one to the other. They seemed especially keen for us to choose Erth, with special emphasis on the yards of two of their neighbors, the Parks and the Smith-Joneses, but said the choice was ours. (Also warning us that the Parks were the people who had refused to help us.) We were free to stay inside their own home until we could decide, though, so we would at least have their hospitality for however long it took to decide.
After weeks of debate, our people decided to remain on Erth, and spread through the neighborhood of the Ravenstones. But some of us also asked if they could live in the basement of the home of our saviors, to visit friends and family in the rest of the neighborhood at our leisure. The Ravenstones found this quite amusing, and so they agreed.
I am among the number of those who live in the new settlement of Basement. It is a small town, but now that we have access to the soil under the foundation, it will no doubt grow over the years. We need only avoid the predatory plants in the front yard until they can be trained to leave us alone, which should be no trouble.
So far, we have found the new neighborhood to be quite comfortable. Local game is scarce, mainly due to a shortage of rats and mice, and mostly consists of rabbits and raccoons and birds. (Not counting ravens, which are too clever for it to be right to eat them, even if we had not made friends with their kin.) But the soil is fertile, and we did make a third trip later to retrieve and relocate our livestock, so we will not starve. The Ravenstones also told us that they would gladly share their own bounty with us if we wished it, and so we could ask for food and other amenities from them whenever we wished. We thanked them for this, but have not yet taken them up on it, as we prefer to be self-sufficient.
And so here, in our new homes, we hope to stay for many more twelve-by-twelve span years, and prosper, under the protection of the Ravenstone family.
~ End excerpt ~
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1 = The “âls” in “dôrôthâls” rhymes with “false.” Please refer to the Glossary/Pronunciation Guide page for how to pronounce Gnomish words.
2 = The suffix -ju (joo) makes a Gnomish word plural.
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