Guild Canon: The contents of this page are considered canon within Cobalt Company's "RP bubble". Guild canon may go beyond official WoW canon and is usually inspired by and extrapolated from it. However, guild canon will not contradict official canon.
Physiology
Lifespan
While gnomes reach physical maturity around the same age as most other races (roughly 18-20 years), they are not considered adults in gnomish society until they have a certain degree of accomplishment and education under their toolbelt. They are considered middle-aged at around 150 years. ((The full gnomish lifespan has yet to be determined, but it is said to be less than 400 years. More to come on this.))
Gnomish Fertility
Like most longer-lived races, gnomes are nowhere near as aggressively fertile as humans are, who must actively work to avoid becoming pregnant every month. Ovulation in gnome females occurs far less frequently. They have about 150 childbearing years, with ovulation occurring roughly every every six months. On average, a healthy gnome trying for a baby will get pregnant within three years. By no means is this absolute; it could happen after a month of trying, or after 10 years.
Due to this rate of fertility and the need for a mother's body to recover from childbirth, children in gnomish families tend to be spaced about 12 years apart. As above these numbers are not absolute; there will always be variation. But any spacing smaller than 12 years would be seen as unusual — the smaller the more incredible!
Chronoception
Gnomish minds are like clockwork, almost literally when it comes to their chronoception, or sense of time. Most gnomes have an incredibly precise internal clock. They can "feel" the the passage of time as naturally as one might feel one's own motion. This sense is accurate to the year, the month, the day…even to the hour, minute, and second.
Barring extreme exhaustion, illness, or injury, gnomes can typically awaken whenever they intend to, setting a kind of internal alarm clock. They almost never forget an appointment or important date. Their chronoception also gives gnomes a natural sense of rhythm that they say makes them superb musicians (though other races have been known to suggest gnomish music sounds too "mechanical").
Hyperfocus
Gnomes can sometimes enter a state of "hyperfocus", in which whatever it is they are working on, talking about, or experiencing consumes their thoughts to the exclusion of all else. Even if some matter of greater importance comes along, it can take phenomenal effort to shake a gnome out of hyperfocus. Actual technologies have been invented to do just that, jarring a gnome's mind to interrupt their thought processes and allow them to emerge from this state.
Hyperfocus allows gnomes to work on mental problems much faster and more precisely than they normally do (which is already quite fast). But shutting out all distraction, they can bring the full might of their brain to bear on a single subject. Most of the greatest gnomish inventions are a result of an inventor's hyperfocus.