The Face

Gnomes are a diminutive people native to the great cliffs beneath the Ginwil plateau's western edge. Until very recently they were unknown outside the scattered settlements of Ginwil, living in small towns cut into the plateau's immense cliff faces and protected by deposits of Fahrstone buried somewhere within the incredibly hard rock.

Gnomish settlements are communities of galleries, ledges, hanging gardens, workshops, stairs, and suspended bridges. The largest extend for miles along the cliff and hundreds of feet vertically, while much of the population lives within shallow alcoves in the stone. Outsiders passing through the jungles below could easily mistake distant windows and terraces for natural shadows or the ruins of some long-abandoned settlement.

Artisans and merchants hold considerable influence among the gnomes. Precision glasswork, mechanisms, ceramics, surveying equipment, and fine instruments are widespread, though craftsmanship tends toward useful and durable objects rather than ornament for its own sake. Tinkering is regarded as both a practical skill and a form of curiosity: gnomes routinely modify household fixtures, test improvised mechanisms, and keep collections of parts for repairs or experiments. Almost every adult is capable of maintaining the lifts, waterworks, and other machinery upon which life on the cliff depends, and many take pleasure in improving them even when they function adequately.

The Face

Gnomes commonly refer to both their homeland and their system of personal conduct as the Face.

The meaning is deliberately broad. The cliffs are the visible face of the plateau, while an individual's face is the portion of the body most readily presented to another person. In either case, the face is considered something partly inherited and partly made.

Accordingly, the alteration or covering of the face carries little stigma. Spectacles, lenses, work masks, magnifiers, sunshades, and other apparatus are common parts of ordinary dress. Formal masks representing occupations or virtues appear in festivals and public ceremonies.

Gnomish philosophy recognizes five idealized Faces. A good life is not devoted exclusively to one; each is considered necessary under the proper circumstances.

The Far Face

The Far Face represents curiosity, observation, guidance, and the willingness to admit that something is not yet understood. Its patron is usually called the Far Lantern.

Surveyors, explorers, navigators, investigators, and teachers are strongly associated with this Face. Its adherents hold that ignorance is best answered first by improving one's ability to observe rather than by arriving at a rapid conclusion.

Before you decide, improve your sight.

The Far Face is represented by purple glass.

The Crafted Face

The Crafted Face is associated with the Toll Monger and represents workmanship, invention, precision, useful improvement, and the pleasure of finding out how things work.

Gnomes make relatively little distinction between an inventor, an artisan, a tinkerer, and a competent repairer. Life upon the cliffs requires almost everyone to understand ropes, fasteners, waterworks, simple machinery, and structural maintenance to some degree. A broken object is rarely discarded before someone has taken it apart, examined its failure, and considered whether it might be made better.

Commerce is commonly included within the Crafted Face. A merchant is held to create something no less real than a smith or glassworker: a useful connection between people who possess different goods, information, or skills.

Poor workmanship knowingly represented as sound is consequently treated as more than simple dishonesty. Maker's marks are common, and the reputation of an artisan may follow an object long after it has passed into other hands.

The Crafted Face is represented by clear glass.

The Remembering Face

The Remembering Face represents records, names, provenance, continuity, and accumulated knowledge. Its patron is called the Shepherd of Names.

Cliff communities retain extensive records of construction, repairs, safe excavations, water flow, livestock, marriages, contracts, and unusual manifestations of the Flows. Old observations are rarely discarded even when their original explanation has been proven wrong.

This practice is particularly important where Fahrstone is concerned. No settlement possesses a complete map of the deposits within the plateau. Instead, generations of measurements and observations allow engineers to estimate where protective fields extend and which areas of the cliff may be safely inhabited.

Old tools, artworks, livestock, and buildings may all possess carefully maintained histories. Gnomish merchants are often surprised by outsiders who cannot identify the maker or previous owners of an expensive object.

The Remembering Face is represented by blue glass.

The Living Face

The Living Face represents cultivation, stewardship, health, teaching, and prosperity. Its patron is known as the Green Eye.

The word cultivation is used broadly. Orchards are cultivated, but so are children, apprentices, businesses, friendships, and neighborhoods. To create something and refuse to provide for its continued growth is considered incomplete work.

Agriculture on the Face is intensive. Fruit trees are trained against warm stone, gardens occupy terraces and suspended beds, and interior chambers are used for mushrooms and plants requiring little direct light. Space and water are too valuable for uncontrolled expansion, and good husbandry places as much emphasis upon restraint and pruning as growth.

The Living Face is represented by green glass.

The Mended Face

The Mended Face represents correction, restitution, reform, and the repair of things which have ceased to work properly. It is associated with the Lone Gear.

Where the Patient Hand represents making and improvement, the Lone Gear is invoked when something has gone wrong. The distinction applies equally to a cracked support, a defective mechanism, a poorly written contract, or a dispute between neighbors.

Gnomish justice consequently places substantial emphasis upon identifying harm and making the injured party whole. Punishment without repair is often regarded as an incomplete solution.

The Mended Face is represented by amber glass.

Lenses

Spectacles are common among gnomes regardless of the wearer's eyesight. The abrupt visual changes of life on a cliff make interchangeable lenses useful: a worker may examine an object at arm's length, inspect a structure hundreds of feet away, enter a dim gallery, and return to an exposed ledge within a matter of minutes.

Most frames therefore allow one or more lenses to be raised, lowered, or exchanged. Expensive sets may contain several hinged lenses on each side, while simpler versions use individual lenses carried in small cases.

