Paggebedalon

Hakan has no king or emperor. The Gnomes instead are governed by the Paggebedalon, a large, often unruly representative parliament made up of a host of inchoate and conflicting interests. While the exact number changes, it frequently is made up of several hundred representatives. Frequently criticized as slow to act except against the most dire of threats, it seeks to be as inclusive as possible, and so representatives are not apportioned only through geography, as in Odessa, but also according to a host of other associations, such as guilds, magical and martial organizations, Wild Gnomes (both the remnants still found among the Scar as well as the recently resettled Gnomes in the islands), trade caravans or other temporary or permanent expatriates. Each of the groups are guaranteed seats through a formulae that changes every few years and most seats are contested through elections though some seats have different rules or methods of selection.

The leader of the political coalition currently in power formerly takes as their only name "the Speaker for the Gnomes". While a rare few have had 100 years or more in office, many more have served for only a few years as power shifted between competing groups. The Speaker of the Gnomes has direct control or power to appoint leadership in matters of diplomacy, military, and most state functions. Lower-level members of those groups are almost always retained between Speaker changes though.

Those who take it seriously tend to take it very seriously and political machinations between some groups are often said to include complex espionage and extreme ratfucking with some grudges between groups date back to the Gnomish Vassalage and the founding of Hakan. In Gnomish reckoning the violent rifts that erupted during the Gnomish Civil War are still very recent and only slightly healed. Several currently-serving representatives were active participants in that conflict.

"Anyone who says a Gnome will never split the lip of another Gnome has never seen the Paggebedalon in action!" -Anonymous Gnome.