The gnomes of Faerûn have always been reclusive people, avoiding adventure and heroics in favour of simpler lives. This is potentially why your adventuring party doesn’t encounter many gnomes inBaldur’s Gate 3; they don’t care much for the rise of the Absolute, instead preferring to focus on their craftsmanship and other personal pursuits.
You do meet a couple of notable gnomes, though, and boy, do they have it rough. Most people’s first encounter with a gnome comes in the form of Barcus Wroot, the unfortunate soul who’s been tied to a moving windmill by the goblins of the Blighted Village. As everyone probably knows, Barcus can meet an unfortunate end almost immediately if the player pulls the wrong lever to stop the windmill.
It speaks to the mentality of deep gnomes that Wroot immediately offers himself as a slave after being rescued. You encounter the beleaguered gnome again in Grymforge where he has, you guessed it, been enslaved, along with a whole village of his kin. This is the average state of a gnome in Baldur’s Gate 3, they’re either captured, enslaved or dead.
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If you continue to pursue this questline with Barcus, you’ll get to know the Ironhands and their ancestral feud with the Gondians. These two groups of gnomes worship opposing gnomish crafting gods. The deity Gaerdal Ironhand accused the Gondians of stealing Ironhand inventions, or so the story goes. It’s quite scandalous, really.
A gnome who feels quite strongly about this is Wulbren Bongle. You first meet Wulbren while he’s imprisoned (of course) in Moonrise Towers. After freeing Wulbren, he’d go on to do great and heroic things, becoming a household name up and down the Sword Coast for his unwavering commitment to helping others. Just kidding, he asks you to plant a dirty bomb in the Steel Foundry to genocide the Gondians.
That’s not so bad though, is it? The Gondians created the Steel Watch, after all, indomitable servants of Enver Gortash and his patron Bane. Well yes, but as we find out, they too have been enslaved. I can count the number of free gnomes in Baldur’s Gate 3 on one hand. The morally ‘good’ resolution to this quest involves freeing the Gondians and not violently exterminating their community, figures.
This is the average state of a gnome in Baldur’s Gate 3, they’re either captured, enslaved or dead.
Another gnome who finds themselves in a regrettable situation is Manip Edenosa, a member of the Flaming Fist. After interrupting a fight between the player and some Bhaalists, she proceeds to get possessed by the Netherbrain who uses her body as a vessel to communicate with the party, the stress of which causes her immediate death… how nice.
The final knife in the gut for gnomes came when Larian released statistics of whichrace was the most playedshortly after the release of the game, gnome was among the least popular choices alongside halflings, dwarves and githyanki. There’s just no love for the short-statured or hyper-militaristic inter-planary raiders among gamers these days.
With all of this in mind, we need to ask the question, does Larian Studios hate gnomes?
