The early art of this page was, IIRC, even more obvious about the adventurers at Kepfer’s Keep paralleling the five adventurers we’d spent the most time with– except Pyre, who very loosely approximates E-Merl, saving us from having to consider what a “more gnomish and somehow accepted Bandit Keynes” would look like. Again IIRC, that was John’s idea. I wouldn’t have minded seeing Gnome Best.

The whole idea of gnomish Peacemakers struck me as odd, though, because our heroes are basically a band of misfits. Each is somehow unable to function in the life they led prior to joining the team, either because they’re exiled (Gravedust, Bandit) or self-exiled (Frigg, Scipio, Syr’Nj) or because that life no longer exists for them to go back to (Byron, Rachel, Frigg again) or can’t support them (E-Merl). And gnomish society is, as Bandit describes it here and as we saw it then, a society almost without misfits, one that rejects what misfits it finds.

But one of the thematic conflicts that drives Guilded Age is whether adventurers are, in general, outside society or a part of its ecosystem. Hewie and Pyre, at least, seem to be more like police than nomadic do-gooders for hire. Which makes the gnomes’ feelings about the Peacemakers being “not our law” a little more understandable.