Hero: Gryff Galan

This is a PC-biography for Gryff Galan, and is written by said PC's player. I have only formatted the text so as to fit the blog. It should have been posted a while ago, but it fell through the cracks... For that I am sorry. But here it is, updated as of 15 May, 2011.




His Background as written out after the first game session in January 2009~


Gryff Galan is the third son of Grimm Galan, son of Grandi Galan. The Galan clan  originally hails from northern Aragorn, hence the name, but has lived in Pendrel for seven generations. Ganda Galan, the first Galan in Pendrel, was given, after a deed of great heroism, a barony by the King himself. Being without heritance in Aragorn he moved to Pendrel to become the first Baron Galan of Glencaellyn. The Galan family did very well. Their business ventures in timber and mining were booming. This again led the family to purchase more land in the southwest of Pendrel, along the coast, around Llewellyn.

Gryff´s grandfather, Grandi Galan, was Admiral, as was his father before him. Grandi married Siva, and had three children, Grimm, Gilga and Gonzo. 


Grimm married the Livonian beauty Elena, daughter of Daniel and Muriel, of the merchant family Elaxa, and had four children. Grimm inherited the Galan trade, and he did very well with it. He has now passed it on to his first-born son, named after his father, Grandi. Grandi is married to Roxa. The next brother, Gregor, is considered the clever one, and he has excelled in the field of engineering. Gregor is married to Sirkka. Gryff also has a twin sister, named Gela. She has not yet married. The two twins are very close. They both have their mother’s golden locks and green eyes, while the rest of the family have the dark brown eyes and straight, black hair of the Galans. 


A few words about where Gryff grew up. Outside Glencaellyn, he took pleasure in the space in and around the mansion. His playground was the library, the vast gardens, his grandmother Siva’s herbarium, the kitchen and the river. He would help Siva with the growing of the herbs, and collecting the ones that would only grow elsewhere. He took great pride in getting fresh produce from the nearby river. During the extremely warm summer when he was five, he learned to swim in that same river. He loved it, and seemed to take to the water naturally. When he was twelve he drew plans of how to close that river, with a sort of a wooden dam. This made it possible to, quite literally, harvest the river. There was also a forest. In there he made his first wooden flute. And when he was in his teens, they would go there to hunt game.


Gryff was always a small boy, like most twins are. When they were young, Gela did not speak much, and Gryff spoke for the both of them. His size meant he could not very well fight, and he took to books. He vividly remembers the fairy-tales and legends he was told as a young child. His grandmother Siva told strange and wonderful stories from distant lands, Tales of Kings and noblemen, of wars of weapons, and of wits. Not all wars, even between kings, she said, are fought with swords. His grandfather, too, was a great storyteller, as was his mother. He takes pride in bringing this legacy on. And their vocal tradition was not limited to stories told. His mother, Elena, used to sing, sing and sing to her two younger children, Grandi and Gregor not being very interested. And the twins sang along. They found a great joy in song. Until they were six years of age, it seemed they were always singing, and always together. They would bring their grandmother to tears with their song. They sang great ballads, duets, songs of legend that would take the best part of seven hours to perform. And eventually, they sang before the King’s court and became quite famous. Their voices have been described as angelic.


One of his favourite pass-times, when he was young, was to listen in on his parents dinner parties. Especially when Siva’s and Elena’s families would come to visit from overseas. He remembers a sense of tingling excitement. He heard strange sounds, words he could not immediately understand. It seemed to him that these other languages held glorious secrets.



Gryff was reading at three, and was regarded as quite the wonderkid. He took a keen interest in geography at an early age. He could sit for hours on end studying maps. He also developed other interests in the world of books, another treasure of secrets. The Galans have always been collectors of the written word, and their Mansion has a huge library. Gryff’s grandmother Siva nicknamed him The Librarian, simply because he spent most of his childhood and adolescence in there. He began studying history at nine, and was particularly devoted to the native lands of his family. One entire summer, he spent reading exclusively on naval battles. His grandfather never misses an opportunity to thoroughly express his delight in this fact.  At twelve he went on to philosophy, and he has read all the great masters, and has always had a deep fascination for Maccharius. Soon after, rhetoric would become one of the great loves of his life. He has a passion, also, for poetry. Siva always encouraged him to study lyrical verse. Gryff Galan can recite more than a thousand poems and songs. This passion only grew in intensity when Siva passed away two years ago. He would sit through the night, reading her favourite poems of tragedy and loss. He loves her old books, with the quaint smell of aged leather. He can still feel her presence when he reads these books in the darkest hours of the night. He recalls how, when they were alone, she spoke to him only in her mother’s tongue.


For his fourteenth birthday, his grandfather promised him, that over the next year the two of them would meet weekly, and Grandi would show him the wonders of the sky at night. And so he did. Here also began Gryff´s habit of writing a journal. This was Grandi’s idea, to make it easier to go back and study their discussions of the secrets of the sky at night.


At twenty-four, Navigator Gryff Galan, was the sole survivor of a shipwreck. A great storm took their ship. He managed to capture seabirds that landed on his longboat, and ate them raw. He collected rainwater with a sail, and this is probably the main reason he is still alive. This experience taught him the importance of having a well-equipped longboat. He has made sure, now that he is commanding his own ship for the first time, that all of the longboats have fishing supplies in them, as well as dried foods of different kinds and a barrel to collect and store rain water. This experience re-acquainted him with the sweet and sour taste of the fame from his childhood years as boy tenor.


When Gryff returned, his grandfather, who had been slowly perishing since the death of his wife and life-long companion the year before, was on his feet for the first time in months. Gryff still can’t wait to get back and tell him of his first voyage with his new ship. Gryff is particularly keen on telling him about his encounter with the black ship and his meeting with Octavian and coming to terms with magic being a very real thing indeed. 






Captain Gryff Galan of the Royal Pendrellian Argonauts.
"The Mariner"
Master of the Third Degree, of the Arcana of Mind, Prime and Space.
Knight of the Golden Dawn, Knight of St. Invictus


Virtue: Hope
Vice: Wrath


Attributes
Intelligence 3, Wits 3, Resolve 2
Strength 1, Dexterity 3, Stamina 2
Presence 4, Manipulation 2, Composure 5


Skills
Mental: Academics 4, Occult 3, Politics 3, Scribe 2, Science (Goethic, Navigation) 5
Physical: Firearms (Handgun) 4, Weaponry 2
Social: Expression (Rhetoric, Song) 5, Persuasion (Leadership) 4


Merits
Common Sense, Danger Sense, Directional Sense, Eidetic Memory, Fast Reflexes.
Enemy (Magnus Emil) 4, Fame 4, High Speech (Arcane) 4, Inspiring 4, Resources 4,
Status (Pendrellian Royal Court) 4, Status (Argonauts) 4, 
Status (Northern Alliance) 4 , Status (Knights of the Golden Dawn) 4
Status (Knights of St. Invictus) 3, Status (House of Arkon) 2, Status (Draccia) 2
Channeling 4 (Blackstaff, Gudmund)


Arcana
Life 2, Mind 5, Prime 5, Space 5, Spirit 3


Defense 3 (5 Cloak of the Shadow Lynx)
Armour 3 (5)
Initiative Mod 10
Health 7
Willpower 8
Humanity 5
Gnosis 5


Weapons
White Riot, Mana-fuelled Handgun – dice pool 15, clip special
Repeating Rifle, Bansl & Galan Guns – dice pool 9, clip 6
Barrel Gun – dice pool 10, clip 4
Vargsax, armour-piercing – dice pool 9




[Picture source unkown]