Ak’Anon and Meldrath the Malignant

A free race

Under the dark elves the gnomes had lived in something close to slavery. Then the emperor of Felwithe declared them a free race allied with the elves, and the gnomes built a city of their own. The Founding of Ak’Anon tells it.

A city of tunnels

Ak’Anon is a maze of tunnels beneath the Steamfont Mountains, powered by cold water and windmills and guarded by clockwork constructs and mortal warriors alike. For centuries the gnomes were reclusive, one of Faydwer’s secrets. It is ruled by King Ak’Anon and houses the Library Mechanamagica, which draws even Erudites to study.

It is “a city of contradiction,” where clockwork guides lead visitors around, merchants sell ordinary goods beside bizarre gnomish machines, and the zoo is famous for its natural and unnatural creatures. The main entrance is a narrow chasm from the Lesser Faydark, and rumours of a hidden dock and tunnel beneath the city might explain how so many wonders got so far from the rest of the world. Not every gnome welcomes the crowds. A manifesto by Lobal Postugger, with “editing done by Lobal’s Missus,” complains of over-sized, under-intelligent creatures who “steal our air and stank up the place.”

The Dark Reflection

It also hides something darker. Deep in the Mines of Malfunction is the Dark Reflection, a hidden enclave of evil necromancer and shadow knight gnomes who follow Bertoxxulous, the Plaguebringer, and greet visitors “with a kiss of decay and pestilence.” Their letters wait for the day: “In the mirror of this wretched society, we await… the time grows ever near, for us to shatter these rose-colored visions of Ak’Anon’s citizens.” The Dark Reflection “readies its soldiers of Bertoxxulous, hidden away deep beneath Ak’Anon, in the Mines of Malfunction.”

Born as two

Ak’Anon’s most brilliant outcast began life joined at the chest to a twin. One child was pure of heart and the other dark, and both were named Meldrath. Their mother wanted two sons, and Bristlebane, disguised as a healer, gave her a magic sword to separate them. After the cut, the beautiful twin floated up into the sky and was never seen again, most likely into the planes by Bristlebane’s doing, and a demi-plane came into being. The ugly one bit his mother. Balance Sundered tells the story.

The Malignant’s machines

He grew into Meldrath the Malignant, and his clockwork armies gathered in Steamfont. When his air fortress, Mechanotus, launched, it tore open the earth. Of his Gyrospire towers, Beza and Zeka remain; the gnomes of Ak’Anon destroyed Azia. He also refined minotaurs into fighting machines. Rogue clockworks still roam Steamfont outside the city.

In the game

Ak’Anon was the gnome starting city in 1999, reached through Steamfont, where new gnomes learned to dodge rogue clockworks and minotaurs. Secrets of Faydwer returned there in 2007 with Meldrath’s fortress and Gyrospires.