Nebelun

Nebelun
Bellows and Lizard Tail
Aliases	The Meddler
Alignment	Chaotic Good
Divine Rank	Lesser God
Pantheon	Gnome
Portfolio	Inventions, Good Luck
Domains	3E: Craft, Earth, Fire, Knowledge, Metal, Planning, Pride 5E: Forge, Knowledge, Trickery
Home Plane	Great Wheel: Golden Hills (Bytopia) World Tree: The Workshop (Golden Hills)
Worshippers	Gnomes, Thinkers, Inventors, Tricksters, Artificers, Engineers
Favoured Weapon	Warhammer

Nebelun the Meddler is a forgotten member of the Gnome pantheon in Dungeons & Dragons. God of Inventions, Technology, and Boldness, he is an ascended gnomish hero-god who hails from the setting of Greyhawk, or at least Gygax's nebulous "core setting" of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. As the editions have passed, Nebelun has been forgotten, mostly due to his assimilation by Gond in the Forgotten Realms setting.

Nebelun takes the form of an spry old male gnome with white hair, clad in a black frock-coat and top hat, wearing glasses and carrying a black leather bag filled with bizare tools and devices.

Nebelun Lore

Nebelun is a restless, wandering god who is ever-filled with grandiose schemes, despite the fact that they usually never quite work out. He is a technologist, whose creations usually don't work out according to plan, but also a thief-trickster; his holy symbol stems from the famous occasion when he invented the first blimp by cutting off the tail of Semuanya, the lizardfolk god, skinning it, sewing it up, and inflating it with hot air. It actually worked fine... until he got it back to the ground, where it mysteriously exploded after a few minutes spent idling.

Fearless to the point of insanity, he is further characterized by his curiosity, his humor, his sense of fun and his love of playful tinkering. His priesthood are all inveterate tinkerers and experimentalists, forever trying to devise new ways of doing things.

Although all this sounds a lot like the Tinker Gnomes of Dragonlance, Nebelun has no official ties to that race, although he would make a logical patron for minoi carried off of Krynn, which Spelljammer makes canon has happened.

Publication History

Nebelun is a "3rd generation" gnomish god; he debuted in Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd edition in the splatbook "Monster Mythology", with a slight addendum to his place in Planescape in the splatbook "On Hallowed Ground". He has never appeared since then.

Nebelun vs. Gond

Nebelun's downfall - beyond being too caught up in the "comic relief inventor" stigma of the Krynnish Tinker Gnome - can be directly attributed to the Forgotten Realms and its own god of invention, Gond. In the splatbook Demihuman Deities, which covers the demihuman gods and goddesses of Faerun, it's explicitly stated that Nebelun is merely a Gnomish "interpretation" of Gond. How this is possible when Gond is a True Neutral solemn thinker and Nebelun is a Chaotic Good playful inventor is, of course, not explained. When Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition rolled around, due to its lack of focus on "demihuman deities" - most of those would only be brought back through the Forgotten Realms splatbook "Faiths & Pantheons", or in the Races of X books - Nebelun was promptly left behind, being mentioned only in his role as a mask for Gond. And as 3e was the most successful edition of D&D, at least until 5th... Nebelun was basically lost to time.

For added humiliation, Races of Stone would come up with Rill Cleverthrush, who is literally just Nebelun with his personality shifted to match Gond's.

Nebelun the Goddess

She's at least a little like this.

Amazingly, Nebelun actually returned in Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition in Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes. But there was a certain major change here... namely, Nebelun had gone from being a male god to a female goddess. In this, she was joined by Baervan Wildwanderer, Baravar Cloakshadow, and Gaerdal Ironhand, who likewise jumped the gender barrier and became goddesses.

Now, precisely why this happened, nobody knows. Maybe somebody at WotC finally said "you know, it's kind of stupid that dwarves have more goddesses than gnomes do, isn't it?" Maybe somebody freaked WotC out with an epic-length smutfic about homosexual orgies amongst the gnomish gods. But whatever the cause, the gnomes now have a couple of goddesses, and Nebelun is one of them.

Sadly, there's not a lot actually said about Nebelun in this book; the entirety of her lore is repeated below:

Nebelun, also known as the Meddler, is fearless, perhaps foolishly so. Every invention of Nebelun's starts with a wild idea, nothing goes entirely according to plan, and her greatest exploits often spring from mistakes. Who else would stroll in and steal Semuanya's tail as the lizardfolk god splashed in his favorite pool? Who else would use Thor's hammer to pound a nail and thus be inspired to invent the lightning rod? Garl never needs to persuade Nebelun to join an excursion, but he and the rest of the pantheon do have to focus her attention on the task at hand, so that her madcap inventiveness doesn't derail the effort.

All gnomes see Nebelun as the delightful spirit of invention and discovery, even those whose livelihoods have nothing to do with the construction of odd devices. Any accident that fortuitously results in a new discovery might be credited to Nebelun's benevolent meddling in the affairs of mortal gnomes.

Although nothing is said about Nebelun's appearance in 5e, it would be logical to presume that, just as her original counterpart looked like the stereotypical crazy old mad scientist, this new female Nebelun is what weeaboos would call a "Manic Pixie Dream Girl" - a cute tech-geek girl who is constantly bubbling with energy. Basically a female gnome artificer from the Warcraft world.