Children of the Restless Earth by Robert J. Schwalb is a role playing game supplement published by Schwalb Entertainment for use with Shadow of the Demon Lord. This supplement details the gnome as a player ancestry; however, it is not in the Victims of the Demon Lord series like those supplements that expand on existing ancestries but part of the Poisoned Pages series.
This is a five page PDF that is available from DriveThruRPG for $1.69 but was purchased at the reduced price of $0.83 during a sale. Around half of the first page is an illustration and the Credits.
The opening text explains that the gnomes are one of the elemental races created by the genies before they went mad. After that madness, the gnomes fled deep underground; the Demon Lord’s shadow has destroyed the underground homes of the gnomes who have come to the surface as a result.
Gnome describes the ancestry in more detail. It gives a history of them, their languages, their general appearance and their problems with the sun (and a sidebar on goggles that gnomes wear). Until recently, most experiences that gnomes had with other races was with dwarfs, and that was often conflict over dwarfen prospectors getting too close to the gnomes’ homes. Many gnomes, their subsurface realms drowned in lava, have ended up in the Northern Reach.
One and a half pages then explain how to create a gnome, using similar tables to those in the core rulebook. Half a page has details on He Who Slumbers, something that gnomes used to worship as a god. However, He Who Slumbers was associated with a massive cavern known as the Great Cleft, and that cavern has been the source of the doom that wiped out gnomish settlements.
Finally, there are several new spells, all from the earth tradition, and stats for a generic gnome.
Children of the Restless Earth in Review
The PDF lacks bookmarks and, at this length, does not need them. Navigation is decent. The text maintains a two column full colour format and no errors were noticed. There are full colour images as well as some black and white stock. Presentation is very good.
As with other ancestries in the Poisoned Pages series, this simply adds a new ancestry to the game in the same amount of detail as would be found in the core book. It doesn’t cover the ancestries in the level of detail that would be found in the expansion options in the Victims of the Demon Lord series; perhaps expansions will come at some point. These shorter ancestries should perhaps not be used if other players are using the expanded ones. This is a short supplement that does exactly what it is supposed to do – add a gnome ancestry option to the game. Children of the Restless Earth can be found by clicking here.
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