Gnomes
There comes a time in every person's life when the world becomes too much. Too big, too loud, too chaotic. The world presses in then, crushing the unfortunate person, grinding them to pulp and sawdust. Sometimes, awfully, the person survives the initial instant contact with the crushing world long enough to feel something, which is really terrible...
THIS DOESN'T HAPPEN AT ALL FOR GNOMES.
It's widely known that gnomes are incredibly happy creatures, sure, but they are also incredibly resilient creatures. People have hard, brittle spirits that crack and shatter before ever bending. A gnome's spirit is like some sort of wonderful paste: when pressed, it distorts and stretches and glorps all over the place, but it doesn't break, it can't! And like paste, anything that tries to crush it just gets the gnome's spirit all over itself. This is why people say gnomes spread a bit of that good old gnomish cheer wherever they go.
So gnomes are happy, and resilient, and they are also we must remember very diminutive beings. The average gnome is the size of an egg and weighs as much as a thimble. They can, in a pinch, extend their arms to reach things about 2 feet away. It's worth noting that gnomes are not great smiths (like the dwarves) but they are phenomenal tinkers!
Gnomes - being happy, resilient, and tiny - are among the cutest creatures in the world. Indeed, the affection they inspire in "the bigfolk" (pretty much anyone larger than a badger) is so profound that the feeling has earned its own name: agapasia, for which there is no known cure. Gnomes are aware of the reaction bigfolk have to them, which begins with a desire to keep the gnome always at hand, and inevitably ends with the bigfolk compulsively eating the gnome in a single hazy moment of bliss and terror. As such, gnomes keep their distance from bigfolk, preferring to stay hidden or do business through intermediaries (fairies, cooperative spiders, trained mice) whenever possible.
Despite the great danger they exist in, gnomish resilience of spirit keeps them almost always jolly. In the gnome is writ a simple refusal to succumb to darkness and ill fate...
Somehow, gnomes never find the world too big and scary to soldier on.
Or, to put it more plainly:
Gnome Statblock
HP = 1/2, Dodge = House Fly, Block = Mithril, Size = Faberge Egg, Disposition = Jolly (almost always) or pants-shittingly terrified (if discovered by bigfolk).