I'm currently assembling and editing my session notes for the next Outlanders adventure. My notes call it The Orb Commission, but I and the players always refer to it as The Flight of the Yardbird, so that is how it will be listed on this blog. It is possibly the best adventure I've written from scratch and introduces several new elements to my campaign world, the most notable being the gnomes.
One of the players wanted to try something similar to a gadgeteer in a fantasy setting. I don't remember why, but he decided to make the character a gnome, a race I had not used before in this campaign. Tinker Gnomes were popular at the time, but he did not want something that scatter-brained. So we created Wendell and the Gnome Consortium.
I gave the gnomes a deep backstory. They were created by the Sorcerer Kings as a servitor race to run their households (which was beneath the dignity of a Sorcerer King, but still necessary) and assist in their magical laboratories (because competent extra hands made things go faster and smoothly). And because who wants to retrain assistants too often, they were given longer lifespans [400 years on average].
After the Sorcerer Kings disappeared [for reasons], the gnomes were still around and now had to interact with a world full of larger races. The gnomes did what they do best: they organized and maintain their records and kept their heads down. After the intervening 8 thousand years, they have enclaves in most important cities, are deeply tied into finances everywhere, and have codified rights and prerogatives, living together yet slightly apart from the bigger races.
The other thing that happened was that their birthrate has slowly dropped. No one [other than me, the GM] is certain why it is happening and the gnomes keep it quiet, but in another 3-4 thousand years, the gnomes might die out.
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