People
Mateo knows

Alfred Richardson  |   Friend   |   Dome Brewing Society
Human owner of Dog-Ears in Whetsone Dome and a magic enthusiast.  Struggles a bit with money.  A sad soul but a loyal friend.  Would never turn Mateo away.

Zigan Everbelt  |  Friend   |   Dome Brewing Society
Halfling tavern owner of Frothy Foam in Whetstone Dome on Brighton's Row, next door to the Brewing Society's shared workspace.  Has black market contacts, especially for rare reagents and arcanotech.  Highly charismatic.  Runs a tight ship at the tavern.  Probably a high functioning alcoholic.

Modwenna Tully  |  Master Alchemist and Mentor  |   Whetstone Dome Alchemist Guild
Dignified, terse, and excessively professional.  An older human woman standing about 6' tall.  Highly approves of Mateo and his drive.  She has recently assured Mateo that she would be offering him more opportunities to do work for the Guild itself, but for the time being to track down independent leads for his own self-directed slime research.  Her office at the Guild contains a lot of brass clockwork gadgets that help her work with precision.  Sends paper missives using a brass clockwork butterfly.

Hexorolonimus Estroninemon   |  Guild Master  |   Suragal Alchemist Guild, Whetstone Dome Alchemist Guild
Father of modern alchemy.  A man of renown and famed eccentricity.  Probably human or a mainly human mix that might include a bit of halfling or gnome.  Mateo has heard Hex lecture from "Currents and Liquids" his definitive text, in Whetstone Dome.  He once lived in Whetstone, but now presides over the Suragal Alchemists' Guild at the capital of Docens.  He offers remote advice and edicts to the Alchemists of Whetstone Dome, so the Dome Alchemists Guild has made an exception and has named Hex their Guildmaster in lieu of a more traditional leader.  Guild Administrative decisions are instead handled by a gathering of Alchemist Masters in the Dome.

Quixbix Kizzelnix   |  ex-wife of Berto Kizzelnix
A sweet and honest gnome that assumes her husband Berto was killed in action

Berta Kizzelnix   |  daughter of Berto Kizzelnix
Studies spycraft at the Republic Intelligence Agency.

Bertrand Hardwick  |  professional rival
An annoyance.  Wealthy teenage crystal elf from a family of horse and stable owners and member of the Whetstone Dome Alchemists Guild.  Hates Mateo with an unreasonable passion.


Selves
Berto Kizzelnix
Soldier, husband, father of Berta Kizzelnix
Niles Jinxlittle
Con artist, thief, father of several unknown children
Hutto Grimripple
Enchanter, jeweler, founder of Grim’s Gems, a once popular jewelry and magic item shop in Docens, twice divorced, no children
Jay Glitterstep
Bar owner, cage fighter, widower, father of three.

Places
Mateo knows

Whetstone Dome  |  An oasis of urban civilization in a wild province
Mateo's current residence and home of the Dome Brewing Society and Dome Alchemist Guild.  Mateo knows the city well, and can advise where to acquire all sorts of goods and services.  He has a modest residence provided by the Alchemists Guild within walking distance of their Guildhall.
While it barely meets the description of a city, with under 25,000 residents, compared to the rest of Whetstone, it is a haven of culture and infrastructure. 

Bell Fields  |  Birthplace
A gnomish farming village in The Mosslands.   A completely gnomish habitation of about 300 households. The village struggled because of the inconsistent farming yields. The farming duties changed hands every few years, and each gnome that tried their hand at the profession utilized a new tactic, be it TinkerTech, magic enhancement, or some other unproven technology. The village survived by exporting the menagerie of trade goods created by its inventive citizens such as spicy peppers and waterproof cloth, however traditional farm products never had much success.

Whetstone Bridge  |  Travel Hub
People travel from all over to Whetstone Bridge to sell their wares and meet people.  The town is not permanent resident to many, but travelers are abundant.  You have sometimes found people selling rare, unusual reagents on the Bridge, and even impressive Gnomish food.  On the first week of each season a faire is held there, which means a wider variety of people and goods.  You've heard that the Plum Root Tavern is a place where all are welcome, even the most vile of mercenaries.  If you had to guess, there is probably a magical reason why the town is so peaceful and carefree.

Green Canopy  |   vacation spot
The isolated town known as Green Canopy is perhaps the most beautiful in Whetstone.  The area is verdant, humid and lush, surrounded completely by an enchanted jungle called Maidenhair.  Wealthy interests and individuals have built up the infrastructure of the Canopy and made it a comfortable place to visit and vacation.  The lack of easily navigable roads make it difficult to travel to on land, but there is a healthy druid circle less than three miles away, and a teleportation dome has been built in the town square.  Mateo almost certainly has visited at some point in his lives.

