Leper gnome

When trogg invaders breached Gnomeregan during the Third War, Mekgineer Thermaplugg advised High Tinker Gelbin Mekkatorque to flood the city with radioactive toxins. Thermaplugg claimed the poison would exterminate the troggs while sparing the gnomish population. Instead, the catastrophe wiped out eighty percent of the city's inhabitants. Those who survived within the sealed lower levels were warped in mind and flesh by toxic fallout, mutating into pale, pustulant wretches dubbed leper gnomes.

Thermaplugg himself succumbed to the poisonous fallout, losing both his complexion and his sanity. Naming himself techno-overlord and King of Gnomeregan, he gathered the crazed survivors in the Tinkers' Court. In their fractured mental state, many leper gnomes perceive all surface dwellers as trogg intruders, driving them to attack returning rescue parties with frantic savagery. They pilot salvaged mechanical constructs and assemble volatile ordnance, guarding Thermaplugg's twisted kingdom with fanatical devotion.

While the majority remain trapped within Gnomeregan's contaminated corridors, a handful of leper gnomes have found their way into the wider world. Driven by desperation or dark ambition, individuals have turned up among the Dark Iron dwarves in Blackrock Depths, operated machinery for the Venture Company in Stonetalon, or taken up service as lab assistants under the Forsaken's Royal Apothecary Society in the bowels of the Undercity.