The World of Warcraft is an expansive universe. You’re playing the game, you’re fighting the bosses, you know the how, but do you know the why? Each week, Matthew Rossi and Anne Stickney make sure you Know Your Lore by covering the history of the story behind World of Warcraft.
WARNING: The following post contains small spoilers for Wrath of the Lich King. Players who are still playing through the expansion and wish to avoid spoilers may want to avoid this post. In addition, theories behind the new Cataclysm race/class combinations will be discussed.
Last time on Alliance politics we looked at the night elves, who have had arguably the largest impact on Azeroth of any race currently living, and a lengthy history, as their current leader has been in power for approximately 10,000 years. The night elves have an extensive amount of history to back up their current political stance, but today we’re going to look at a race that doesn’t really have a lot of history to speak of (or at least they didn’t until the launch of Wrath of the Lich King): the gnomes.
The gnomish race has been relatively low profile in World of Warcraft and in the Alliance in general. Friendly to everyone, regardless of faction, the gnomes are quite happy to teach engineering to anyone who will listen. They generally avoid conflict where they can and honestly the main reason they joined the Alliance wasn’t due to their beliefs or any strong feelings, it was due to circumstances at the time. Let’s take a quick look at the background of the gnomes and how the events in Wrath could potentially affect future political entanglements.
The gnomes of Azeroth were a largely unknown element to most races of Azeroth. The earliest records of gnomish contact involve a gnome named Indus who was a gnomish representative to the Council of Tirisfal approximately 2,600 years before the First War. Indus was a powerful mage and well respected; her penchant for tinkering earning her the nickname “the inventor” in Dalaran. She was among the group of Council members who empowered the very first Guardian of Tirisfal, way back before Aegwynn even existed.
There was another gnome that was mentioned as being involved with the Council of Tirisfal — Erbag, who was present during the early days of Aegwynn. Yet there is little history surrounding why these few gnomes came to Dalaran and the Kirin Tor in the first place, and little was known about the gnomish people in general until they were “discovered” by the dwarves. There’s a story told about a dwarf explorer who came across a small gnomish village and was shocked to discover the sheer level of technology present in the little city, as well as its friendly residents. Contact between the two races grew to a point where they allied with each other, and the dwarves allowed the gnomes to build their capital city near Ironforge.
The dwarves and gnomes were in fact close enough allies that when the dwarves joined the Alliance during the Second War, the gnomes came right along with them. It wasn’t a matter of strong beliefs so much as it was a matter of wanting to help out their friends and allies, the dwarves. This pretty well explains why the gnomes aren’t really averse to teaching any of the Horde engineering and why Horde can find neutral gnomes here and there across Azeroth — it’s because they don’t really hate anyone in particular. They’re much more interested in teaching people what they know and inventing new technology to deal with what they don’t know.
The gnomes have no real political structure to speak of. Their leader is simply elected by the general public, usually one of the highest officials in their ranks. Gnome leaders are elected for set terms of service, after which point they return to the work force. The current high tinker of the gnomes is Gelbin Mekkatorque, one of the most renowned inventors. This is pretty much how the gnomes choose who goes into office — it’s a matter of who’s the most creative, intelligent and skilled, rather than of being born into a monarchy. Gnomish leaders aren’t really chosen for being charismatic or diplomatic; it’s merely a matter of who’s the smartest among them.
This zest bordering on obsession for technology, the lack of historical records and the way in which they chose their leaders may seem a little odd to most people who encounter the gnomish race. They’re brilliant, quite possibly the smartest race on the planet, and there’s a reason for that — a reason that wasn’t revealed until Wrath of the Lich King. In the quest The Mechagnomes, Alliance players get to listen to the tale of Fizzcrank Fullthrottle, who has discovered something incredibly disturbing near the Fizzcrank Airstrip in Borean Tundra:
Anyway, we needed to pump up lots of sand and oil for the machinery. The nearby pools proved to be perfect for that. Some of the sand even proved to have magical properties … can you say possibilities!? But that’s a different tale.
