Like the Trees of Life, gnomish relics are avatars of the gnomes’ Immortal (and creator), Garal Glitterlode. However, the gnomish relic is of a completely different kind from the other demihuman relics. It fills an entire room in the heart of the clan stronghold or meeting place. It consists of hundreds of whirring gears, metal tubes and pipes, valves, levers, buttons, dials, grills, flashing lights and little plates of glass. Of course it is never left untended, and there are always at least a few gnomish engineers running around the little platforms and walkways, meddling and "improving" on it.

But what does it do? Well, it has number of different functions.

First, it serves as the centre for the gnomes’ communication tubes (most gnome stongholds have some form of communication system [internal, but sometimes external too] which utilises air tubes and message cylinders).

Second, it is a source of "power" for some of the gnomes’ inventions (usually menial house-work inventions).

Third, it has a limited form of intelligence (being an avatar of Garal Glitterlode), and it can answer questions the gnomes ask of it. The questions are spoken into a metal tube, and answers appear magically on the little glass plates. Of course, the answers are not always helpful, and very often pretty obscure. But when it comes to the realms of Fantasy Physics, it can be quite informative and helpful (perhaps giving a +2 bonus to the Fantasy Physics skill checks of a gnome who consults with it).

Thorfinn Tait. Curufin@velvia.demon.co.uk

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Actually, in Earthshaker the clan relic is not Earthshaker itself, but rather the Clock of Timelessness which is housed within it. At the risk of violating copyright, I offer the following quote from p.16 of the module:

"The clan’s relic, the Clock of Timelessness, is a 5-foot clock with a skeleton movement (the inner works can be seen clearly). Unlike Earthshaker, the relic is ornately decorated; gears are filigreed, armatures sculpted, and jewels are lavishly set in the clock’s face. The relic has all the standard powers of a relic as described in the Companion rules.

In addition, the relic can be used to fashion the rare equation of time. The equation allows time travel to any specific point in time. First the keeper and his aides must study and record the movements of the clock in perfect detail for one year. With this data, they must perform thousands of complex, magical, mathematical formulae in their heads. Nothing of this can be written on paper and the slightest error will cause the end result to be imperfect. Performing these calculations takes 20 years.

When the final formula has been completed, the keeper and the clanmaster can correctly set the clock. When the clock is set, one person or object is instantly transported through time to the chosen date. The transported object remains there for 24 hours and then must either transport again (by use of another equation of time) or fade into nonexistence. Anything that fades disappears utterly and totally from the Multiverse as if it had never existed (although any possessions or previous deeds of a character do not change)."

The question is: if you only have 24 hours, how do you do 21 years of calculations required to travel again? I suppose you could do the calculations before you leave, but that’s got to be one VERY important 24 hr time period if you’re going to spend 42 years studying just to get there and back. However, there is another possibility: person who travels in time only has 24 hours, but back on the home front, the other gnomes are busy at work calculating his return time, and twenty years later, poof! The time traveler pops back home. Twenty years have passed for everyone else, but only 24 hours for him.

Of course not all gnomish relics would have to be such as this, if you even like the way it is dealt with in the module in the first place.

David "Azure" Leland

Email: dleland@cogsci.ucsd.edu

Web: http://cogsci.ucsd.edu/~dleland