Pentuckle
A pipe-smoking hermit-crab man who has made the flooded lower levels of the Middle Tor mine his home since the fire ("water place now"). Common-speaking, unbothered and friendly — "I'm Pentuckle, not Knuckle. I ain't no kind of bandit" (distancing himself from the warband barbarian Knucklebones). He blows huge smoke-rings from a pipe as big as his head. Not part of the mining operation; just a squatter who likes it down there.
His companion is Walter Gilman, a claw-and-bubble gilman (half-lobster) with "business in the city" — Gilman speaks only in floating water-bubbles and answers questions by raising and clicking a claw, so no one but he knows what he is saying. Pentuckle is the one who washed in through the little underwater aqueduct and who gives the party the directions to the nearby city ("that way, up a little and left"), for all that he calls Gilman the "city slicker" and himself a man who only lives in the outskirts of places.
Session 50 (met)
- Greets the party (arriving disguised, deep in the burned mine) warmly and shares pork sandwiches off a stolen roast pig that Gilman hunted.
- Serves as the deep mine's guide, naming what lies along the track: a locked cage, the drowned Mage-Man's "office" (whose ghost can be asked about the fire — "the last thing the Mage-Man did"), the underwater city (reachable only by water — "all water's connected"), and a "scary hole" at the very end of the track that even he won't approach.
- Confirms the fire pre-dates his tenure and blames it, by rumour, on the Mage-Man. Intends to stay ("this my place now"); Walter Gilman will move on to the city.
Session 51 (still squatting)
- Still living in the flooded deep with Gilman. The party asks whether either has seen the missing cogwheel/drive pin from the sabotaged lift — a "big metal circle with teeth"; neither has ("if it starts coming for you, let us know and we'll run").
- The Mage-Man he blamed for the fire is now identified as the ghostly Dilbert the Mage, whose office and journal the party finally reaches.