All you never wanted to know about Gnomes -- Part 1

Gnomes. They come in many shapes and sizes. I happen to be playing a Gnome in our current weekly RPG. It wasn't exactly my choice, though I embraced it full force. Our current campaign is using the D&D 3.5 system. Our DM decided to run a campaign where we all play Gestalt Characters. Since we had never really played this type of D&D campaign before he pre-generated enough characters that each member of our group could play one and then allowed us to choose. The oddest character was the Barbarian/Wilder Gnome. Everyone in our group felt that I should play the oddest character, so I jumped on board and chose him. I decided that to make this bizarre combination even more radical I would take the stereotypical picture of the Gnome as typified by the Travelocity Gnome (pictured above) as my template for appearance. I named him Keoghan after Phil Keoghan, host of The Amazing Race that is sponsored by Travelocity. Here is the picture I drew of my character:

I declared that the Pointy Red Hat (which is so obviously impractical to adventure in, especially for a fighter) is the customary cultural dress of the Gnome Barbarian, much like red shuka of the Maasai Warrior or the sash of the Klingon Warrior.

Well, it just so happens that during our adventures one of the other characters rescued an Ogre from a horde of our enemies that had enslaved him. He named him Smashskull, and took him on as an NPC, hoping to train him. Unfortunately, during a boring night in the local tavern Keoghan challenged Smashskull to an arm wrestling competition to prove the superiority of the Gnome Barbarian. The DM had us make Strength Checks. I rolled a 20 and Smashskull rolled a 1. Needless to say the Ogre (and everyone else in the bar) was quite impressed to see the Gnome arm slam an Ogre. The Ogre took this as a sign that he could learn much from the Gnome in terms of the ways of battle. He began hero worshiping the Gnome. The Gnome was--at first-- annoyed by all the attention of the Ogre, but he soon decided to take the Ogre under his wing and train him as a Barbarian. The first thing Keoghan did was to present Smashskull with his very own Pointy Red Hat, which he wears proudly... confusing everyone who sees the Ogre in a Pointy Red Gnome Hat... and woe to any who laugh at him.

A little later our party freed an oppressed village from the tyranny of some evil doers that had taken over. One 12 year old boy--Rory-- who had seen our battle to defeat the bad guys decided he too wanted to become a Gnome Barbarian. Thus, he was given a Pointy Red Hat and Joined Koeghan's posse. More on him and what it means to be a Gnome next time...