Gnarl “King”
Early Life
King was the most mature of the four Gnarl brothers.
The original leader of the group.
Care free, leads with joy and a sense of what his skewed feelings of right and wrong.
Self proclaimed name, Gnarl was his original name. The brothers adopted the moniker of gnarl partly in honor of their brother and partly in hopes of running into someone who had heard of the unusual name... and not king
Joined the Chickadees first when their father fell ill.
Their mother was the courier for Romulan.
She was one of many of his followers that bore his cursed artifacts to do the job better but risked the dangerous magic.
Their mother wore the Locket of the Lucidity that allowed her to quickly travel between tether points along Romulan’s business routes. This moved messages faster than anyone else and gave him a leg up over his competition.
When she rested, Romulan would have a Mentalist nearby to whisper in her ear and guide her sleeping mind. She unknowingly was taking the form of a Night Terror, a creature from the Weave. The Mentalist was aiming the creature to travel between tether points and pull the enemies of Romulan into the Weave, contorting them into something terrifying and twisted, creating the Dream Interlopers that would be dubbed the Bagmen in Caluan ghost stories.
Slowly the Locket was draining the life force of their mother so she was either sleeping or working. She was so worn out that she escaped Romulan’s stronghold and fled to Silvermound. Here she joined the Chickadees and met a goblin who she would begin a relationship with in Goblintown.
She used the locket to travel around town but not nearly as much as she was when she worked for Romulan. Her liveliness returned which was helpful for her most arduous next task, the birth of her quadruplets.
The young boys wreaked havoc on Goblintown and the larger city of Silvermound. They learned how to move around from their father and began to show signs of tether jumping, a skill their mother did not know would pass on.
Their father was behind on rent to his landlord when the boys were young. He unfortunately ended up on the wrong side of a fall because he couldn’t pay up. The family was still together but their father was crippled and couldn’t run mail. King took it upon himself to become a Chickadee. At the time the faction only accepted King and he was paid per delivery. The brothers all pretended to be one courier, going by the moniker name of Gnarl to deliver as much as possible, while also using their tether jumps to streamline the job.
They paid off all the debts their father owed and things seemed to be going in the right direction. They saved up enough to buy their mom a place in one of the safer districts. This was until one day when goons broke into their home and destroyed the place. These goons were trackers sent by Romulan. They had been searching for their mother and the locket she took. They took her away and ransacked the money. The boys were left heartbroken and no one would speak out of fear. All they knew was Romulan ordered the attack but they couldn’t find out more about the mysterious businessman.
Their father died soon after, as the money took time to build back up and the doctor was fearful of the wrath of the enemy the Gnarl brother's had encountered. After watching their father die while rich people lived in luxury one crater away, the boys began to do what they could to even the odds for the poor and downtrodden.
The Gnarled Hand Bandit began stealing from the wealthy to disperse to the poor. They used their work as an alibi as Gnarl was seen as one goblin.
One day when they were resting, a creature of gangly arms and fouls spikes crept out of their bag of holding, he pulled King into it and the other three brothers have been trying to find the Bagman ever since.
The Weave
King was pulled into a eerie cave within the Weave where a dark force transformed the kidnapped mortals into Dream Interlopers, what the folklore has come to call the Bagmen.
King, just like others, had his body transformed and the feeling he was entombed in the body of a malevolent creature. His sense of self diminished as he was sent to hunt more victims within the mortal plane, travelling through tether points just like he did before. It became clear that his previous experience in jumping made him stand out. He captured enough people under the guidance of a mental voice that the Lucidity took notice in this one Dream interloper. The voice guiding the entity was that of the Mentalist, a sister of the Visus Sori.
The Lucidity lives in the desolate caves of the Weave at the base of the Sleeping Giant mountain, an ancient force clinging to life and pulling strings in Twilight's realm, trying to consume dreams and nightmares while expanding its army. As repayment for being a great Bagman, the Lucidity thought it wise to give King back some of his old form, not his full will but enough that he could complete jobs more nuanced in the mortal plane.
As King took on his goblin form he saw the form the Lucidity had taken in the Weave. It was that of his mother, unbeknownst to her, she was falling asleep and becoming the Lucidity, the original bagman and interloper. Her last waking thought was of her boys and that caused her sleeping mind to hunt them, pulling King into the nightmare she was enduring. That's why he was targeted by a Bagman creature.
In that moment, the newly returned body of King, the force of the Lucidity and the mind of Gnarl’s mother realized he was the eldest son if the weakened goblin mother that the Lucidity had taken hold of. King took the opportunity to run from the Sleeping Giant mountain and headed for Dawnlight.
He knew the Lucidity was an ancient being of the Weave and that the connection to his mother’s comatose mind was the locket. Since he could not find a way to leave the Weave, even with his tether jumps, he decided he needed to shut off all communications leaving the Weave to give his mother a chance to wake up.
