Gnoll was always interested in weaving, in the process of gathering smaller, relatively weak or useless things and discovering how they can fit together to make something bigger, stronger, more useful, and more beautiful. She frequently wandered away from home as a young gnomeling. Her parents would find her following spiders or just sitting in a tree, watching them spin. She began replicating the patterns she saw in webs and soon discovered that the end product somehow contained *more* than the materials she used. It was not a simple fact of matter and energy in = matter and energy out. The product was heavier than the sum of its components - not in a physical sense, but in a magical one. And, she learned, the power created by weaving could be used for more than just making Things. Certain knots, patterns, and stitches had different effects, not just in the art, but in *energy*. Spells came more easily, some almost intuitively. Spiders' webs gave Gnoll not just her elementary education in weaving, the power of creation, and magic itself, but her life's passion as well. She believes that the answers to all Life's question can be read in webs, if only you know how to interpret the language. She has spent her teen and adult life following spiders and chasing knowledge. In her 28th spring, she caught sight of an unusually large, brightly colored spider that she simply had to see more closely. It was magnificent! And also quite quick on its long, elegant lens. Gnoll followed it deeper into woods - further than shed ever gone before. She could not let this spider out of her sight! What if this Spider's webs held Answers? She eventually caught up with the majestic beauty. She was, of course, hopelessly lost. She had not the slightest inkling where her parents house might be. But she didn't care. She was not afraid of the forest, no matter how dark and desolate. She had found her Companion and she knew she would never be alone again.
 
In Gnoll's 64th autumn, she and Nan were traveling through yet another wood, collecting Nature's small baubles and hunting greater Knowledge, when Nan scuttled into a burnt-out hole in a giant, gnarled oak. It was so deep and the entrance concealed with arboreal debris, that Gnoll couldn't even see through to the rear wall of the tree. Nan rarely raced off like that. When she didn't emerge after being called several times, Gnoll became worried and followed her Companion into the oak and emerged in a Bristlecone pine, high over an alpine valley snowfield in some strange new mountains.
 
Thus, she had arrived in Patchwork.