So, we drained most of the water out and build the pumping station smack dab in the middle. Everything was going swimmingly until one day the main suction pipe got clogged. Mind you, this part I learned later because I wasn’t out there at the time. When they ratcheted up the suction on the pump, up came pieces of a robot that looked like a gnome! Of course the fools worked night and day to put it back together without telling us. This is when we lost communication with the pumping station.
After a couple of days of silence, I sent a scouting party out to the platform. They never returned. I sent another group the next day with the same results, and lost a couple of flying machines out on aerial recon. At that point I sent someone south to find help, and we hunkered down to prepare for the worst. We turned all of our attention to making armor, weapons and robots so that we could head out there in full force.
When we did a few days ago, we couldn’t believe our eyes! As I was saying, what we saw out there defied explanation.
My people where nowhere to be found, but in their place as a veritable army of robots and androids going about their business! The droids all looked like gnomes and they said that they’d been expecting us. In fact, in their own strange way, they acted like they knew us. We were surrounded and quickly taken to the top of the pumping station. That’s where we saw their leader and what he was doing to the surviving gnomes!
He called himself Gearmaster Mechazod. When we arrived he was busy transforming the survivors into mechanical beings! He greeted us warmly and explained that he was one of the first gnomes ever to be created by something he called “The Grand Architect,” a Titan keeper from within the halls of fabled Ulduar.
Apparently, he was the blockage that my team had accidentally sucked up from where he’d malfunctioned thousands of years ago. It was just our luck that we’d built the pumping station right above him. The station’s mechanics had put him back together, bringing him back to “life.”
And now, by way of thanks, he was going to return the favor by curing all of us of what he called the “Curse of the Flesh.”
According to Mechazod, it’s a condition that eventually befalls all creations of the Titans! In other words, we all supposedly start out as robots of some kind, and, over thousands of years, slowly turn into fleshy beings!
Gnomes were right up there with tauren as the two races with the least amount of recorded history in Warcraft, until Wrath. The explanation of their origins does a lot to shed light on both their attitude towards the Alliance and Horde, and their mysterious lack of any kind of historical records whatsoever. Robots, after all, have no need to document history if they’ve never been programmed for it. Current gnomes had no memory of their prior existence as mechagnomes, largely because there was no need to document it or the Curse of Flesh that turned them into the gnomes we see and interact with today.
Robots also have very little need for political organization or diplomacy and don’t possess the inherent irrational nature that would lead them to anger or the viewpoint that races of differing origins were innately “bad.” This is why there’s no real animosity between the gnomes and the Horde. The animosity doesn’t lie in gnomish opinion; it lies in whether or not the Horde is intent upon harming the friends the gnomes have already made. So long as no animosity is shown, no animosity is given in return, generally speaking.
However, the dwarves were the first real “friends” the gnomish race had and the first real allies their people had encountered, which led to the gnomish bent towards the Alliance. Had the gnomes originally encountered the tauren, for example, it’s just as likely we’d be seeing the gnomes as a playable Horde race, rather than an Alliance one. Gnomish politics, as it were, aren’t so much dependent upon gnomish beliefs, but more so on those that they happen to be friendly with at the time. They’re staunch supporters of their friends and will do everything in their power to help those that they’re allied with. The gnomes were a huge help to the Alliance in the Second War, their inventions, flying machines and weaponry tremendously useful to fight back the Horde.
During the Third War, however, the gnomes strangely refused to send any personnel to help their allies with the Burning Legion’s invasion. They did send along designs and blueprints for various helpful machines and weaponry; however, no pilots or troops were sent along. The Alliance was somewhat shocked at this refusal of aid from an ally they’d been so close with during the Second War, but as the Burning Legion was a much larger problem, they didn’t really look into why the gnomes had suddenly withdrawn.
It wasn’t until after the success of the Third War that the Alliance checked back with the gnomes and discovered what had happened. Troggs, a barbaric, cruel race of humanoids, had emerged from the depths of Gnomeregan and invaded the city, slaughtering any gnome that got in their way. Despite the severity of the trogg attacks, the gnomes knew that the Burning Legion took priority over their situation, which is why they didn’t send any of their personnel to help with the Third War. During the trogg invasion, High Tinker Mekkatorque was advised by Mekgineer Sicco Thermaplugg to irradiate the city in order to stop the troggs. While it did indeed halt the trogg’s advance, it ultimately killed more gnomes than troggs and rendered Gnomeregan unlivable.
