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Peg PomPocket

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Stephen Reid edited this page Oct 2, 2026 · 4 revisions

"Never fight a Storyvore on an empty stomach. Theirs, I mean. Fill it first, then see how fierce it is."
-- Peg PomPocket

Peg PomPocket is the PomPuff Collector of HemsHollow, a small town on the frayed edge of the world, and the Threadling who saved it. Most of Threadbare knows her as the heroine of The Battle of HemsHollow, the night she lured an entire pack of Storyvores into a cage with nothing but a season's worth of PomPuffs, and sent every one of them back into the Void without a single story lost.

At a Glance
Species Threadling
Home HemsHollow, on The Fraying
Known as The PomPuff Collector, the Heroine of HemsHollow
Known for Collecting PomPuffs, and The Battle of HemsHollow

Appearance

Peg is round, rosy and always slightly out of breath, as though she has just been chasing something across a field, which she usually has. She wears a knitted bobble hat with a PomPuff growing on top of it (it took root years ago, and she has never had the heart to move it), a long striped scarf, and, most famously of all, a wooden clothes peg clipped firmly on the end of her nose. The peg is not decoration. It is so that she can gather PomPuffs all day without breathing in their StorySpores and wandering off into someone else's adventure. It gives her voice a cheerful, slightly honking sound that every Patchling in HemsHollow can imitate, and plenty of Threadlings will tell you it is how she got her name, though Peg insists she was called Peg long before she ever needed one.

On her back she carries the PuffSack, an enormous patchwork bag with a drawstring top, and a soft, constant puff...pom! follows her wherever she goes as its contents jostle against one another. BobbleBleats follow her too, in a hopeful line, in case she drops one.

The PomPuff Collector

Peg has collected PomPuffs since she was a Patchling. She knows every colour, every pattern and every patch where they grow for a day's walk around HemsHollow, and she grows whole beds of them in her own garden, where the BobbleBleats are not allowed. She can tell, from the spots and stripes alone, what kind of story a PomPuff holds: red with yellow spots for daring rescues, blue stripes for long sea voyages, plain purple for mysteries that are solved just before teatime.

Most of HemsHollow thought it a harmless, slightly puffy hobby. The Patchlings of the town adored her for it, because Peg always kept one PomPuff in her pocket for any Patchling who needed a quick adventure on the way to school.

The Battle of HemsHollow

"We'll need a cage, and every rope in town, and all the PomPuffs I own."
-- Peg PomPocket, to the townsfolk of HemsHollow, the night before the Battle

When a pack of Storyvores came for HemsHollow and its Lending Library, Peg was the one who knew what to do. Storyvores love PomPuffs even more than they love books, and a Storyvore that eats too many falls fast asleep for days. So Peg had the whole town build her a cage from bedsteads, fireguards and garden gates, heaped it with every PomPuff she owned, and laid a trail of them from the Library steps to the edge of the world.

The Storyvores followed the trail into the cage, ate until they could not keep their eyes open, and snored all night long. At dawn, the townsfolk knotted every rope in HemsHollow together and lowered the snoring cage into the Void. All that came back up was the tattered end of the rope: the cage and every Storyvore in it had faded into the Void. Not a single book had been lost. The full story is told in The Battle of HemsHollow.

Peg After the Battle

HemsHollow hung the tattered rope in the town square, beside the EverAfters' stage, and it still hangs there today, with PomPuffs growing all along its knots. Hattie HardBack gave Peg the first library card ever made of gold thread, and HemsHollow made her its first, and so far only, Keeper of the Rope.

Every year on the anniversary of the Battle, the people of HemsHollow hold Snoring Night. They lay a trail of PomPuffs from the Library steps to the East Wall, read stories aloud all the way to their endings, and snore as loudly as they possibly can, all night long, to remind the Storyvores who won.

Peg still collects PomPuffs, and still keeps one in her pocket for any Patchling who needs it. These days she travels, too, to towns on the edge of the Fraying that have Storyvore trouble of their own, carrying the PuffSack and teaching what Threadlings have come to call the PomPocket Plan: fill them up, let them sleep, and let the Void do the rest.

Lore and Sayings

  • "Feed it a PomPuff." In HemsHollow, this is what you say about any problem that looks too big to fight. Find out what it wants, give it far too much, and wait for it to nod off.
  • The Battle of HemsHollow is one of the few Storyvore stories in Threadbare in which no story was lost at all, and so Threadlings tell it to Patchlings who are frightened of the dark.
  • "Peg your nose." HemsHollow's way of telling someone to keep their wits about them and not get carried away.
  • The PomPuff on Peg's hat is said to hold the story of the Battle of HemsHollow itself. Peg has never let anyone tap it to find out.

Gameplay Notes

  • Quest giver. Peg is a natural quest giver for Storyvore encounters, teaching the player to lure Storyvores with PomPuffs rather than fight them.
  • Lure and sleep. Laying a trail of PomPuffs can lead Storyvores away from a story, and a Storyvore that eats enough of them falls asleep, so the player can slip past.
  • The nose peg. A clothes peg, given by Peg, could let the player walk through clouds of StorySpores without being carried off into a story.

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TBC

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