Paksworld

One of last night’s discoveries is that some gnomes traveling with a dwarf are kteknik…exiles, usually temporary, who are wearing colors because they’re being punished.   (How to make a gnome unhappy–make him colors.)  If you’re a naughty gnome (could not resist), you may be required to go do something in the outside world that is considered a fair exchange for whatever it was you did.

Since gnome princedoms actually have uniforms (news to me–like most humans I saw the gray or black they wore as just dull gray and black)  and it is a death sentence to wear the uniform of another princedom, if you’re forbidden your own there’s really nothing to do but go into blue/green/yellow/red.   Usually they go for dark blue or green or both.   Most humans don’t a) recognize the beardless “youth” with a dwarf as a gnome and b) don’t know about kteknik punishment.

Dwarves, who have a strange and not always pleasant sense of humor, think it’s funny, and often urge their kteknik companion to go wild and crazy for once in his life.    Wear red–wear pink/purple/orange/yellow, and all at the same time.   Dance!  Dance on the table!

The kteknik gnomes never do.   This freedom is not freedom to them; the strictures of the Law are, to them, as familiar and comforting as a soft bed.   Sometimes they are so homesick for their sober gray uniform and the Law that they go crazy in another way–in trying to redeem themselves, they break yet another bit of the Law (or someone else’s law, more likely) and get themselves deeper into trouble.

A few humans do know all about this, and one of them is now trying to persuade a Marshal that he, not the Marshal, is better suited to guarding a treasure this night.    The Marshal, no surprise, isn’t being easy to convince.

I’m going to try to pry loose a non-spoilerish snippet later.