Grubgrindle: Kingdom of the Wyrde

The Satyrs – The Royal Hunters
Amongst the hunched and clattering court, the Satyrs are strange in their own right—lithe, shaggy-legged, antlered, and uncannily graceful. Their names are Bramhook and Skirl, twins who speak in a private whistling tongue and always smell of pine and blood.

🏹 Role & Mystique:
Royal Hunters by title, they are among the very few who leave Grubgrindle to stalk through the Deep Dark Forest above.

They return with antlers carved with runes, the heads of strange beasts, and sometimes entire trees, humming with captive spirits.

Their breath fogs silver, and they refuse to explain what’s chasing them—only that they’ve been hunting it back.

Their weapons are grown, not forged: bows of living bonevine and spears tipped with thorn-glass.

No one ever hears them arrive or leave.

They answer only to the Hectoring King and occasionally Doctor Thorne, who has a fascination with their “resistance to surgical realities.”

A Satyr Returns Without His Shadow: “The Silence Behind Bramhook”
Three weeks ago, Bramhook of the twin Satyrs returned from the Deep Dark Forest. Alone. Silent. And without his shadow.

Observations:
His hooves no longer click on stone—they squelch.

He responds to questions only with a faint, flute-like whistle, almost… relieved.

His antlers are smoother, as if worn down by thought.

During court, a mirror behind him shattered without being touched.

Skirl, his brother, has not spoken since Bramhook returned.

Theories:
He bartered his shadow to something ancient in the forest—a thing that can’t speak but desperately wants to be seen.

His shadow ran away, having seen what he did in the woods.

The Elf has suggested, too casually, that “he may not be Bramhook anymore. Not precisely.”

Now, when Bramhook walks near the Sunken Battlefield, the monoliths groan.

In which we meet some of the characters to be found in and around the palace, usually milling about in the court unless put to work by the whims of the King

Doctor Thorne, the Royal Physician

Towering and wrong, Doctor Thorne appears at first glance to be a man—until you realize every limb is a little too long, his head too oblong, and his hunched frame about 23% too large to belong to any normal creature.

He wears a pristine grey-white coat, but it never gets dirty, and his plague doctor mask is fused to his face. It hisses faintly as he breathes.

Disturbing Details:
His bag is full of surgical leeches that whisper in Latin.

His handwriting appears before his quill touches the parchment.

He diagnoses patients with surreal ailments like “Chrono-Slippage” or “Inverted Ego Collapse.”

Speaks in a calm, echoing baritone that bypasses the ears and is heard directly inside the skull.

Keeps a collection of “future organs”—things the body doesn’t yet have but soon will.

He performs surgeries in The Room of Clean Screams, where the walls are padded with memories of those he’s treated. Some say he can cure anything—at the cost of something else.

The Seat of Absence

A black, twisting chair that folds inward on itself and hums.

No one remembers who used to sit there.

The chair occasionally votes, always in contradiction to the King’s wishes.

Why Everyone is Scared of the Mayor of Drumdark?

Mayor Thrumm looks like a pile of wet rope in a waistcoat, and smiles like someone remembering a mercy they regret granting.

He rarely speaks, but when he does, the room dims, and frogs fall silent.

He never removes his gloves, and everyone suspects his hands aren’t hands at all, but rather some kind of clever parasites.

The Hectoring King treats him like a visiting warlord, never raising his voice in his presence.

Once, during a feast, Doctor Thorne flinched when Thrumm entered. This was enough to cause panic for three days.

If you are at the court he is always there, if you find yourself on some errands in Drumdark, he is always there too.

Rumors:

Some say Thrumm is older than the cave itself.

Others claim he governs not just Drumdark, but everything beneath it, including the things that don’t yet exist.

The steps leading to Drumdark pre-date the village—but they say Thrumm built them, backward in time.

Once a goblin noble mocked the Mayor during court. The next morning, his house had no door and could no longer be entered. He was never seen again

🐐

Lord Gristlehand, the Royal Butcher.

As commonly described: swine-headed, sorrowful, and spiritually splattered.

Holds the title of “Minister of Reconciliation,” which mostly means cutting feuding nobles in half.

Has been known to whisper strange lullabies to the meat during council sessions.

The Buzzing Viscount
(Also known as: His Humbleness, the Honied Mind, The Hum)

Appearance:

A tall, bear like being in moth-eaten fur. Where a head should be, there is a living beehive, buzzing with golden-winged, whisper-sized bees.

