The Unknown Knomes
The Unknown Knomes
The Unknown Knomes are a mysterious people in Dragon Age, not quite dwarves, not quite spirits, and not quite surface-folk. Most scholars believe they are a hidden branch of ancient dwarvenkind, but the truth is stranger: they are a forgotten underground race that lived beside the dwarves, not beneath them.
They are called “Knomes” by surface travelers because of their small size, strange craftsmanship, and impossible knowledge of tunnels, roots, stone, fungus, and old magic. But the Knomes do not call themselves that.
Their real name is unknown.
And they prefer it that way.
Who Are the Unknown Knomes?
The Unknown Knomes are small, secretive, highly intelligent underground beings who live in hidden settlements between the Deep Roads, ancient thaigs, buried forests, lyrium veins, and forgotten elven ruins swallowed by the earth.
They are rarely seen because they do not want to be seen.
Unlike dwarves, they are not defined by caste, Stone worship, or thaig ancestry. Unlike elves, they are not tied to the Fade in the normal way. Unlike humans, they do not build empires. They build systems.
They are inventors, tunnel-readers, fungus farmers, trapmakers, poisoners, rune-carvers, archivists, and survival engineers.
To the dwarves, they are an old rumor.
To the Dalish, they are “root-spirits wearing bodies.”
To the Chantry, they are either demons, apostates, or nonsense.
To themselves, they are the ones who stayed hidden and survived.
Origin of the Unknown Knomes
There are several competing theories.
Theory 1: The First Deep Folk
Some dwarven scholars believe the Knomes were an older cousin-race of dwarves who existed before the great thaigs were carved.
They did not mine the Stone.
They listened to it.
Where dwarves built cities, Knomes built hidden networks. Where dwarves chased lyrium, Knomes studied the dangerous spaces around it. They knew certain underground places were not meant to be opened.
According to this theory, the Knomes warned the ancient dwarves about digging too deep.
The dwarves ignored them.
Then came the darkspawn.
Then came the fall of the thaigs.
And the Knomes disappeared into the cracks of the world.
Theory 2: Dwarves Changed by Strange Lyrium
Another theory claims the Knomes were once dwarves who settled too close to unusual lyrium deposits — not red lyrium, not blue lyrium, but a rare pale form called ghost-lyrium or white lyrium.
This lyrium did not make them stronger.
It made them stranger.
Over generations, they became smaller, quicker, more sensitive to vibrations, and resistant to certain underground poisons. They developed unusual eyes capable of seeing in near-total darkness and learned to detect movement through stone.
They did not become mages, but they became something close to magical engineers.
They learned how to bend sound, pressure, root-growth, minerals, and insects into weapons.
Theory 3: The Evanuris Hid Them
The most disturbing theory comes from ancient elven ruins.
Some hidden murals show tiny hooded figures working beneath great elven temples, maintaining underground machines, root networks, and lyrium channels.
This suggests the Knomes may have been an enslaved servant-race used by ancient elves to maintain magical infrastructure beneath Thedas.
When the Evanuris fell and the Veil changed the world, the Knomes escaped.
That would explain why they fear elves, avoid mages, and destroy certain ruins before anyone else can study them.
Appearance
Knomes are usually between three and four feet tall, though some elders are even smaller. Their bodies are compact, strong, and built for climbing, crawling, digging, and moving through narrow spaces.
They have:
- Large reflective eyes suited for darkness.
- Long fingers with toughened nails.
- Wide feet for gripping stone.
- Strong backs and shoulders.
- Quiet voices that can carry strangely through tunnels.
- Skin tones ranging from stone-gray, deep brown, moss-green undertones, ash, clay, and pale root-white.
- Hair that is often wiry, braided, or decorated with beads, bones, fungi, and carved stone.
They often wear layered clothing made from leather, moss-fiber, insect shell, old dwarven cloth, fungus silk, and scavenged metal.
Their masks are famous.
A Knome mask can mean rank, profession, family-line, warning, grief, exile, or war.
Culture
The Unknown Knomes do not have kings.
They have Keepers of Knowing.
A Knome settlement is called a Hushhold — a hidden community built into stone, root systems, collapsed thaigs, or caves masked by natural formations.
Their society values:
- Silence.
- Memory.
- Craft.
- Survival.
- Secrets.
- Debt.
- Warnings.
