"Legends speak of an old king beneath the hill – a horned drummer who heard the voices of the stars and spoke in their incandescent tongues. It's said that on lonely nights one can still hear the slow beat of his drum sound like the pulses of a great heart."[1]
The Drummer, also known as the Saint in the Drum and the Drummer-in-the-Depths, is an eight-legged and insect-mandibled[2]Grand Devil who resides in Parabola under the church at Burrow-Infra-Mump (which was his domain before Burrow’s fall).[3] He has been sealed there, tantalizingly close to his drum, but not close enough to play it.[4] Members of the Brazen Brigade, the palace guard from the days when the Grand Devils still reigned, still make the pilgrimage to his resting place regularly to preserve the holy site.[5]
As of 1905 in the Sunless Skies timeline, the Drummer dwells in a cavern beneath the temple of Caduceus.[6] He can finally play his drum here, and none can resist the temptation to dance.[7]
↑Commune, Fallen London"Before Burrow fell, the Drummer had its holdfast here: a province of the white city. All this was the Drummer's dominion and all within marched to his tempo. Then came a new ideology and with it the seeds of revolution."
↑Commune, Fallen London"Before Burrow fell [...] All this was the Drummer's dominion and all within marched to his tempo. Then came a new ideology and with it the seeds of revolution. The devils knew a land behind the glass: his own servants committed treason and sealed him away there. His chief joy: his instrument, the source of his strength, lay in sight but out of reach forevermore."
↑Permit the pilgrims entry, Fallen London"They are of the Brazen Brigade, they tell you. Once they were the palace guard of their Hellish saints. Now they are exiled from Hell and forbidden from their worship. They make journeys across the hinterlands, preserving the sites and shrines of their dead."
↑The Darkling Caverns, Sunless Skies"Underneath the dome of Caduceus is a warren of caverns. A labyrinth of caves, walled with slabs of volcanic black glass, burrow their way through the rock. A steady drum beat thrums through the walls, echoing from somewhere deeper."
↑Entreat the Drummer, Sunless Skies"Below Caduceus, the Drummer plays. One of the greatest Saints of Hell, all Caduceus dances to his beat."
