Gnomes

Gnomes are about twelve centimeters tall and have pointed red caps and beards. They live for hundreds of years, and are generally helpful and benign, and live mostly on cereal and root vegetables. Some live underground, each family looking after a store of a mineral resource, and are able to swim, like North European Dwarfs, through the earth. Others live in the roots of trees in forests, helping milkmaids with milking, shepherds with rounding up sheep, and cobblers with shoemaking. They pioneered many crafts, such as weaving and woodworking, although they chose not to explore more complex technologies, thus avoiding the problems of industrialization.