His ‘robes’ are stiff with wax, and his gloves are sticky with perpetual sweetness.

Sometimes, bees form eyes on the hive to regard you. Sometimes they blink.

Behavior:

Does not speak—not in words. He communicates through the arrangement and dance of his bees, a complex language of vibration and scent. Court interpreters must stand very, very still to translate it.

When he becomes agitated, the bees buzz in minor chords, and anyone near him reports vivid memories of childhood disappointments.

Sometimes produces royal jelly which the court alchemists harvest for rituals and spells.

Role in Court:

Keeper of Whispered Petitions—pleas too dangerous or delicate to be spoken aloud.

Has influence in affairs of memory, inheritance, and betrayal.

Known to be older than the King, or at least older than the King’s name.

Rumors:

It is said the hive on his shoulders once belonged to a forgotten queen, and the bees still mourn her.

His body is hollow. Or full of honey. Or filled with tiny dancers who dream for him.

Peculiar Nobles & Court Members

Sir Lintfeather the Undone – A goblin noble of great status who wears only clothing made of pocket lint and forgotten socks. He is perpetually unraveling, but reconstitutes nightly with the help of his tailor, Madame Spider-Skein.

Lady Phlegmarina the Moist – A swampy, toadlike noblewoman who secretes a variety of magical slimes. She is revered for her “Slick of Diplomacy” and “Mucus of Memory.” Courtship with her is considered both a political alliance and a biohazard.

The Oracle of Knuckle-Bones – A many-eyed worm-beast that lives in a goblet and predicts the future by belching up small bones which it interprets in rhyming riddles. The bones are often stolen, so the Oracle is usually in a terrible mood.

The Grand Sniffer, Sir Nostrildamus – A vast-nosed sage whose power lies in his ability to “smell truths.” He wanders the court, sniffing things deeply and then mumbling riddles like “A lie! A lie with hints of beetroot and betrayal!”

Ambassador Splitch – A representative of the Mole-Centipede Confederacy. He has numerous legs and speaks only through interpretive dance and spittle. His visits are infrequent but always result in mild earthquakes.

Deep in the fungal dim of the Spiral Hollow, amongst the pulsing cap-beds and psychic dew pools, a body was found: Dap Scumblethwick, a mid-tier court mushroom-sommelier with a penchant for whisperleaf gin and scandalous toadmilk poetry.

He was discovered inside a giant puffcap, sliced open from below, spores clotted with black ichor and bits of golden thread.

Found his mouth: a wax-sealed note reading, “The Sporacle forgets nothing.”

Next to the body: a Sporeknife, an illegal weapon known to cause hallucinations of one’s own murder before it happens.

The Suspects:

Lady Phlegmarina, who was last seen arguing with Dap over the non-consensual fermentation of her private thoughts.

Squire Mibbone, a young guard recently demoted to Spore Vat cleaning after losing a game of “Goblin Bones” to the Bramble Duke.

A fungus that calls itself “Grunth the Witness”, which has grown eyes but refuses to speak unless sung to in the dialect of rot.

The Twist:

The murder appears to have occurred three days in the future. Doctor Thorne confirmed this after dissecting Dap’s “time-rot lobe” and discovering residual chronotoxin—a substance only found in Drumdarkian eel minds.

Mayor Thrumm has been invited to court for questioning. The palace trembles in anticipation….

The Hectoring King, so named for his love of shouting unsolicited advice and insults, sits on a throne made entirely of screaming toads (yes I am going to build that), which periodically croak out warnings, complaints, or unsolicited gossip.

The king wears no crown but sports golden horns and rules the kingdom with a copper fist. 

He keeps the other courtiers on their toes and the mood in court chaotic.

It is against the law to have a bigger face than the king. Also any images of the man in the moon are banned.

The Court is the political, spiritual, and absurd heart of the kingdom. Filled with nobles, sages, beastlings, and unknowable creatures, it balances precariously between function and farce.

• The Hectoring King: Loud, cunning, impossible to please, and maybe more than one goblin stitched together.

• The Buzzing Viscount: A being with a living beehive for a head who communicates through scent and wingbeat.

• The Walking Shrines: Person-sized beings who carry small sacred structures on their backs; cryptic, ceremonial, possibly possessed.

