Megagame Makers

We Gnomes are the fun Dwarves. We are famous for our alcoholic beverages, fruit preserves, condiments, cuckoo clocks, music boxes, steam&sterling engines, clockwork servants, other assorted mechanical devices¹⁾ and because our girls have the biggest noses²⁾. While the rest of the world leans heavily on tradition we are innovators. The other local Dwarven kingdoms are stuffy, stuck up and full of themselves, especially those Longbeards. Sometimes they need to be taken down a peg. Yes, this explains a lot about the names of our governmental institutions. We maintain very friendly ties with the city of Urr, another thing in the long list of reasons why the others consider us nuts.

  1) Playing a Gnome Trading Chief means coming up with peculiar trade goods. 
  Think Icelandic/Scottish-cafetaria fusion cooking and strangely coloured/flavoured wines&marmalades when talking food, 
  outlandish Steampunk gear when not.
  2) Which truly helps ironing out the bumps in dwarf diplomacy as every **real** man loves the sight of a girl with a big nose.

Our front door is actually a steam elevator entrance. Only gnomes understand how to operate it. Inside Mount Central Heating, our engineers have created a wonderful network of lava and stream pipes, quite useful if some we do not want here try to march through.

• The Gnomish Massive Magic Multibarrel Steam Canon
• The Gnomish Observation balloon unit (deploying them requires casting a Strategic Turn magic ritual)
• Two Giant Hamster Cavalry units
• The Breach Gnomes (1 infantry unit, primarily intended as last line of defense for Mount CH), this unit can double as an engineers corps if needed.
• The Mattress Jäger (1 infantry unit; they may travel really fast via a Tactical Turn magic ritual), this unit can double as an engineers corps if needed.
• The Gnomish Steam Archers (1 archery unit), this unit can double as an engineers corps if needed.
• Three raider forces:
  • The Wrath of the Goddess (Her personal Guard)
  • The Trap Unit
  • The Gnomish Air Marines (Using them requires casting a Strategic Turn magic ritual)

The Gnomes need to spend 2 food tokens each week/Strategic Turn. If you don't have the needed tokens, your army will simply get up and migrate to another Dwarven kingdom that will feed them. There are the following modifications to look out for.

• The First turn of the game is an extended 4 week turn. So that is 8 food tokens for turn 1.
• If the Confederacy gains a large amount of guests, those must fed as well. 1 food token for each 1000 guests.
• Gnome Haute Cuisine is the Awesomest Ever!!! So while the rest eats stew. Your guests get to eat grape jelly, flavoured with ammonium chloride, deep fried in a honey beer batter on a stick!

Urr represents the best of humanity. The city is our main trading partner and its inhabitants are our friends. The ties between our wizards and theirs are especially close.

Your basic generic evil dictatorship that exists on one side of the mountain range we call home. Now the emperor has sent one of his sons, the Prince of Darkness together with an army of minions to extend the borders of that dinky little empire to our front door. Right in front of our front door lies the The Free City of Urr. Our allies, our friends. Those folks will regret trying to harm our friends….

Worth mentioning, there is a memo by the Mistress of Steam that urges any gnome without magical powers to not engage either the emperor, or his son in verbal sparring.

A brutal humanoid species. They call themselves the Free folk. They raid, pillage and enslave people as a way of life, making that name highly ironical. Meanwhile they think they are great heroes…

We unleash our forces on them every time their antics escalate beyond stealing of some of our fruit.

Urr is running a project to civilize at least some of the Orcs. This seems to have at least some success. Not sure why Urr is running a similar project on the Redbeards.

The Longbeards see themselves as the noblest of dwarves. They live under what they call the Metal Mountains* and we poetically call The Tits. Currently the 'beards are almost isolationists outside of trading, while making it very clear they don't really like trading. They export magnificent weapons and art, well expensive kitsch really. The crowns of the kings of this world, the signet rings of richest merchants, the gold plated armor for noblemen with more money than sense, the emerald ring to conquer the heart of the noble lady whose firm, sculpted buttocks have conquered your 'heart'. That kind of stuff. They are supposedly enormously rich and are said to know a few ancient magical secrets of immense power.

*Or Mount Emerald & The Mithril Mountain. Don't say The Emerald Mountain & Mount Mithril, that is wrong and they'll explain to you in tiresome detail why it is wrong and hold a grudge against you for this mistake for years.

What you see is what you get with these folks. They are the purest, simplest most honest of us 3 dwarf nations.

Be polite, be careful and be a confirmed cynic when it comes to evaluating anything they say. Do not make any concession to them that cannot be overruled later by one of our wizards. In fact, if at all possible, let the Goddess Empress, or the Mistress of Steam do all communication with them.