Extract from Ode Diminutis Propinquis Hominum: Demi-humans and Their Habits, by master wizard Athanasious Great-Wand, called "the Glaucous".
There is a common misconception even among scholars of demi-anthropology that the three taxonomies of Dvergar, Rotundus and Gnomii represent different branching clades on the tree of life. My own examination of these groups has revealed a startling truth; there is in fact only one demi-human race of foreshortened stature, and its truest form is represented by the common or mountain dwarf! That this truth has gone unrecognised is due to certain cultural and biological peculiarities, namely the dwarven shame-culture and unusually complex relationship with their humoural balance and local morphogenic fields. It is still remarkable that this revelation should have gone un-noticed for so long, given the inviability of so many physically similar species occupying the same subterrene ecological niche. To explicate;
Halflings represent the dwarf in a kind of prolongued neotenic stage. It is oft remarked that humans find halflings endearing due to their resemblance to human children, it is for this very reason that they are repulsive and annoying to dwarves - to whom they resemble overgrown dwarven children. Dwarves are dependant on strenuous physical exertion during their adolescence - ideally in low-light conditions, somewhat analogous to the growth of rhubarb in a forcing shed - to promote the production of the melancholic and choleric humours that complete their metamorphosis into hirstute and mesomorphic adulthood. Deprived of the rigors of anvil, shield-wall and mine-face their naturally strong sanguine humours take precedence, physique tends toward portliness and beard growth ends at the mutton-chop if at all. An intermediate example of this can be observed in the valley dwarves who trade with the human kingdoms and supply their mountain-dwelling cousins with the products of the surface world. While still stout and hirstute by human standards, the valley dwarves - who maintain their humour balance through heavy agriculture and forestry - are notably willowier, softer-featured and higher-voiced than the mountain dwarf and less taciturn and dour in temprament. I conjecture that halfling communities likely form in the aftermath of dwarven civil wars which are customarily concluded with mass exiles.
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| Fig. 1, the halfling dissolute. |
Those exiles unable to find another mountain home may have adopted human customs to survive, engaged in light agrarianism and forage, dug subterrene homes in sod hills rather than carved out of stone, and over time abandoned the practices that lead to dwarven adulthood entirely. A further proof of this conjecture is the halfling custom of going unbooted - traditional dwarven culture considers bare feet risqué in the extreme, and it is easy to imagine that exiles with grievance might adopt taboo-breaking behaviour as a means of thumbing their nose against their culture of birth. The halfling's famed skill at thievery, stealth and the burgling arts may also originate from the other major cause of exile among the dwarf holds - crime. I suspect that it would not be uncommon for entrenched halfling communities to find their numbers periodically added to by exiled dwarves tried for thievery, and that over time a corpus of knowledge regarding thiefcraft could accumulate among their descendants, preserved in the cultural background noise much as children's games are passed on from one generation to the next almost unaltered for milennia.
The final proof, and I think the most pellucid of them all, is the periodic dwarven practice of abducting or press-ganging halflings into military service. This author has observed this practice in person on one occasion when he participated in it first-hand! In this I was playing the role of the dwarves' agent, the vital initial stage - humans who have regular contact with halfling communities are induced through bribery to spy upon the inhabitants and identify a likely target - favouring a young, spry halfling of good (or at least decent) moral character and imaginative temprament, which it is hoped is indicative of an underlying courage and sense of adventure. I was then given orders to scratch a dvergar rune on the door or gatepost of the target. I observed from afar as by dead of night a troupe of dwarves dressed in hoods and common clothes rather than their customary armour for sake of stealth, though still carrying weapons concealed beneath their cloaks, invaded the halfling's home and after a night-long process of indoctrination involving alcohol, the singing of folk-songs and much back-slapping encouragement not dissimilar to that observed among adolescent human males, elicited their target to leave behind his home and comforts to join them on a venture to retake an orc-infested dwarfhold!
Halflings who have been subjected to this practice - which I believe is an attempt by the dwarves to induce a kind of moral fortitude and essential "dwarfiness" to grow in what they consider to be a redeemable case of halfling degeneracy - do indeed take on a more dwarf-like spirit thereafter. While they never metamorphose into true dwarves, they tend to be more willful, stoic and often regard other halflings as frivolous and petty. A great many of these halfling janissaries will spend long years even after their release from dwarven service pining for the majesty of the mountains and even take to wearing armour and relishing the lustre of gold and hammered steel. In time some of them return to the dwarfholds and, I think likely though I cannot confirm, marry into them and thus restore their lineage from exile.