The dwarves took the gnomes into Ironforge and offered them shelter, but the losses were devastating. Over 80 percent of the gnomish race was wiped out during the events of Gnomeregan, and the whole of the damage rested on the high tinker’s shoulders, something he carries with him to this day. The high tinker therefore has given priority to working on plans to retake Gnomeregan and sends adventurers in regularly to investigate the severity of the damage, carry out the death sentence given to Thermaplugg and kill the trogg survivors of the fallout, enabling those that still remain in the city’s walls to make their escape. He’s also assigned a few teams of researchers to work on anti-Scourge weaponry, some of which is visible here and there in Northrend.
While gnomish focus has leaned towards the eventual retaking of Gnomeregan, the gnomes still focus much of their energy on helping their allies — particularly the dwarves that have taken them in and provided a temporary home for them within Ironforge’s walls. But with the revelations given to the gnomes in Wrath, they suddenly have a lot more information about themselves as a race than they’d ever had before. It’s how this information will affect them that is interesting.
Gnomes don’t have any particular religion; they don’t believe in a higher power. Instead, they place their faith in themselves, their friends and their inventions — a logical choice. This is why we don’t see gnome priests or paladins — they concentrate on their inventions and technology, not higher beings that might grant them mysterious powers. It simply isn’t logical to gnomes to follow an unknown element; they’d rather take the elements that are available, tangible elements that they can see and manipulate to the advantage of all around them. To gnomes, it’s all about making the world a more organized and comfortable place to live via inventions and technology that they create.
But with the revelations in Wrath, the gnomes have suddenly been confronted with their own origins and the realization that they were, indeed, created by a higher power. In Cataclysm, gnomes will finally have priests added to the available list of classes they can play. While there’s been no information released as to why the gnomes are suddenly interested in the Light, or how they’ll incorporate the Light’s powers into their own unique blend of magic and technology, I’ve thrown around a few theories of my own.
In World of Warcraft, gnomes are allowed to be both mages and warlocks. The pursuit of these particular schools of magic is generally hand in hand with the zest for invention, and magic is looked at as something to be used to modify existing technology for the better. So there are a couple of possibilities that could be followed here — perhaps with the revelation that the gnomes have that higher power that created them, suddenly they’ve regained a new interest in spirituality and wish to look a little more closely at the Light. Or, and this one is a bit of a stretch mind you, the gnomes observed what the blood elves managed to do with M’uru in Burning Crusade — literally harness a being of Light and siphon the energy off of it — and determined that perhaps they could do something similar without harming the creature involved in the process.
There are other theories out there, but until we receive an explanation, we’ll never know for certain why the gnomes suddenly decided to follow the path of the Light, other than conjecture based on what little we know of the gnomish race. However, while gnomish presence in the world has been scattered all over, largely neutral and seemingly without focus, there is one thing above all else that the gnomes as a whole have been focused on, and it’s something we’ll see near Cataclysm: retaking their beloved capital city for good.
See, while the gnomes don’t really have much in the way of politics, there are still a few gnomes that seek power. Remember Sicco Thermaplugg, the High Tinker’s advisor? He was one of these rare gnomes, the ones who sought rank and power over technological advance. Sicco wanted to be high tinker and worked towards this goal relentlessly his whole life. He wanted to see Gnomeregan turned into a great kingdom, with himself as king — the first true king in over 400 years. And if that meant relocating the dwarves, well … so be it. However the gnomes, being a highly intelligent race, saw through his charming facade and decided he was too ambitious for the seat of high tinker. They chose Mekkatorque, his closest friend, instead.