King entered into the Prismatic city and stole the Orbicus of Sleep. The connection beacon to Twilight and her followers but also the way in which messages left the realm. The locket was still around the neck of his mother but the connection to the Lucidty was severed.
King escaped in the cart of a Milkthistle forager and hid the Orbicus in the Forest of Hallucinations. Little did he know that freeing his mother also ended the hold that Romulan’s mentalist had over the entity. The Lucidity was now free to move his terrors as he pleased. All Sleeping Self projections were now locked here, and that includes followers of Twilight who entered the trance like deep sleep, now their bodies die as they sleep for too long.
The Lucidity quickly began massing all creatures of the Weave to follow his commands. His dream interlopers that were once the enemies of Romulan taken away, are amassing at the base of the Sleeping Giant.
King was unable to escape the mass migration of reveries, Delusionairies and night terrors. The Lucidity knew the goblin was the cause of his connection being severed. The Orbicus being taken meant that the amount of Interlopers in the Weave were all he could muster as he cannot pull in more victims with the master connection point to the mortal realm.
King was captured but did not have the Orb on his person. The Lucidity would command him to reveal it once he transformed this goblin back into a grotesque Bagman again. As his body twisted back inside the moist leathery cocoon of the creatures, one last wrinkle met the ancient force's plan. Since the Lucidity was using Gnarl’s mother’s mind as a base, her connection to her sons was pushed ahead of any instruction to find the Orb. King tether jumped immediately to a point in void Dream he sensed his brothers. Ever since the orb was taken, Gnarl was having issues teleporting to bags of holding, as he had to traverse into pockets of the Weave to do it. He became stuck in the nearby nightmares of his allies. Unbeknownst to him, he was causing them as he tried to escape the realm of dreams. King was able to latch on to the jumps and pursued his brother because of his mothers strength of will, even though she was comatose and asleep in the waking realm.
Gnarl ran for days from the bagman, King resembled the creature that took him, not knowing that was a thing sent by their own mother because she wanted to find her sons. Even though the three brothers were currently in the form of one dwarf, King could sense them and continued his chase through the dream pockets of the Shatterbrand.
Finally Gnarl was able to escape by jumping to the tether point that was his shell and he made it back to reality with his team. He was tired and disheveled, more than usual.
King could not leave the shell as it was not the tether point he was accustomed to. Inside this shell hut he saw things that reminded him of his kin, not able to think in this form but still driven by his mother’s last feeling that was able to override the request of the Lucidity to reveal the orb.
King hid in the hut until his brothers returned but the first in there was a member of the Shatterbrand named Triss. A fight ensued and the Dream interlopers survival instinct kicked in. It was able to tear open a convergence point to return to the Weave, instead of this strange pocket of dream space.
In the last moment before the portal closed, King was able to overcome the interloper and reached his hand from the maw of the terror. Gnarl grabbed on as the Shatterbrand fell into the Weave, something not done intentionally by mortals in over 20 years. Astal projection has been an option but Waking selves from Galfin have not been able to enter the Weave.
King can sense his body but his hand is clinging to the shoulder of Gnarl as his team try and find a way out of this strange realm.
His body is inside an interloper. His mother’s connection to the Lucidity is broken but she is still in the grasps of the Mentalist of the Visus Sori. The Lucidity now has its free will although it still takes the form of the mother as that is what its locket is attached. Twilight cannot be reached as her followers muster their forces or await salvation if they are in the spiritual forms. The Orbicus was hidden and we do not know if the interloper that was King was killed fully or if the information he sought now has an army marching to retrieve it,
Inside the Weave
Yulianna reveals that King, the missing Gnarl brother, was last seen with a group of Milkthistle Foragers, fleeing with an ancient artifact known as the Orbicus of Sleep.
King, eldest of the four siblings born to a mother cursed by the Lucidity, is a being of quiet intensity. His presence is as commanding as his name suggests, though he carries the title more like a burden than a crown. His sharp green eyes seem to pierce the veil between worlds, a reflection of his deep connection to the Weave. King’s movements are deliberate, his words measured, and his demeanour often distant, as though he exists in two realms at once.
Born with an innate understanding of the dream-realm, King was the first to venture fully into the Weave, drawn by an unspoken yearning inherited from his mother. He has spent years wandering its surreal landscapes, learning to navigate its dangers. It was in the Weave that King first encountered the Lucidity’s minions without knowing they were bound to the locket around his mother's neck.
Relationships
Current Location
Species
Conditions
Ethnicity
Spouses
Siblings
Gnarl "Rum"
(Quadruplet Brother)
Gnarl "Tugger"
(Quadruplet Brother)
Gnarl "Tum"
(Quadruplet Brother)
Children
Aligned Organization
Other Affiliations