Fhizz (VG) – Crimson Fellowship Stories

How Gnomes Invented Fire

Eons and eons and eons ago (actually just two eons but you so seldom get to use eons that I threw in an extra one), long before anyone in the world knew what ifire was, gnomes lived in their cavern home in complete darkness. Imagine stumbling about in the dark, walking into walls and each other, never being quite sure if the home you spent the night in was actually yours, always seeing the same thing (which in this particular case meant seeing nothing at all).

One day, a gnome became so frustrated with the situation, having just walked into a wall - or at least something very hard since he couldn't see if it was a wall - he took his hamer and struck at the thing in front of him (which did indeed turn out to be a wall fortunately). As his hammer hit the wall though something miraculous occured - a spark. For one brief instant, for the first time in the history of the world, that gnome could actually see that it was a wall in front of him. That was the invention of sparks, but still a long long way from fire.

As the eons passed the gnomes continued to live in darkness but now it was darkness that could momentarily be removed by sparks. Gnomes wandered everywhere, constantly striking with their harmmers at anything in front of them. This of course resulted in quite a bit of injury as it was not uncommon that it was another gnome that happened to be in front of them. It also resulted in the size of the cavern reaching truly monumental proportions as the rocks were slowly chipped away.

Eventually there came to be born a gnome known as "He who discovered Fire" - he is known that way because his name has been lost in the fog of time (note - time is not truly foggy, that is just an expression, time is a bit more solid, sort of like a pudding, but for some reason people do not say lost in the pudding of time). "He who discovered Fire" grew up as most gnomes of that time did, walking slowly and constantly swinging at anything that might be in front of him. Not a great way to live, but far far better than in the olden days before the discovery of sparks. One day as "He who invented Fire" was making his way through the cavern his hammer hit a wall in front of him. This time though there was more than a simple spark that appeared. As he hit the wall and recieved the spark he was hoping for, someting else happened. The spark jumped to a nearby piece of paper stuck to the wall (some say a gum wrapper, but that is disputed as no one really knows what the piece of paper really was). The paper ignited and for the first time in history there was a FIRE!!!!

It took several more years to perfect fire, years where gnomes stuck paper everywhere they could in order to create brief fires. Eventually though they advanced to finding other things that could burn - wood, oil, occassionally (and completely by accident) other gnomes (especially those carrying oil who usuallyspilled it all over themselves in the darkness between fires). Fire was at last here and here to stay. Being benevolent and wise the gnomes shared the secret of fire with the other races and soon the whole world had a way to see when it was dark.

Note: because they were the first, the gnomes kept their lead on other races with a whole series of inventions that were useless before fire - windows (no need for them before fire since you could not see in or out of one in darkness), personal property (in darkness you never know whose house you are in or for that matter whose toothbrush you are usiing), specatcles (in darkness you never know if your eyesight is good or bad) and so on. To this day gnomes continue to be the most creative and inventive of all the races.

Fhizz, Gnome, Knight

---