- Cleverness over strength.
- Preparation over bravery.
A Knome insult is not “coward.”
A Knome insult is “loud fool.”
Because to them, being loud gets your people killed.
Their Beliefs
The Knomes do not worship the Stone like dwarves do, but they respect it.
They believe the world has layers of memory.
Stone remembers pressure.
Roots remember water.
Bones remember death.
Lyrium remembers songs.
Blood remembers pain.
They believe nothing truly disappears. Everything leaves a trace. A good Knome can read those traces and survive because of them.
Their spiritual leaders are called Trace-Speakers.
A Trace-Speaker can walk into an abandoned chamber and tell:
- Who passed through.
- What they carried.
- Whether they were afraid.
- Whether something followed them.
- Whether the place is safe to sleep in.
- Whether the walls are lying.
That last phrase is very important in Knome culture.
They believe some places pretend to be empty.
Relationship With Dwarves
The dwarves mostly deny the Knomes exist.
Orzammar scholars dismiss them as campfire stories from frightened miners. Legion of the Dead warriors sometimes report seeing tiny hooded figures watching from distant cracks in the Deep Roads.
The Carta has tried to capture Knomes before.
It went badly.
The Knomes do not fight like soldiers. They collapse tunnels, poison water stores, steal boot soles, spoil food, mimic voices, redirect darkspawn patrols, and leave traps so cruelly precise that even Carta veterans become afraid to walk.
The Knomes do not hate dwarves.
They pity them.
They believe dwarves were once warned many times and chose pride over listening.
Still, some Knome clans trade secretly with casteless dwarves, surface dwarves, and exiled smiths.
Relationship With Darkspawn
The Knomes are experts at avoiding darkspawn.
They know how darkspawn move, smell, gather, scout, and sleep. Some Knome settlements have survived for centuries within miles of darkspawn-infested roads because they understand sound discipline, scent masking, and tunnel misdirection.
They have developed weapons specifically against darkspawn:
- Blight-lanterns that detect taint in air currents.
- Spore bombs that choke genlocks and shrieks.
- False tunnels that lure darkspawn into collapses.
- Root snares grown around pressure plates.
- Taint bells that ring only when corrupted blood passes nearby.
- Fungal salves that slow infection long enough to amputate or treat wounds.
The Grey Wardens would be very interested in them.
The Knomes would be very suspicious of the Grey Wardens.
Relationship With Magic
Knomes are not mages in the normal sense.
They do not cast fireballs, summon spirits, or open rifts. Most of them have little direct connection to the Fade.
But they use what outsiders call practical magic.
Their craft blends alchemy, rune-work, sound manipulation, lyrium residue, fungal biology, ancient mechanisms, and spiritual trace-reading.
A human mage may throw lightning.
A Knome engineer may build a copper-and-lyrium device that makes a metal door scream open by remembering the sound of the key.
That is the kind of strange they are.
They do not trust Circle mages.
They do not trust Tevinter magisters.
They do not trust Dalish Keepers fully either.
Their oldest saying is:
“Magic always asks for a door. Never forget who must live beside it.”
Knome Specializations
1. Trace-Speaker
A spiritual investigator who reads environmental memory.
They can detect hidden passages, old deaths, magical scars, nearby creatures, weak stone, and places touched by spirits or Blight.
Gameplay role: scout, support, trap detection, lore discovery.
2. Hush-Maker
A stealth specialist trained to erase signs of movement.
They can silence footsteps, hide camps, mask scent, and confuse enemy tracking.
Gameplay role: stealth, ambush, evasion.
3. Rootwright
A biological engineer who works with underground roots, fungi, moss, and spore systems.
They can grow barriers, healing fungus, poisonous blooms, light-moss, and living snares.
Gameplay role: battlefield control, healing-over-time, poison, area denial.
4. Gear-Knome
A mechanical genius who builds strange gadgets from scrap, dwarven parts, lyrium dust, beetle shell, and old elven mechanisms.
Gameplay role: deployables, turrets, bombs, traps, utility.
5. Stone-Nibbler
A miner-saboteur who can weaken structures, dig emergency tunnels, collapse roads, and create escape routes.
Gameplay role: terrain manipulation, siege sabotage, exploration.
6. Blight-Sniffer
A rare Knome trained to detect darkspawn corruption before others can sense it.
