Most of the gnomes of the Wallingmiotta are vegetarians. Thus, a popular dish served by many of the gnomish families is a collection of garden vegetables called a "salad." Unfortunately, when you live in a magical forest, sometimes the greens you pick are tainted with magic. Often, this ambient magic results in nothing more than a slight magic aura. Other times, it might turn the eater a harmless shade of blue or green. But there are times when the salads themselves gain self-awareness and become the notorious attack salads.
While aware of their own existence, attack salads are by no means intelligent creatures. Like a newborn toothy wuhlos, the attack salad lashes out at its perceived "captors" thrusting with lettuce-wrap bites and thrown tomatoes until it is free to leap from its creator's table and escape. Unfortunately, most attack salads fail to realize that often the only thing holding them together is the bowl in which they were tossed. As such, the moment they achieve liberty is also the same moment that they perish, a disparate collection of leafy greens covering the earthen floor of a gnome kitchen. Rest in peace, gentle greens.
Attack salad occurrences tend to be somewhat random. However, in 999 AT there was an outbreak of cursed spinach that found its way into a few hundred salad bowls during a gnomish harvest festival. All at once the salads gained sentience and attacked the festival-goers. Gnomish historians refer to the event as The First War of the Tossed Ones. While there were no casualties on the gnomes' side, it is an embarrassing mark on an otherwise peaceful existence for the forest dwellers. After all, it was the third largest war the gnomes had ever experienced.
Mark Adams
2020-10-09 02:34:52 +0000 UTC