However, I do own a number of DL products, because I really like certain aspects of the world, such as the Minotaur nation and Draconians. I love Tinker Gnomes (which I learned about from Spelljammer), and Kender are fun to annoy people with (learned about them from the vampire kender in ravenloft).
Now my question - I remember reading something about a furtive forgotten race of deep gnomes that were mutated by radiation (I think), but I can't find the information in any of my books anymore. I'm sure fans of the setting know what I'm talking about, so if you could steer me in the right direction to learn more it would be much appreciated.
Sorry I couldn't be much more help.
That does not sound familiar at all, I'm afraid. Dragonlance has three types of gnomes: tinker, mad/thinker, and wild gnomes.
What's a wild gnome? The ones I know of are the Minoi (in "Tinker" and "Thinker" varieties) and the Gnomoi (the true gnomes, native to Taladas).
What's a wild gnome? The ones I know of are the Minoi (in "Tinker" and "Thinker" varieties) and the Gnomoi (the true gnomes, native to Taladas).
Wild gnomes are found in Spectre of Sorrows. They're sort of a rustic off-shoot of the gnome race who are botanists.
As for Taladas gnomes, I think of them like this:
Tinker - Minoi
Mad/Thinker - Gnomoi
Marak kender even make for a nice correlation to afflicted kender.
As for Taladas gnomes, I think of them like this:
Tinker - Minoi
Mad/Thinker - Gnomoi
I'm not sure it's that simple. The Gnomoi existed before those human smiths were transformed into the Minoi. To outsiders they may look the same, but they seem to be able to tell each other apart. The fact that the two have remained as distinctive groups in Taladas suggest to me that the two might be infertile with each other. Considering the different social expectations for Gnomoi and Minoi in Taladas's gnome cultures, playing a Thinker Minoi could be an interesting challenge.
Personally this is what I think.
The bakali were created before any elves, humans, or ogres. The fey and other creatures were created before them as well. So is it so hard to believe that Reorx (the gods who blew life into the dragons) might have created his own followers.
My version of history: Reorx decided to create his own race of followers, so he created them the same way he did the dragons, he created statues in his own for and blew life into them naming them the smiths. They however had no knowledge of the world and as the gods were forbidden to directly intervene in the affairs of the mortals he could not simply impart this knowledge to his followers so he gathered humans with this knowledge and brought them to the same place as the smiths and they lived and grew together. Eventually there were offspring (gnomes), these beings learned and combined both the industriousness of the smiths and the creativity of the humans. The smiths soon lost the favor of reorx, and so when reorx decreed that his followers create the machine that needed the greygem to power this. Now Milgas Kadwar was of the lowest of the low, but the smiths meant this this not only as an insult to they gnomish cousins but as as a reference to Milgas height, for it was Milgas fault (or so the Dwarves see it) that they were changed from the form that Reorx created them in. Because when the greygem hit the ground it not only created the Scions (who the smiths that were interested in magic) but the greystone also changed the smiths physical stature. Ashamed at their lack of physical perfection and their failure to recover the greygem, and more than a little fear of the greystone smiths renamed themselves the Dwarves and scattered to the four winds and disappeared out of the history of the gnomes and the humans. Not all the smiths reached the shores of Ansalon but some of them remained on Taladas (that is how we get Dwarves on Taladas, where we would not if they were created on Ansalon). The gnomes however felt an obligation to track down and recover the Gem as well as to finish the machine that needed the gem, so some of them stayed to finish the machine while the rest went in search of the greygem. Eventually these gnomes reached the shores of Ansalon, only nobody elves or humans had ever seen Gnomes or Dwarves before so nobody knew what they were and they were close enough in physical form that nobody could tell the difference. The dwarves settled in Kal-Thax and the gnomes continued to look for it. Eventually either Reorx told the Dwarves to recover the greygem or they finally sucumbed to their own guilt over the loss of the greygem and they went to look for it. After discovering the location of the gem the dwarves gathered their army and marched out. While they were gone the Minotaurs rose up and slew their dwarven slavemasters to the last Dwarf. Now the dwarves met up with their cousins the gnomes at Gargath, but again nobody could tell the difference between the two. Now Gargath had ogre servants and the elves were also curious about the mysterious human and all these peoples gathered at the tower. Now whether the three great machines were designed to fail (as the Dwarves would have it) or simply failed (as the world and the gnomes would have it) does not matter, what is important is that the greygem was released, the greygem then merged the qualities of all the gnomes, the dwarves and the elves to create the kender. Which race served as the starting block doesn't matter, in fact it could have been all three (not all of the Dwarves, Elves and Gnomes there of course but some of each) the others were altered slightly, the gnomes lost more of their heighth, the dwarves grew bigger, the elves became shorter and their ears became longer, in short they took the form of kender but not their personality. The elves, just as the smiths, were ashamed of their "deformity" just as they still are about deformity, and shunned contact with their cousin elves and eventually either died out or interbred with kender. The elves of course removed any evidence (or at least as much as they could, and flatly deny any connection to the kender just as the dwarves do). When the dwarves returned home they found the bodies of their brethern strewn a bout, so they closed Kal-thax and hid their shame, their shame of being slavemasters, and the fact that they could not protect their loved ones, better that they died of some mysterious disease than revolting slaves. The kender scattered (just as their predecesors did) to the four winds. The gnomes continued their quest for the stone but do to their change they soon lost their dedication to that quest to looking for a better way to get there than the last idea on how to get there and so on, and so on, and so on, until they finally forgot the quest to begin with, some of course were dedicated to returning to their fellows gnomes in order to let them know about the development and crossed the oceans again, this time with more than a few stowaway kender tagging along (which explains kender on Taladas). As the elves and the dwarves decided to bury the history, the gnomes were more interested about the next time than to concern themselves with the past, and the kender of course were more concerned with the pleasures and excitements of things more interesting than the past, nobody questioned what really happened at the tower. The elves being more social than the dwarves, spread their "version" of history so that the majority of the world accepted that and dispute the dwarven version (which of course is not the whole truth either).
This of course is simply my idea of what really happened.
Now according to the dwarves, they were created by Reorx on Taladas and we changed by the greygem into scions who fled with the rest of the other dwarves to Ansalon, where the majority of the scions were either killed or set adrift upon rafts.
We don't know exactly the history held onto by the ogres so there really is no tie breaker. That is why I weaved a story that inclued both histories and tried to weed through the vagueness in each story, kinda like real-life.
The main reason there is such contention between the histories is because neither the leves nor the dwarves want to connected to the Kender.