They are treated with respect and fear because many eventually become sick from their work.
Gameplay role: anti-darkspawn specialist, corruption detection, resistance support.
Weapons of the Knomes
Knome weapons are small, clever, and nasty.
They prefer tools that do not require brute strength.
Common Weapons
- Hook knives.
- Needle spears.
- Folding picks.
- Weighted cords.
- Miniature crossbows.
- Spore grenades.
- Acid flasks.
- Beetle-shell shields.
- Trap stakes.
- Stone-dust bombs.
- Sonic chimes.
- Spring-loaded blades.
- Root snares.
- Poisoned darts.
Their most feared weapon is the Quiet Bell.
It makes almost no sound to humans or dwarves, but certain creatures hear it as unbearable shrieking. It can confuse darkspawn, drive deepstalkers into panic, and disorient enemies wearing metal helmets.
Knome Settlements
A Knome village is almost impossible to find unless they want it found.
A Hushhold may be hidden inside:
- A dead thaig wall.
- A cave behind a waterfall.
- The root mass of an ancient underground tree.
- A collapsed Deep Road.
- A giant petrified creature.
- A mushroom forest.
- An abandoned elven ruin.
- A lyrium-free stone pocket near Blighted territory.
Their homes are small, warm, layered, and full of hidden doors. Every path has at least three escape routes. Every public room has silent alarms. Every nursery is built near the safest exit.
They are not paranoid.
They are alive because of it.
Major Knome Factions
1. The Hushbound
Traditionalists who believe the Knomes must remain hidden forever.
They see all outsiders as danger.
Their motto:
“The seen are hunted.”
2. The Open-Ears
A younger faction that believes the world is changing too quickly for isolation to continue.
They want contact with select outsiders, especially Grey Wardens, surface dwarves, and trustworthy scholars.
Their motto:
“A warning unheard is a grave already dug.”
3. The Root Covenant
Knomes who live closest to underground ecosystems.
They are masters of fungus, insects, roots, and medicinal growths.
Some outsiders mistake them for nature spirits.
Their motto:
“The deep is not dead. It grows downward.”
4. The Broken Mask
Exiled Knomes who sell secrets, traps, maps, poisons, and forbidden devices.
Some work with the Carta, Tevinter agents, Antivan Crows, or Qunari spies.
Their motto:
“A secret has value only when sold.”
5. The White Vein
A dangerous sect that studies ghost-lyrium.
They believe Knomes were meant to become something greater than flesh.
Other Knomes fear them.
Their motto:
“The Stone dreams in pale fire.”
Story Role in Dragon Age
The Unknown Knomes could fit perfectly into Dragon Age as a hidden people who reveal that the underground world is far bigger than players thought.
They would expand:
- The Deep Roads.
- Dwarven history.
- The Blight.
- Lyrium lore.
- Ancient elven infrastructure.
- Hidden civilizations.
- Survival horror.
- Exploration.
- Crafting.
- Underground politics.
They should not be comic relief.
They should not be silly garden gnomes.
They should be eerie, brilliant, suspicious, and dangerous.
They are small, yes.
But in the Deep Roads, small survives.
Main Questline: “The People Beneath the Stone”
The player discovers a destroyed darkspawn patrol in the Deep Roads. The bodies are not burned, hacked apart, or crushed.
They are arranged.
Each one was killed by a different trap.
Nearby, a small mask hangs from a hook.
A warning is carved into the stone:
“Do not follow what you did not hear.”
The party eventually finds signs of a hidden civilization. At first, the Knomes are only glimpsed:
- Tiny shadows moving through cracks.
- Supplies disappearing.
- Traps appearing behind the party.
- Darkspawn lured away by strange bells.
- Campfires extinguished without wind.
- Whispered voices in old tunnels.
Eventually, the player learns that the Knomes are preparing for something terrible.
A new Blight strain is moving through underground roots and fungus.
It is not just infecting bodies.
It is infecting ecosystems.
The Knomes call it The Rot Below.
And if it reaches the surface, forests, farms, wells, and villages could become Blighted without a single darkspawn army appearing.
Major Knome Character: Nibren of No Name
Role
Companion / scout / trap engineer / reluctant guide.
Personality
Nibren is sharp, suspicious, sarcastic, and very hard to impress. He does not trust the player at first and keeps testing them with small tricks.