Docens  |  Capital of Suragal, former home
TBD

Things & Factions
Mateo knows

Orcs |  an endangered, inscrutable race
Some fifty years ago, the Empire crushed the number of tribes of orcs in Suragal to almost nothing in the "Orc Push".  This was a bit before Berto's time in the military, but a lot of the soldiers Berto knew had been veterans who fought orcs and were obviously biased against them.  Historically, orcs have been depicted as nothing but unfeeling brutal animalistic raiders of peaceful settlers.  Logically, orcs should be a varied race capable of diplomacy and negotiation, but the Suragal Empire opted for genocide on all the tribes.  Also logically, in the Push, one can imagine that many orcs were defending themselves and their homes, even if some, or even most, of the tribes were aggressive and violent.  In the fifty years since the Push, especially during the War of Shields, the remaining orcish peoples left have been largely a nonpresence in Suragal, but are probably still a concern in the Nations of Aurelia.  Mateo has heard that a few orcish tribal villages still exist on the east coast of Suragal. 

Elves | mostly human
People have a lot of opinions about elves and the different subraces of elves - the woodland Sylvan elves, the erudite Crystal elves, the survivalist Sand elves, and many more, but as a Mosslands native, you know deep down they're all wrong.  What people don't typically know is that elves all descended from the Fen elves, the most isolationist and pure tribe of elves who are so magical they're scarcely corporeal.  All the other subraces emerged when a few Fen got brave and set out from the swamps thousands of years ago and eventually started breeding with humans.  The characteristics of today's elven subraces are much more a reflection of their different human ancestors than their Fen kin.  Other than their lifespan and sleep habits, there's very little difference between humans and elves, and it seems like most elves handle their long lifespans by being content with being boring.

Halflings  |  nothing special
Short humans, pretty much.  A bit more wiry and entertaining.  Halflings are more likely than humans to be dabblers with a hundred interests; you don't find them focusing on practicing pure magic or pure craftmanship or pure politics or pure soldiering.  There are very talented halfling alchemists, but they're not among highest ranking alchemists in the Guild.  That requires too much focus and specialization for them.  If you pay attention, halflings tend to be suspicious of gnomes, but not the other way around.  In Mateo's experience, halflings he's known have been true to their word, and only shifty when being shifty makes sense.  There are probably as many halflings in Whetstone as humans.  If given the choice of doing business dealings with any race, it would probably be a halfling.

Dwarves |  an extinct race
In ancient history, before the Year Zero, the Dwarves residing within the mountains of the world had periodic tribal and military conflicts with elves of all types for reasons beyond count or reliable record.  Though peace and cooperation eventually prevailed between the races, simmering tensions always existed, and Dwarves began to occasionally trade and communicate with the world above, though remained mainly isolationist.    
With the proliferation of humans by the 2870s, elves and humans had tenuously joined forces in a power struggle for land in the world north of Suragal.  There was a social, religious, and political movement that came into power called "Clarity" in that time that was highly xenophobic.  History says the beast-men races of all types endured many injustices, but perhaps the most unfortunate, unintentional victims of this were the Dwarves.  While Dwarves were not as directly persecuted as Beast-Men, but shunned and ignored, and cut off.  The Dwarves faced an "Evil from the North Side of the Mountains" that somehow drew them in and wiped them out utterly.  The other humanoid races of the world ignored their plight, and most races of the world consider this to be modern civilization's greatest failure.  Within a generation, the Clarity movement was no more.  And while one can understand how Dwarves might be defeated militarily by a mystery force, the only way to explain their complete extinction would involve the darkest of magics.  There are a thousand thousand tales of why the Dwarves disappeared, and centuries later, the truth is still unclear.


Teleportation |  Magic and arcanotech options
Teleportation exists in the world, but it is rare and expensive in different ways.  Pure magic options for long-distance travel use reagents from extinct creatures that are almost unobtainable, and most magic users never learn how to cast teleport spells because they would so rarely have the opportunity.  Some of the reagents' quantity requirements can be mitigated by structures such as teleportation domes, and dedicated teleportation mages who cast hours-long rituals to change, for instance, the requirements from a full Silph tooth to a tiny chip of a tooth.  The Porters' Guild is dedicated to these mages who often have city-based day jobs working at teleportation domes teleporting people and goods for a significant fee.  In addition, things that are teleported have to stay within a teleportation dome for the full duration of the ritual. 
Druidic Circles are a more swift, inexpensive option, but are only found in unblemished enchanted forests and worst of all you have to deal with Druids.
Arcane technology has also been developed to find a more swift, convenient form of teleportation for individuals, but the magic energy cost is currently kind of absurd. the arcane equivalent of five hundred to a thousand first-level spells, to open a teleportation door for long enough for one or two people to walk through.

Druids |  Nature mages
​​Druids draw their magic from animism, a harnessing of natural elements in a way that is a kind of abstraction of arcane forces.  On one hand, these forces in the right hands and with the right enchanted focus (such as an enchanted forest) these effects can be powerful beyond imagination.  On the other hand, nature is capricious and wild, and the elements often have their own abstract desires and plans that do not care about the mortals trying to wield them.   Mortal minds can easily become untethered from reality when using nature magic, and those harnessing the same forces tend to become untethered in much the same way.  Covens of witches have the same problem.  Druids tend to not be reasonable nor intelligent, but are convinced of a greater wisdom that the rest of civilization is not privy to, which makes them dangerous.   Druids tend to control animals and elemental magic.  91.4% of druids are beast-men or tieflings, which in this world, are distant ancestors of dragons, demons or beastly aberrations.