Tongue gnomes

Tongue gnomes are made up creatures to haunt naughty children in their dreams for sticking out their tongues and blow raspberries in front of anyone.
Children are being told that if they ever stick their tongues out of mockery or any other reason that is not licking icecream or candy, the tongue gnomes will come out at night and look for naughty children with huge scissors. What do gnomes do with scissors you ask? Well, it‘s easy and terrifying at the same time: The tongue gnomes will find a way to get inside the children‘s bedrooms and when the kids are asleep in their beds, that‘s where they attack and SNIP! The tongue is gone!

Summary

Tongue gnomes are described as tiny dwarves with long white beards and hats made out of children tongues. They‘re very small, just about the size of three apples stacked up.
These creatures are intentionally described like this to appear scare to children, even if they are indeed small. How else could they break in unnoticed? And once anyone sees what the gnomes are wearing on their heads, they‘d be terrified and grossed out at the same time.
And if even that doesn‘t stop the kids from sticking out their tongues, then the thought of having their tongues cut off at night definitely would!

Spread

Just as the myth of the Only Unicorn, the tongue gnomes are well known all around Centurion. Most of the parents tell their children about those mythical creatures so they wouldn‘t misbehave, but some don‘t, like orcs, goblins and gnolls, because they don‘t care about such stories.

Cultural Reception

Frogs don‘t tell such stories to their children because they‘d fear that they won‘t dare sticking out their tongues to catch large insects to snack on, which is very common for frogs.
Drakonians, dragonians, nagas and xanktheels use their tongues frequently and sticking out their tongues is one way of how they communicate to one another. They don‘t tell their kids about the tongue gnomes either.