Sicco went mad that day. All that he’d devoted his life to had been taken away from him in a single moment via a vote that he had no control over, despite his best efforts to sway people to his side. He wanted revenge, and he worked just as carefully on obtaining it as he did on trying to become high tinker. Gaining the trust and favor among the intellectually elite, he managed to get himself into the position of Mekkatorque’s advisor. When the troggs began their invasion of Gnomeregan during the Third War, it provided him the perfect opportunity to ruin Mekkatorque’s reputation and gain the rank of high tinker in the process. In fact, while it’s unverified, there are rumors that suggest that Sicco not only knew of the trogg invasion before it began, but that he engineered the whole thing himself in order to set Mekkatorque up for failure.
It was Sicco’s idea to leave the Alliance in the dark during the Third War as far as the trogg invasion went, and the rest of the gnomes agreeably went along with the plan. After all, in the priority of things, a world invasion by a dark power that sought to consume Azeroth rated much higher on the list than troggs that were only invading a single city. It was also Sicco’s idea to flood Gnomeregan with radiation. While Mekkatorque was against the idea as first, it seemed like the best option — and if a few gnomes died in the process, Sicco argued, it would be a worth sacrifice for saving the entire race as a whole.
However, something happened that caused Sicco to be locked inside of Gnomeregan as the radiation worked its way through the city. Along with many other gnomes, the radiation caused him to mutate into a leper gnome, driving him even further down the path of total insanity. After the damage had been done, Gnomeregan had a new leader, the self proclaimed “King” Sicco Thermaplugg, who ruled over the remaining leper gnomes and continued fighting back the troggs, as well as working on ways to conquer the rest of the world.
The story of Thermaplugg is an odd one in light of gnomish origins — why would a creature descended from a robot crave power and global domination? Part of it can likely be attributed to the Curse of Flesh, which made all gnomes the creatures that they are today. Perhaps the madness and the craving for power is simply some sort of faulty programming that was passed down for generations until Sicco was born; perhaps Sicco heard the call of some sort of old god. Regardless, Thermaplugg betrayed his people in the worst possible fashion and gave the majority of them a death sentence, all in the name of a fancy title.
Sicco was naturally branded a traitor for his actions, and sentenced to death though that death has never been carried out. While many were sent into the city, upon their return and analysis of their claim it was discovered that the “Sicco” that was defeated was likely nothing more than a cleverly engineered fake of Thermaplugg, and the real Thermaplugg still dwelt somewhere within Gnomeregan’s depths.
Oddly, it’s not just Thermaplugg, the leper gnomes and the troggs that are running the show in Gnomeregan. Down in the depths near Sicco’s quarters, there are groups of dwarves — Dark Iron dwarves. Why are these dwarves, commonly found in Blackrock Mountain and the surrounding areas, allying with Thermaplugg? It seems unlikely that a faction of dwarves that serve Ragnaros would have any use for Gnomeregan or the leper gnomes within. For now, the alliance remains a mystery, though a look into dwarven history and politics will hopefully offer some theories and ideas behind the mysterious alliance.
With the death of the Lich King and the Alliance’s focus no longer solely dedicated to Northrend and the Frozen Throne, Mekkatorque has been able to finalize, at last, a planned assault on Gnormeregan in an attempt to reclaim the city and finally bring Thermaplugg to justice. No longer quiet or withdrawn, the gnomes are quite open about discussing this with the Alliance and asking them for their help, regardless of race. After all, the silence between the gnomes and the others in the Third War proved disastrous for the gnomish race as a whole. But what will happen after Gnomeregan is retaken? What role will the gnomes play in the Alliance?
There is no “oh wait” moment for the gnomes, because the answer is the same as always — they’ll continue to help their friends when needed and fight their foes when they have to. With the introduction of the Bilgewater Cartel of goblins to the Horde, there might be a few skirmishes here and there, but gnomes by and large aren’t going to be a major player in any political battles. They’ve got far too many other interesting ideas and prospects to follow. With the retaking of Gnomeregan and the events in Cataclysm, we may see their priorities shift to helping their allies with the sheer amount of devastation Deathwing will surely create.
The largest role the gnomes will play in the Alliance is an ally — a strong, intelligent ally that will step forward to help anyone they deem as friend. Given the current situation of the other Alliance races, they may be asked to step up sooner than they think — but that’s a story for another week.