• The Satyrs: Royal hunters who range into the surface forest, half-wild and deeply unnerving.

• The Elf: A rare presence; radiant, cursed, and under constant watch.

• The Mayor of Drumdark: A terrifyingly polite creature who smiles like he’s heard your death whispered in advance.

And interpreting them all are the Court Interpreters—ink-stained, spore-sickened scribes who translate buzzes, gestures, sighs, and architectural groans into law.

“Where the torchlight stutters, the mushrooms whisper, and the court never sleeps.”

Hidden deep beneath the darkest part of the deepest forest lies Grubgrindle, a vast subterranean kingdom of goblins and stranger things. Carved through ancient stone, fungus-veined caverns, and bottomless lakes, it is ruled with exhausting passion and theatrical menace by the Hectoring King, whose moods are legend and whose court is a theatre of the weird.

🏰 The Court of the Hectoring King

The Court is the political, spiritual, and absurd heart of the kingdom. Filled with nobles, sages, beastlings, and unknowable creatures, it balances precariously between function and farce.

• The Hectoring King: Loud, cunning, impossible to please, and maybe more than one goblin stitched together.
• The Buzzing Viscount: A being with a living beehive for a head who communicates through scent and wingbeat.
• The Walking Shrines: Person-sized beings who carry small sacred structures on their backs; cryptic, ceremonial, possibly possessed.
• The Satyrs: Royal hunters who range into the surface forest, half-wild and deeply unnerving.
• The Elf: A rare presence; radiant, cursed, and under constant watch.
• The Mayor of Drumdark: A terrifyingly polite creature who smiles like he’s heard your death whispered in advance.

And interpreting them all are the Court Interpreters—ink-stained, spore-sickened scribes who translate buzzes, gestures, sighs, and architectural groans into law.

🛖 Notable Locations

• The Mushroom Farms: Cultivated by goblins and managed in chaotic partnership with scattered Myconids. Some mushrooms are edible. Some remember you.
• The Gullet Market / Market in the Beast’s Bones: Built inside the remains of a long-dead monster. Filled with strange vendors selling moss wine, memory worms, bone whistles, and regret-infused honey.
• The Sighing Swamp: Emits gasps and mournful sounds; home to forgotten spirits and bog-brewed secrets.
• The Steps to Hoonozewhere: A crumbling stone staircase that descends beyond sight. No one knows what’s at the bottom. Some things come up.
• The Sunken Battlefield: Littered with ancient weapons and half-buried monolithic stones that hum with lost wars.
• The Darksea: A subterranean ocean of unknowable depth. Fished by desperate goblins.
• Drumdark: A fishing village on stone columns, shrouded in fog and rum-soaked mystery. The locals whisper in old tongues and drink to forget the things that watch from below.

🧬 Cultures and Beings

• The Goblins: Crafty, nervous, superstitious, and industrious. Speak Goblish and a little Drumdarkish. Fear the Rot. Love fermented things.
• The Myconids: Scattered, possibly mad, and incapable of consistent behavior. Speak in sporadic spore-puffs and alien thought-shapes.
• The Rot: A sacred and terrifying force of transformation. It despises silk and blesses the deserving with mossy rebirth.
• The Moss: Ancient, semi-sentient, used in ceremonies. The Moss Archivist tends to it in damp reverence.

🐶 Palace Defenses

• The Palace Guard: Cloth-wrapped, eyeless goblins reminiscent of the “Cloth Goblins” miniatures. They speak in clicks and coughs.
• Captain Drindle: The loyal (and terrifying) commander of the guard. Possibly undead. Definitely in love with his sword.
• Rot-Hounds: Squig-like beasts covered in thick fur, used for patrols and sniffing out liars.

🍄 Food & Drink

• Mushroom beers, moss wines, and fermented thornfruit liquors are popular.
• In Drumdark, Barnacle Rum can polish metal and scrub “thought barnacles” from your brain.
• The Melancholy Monks of the Mossflask curate drinks and poetry that can make boats cry and lanterns dim in sympathy.

🧪 Strange Goods & Magic

At the markets, one might find:

• Scab-coins that melt in daylight.
• Kiss-vials—bottled breath from lovers long dead.
• Librarian’s Ink—only visible in candlelight and shame.
• Potions brewed from forgotten names or distilled hallucinations.