While I know theres an ongoing thread about this in the Lore forums, I figured I'd bring attention to this mystery on here and include some other findings .
To start I'm going to quote user Nimzie from the Wow forums, who wrote up a great summary of findings so far.
https://us.battle.net/forums/en/wow/...2147136?page=1
TL;DR : Gnomes have a sizable population on Kul Tiras, but all of them from Boralus have vanished. There is an area called The Rusted Vault featuring completely new gnome architecture models and a new symbol for Kul Tiran gnomes, where an Alliance gnome is looking into the disappearances and has you do a few quests before telling you he'll send in the results to Ironforge and keep you updated. You currently cannot enter the vault.Greetings, fellow nerds and nerdettes. Recently, a new discovery was made in Tiragarde. A place called 'The Rusted Vault', a massive scrap-heap, guarded with laser turrets and mecha-puppers. Here are some pictures:
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https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachmen...4.01.48.61.png
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachmen...4.04.57.82.png
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachmen...4.04.38.18.png
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Now, while exploring this place, we come across a strange symbol. An anchor overlaid atop a cog. Here it is below:
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https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachmen...4.05.19.42.png
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Strange, yes? What happened here? Well, we best turn to a nearby questgiver and see if we can get some answers. Parin Tinklocket is in a cave nearby, we can find a destroyed mech on the way. He gives us two quests, pictured below:
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https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachmen...4.26.32.51.png
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachmen...4.26.36.63.png
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachmen...4.26.08.82.png
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All the gnomes have vanished from Boralus? Curious. Parin confirms these robots are of Gnomish craft, so the mystery of what happened here thickens. After doing some surveying with a flashy-floodlight, and dismantling some Hord-I mean, mecha-puppers, we turn the quests in for a couple of lines of "Thanks" dialogue, and then a speech bubble, pictured here:
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https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachmen...4.30.45.68.png
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A cliffhanger, sadly. Nothing I can see that continues this for now. So, we've got a mystery on our hands here in Tiragarde Sound - the Gnomish population has gone missing, and the only clues are to be found here in this semi-unfinished junk heap.
So let's hear some theories! Could this be a potential tie-in to an allied race? Mechagnomes? The Blingtron war? A mass genocide of the Kul Tiras Gnome population? Exciting stuff, to be sure.
Now, this isn't the only new thing relating to gnomes in BFA. Lets go look at one of the first Alpha builds.
http://www.wowhead.com/news=281085/b...ta-build-25902
This build featured names for zones that have not been featured yet in BFA, including Nazjatar (heavily implied to be the Azshara raid) and Plunder Isle. Relating to gnomes however are the following:
Now, we've seen neither of these islands yet in the BFA Island selection. Caverns also don't sound exactly like an Island at all, and sound more like what the Vault may lead to. What a "Junker Gnome" entails isn't exactly clear but it definitely SOUNDS like an allied race ( "___ Gnome" as opposed to "____gnome"). It's important to note that Mechagnomes don't have women... but they are closely related to Titan/Keeper things and may play a part as we move forward towards N'zoth.8.0 Islands - Junker Gnome Caverns - Prototype
NEW Mechagnome Island
Finally, a bunch of new Gnomish themed models was datamined recently (credit to Allifeur) and posted on the BFA General:
Keeping this all in mind, there seems to be a pretty heavy implication that Gnomes will play a part in a future BFA patch, or maybe even a future build of launch seeing as how Alliance side is now the focus of the art team and devs.
What do you think it all means?
EDIT: Shoutout to Marlamin for linking some new Gnome buildings!
EDIT 5/15:
Blizz has finally added the icon for the "Cyborg Prairie Dog": it has the name "Junker" in its filename and its colors look similar to the gnome props shown in Boralus so far. It is also the ONLY "cyborg" prairie dog with the others being full robot or full regular (or undead).