Regarding Gnomes the matter is somewhat more straightforward, though no less fascinating - it is oft opined that dwarves have no talent for the arcane arts, that their innate resistence borne from the heavy concentrations of certain metalic salts in their bloodstream - particularly sal ferrum and sal plumbum - precludes them from ever gaining the facility outside from the priest class who in any case are mere intermediaries for the power of their gods and not true spellcasters. This, I say, is not so! While it is in fact the case that the dwarven race produces a deficit of arcanists this is for a far more profound reason than the talent being lacking among their kind, but rather because so few with the talent are willing to endure the consequences; namely the malady known as gnomism!
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| Fig. 2, the gnomish adept, age: 42 |
Gnomism, from the dvergar "gnomri" meaning ash or slag with connotations of being used up or withered, is a wasting sickness that afflicts all dwarves who practice the mystical arts. The aformentioned blood salts react strongly with the presence of arcane forces - when these forces come from outside the body these reactions serve to protect the dwarf from the effects of hostile enchantments, but when they come from within as is the case when a spell is memorised and cast, the dwarf finds their very humours rebelling against them. Like a man subjected to a long-term infection, the humoural reactions leech health and vitality from the victim's marrow. A dwarf who has fully initiated into wizardry will soon find their muscles shrinking, their skin wizening, their hair and beard becoming wiry and coarse. Unlike the neoteny experienced by halflings, gnomism resembles a form of progeria - the subject comes to resemble an elderly human in miniature, crook-backed and wiry of frame. Perhaps even more significant than the physical changes is the mental impact of gnomism - the sparking of arcane energies in the salt-laden grey matter of the brain results in bouts of whimsy and mild hallucination often resulting in eccentric obsessiveness as a coping mechanism to remain focused on the present.
While these effects are extreme, curiously they do not actually diminish the lifespan of the subject, nor do they suffer any of the common maladies of senescence such as rheumetism or hearing loss. In fact, there is strong evidence that gnome lifespans can in fact be longer than that of their hale peers despite their frail appearance. This can perhaps be attributed to the anti-entropic nature of certain magical energies, the pyr technikon ordering their humours and sustaining them long past the point where mere gross animal vitality would have failed. This explanation does fall down somewhat in the case of the progeny of gnomes - for indeed, gnomism is partially inheritable, with a chance of being contracted by the descendants of any gnome if their spouse is a non-suffering dwarf and a certainty if both parents are gnomes - who do not have to be magi to still suffer and benefit from the effects of gnomism. This author would conjecture that in these cases even if not trained in their use the vital pneumatic channels for magical force likely still exist within these offspring.
Unlike halfings, gnomes are not outcasts from broader dwarven society. There is no particular law in dwarven legislature against dabbling with the arcane - though there are some prohibitions against tempting the young with promises of eldritch power. Any adult dwarf of sound mind who is willing to brave the consequences is within their right to study the arcane arts. As the number of gnomes grows while the dwarven population struggles to avoid diminishing, this is likely to change in the future - though given the glacial rate at which dwarven jurisprudence advances this change will no doubt be some time coming. This author predicts that within two centuries dwarven law will require any dwarf who wishes to pursue the magical arts produce at least one issue before their descent into gnomism, for simple reason that many dwarven families already pressure this condition upon their magically inclined relatives in an unofficial capacity.
Gnomes live in close proximity to dwarves, though not too close - their communities that resemble inverted subterrene wizard's towers (for the same sound reason that aboveground magisters construct their domiciles - that being to concentrate geomantic forces) located on the outskirts, just seperate from the main dwarfhold. It would be perhaps unkind to liken them to leper colonies, given that they are far from being dour sanitoriums but rather lively and collegiate in character, but the principle of isolation from the untainted remains the same. Some gnomes, particularly those of the second and third generations, have even taken to abandoning dvergar society altogether and strike out to found new homes of their own in geomantically agreeable locations, with some even going so far as to abandon their clan-names and establish new lineages.
Tl;dr: There's only one human-looking shortarse race and that's dwarves. Halflings are dwarven thieves, gnomes are dwarven wizards. Inspired by By This Axe: The Cyclopedia of Dwarven Civilisation.
