Nokneblin, Brass Gnomes

  Tinkerer, Tailor, Solider, Sailor   Nokneblin, knockers as some call us because we like to knock on things and listen to the sound it makes, helps us figure things out you know! Others call us Brass Gnomes, not because we are made of brass of brass colored or any cosmetic reasoning but as we are said to have a preferance for working with brass. This not true in any whole factual way as we also enjoy working with copper, iron, bronze, tin but conductive metals and metals with extensive properties and thermo dynmanic traits are the most interesting but brass gnome rolls off the tongue better then metals with interesting baseline properties utilsed in science and engineering gnomes!   We branched off the Gnharneblin sometime durring the early days of the Golden Alliance our ancestors were once an academic enclave of Gnharneblin who on the whole found that acadamia and the advancement of engineering and science were more important then the upkeep of social convention we also prefered more urban environs to call home close to our forges, workshops and liberaries. That said discovery and curiosity are still very much a part of our gnomeish hearts and many of us are quite happy to engage in field research and first hand exploration as to better understand the functionality of the world, magic and progressive devlopment of machina.   Durring the golden age our enclaves worked along side the dwarves, elves, halflings and other gnomes and we cataloged and created wonderous ideas and devices! learned about the world, the stars and we invented the calander that details the exact time our world makes a rotation around the sun that in use to this day! We helped forge the weapons of old, designed walking machines of iron that crushed goblins underfoot, flying devices that droped fire and doom on orcish hoardes and that was all fine and well but our true joys came in making tiny intricate clockwork devices, finly detailed machines and systems working in beautiful harmony made our hearts increase in the speed of palpatation by a factor of two! It was a happy time inspite of those wars inspite of the terrible things that threatened the world.   An age of Rust   With the tarnished age came the Kobolds, driven by greed and encouraged by traitors to the alliance they fell upon the gnome warrens like an endless tide of hatefuled humanoid reptiles prone to acts of slavery, canibalism and psychopathic levels of spite. Like so many other gnomes we were cut off from the empire of our people and forced to retreat againt ten to one odds, twenty to one in a few cases. Our greatest sorrow is in that age we lost our great cities, that there lay old gnomish ruins infested with generations of kobolds where long lost knowledge remains lost to a world that dearly needs it. We Knockers we gather in city gettos and small villages these days, living in the shadows of other races hospitality working our crafts and doing our best to discover knew knowledge and uncover what has been lost.   We leave the old haunted ruins of our past cities because the effort required to reclaim them is beyond us as a people, we lament their losses but strive to move forward. Many of us will never forgive the kobolds, dragons or other evils who hoard knowledge or else destroy it nor do we tolerate tyrants who obsure the purity of truth to control others. We are the Nokneblin, we might be called shy or introverted except in regards to objects of our obession where we wax endlessly on topic and we will always stand for truth, knowledge and progression.