10 "Good" Video Game Factions That Are Secretly Evil

7. The Ironhand Gnomes - Baldur's Gate 3

PRESTON
Larian Studios

As far as fantasy races go, Baldur's Gate 3's gnomes have to be the most chaotic, unhinged, and unstable people.

Each gnome you meet in the game is either an eccentric inventor or someone who's clearly going through something, but despite this, you wouldn't really accuse them of being capable of committing mass genocides. And yet, this is exactly what happens with the Ironhand gnomes.

The Ironhand clan is a family of gnomes that your party encounters throughout all three acts of the game, usually as victims of the Absolute, getting tortured, enslaved, and killed off by the cultists, which makes them somewhat sympathetic.

All of it changes, however, once you reach Act 3 of the game and the gnomes' leader, Wulbren, reveals that the gnomes want to take revenge on another oppressed gnome clan that drove them out of Baldur's Gate. To accomplish this goal, the Ironhands aim to detonate a devastating bomb that will kill hundreds of innocents.

If this doesn't already sound bad, the reason the Ironhands were exiled in the first place was because they used to be allied with Sarevok, the evil spawn of the god of murder, Bhaal.

They might be small and unlucky, but they're real wolves in gnome clothing.

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Video games enthusiast with a love for bizarre facts about his favorite titles. Really into old-school strategies and RPGs of all shapes and sizes.