Grendel is the eighth season of Dice Funk and focuses on the Moistwatch, the recently-created town guard of Grendel, a small town and last stop for adventurers on the way up the mountain to a hole in the sky.
Starring:
- Laura Kate Dale as Neelith, squidling bard.
- Quinn Larios as the Genius of Grendel, goblin warlock.
- Mari as Slime, slime wizard.
- Michael "Skitch" Schiciano as Aze, hobgoblin druid.
- Theymer Sophie as Phillipa Heck, aarakocra druid and The Dream Team, sheep and myrmecoleon barbarian.
- Austin Yorski as the DM.
Season 8 Tropes
- Amazing Technicolor Wildlife: The alebrijes in Dal Quor are a variety of psychedelic colors and patterns.
- Baku: One turns out to be responsible for the nightmare tulpas in the second arc. He finds that nightmares taste better if they've killed the person who has them first.
- City Guards: Averted. The Moistwatch nominally serve the role of fantasy law enforcement but, being incredibly recent and in a ridiculously small town, are more built around protecting the town's inhabitants. They don't even have a system for punishing criminals initially.
- Death Mountain: Mount Grendel itself. Numerous adventurers meet their end on their way to or from the portal, so many that Grendel has a graveyard with a full-time gravedigger despite only having a little over ten permanent residents.
- Dream Land: Dal Quor, which the Moistwatch enters in search of the baku that has been manifesting their nightmares. It's populated by, most notably, alebrijes who befriend the Moistwatch and quori who start attempting to infiltrate Grendel after their visit.
- Geometric Magic: The Dogberry has a sigil at the entrance which magically cards people, only allowing entrance to those old enough to drink.
- It turns out to have been tampered with to also scan their nightmares and create tulpas from them. The party then modifies it to send them into Dal Quor.
- The sigil is later further modified to allow the Genius and Shoko to time travel. After Shoko gets back the sigil is destroyed.
- Our Alebrijes Are Different: Dal Quor is home to, among other things, alebrije. The party befriends one who escorts them to the baku they're searching for.
- He is later able to possess Drip the sharkhorse to warn Neelith of the Quori trying to infiltrate the town.
- Our Giants Are Bigger: Beyond the town, most of the mountain is populated by frost giants who grow to about twenty feet tall. They have a standing agreement with Grendel to allow the townspeople to stay so long as they aren't bothered.
- Our Goblins Are Different: Grendel was originally founded by goblins looking for a safe haven for themselves. As a result most of the goblins in town are from varying subcategories and have a wide range of personalities.
- Regular Caller: The governor can summon the Moistwatch with a set of bagpipes.
- Running Gag: Crossing the Tarn requires a skill check to avoid slipping on the ice. Queue Aze deliberately crossing it whenever possible.
- Every time Vary has something to say he takes out a folding chair and sits on it backwards. This starts escalating to moving to different chairs or sitting backwards on multiple chairs at once.
- Slippery Skid: Crossing the Tarn requires a skill check to avoid slipping and falling on the ice.
- One of Phillipa's first projects as governor is to built a bridge over it. Everyone else wonders why no one thought to do that earlier.
- Small Towns: Grendel only has about thirteen permanent residents at the start of the season. Most of their business comes from adventurers making their way up the mountain, but the season takes place in wintertime when the town is completely closed off from the outside world.
- Time Police: Shoko helping the Moistwatch explore the past combined with her previous temporal supply run draws the attention of an Inevitable.
- Time Travel: One of the Genius' goals is to learn how to manipulate space and time. They eventually succeed and send themself five years into the future.
- Shoko uses the same method to send herself five years into the past to look for specific parts, but on her return the sigil is destroyed.
- Tulpa: Thought-forms based on peoples' worst nightmares start physically manifesting in the material world in the second arc. It's the work of a baku who intends to let the nightmares grow in power and then eat them.
- The Moistwatch creates an egregore to fight back against the baku. It sticks around after the arc is complete.
- Ultimate Authority Mayor: Averted. Many of the trappings of the trope appear, but it the highest authority in Grendel is actually governor. The office just has no authority outside the town walls on account of Grendel being an independent township on a hostile mountainside.GG: How dare you! I am not the mayor! The mayor is a democratically elected position; we choose our leader by sortition and I have dictatorial authority!
- Youkai: The mountain is home to a number of youkai.
- The first arc features a yūrei that possesses food
- The second arc has a baku as the main villain.
- The fourth arc introduces a whole village various youkai led by a kitsune.
