Warcraft Race Origins: Gnomes

Today I am kicking off a multi-week series of lore related posts which will chronicle the origins of the various player races which populate Azeroth. For each race I will briefly work through the information available regarding where they came from and how they ultimately came to be what we know and love in modern Azeroth. What better way to kick things off than with one of World of Warcraft's more bizarre populations: the Gnomes.

There is still a great deal of mystery surrounding the Gnomes distant past, but as for their more recent history, it was the Dwarves who uncovered the first underground Gnomish village. Impressed by the Gnomes' ingenuity and technological progress, the Dwarves were quick to make friends with the tiny humanoids. The bond between the races grew quickly and was soon so strong that the Dwarves authorized the construction of Gnomeregan, a brilliant capital city for the Gnomes, within their mountains.

Unfortunately for the Gnomes, Gnomeregan fell following an invasion by the primitive humanoids known as Troggs which may have been an inside job perpetrated by one of the Gnomes own, Sicco Thermaplug. To make matters worse, a venting of radiation in Gnomeregan in an attempt to destroy the Troggs failed to do the deed and instead left the city an irradiated husk. In the wake of the catastrophe, the Gnomes have leaned heavily on the Dwarves and the rest of the members of the Alliance for their continued survival.

Prior to their meeting with the Dwarves, even the Gnomes themselves have little knowledge of their history. Recent events in Northrend have indicated that perhaps the Gnomes, like the Dwarves, were originally created by the Titans. The theory goes that the Titans created the Mechagnomes who, due to the curse of flesh, transformed into the fleshy Gnomes of modern Azeroth. The mechanical gnomes wandering the Storm Peaks would then be a living (sort of) example of the Gnomes at their creation. That, however, remains nothing more than theory, but Gearmaster Mechazod in the Borean Tundra, a Mechagnome who claims to be one of the first "Gnomes" created, seems to serve as evidence of its truth.

A great deal of the tale of the Gnomes origin remains to be told and hopefully Blizzard will continue to develop it as Azeroth evolves.

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