He steals a button from the player’s coat during their first meeting and returns it later as proof that they are careless.
He is not cruel, but he believes surface people are dangerously loud, emotional, and overconfident.
Appearance
Nibren wears a cracked beetle-shell mask, layered moss-cloth, and a tool belt filled with tiny devices. His eyes glow faintly in darkness due to years of exposure to underground minerals.
Combat Style
Nibren fights with traps, darts, smoke, hook-lines, and strange devices.
He can:
- Disarm traps.
- Build temporary traps.
- Detect ambushes.
- Throw spore bombs.
- Create escape tunnels.
- Mark weak stone.
- Distract darkspawn.
- Sabotage enemy armor.
- Disable magical devices.
Personal Quest: “The Mask He Sold”
Nibren was once part of a secret scouting order. During a crisis, he gave a hidden map to outsiders to save his Hushhold. The outsiders used that map to raid another Knome settlement.
Now Nibren is considered partially responsible for the deaths.
His personal quest forces the player to choose:
- Help him expose the real traitor.
- Help him accept exile.
- Convince his people to forgive him.
- Or let him sacrifice himself to save the Hushhold.
Companion Banter
With Varric
Varric: You know, you’d make a killing selling those trap designs.
Nibren: I know.
Varric: That’s it? No temptation?
Nibren: Surface people would put them in taverns, lose the instructions, and sue the floor.
With Harding
Harding: You’re not a dwarf.
Nibren: Correct.
Harding: But you live underground.
Nibren: So do worms. Are you kin to worms?
Harding: I might like you.
Nibren: That is unfortunate.
With Solas
Solas: Your people remember things others have forgotten.
Nibren: Your people forgot things everyone else paid for.
Solas: That is not entirely unfair.
Nibren: I was not aiming for fair.
With Cassandra
Cassandra: You cannot simply place traps everywhere.
Nibren: I can. I have.
Cassandra: That is not reassuring.
Nibren: It was not meant to be.
Knome Enemy Types
Not all Knomes are friendly.
Broken Mask Ambusher
Uses stealth, poison darts, and escape tunnels.
White Vein Adept
Uses ghost-lyrium devices that distort perception and sound.
Root Covenant Fanatic
Uses poisonous fungus, root snares, and insect swarms.
Knome Tunnel-Cutter
Destroys terrain, separates party members, and creates cave-ins.
Hushbound Warden
Elite defender with silent bells, hook blades, and anti-magic traps.
Boss: The Pale Engineer
A former Knome genius who discovered an ancient elven machine powered by ghost-lyrium. He believes the only way to save the Knomes is to remove them from normal reality completely.
His boss arena is a shifting underground machine chamber.
Mechanics:
- Walls move.
- Bridges rotate.
- Sound traps disable abilities.
- Pale lyrium clones mimic party members.
- The boss creates false exits.
- The arena slowly collapses if the fight takes too long.
His final line:
“You call this world real because you are too large to fit through the cracks.”
Knome Crafting System
The Unknown Knomes could introduce a new crafting branch called Deepcraft.
Deepcraft focuses on:
- Traps.
- Gadgets.
- Sound devices.
- Fungal medicines.
- Anti-darkspawn tools.
- Hidden passage keys.
- Root-based armor.
- Compact weapons.
- Stone-reading lenses.
- Lyrium-safe containers.
- Scent masking oils.
Examples:
Mothdust Cloak
Reduces enemy detection in caves and ruins.
Taint-Lantern
Glows near darkspawn corruption.
Whisper Pick
Can open certain ancient locks without breaking them.
Rootbinder Bomb
Creates temporary root snares in combat.
Quiet Bell
Disorients enemies with sensitive hearing.
Stone Memory Lens
Reveals old footprints, blood traces, and hidden doors.
Why They Work in Dragon Age
The Unknown Knomes work because they do not feel like random fantasy creatures thrown into the world. They connect to existing Dragon Age pillars:
- Dwarves.
- Deep Roads.
- Lyrium.
- Darkspawn.
- Ancient elves.
- Lost civilizations.
- The Blight.
- Crafting.
- Political secrecy.
- Survival horror.
- Forgotten history.
They make the underground world feel alive again.
Not just tunnels.
Not just darkspawn.
Not just ruins.
A living hidden civilization with its own fears, mistakes, factions, and secrets.
That is Dragon Age.
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