What are some things you've done with gnomes?

[LoA]

So I have a pretty good idea of where my Kharlonia Setting is going. Back-history, Dragons ruled the world and through there excessive psionic power (magic), they messed with the order of things, and the dragons destroyed their home continent, making it a series of islands (similar to Wind Waker), and the various humanoid races started to rise from the ashes. Elves were bred from humans by the dragons to be warriors, and were imbued with draconic pride to make them more fierce. The Dwarves on the other hand were bred to be miners and workers, and were tainted by draconic greed to give them more drive and ambition in getting gold. Dragons are extremely long lived ,and since these humans were imbued with draconic DNA, they have longer life spans than humans. There are other races of course, with goblinoids being bred and created by the Elves to be their slaves both in labor and war (why spill needless blood when you can get someone else to do it), and some other kinds of creatures that were warped by dragons or their ilk.

The Americans come in eons later, but that's not what this is about.

I would like to have gnomes in this setting. Either as mechanical homunculi, or at least as something mechanically related. My question to all of you is, what have you done with gnomes? I know that most people aren't into gnomes, and I can kind of see why. There just so weird... What's the point of being able to talk to small burrowing mammals? I would just like to see what kind of neat stuff you guys have done with gnomes as a race over time. Have you ever found places for them?

[sparkletwist]

Gnomes are weird. The original D&D (party like it's 1974!) didn't include them at all, and I think since then there's always been somewhat of a struggle to differentiate them from dwarves or halflings. Pathfinder managed to achieve some separation with the multicolored spiky hair gnomes, although this doesn't really match the pop culture image of the beardy guy in a pointy hat. Personally, I've never really been able to come up with any idea of a gnome that really felt satisfying to me, so I've just never used them at all.

[Steerpike]

The original D&D (party like it's 1974!) didn't include them at all

The book does mention Gnomes in relation to Language, but I think they're imagined a monster of the fey/fairy/elemental variety.

In my recent campaign I've got Gnomes but no Dwarves; Dwarves were hunted to extinction millennia ago by alien invaders and now only exist in parallel universe versions where the invaders never arrived, and Gnomes are a race of alchemically created beings who are now a full race to themselves and are into most of the stuff you'd expect i.e. clockwork, illusion magic, all that jazz. They live in a part of the central city called Mainspring:

[spoiler=Mainspring][/spoiler]

I generally play them as enthusiastic scientist-types with a lot of child-like qualities.

My wife plays a pretty fantastic Gnome character - an illusionist Gnome graduate student who is sort of "on the spectrum" and mostly pretty disinterested in the gold/glory components of adventuring.

[O Senhor Leetz]

I once had the Gnomes serve as the utmost craftsman, forging the greatest weapons for those who could pay the price.