Overview
The Idea-Brand Gnome is the curious, inventive edge of the Tinker Hollows, a brass-rimmed workshop gnome of the hollows who brands new ideas onto the wrist and ranks the clan by invention, not age. It stands under a meter tall, quick and social, with the kind of certainty that comes from a life measured in branded ideas rather than years. Where the goblins of the warrens read the dark and the dwarves of the delve sing the anvil, the Idea-Brand gnomes of the hollows brand the idea, and they have been branding the first idea in the first workshop for a very long time.
Habitat
The Idea-Brand Gnome keeps to the workshop-halls of the Tinker Hollows, a range of soft, workshop-fed ground where the machinery is a promise and the brass is a treaty. Its dwellings are dug into the faces of the workshop-walls, hollows of shaped stone and woven brass-cable coaxed into a home that catches the warm work-light on its inner face and the shelter of the hollow on its outer. It favors the older workshops where the machinery runs oldest and the brand is richest, the places where an idea can be branded without the hollow's own motion breaking it.
Appearance
An Idea-Brand Gnome stands about 0.98 m tall, small and work-bound, with warm peach skin and copper freckles that read as bright in the hollow's own light. Its hair runs pale copper, worn short and bound so it does not catch the cable, and its eyes are pale violet, bright and curious beneath the brow, the color of the work-light's own glow at dusk. It wears a patchwork of leather and scrap in muted umber and soft copper and carries a single brand-stone at its belt, set with a single idea-loop at the brow, the loop of a maker.
Behaviour
The Idea-Brand Gnome is curious, quick, and profoundly certain, a creature of long ideas and long attention who rarely surprises and rarely is surprised. It observes before it brands, often for hours, watching a workshop or a person or a bargain until it understands the shape of the idea, and only then does it brand, and then with a curiosity that feels rehearsed over years. It is not unkind, but it is not easily moved, and a debt named by an Idea-Brand gnome is a debt the hollow will keep long after the maker has gone.
Natural Weapons & Defenses
The Idea-Brand gnome is no open-ground fighter and carries no blade, for its power is the idea and the brass itself, not force. Its primary defense is the workshop, for it knows every corner of the workshop-halls and can lead a pursuer through the Tinker Hollows for days until the pursuit loses its nerve and its balance. Should it be forced to act, an Idea-Brand gnome is quick and precise, 6 m/s through the workshops and curious, and it fights to unmake a threat rather than to wound it, cutting a cable, dimming a light, or branding an idea until the threat is spent.
Magic Alignment
The Idea-Brand gnome has no magic of its own, and it does not want any, and the not wanting is the whole of its way of dealing with the world, for a gnome that has an idea and a word and a brass does not need a spell. It is not attuned to any art, and it is not bound by any word that is not its own, and the not being bound is the whole of its way of being free. Its one signature thing is the branding, which is not a magic but is a thing that the gnomes of the hollow have branded for a very long time, and the branding is the ranking, and the ranking is the whole of its power.
Society
The Idea-Brand Gnomes live in the Tinker Hollows in small, curious, and work-bound packs of perhaps four or five, bound by the brands they make together rather than by blood or by place. There is no elder and no ruler, for a gnome that has branded the most and ranked the most is simply the one the others listen to, and the listening is a branding and the branding is the whole of their society. Decisions are made in the workshop, by a company of violet-eyed makers that has already decided and is only agreeing, and once made they are kept, for a gnome that breaks a brand is a gnome that has broken the whole of what it is.
Culture & Lore
The culture of the Idea-Brand Gnome is a culture of the branded idea, a whole way of life organized around the idea that a word that is curious and work-bound is the only honest word in the hollow. They keep no records, for a gnome that has branded an idea does not need a record, the branding is the record, and the branding is curious and work-bound and does not fade. Their stories are slow and curious, told in the workshop at the dusk, and they are stories of ideas branded and ranks earned and the curious, work-bound difference between them, told in a voice that is quick and means every branding.
Home
The Tinker Hollows is the Idea-Brand gnome's home and its branding, a range of soft, workshop-fed ground where the machinery is a promise and the brass is a treaty, where the gnomes brand their ideas and their curious, quick words. It is a strange and curious place, one that stands as if it were a very old animal holding its breath, and the Idea-Brand gnome has learned to live inside that brass rather than against it. The warm work-light that runs up through the workshops is the hollow's own, a soft copper glow that the gnomes have come to read as the color of a branded idea.
Relations
The Idea-Brand Gnome keeps a long, careful truce with the other creatures of the Tinker Hollows, a truce of branded ideas that has held for a long time and is the oldest and most fragile thing in the hollow. To the warm work-light of the workshops the Idea-Brand gnome is a curious, work-bound, and absolutely certain presence, a violet-eyed maker that is at home in the halls and in the brass, and the light has learned to glow wide and let the brandings pass, for a gnome that has branded you has decided you are a keeping and not a lesson.
In the Story
In the story of the hollow, the Idea-Brand Gnome is the curious, quick edge of the tale, the place where the ideas are branded and a brand is made and a ranking is made. It is the figure that brands a new idea in the dusk and holds the brass very curious and very certain, and the figure that, when the truce with the machine-gnomes grows thin, is the one that remembers what the truce cost and keeps the old idea curious and work-bound and absolutely certain.