The traditional colors correspond with the Five Faces but retain ordinary practical functions.

Purple

lenses. Usually slightly tinted to reduce haze and frequently ground with mild magnification. Shepherds, lift operators, surveyors, and travelers commonly use them.

Clear

lenses. Available in different magnifications and used for engraving, machinery, sewing, glasswork, jewelry, and other precision crafts.

Blue

and inspection lenses. Their tint is favored for distinguishing writing, etched marks, seals, scratches, and maker's stamps against pale surfaces. Merchants and recordkeepers use them heavily.

Green

glare lenses. Common among gardeners, herders, builders, and anyone spending long periods on exposed pale stone.

Amber

lenses. Particularly useful for examining structural seams, worn surfaces, hairline cracks, and machinery in dusty or indistinct conditions.

It is therefore unremarkable for a gnome to change lenses several times during an ordinary conversation or task. This has acquired its own informal body language. Lowering a purple lens may suggest that a claim deserves investigation; amber that something seems amiss; blue that provenance or wording has become important.

Several lenses may also be stacked for specialized work.

Warlocks

Gnomish religious practice has no direct equivalent to the large clerical institutions common elsewhere in the world. Individuals granted unusual power by one of the patrons of the Five Faces instead serve as priests, advisers, celebrants, and specialists. Outsiders generally identify these individuals as warlocks.

Unlike ordinary gnomes, a warlock traditionally wears lenses of only one color.

A servant of the Far Lantern may own many purple lenses of differing strength, but does not wear green, blue, amber, or clear glass. The same restriction applies to the other Faces. This serves as both religious vestment and immediate identification of the individual's vocation.

Purple warlocks advise travelers, investigate unusual phenomena, and interpret signs. Clear warlocks oversee difficult craftsmanship and the dedication of workshops. Blue warlocks maintain records, memorials, and questions of identity or ownership. Green warlocks attend births, illnesses, agriculture, and livestock. Amber warlocks frequently serve as mediators in disputes and investigations of civic failure.

These positions need not be hereditary and do not constitute a unified priesthood.

Fahrstone

White Fahrstone makes large gnomish settlements possible, but surprisingly little of the mineral is actively mined.

The stone protecting a community may lie hundreds of feet from the nearest inhabited gallery, and its exact size and position are often unknown. Removing Fahrstone without understanding the shape of a deposit risks weakening the field protecting a settlement. Excavation may also compromise the cliff itself.

As a consequence, reckless prospecting carries both legal and religious prohibitions.

A common maxim warns:

Work the Face. Do not wound it blindly.

Known exposed deposits may be carefully worked when necessary, but generations of observations, surveys, and field measurements are generally preferred to exploratory mining.

Animals

Cliff Sheep

Small, broad-hooved sheep inhabit both settled ledges and the wild portions of the Face. Domestic flocks provide wool, milk, meat, hide, horn, and bone and are among the most important livestock kept by the gnomes.

Sheep are traditionally associated with the Shepherd of Names and are considered sacred, though this does not prohibit their slaughter. Rather, an animal should be identified, properly recorded, and used thoroughly. Killing livestock carelessly or allowing a useful portion of the carcass to go to waste is considered disrespectful.

Many flocks carry small tuned bells, allowing shepherds to distinguish animals or groups even when mist or the shape of the cliff prevents direct sight.

Particularly old bloodlines may possess records extending back many generations.

Cliff Frogs

Small purple and violet frogs inhabit cliff seepages, cisterns, hanging gardens, and cracks within the plateau.

They are excellent climbers and possess a notorious tendency to appear in locations which seem inaccessible. A frog discovered in a newly opened gallery is sometimes taken as evidence that another route or water source exists nearby.

For this reason frogs are associated with the Far Lantern and with travelers generally. Deliberately harming one is widely considered unlucky.

The Upper Face

Gnomish settlements extend high upon the cliff walls, but do not reach the top.

The final portion of the ascent is affected by an unstable region usually called the Brow. Travel through it becomes increasingly unreliable. Distances are difficult to estimate, unusual effects of the Flows become more common, and expeditions attempting the final ascent have historically suffered severe losses.

The Brow has been studied for generations. Stairs, galleries, and climbing routes reach remarkably close to the plateau rim, but no dependable passage to the upper surface is known.

The unexplored land immediately overhead consequently occupies a strange place in gnomish culture: physically nearby, plainly visible from parts of the Face, and nevertheless more inaccessible than countries hundreds of miles away.

The Low Jungle

Travel downward is possible, but difficult.

The protective influence of the plateau's Fahrstone weakens toward the base of the cliffs. Beyond it lies the dense Ginwil jungle, where heavy vegetation, dangerous animals, unstable ground, and exposure to Flux make permanent camps difficult to maintain.

Gnomish travel methods are also poorly suited to the region. Their settlements depend upon fixed routes, long sightlines, elevation markers, ropes, bridges, and signals across open cliff faces. Beneath the jungle canopy these advantages largely disappear.

Expeditions into the low country do occur, particularly for unusual plants, animals, or materials, but historically there has been little incentive for large-scale settlement. Routes frequently become unusable after Shifts, and many communities consider travel into the jungle a specialized and dangerous occupation.

For most of their history the gnomes consequently remained on the Face: protected by the stone, surrounded by known roads and markets, and with few reasons to descend into a wilderness which offered more danger than profit.