Grumbleholt – The Mountain That Glows From Within
“We live by his pulse. We die by his echo.”
Overview
At the northern edge of Thorgun lies Grumbleholt, the trolls’ high capital — a city carved into the face of a Heartroot mountain.
Its bridges of bone and hide hang between glowing cliffs, and its echoing halls hum with the slow rhythm of Uldrun’s living heartbeat beneath the stone.
The air always trembles here. The trolls call that vibration the god’s breath.
Population
90% Troll — mostly Pulsewright faithful
10% outsiders — Rational Coin observers, Tranquilist emissaries, and daring traders from Port Chimera
Cleftwright radicals exist only in hidden camps and forbidden mines; their symbols are scratched on tunnel walls where no light reaches.
Faith and Society
The Pulsewright Order governs openly, teaching that Uldrun — the sleeping titan — remains alive, choosing stillness as an act of love.
Their priests sing in resonance with the mountain’s tremor, tuning their breath to the pulse.
Every forge, home, and cradle beats faintly to the same rhythm.
The Cleftwright Covenant are hunted heretics who believe the same pulse is one of pain — that the titan’s stillness is torture, and that mercy lies in freeing him through excavation.
They hide below, carving scripture into the very ore that might consume them.
Architecture and Geography
Grumbleholt is an open, airy city of wood, hide, and bone, strung across the cliffs in terraces that glow from the Heartroot beneath.
The Upper Plateaus: home to artisans, hunters, and markets built on rope bridges and mammoth-bone pylons.
The Hollow: a vast amphitheater carved into the cliff’s core, where sermons and arguments alike shake the air.
The Deep Veins: forbidden tunnels where the mountain glows brightest — and whispers back.
Culture and Daily Life
Every troll labors by rhythm: quarrying ore, carving relics, shaping bone. Their work chants keep time with the faint thunder underfoot.
Hunters supply the city from the tundra above — bringing mammoth, frost elk, snow hare, and ice owls — while artisans craft bow-horns and armor from the remains.
Their bows, called Pulsebows, are composite weapons made from laminated horn and bone, strung with twisted sinew and mountain horsehair.
Each must be tuned to the mountain’s heartbeat; an off-rhythm string is considered a curse.
Death and the Resonant Dead
When a troll dies, their body is placed within a newly opened vein of Heartroot. Over days, the ore consumes the flesh and seals itself — returning the body to the god’s dream.
But sometimes the pulse takes hold before the flesh is gone.
These are the Resonant Dead — miners or priests whose hearts restart in time with the ore.
They wander the tunnels, glowing faintly through skin hardened to mineral glass, half-aware and endlessly repeating their final work songs.
The Pulsewrights call them holy echoes.
The Cleftwrights call them proof of agony.
Everyone else calls them a warning.
When a Resonant Dead hum begins echoing through the mines, the living clear the tunnels.
Trade and Relations
Heartroot is mined under sacred regulation. Its export is tightly restricted — not by law, but by fear.
Canava receives only trace shipments through Silverwake’s sanctioned convoys, where Sanctifiers bless each shard to “quiet the god.”
Embervault requests shipments for study but is routinely denied, forcing it to rely on black-market fragments through Port Chimera.
Port Chimera is the true smuggler’s artery: its divers harvest Heartroot dust from wreckage that fell into the sea during the Heartroot War. They call it sea-glow and sell it as contraband fuel.
Fenmarrow imports cured hide and tusk from Grumbleholt in exchange for salt and fish oil — their only peaceful trade partner.
Grumbleholt itself trades in bonecrafts, ore tools, echo-drums, and the rare shard instruments that hum in tune with the Heartroot’s vibration.
Politics
The Council of Hands leads Grumbleholt — a coalition of guild elders, miners, and priests — always chaired by a Pulsewright.
Every law must maintain rhythmic balance: no industry may expand faster than the god’s tremor can absorb.
Beneath this order, though, the Cleftwright Covenant gathers in secrecy, mapping the tremors as signs of awakening.
Their sabotage is sporadic but devastating: a broken vein, a collapsed tunnel, a quake too rhythmic to be natural.
Rumors whisper that some Resonant Dead still chant the Covenant’s hymns — and that the god listens.
Shamans of Uldrun
Between faiths stand the Shamans of Uldrun, neutral interpreters of tremor and sound.
They walk barefoot through the mines, reading the heartbeat beneath the floor, guiding workers away from danger.
Each carries a single shard of Heartroot polished clear — a stethoscope for the divine.
They say when the god truly stirs, every shard will hum at once.
Atmosphere
Grumbleholt glows like a living forge — red light through ice air, constant vibration beneath the skin.
The trolls are calm and deliberate, but their world shakes even when they stand still.
It is a city built on faith, sound, and contradiction.
“The god breathes beneath us,” say the Pulsewrights.
“He groans,” whisper the Cleftwrights.
“We listen,” answer the shamans.
Notable Figures
High Resonant Vorkuun — Pulsewright patriarch; keeps sermons perfectly timed to the tremor.
Wound-Prophet Skethra — fugitive Cleftwright who carves hymns into live Heartroot.
Threnn of the Bonewalks — hunter-chief who commands the plateau herds.
Marn the Listener — blind shaman, said to hear the god breathe through rock.
The Resonant Dead of Vein Nine — thirty miners who reawakened together; their humming can still be heard at dusk.
In One Sentence
Grumbleholt is the living pulse of a sleeping god — a city where every heartbeat is a prayer, every tremor a warning, and every death a chance to echo forever.