Extracts from ‘The Anthropology of the Elder Races’ by Solin’De’Teinde.
Then there are the Pnook. Known as the Gnomes in the common tongue and by the race of men.
The Pnook are makers of automaton, the sciences are what they crave, a hunger for technology - at any cost. They are a diminutive, slight of build for they have no need of muscle, they appear as children to the other races, for they have dwindled in physical stature, preferring that their machines and technology do the physical work for them. Such reliance on their inventions became their downfall. The Pnook had become arrogant, believing in their own inventiveness and what they thought was their superiority through powerful technologies. They built, their iron clad machines of war that crawled along the ground, their flying machines, that could rain death upon their adversaries, their tubes that spat fire and steam, the whirring of the devices that moved their metal armour. But even machines can be stopped by a basic ingenuity and even captured and turned against their makers. The Pnook fell before the Ognod hordes; all fell silent against the onslaught. The Pnook were forced to retreat, facing utter defeat. So in final desperation they used their great ships of war to take them across the Great Trad Ocean and beyond. The Ognods banged their swords against their shields in mockery at the fleeing Pnook race.