Here is what I came up with for gnome towns in the Vrykarr mountains.
My clues from the "Kingdoms of Kalamar" campaign book:
There are 12 gnome cities in the Vrykarr mountains.
Skarnns trade textiles to the gnomes for metals (precious and common).
My clues from the "Hackmaster 5 PHB":
Vrykarr is home of the gnome titans.
The rest is gnome geography I made up (as GM). Basically every fact and phrase is influenced a lot by dwarf fortress and hackmaster.
Overview
There are 12 Gnome-Titan cantons built into small valleys in Vrykarr. They were settled 300 years ago to rid the area of goblins.
The gnomes mine gold, silver, and gems, and trade them to the Skarnns for textiles (hemp grown in Voritti).
Each canton has an outer surface village, and a fortified underground area for military use.
Every canton has a best baker, jeweller, and toymaker. Each has a guild with a high degree of expertise in a certain skill or industry.
Shrines within towns are generally an altar in a small decorated cave. There are larger outdoor shrines in alpine groves, by springs, and on high summits.
The canton leaders form mutual trade agreements and quotas, according to natural surpluses and shortages. Generally every canton leader cooperates for the glory of gnomes.
Gnome Cantons of Vrykarr
Name
Specialty Skill
Elevation (ft)
Elevation (meters)
Baverholler
Carpentry
1800
548
Gruda's Mills
Trap Design
2300
701
Mute Hook
Surgery
2400
731
Budgy
Beekeeping
3300
1005
Sluice
Metalworking
4900
1493
Mucklin
Masonry
5000
1524
Troutluff
Pottery
6800
2072
Toad Hollow
Fluid Mechanics
7000
2133
Dugry
Mining
7100
2164
Scarleto
Cheesemaking
7600
2316
Cross Falcon
Glassmaking
8400
2560
Condor Pass
History
9000
2743
Vrykarr canton elevation diagram.Vrykarr canton relative cardinal directions and intercanton trail diagram. Blue objects are towns over 6000 feet.
Places, people, images from particular cantons
Baverholler (1800 ft)
▶A gnome stepladdered at a giant shipwheel-sized crank rolls a log along a simple conveyor. By the same device, six vertical oscillating saws noisily chew the log into long planks.
▶A wide cave full of 2' high workbenches and sawdust. Saws ranging in size from miniature brass coping saws to 16' ripsaws. A hundred chisels fit for gnome-sized hands. A mallet made from a single giant knot.
▶In the deep shade of a ravine-covered forest, a dozen leathery lumbergnomes hoist logs onto a long sled hitched to a team of mules.
Budgy (3300 ft)
▶A 500-foot section of cliff, itself hundreds of feet above flat ground, covered by vines, muck, crumbling boulders, and thousands of bees' nests.
▶A convoy of gnome teamsters guide their donkeys on a downhill trail, pulling wagons full of wooden tuns.
▶A mile-long trail of ants is going into and out of a busy tavern brightly-lit by beeswax candles in tiny stonework alcoves.
Condor Pass (9000 ft)
▶Stone library with a circular rock door turned by gears. Vault of hemp paper scrolls and finely-scribed cubes of stone. The gnomes illustrate reconstructions of ancient gnome sites.
▶A studio where the artist will tattoo depictions and symbols of her patrons' honorable deeds onto them.
▶Memorial obelisk of fallen gnomes.
Cross Falcon (8400 ft)
▶Crossroads trading post for canton-to-canton trading, with an additional trading cave and outdoor market.
▶Glass platform over a gorge.
▶Alchemy experiment bunker insulated with bricks and lead
Dugry (7100 ft)
▶Deep coal vein slithering underground for miles
▶Long "bridges" of outdoor coke ovens
▶Minecart track trucking carts of coke directly to Sluice
Gruda's Mills (2300 ft)
▶3 stubby sails on a thin brick tower turn a millstone the size of a house
▶A locksmith files together a key set that combines into a doll silhouette
▶A gnome at a trudle lathe cranking out 3' shovels from a stack of gnarled limbs
Mucklin (5000 ft)
▶Enormous cubes of stone quarried out of the expanding Mucklin crypt are hauled by mule to the stonecutters' yard.
▶Gnome-titan trainees carry each other on piggyback while tied to sleds weighted with puddingstone.
▶A mallard family trots serenely through a statue garden of gnome-sized angels.
Mute Hook (2400)
▶A gnome lies in a stone cradle, convalescing in a full-body-cast covered with fluorescent gnomish name-runes.
▶A tranquil squirrel is holding a tray of surgical instruments steadily for a husband-and-wife pair of suturers.
▶A group of sweating gnomes frantically extract a barbed arrow from the appendix of a giddy elf.
Scarleto (7600 ft)
▶In an airy cellar, extravagant wheels of gnome-cheese diligently accrue their sweet and sour molds.
▶The Hundred-Year Cheese is awarded on the eve of every century's fiftieth year. It is often sullied several times on many levels by local pranksters and pranksters from abroad.
▶Blocks of hard sheep cheese are grilled and smoked up beneath a starry sky.
Sluice (4900 ft)
▶The outer houses are plated with steel, and form a loose wall.
▶A completely-red smith extrudes steel to be wrapped directly around a chainmail-jig.
▶A yak drags a cart west to Thygasha, loaded up with barrel hoops.
Toad Hollow (7000 ft)
▶The transportation test slopes are gradually becoming an off-kilter junkyard of broken hanggliders, toboggans, and contraptions.
▶The surface houses are joined by a plumbing network of underground airlocks and floodgates.
▶Within Toad Hollow's fortress, there is a carved laboratory featuring fanblades and vacuum tubes.
Troutluff (6800 ft)
▶Bright fungus and herbs grow under windows in purple and blue clay planters.
▶An engineer tastes a small wad of fresh clay from the ground to determine the limit of its water content.
▶A potter unloads a cooled outdoor kiln of glazed gnome-plates.
