- And the flame attracts this sort of weird scraping, beneath the racks, and this small, gnome-like figure, this stocky little - smaller than a halfling, almost half your size, Gadai - covered in frost, blue features, crawls out from under the racks and looks at you suspiciously.
History[]
Little is known of Barnaby Tum's history prior to his encounter with Gadai, McKenzie and Plank. At some point, Solomon Brumby began to use brownies to work in his bakery overnight, using small payments of food in order to obtain their service. Barnaby was among these brownies, and he states that he has family in the town.
Barnaby grew gluttonous in his time working for Brumby, and would frequently eat large amounts. One night, he became locked in the cold storage room and was unable to move the door. Overcome by the need to defecate, he did so into a number of empty rectangular pans. However, nobody came to release him from the freezer, and he died from the cold. The next day, Brumby proceeded to sell the excrement and profit from it.
Characteristics[]
Barnaby Tums is a brownie, approximately half of Gadai's height but with a stocky, robust build. Like other brownies, he can be made to do work for humans through the appropriate fey deals or rituals.
Whether it is due to his time as a ghost or a leftover from his previous life, Barnaby Tums is a twisted and somewhat perverted figure, refusing to let Gadai, McKenzie and Plank leave the cold storage room, or to give them his name, until they have eaten trays of his excrement. While brownie excrement is clearly edible, he appears to take a sort of sadistic pleasure in forcing them to eat it.
However, his caution in giving his name to the group may also be partially to do with the power of true names among fey creatures.
Episodes[]
Episode 13: Spookaroo Special, The Haunted Bakery Part 2[]
A small, stocky skeleton is found among the skeletal remains in the cells of the bakery basement.
As Gadai, McKenzie and Plank enter the bakery's cold storage room, it slams shut behind them. Plank's use of flame attracts the attention of Barnaby Tums, who crawls out from beneath one of the storage racks, but refuses to give his name because he does not trust them. Their offering of their names does not assuage him, nor does their offer to make a humanoid sandwich, but when they say they will help his family in the town he recounts the story of his death.
He states that he will tell the group his given name if they eat the one hundred brownies in the cold storage room with them, though they are able to get his surname from the badge which he wears. The three of them eat the brownies, with Gadai managing the majority, and he states that he is most impressed with her before giving them the name Barnaby Tums and crawling out of sight.
Appearances[]
Quotes[]
- "I wanna trust you first, before I give my name."
- "One day, I come into the freezer here, and the door, the big heavy door, shuts behind me; I don't have the strength to open it up! I think that's alright, I'm a brownie, I'll survive, I'll just wait it out. But all that food is sitting in my belly and I soon realise - I've got to blast one out."
- "Sixty. You ate sixty brownies, you dirty brownie... bugger."
Trivia[]
- It is unclear how Solomon Brumby became aware of the knowledge of how to make deals for fey to work for him, or exactly what the rituals to invoke this involve. Barnaby refers to work being done in exchange for food, and in Scottish folklore brownies will work in exchange for food or drink, usually a saucer of milk.
- It is also unclear how Brumby overcame brownies' natural magical abilities, which often included spells such as Dimension Door that would have allowed Barnaby to escape. However, similar to his ability to control the magic of Cinnamon Shadowberry, it seems that Brumby was generally able to control or mitigate the magic of fey.
- Brownies appear from the first to fourth editions of D&D, but not in the current fifth edition.
- The name "Tums" is a play on the brand of antacid/heartburn relief medication available in a number of countries, and the word "tummy" which is slang found in multiple branches of English to mean stomach.