Member
RPM
CabbageAngel
TruthHurts
Eviledd1984
DancesWMonsters
Archmage MC
Dyelli Beybi
FujiwaraPhoenix
BingellyGruyere Emmentaler Caerphilly Yarg
Race, Age, Time in the Caravan:
Human (Supposedly), 34, 2 years 8 months and 1 day
Appearance:
Though ostensibly human, Gru possesses an odd assortment of shapes and proportions that make him seem less like a real person and more like a caricature come to life. Standing on the shorter side at a mere 5’7”, Gru possesses a somewhat unimpressive, heavyset physique, with thin arms and legs, a rotund middle, and not much neck, which his hunched posture certainly doesn’t help. His eyes are small, sunken, and a beady black. He bears a very prominent hooked nose, a strong chin made even stronger by his pointed goatee, and what might be termed a triple mustache with three tapered lengths extending to either side. It’s wenge, a dark drab brown, like his somewhat greasy hair, which is worn slicked back with a long, thin ponytail. Large, scruffy eyebrows and sideburns complete the look. His skin is quite pale, though it gets quite pink around his nose, ears, chin, et cetera
History:
For centuries, if anyone were to go searching around the world for a place they could call ‘paradise’, they might have very well ended up at Arcadia, the Valley of Plenty. Its famous black soil, rich with minerals and impossibly fertile, can be traced back to the activity of volcanoes that arose long ago thanks to the region’s fault line. Exactly when settlers first arrived to farm the valley is up for debate, but eventually people of all shapes and sizes would flock to the region in an unprecedented gold rush not for metal, but for grain. For a time budding nations fought over the Valley of Plenty, but after almost destroying the area’s natural beauty and abundance forever, wiser heads prevailed in the nick of time to strike a truce. The paradise became Arcadia, a no-man’s land and a shared blessing to all, governed by a council with representatives from various nations and hailed by many as the agricultural capital of the world. It would remain that way for an age, so valuable to surrounding nations that any threat to it would result in action from all the rest, keeping the Valley of Plenty in peace.
During that time, many mercantile guilds would come and go, managing trade both within Arcadia and with foreign countries. With so many competing interests, its economy was in a state of constant flux, but a few guilds endured. One was the Chemists’ Guild. It specialized in investment, repayment, research, and development, with fingers in countless given pies at any one moment despite the rather tight-knit, clandestine nature with which it operated. The Chemists provided miraculous fertilizers and other products that enriched their clients with harvests of unprecedented bounty even for Arcadia, with vegetables and livestock larger than usual, as well as cultivation of crops not typically climate with the region. Other suppliers just couldn’t compete. Despite the whispers about unconventional, even occult methods, official investigators found nothing amiss, and the Chemists became rich. Of course, they new this couldn’t last. In their underground laboratories they pursued ever more ambitious means to combat soil depletion and ensure that the perennial bumper crop never wavered. One day, things went wrong.
That night, there was no massive explosion. No destruction or indication of any calamity whatsoever. Yet in the morning, with no fanfare, the Chemists quietly packed their bags and left. Those who saw them thought nothing of it, for the Chemists often traveled to secure the rare and exotic materials for their craft, but in the weeks afterward things began to change. It began with the soil, as it became slightly discolored, adopting an odd, fuzzy texture. The crops planted at the time began to experience accelerated growth, initially celebrated by the farmers as the Chemists’ latest innovation made free to all in as a mark of respect for the age-old, often-forgotten tradition of Arcadian generosity. But as large as they grew, the crops weren’t quite right. They came out with strange colors and textures, tasting terrible. Livestock experienced madness and premature death. Soon, the people began to curse the Chemists for unleashing a plague upon them. Those with the means began to leave, but the rest did what they could to purge the disease and try again for the better. Instead, things continued to worsen. Strange, fuzzy growths appeared all over the ground. Animals began to experience grotesque deformities, dying or rampaging in large numbers. The people who remained were in denial, eventually to a delusional extent, and evidencing signs of infection themselves. Attempts at stopping the infection failed, and soon the whole valley was under quarantine.
Within months, fungal mold had infested all of Arcadia, taking over and eventually consuming everything that had ever eaten infected food. Few witnesses ever risked going into what would come to be known as Mycelia, the Valley of Blight, but disturbing rumors got out about what happened deep inside. They say that the mold eventually replaced everything that it killed. Mold birds singing in mold trees that bore mold fruits. Mold predators roaming mold woods hunting mold beasts that nibbled mold grass. Mold farmers tilling mold fields and selling mold grains. Mold men worshiping mold gods and dreaming mold dreams about a land of perfect peace and happiness with neither grief, nor disparity, nor greed.
Well before the point that the ruin of Arcadia became known far and wide, a man who called himself Gruyere E.C. Yarg, known to his friends as Gru (if only he had any, as he often jokes), joined the Pilgrim’s Caravan with a small carriage run by rats. Styling himself as a self-made merchant, he used his travels with them to run a small-scale cheese-making operation. Rather than horde money, he put most of his earnings back into his business, either improving his ever-evolving Chuck Wagon or purchasing milk, feed, rennet, grapes, salt, and cheese-making tips from the various farms he visited during his travels. Gradually he’d build up a reputation as a sleazy-looking but reliable itinerant merchant, his quality products (if not his attitude) earning him a good reputation. Like many members of the Caravan, he doesn’t talk about his past much, and if asked only ever mentions a boring and humble beginning in the small village of Stilton, never bothering to mention where it was. The past, as Gru says, is behind him. He wants nothing more than to practice his beloved craft, care for his beloved rats, and live a comfortable, quiet life.
Personality:
To most, Gruyere would appear to be the archetypal unsavory businessman or snake oil salesman. He’s greedy, cunning, jocular, and capricious, bitingly sarcastic one moment and an obsequious lickspittle the next. Whatever it takes to make the sale. In fact, his manner sometimes undermines the fact that his products are actually very high quality, made to his exacting standards. In terms of his business dealings, he’s actually pretty honest. He’s just not very nice. Highly secretive and private, both about his trade skills and life, he isn’t very social and minds his own business as much as possible. While he doesn’t like conflict, he’s competitive and vindictive, never forgetting a slight. He cares a lot about his rats, both for their own sake and for the joy they bring him, and he gives them all the love that withholds from his fellow man. A perennial miser, he never does anything for free, and he expects anyone he deals with to honor their word
Motivation: To continue building up his business and ‘family’ in pursuit of a comfortable life
Skills, Strengths and Weaknesses, and Tools:
- + Cheesemonger: Gru’s trade skill. He’s cultivated almost encyclopedic knowledge of how to make cheeses, from the chemistry of their creation to the tools needed to produce them. The cheeses he makes are of very high quality and nutritional value, and he prides himself on their appearances and flavors across a whole host of different styles. This is how he makes his money while in the Caravan; taking and orders while on the road, selling pre-made cheeses or taking orders for clients, then aging the cheeses he makes until the Caravan visits them again and he can fulfill those orders. Somewhat more recently he’s also tried diversifying into wine, a trade that demands even more patience but pairs well with his main craft. He makes these foodstuffs with a speed and efficiency few can match
- + Friend of Animals: Gru is much better with animals than he is with people. This extends to most (domesticated) animals, so whether it’s cows, goats, sheep, or even camels and yaks, they feel comfortable and affectionate around him, and he around them. This means he can often get top yield from whatever animals he encounters, and he’s a surprisingly good companion on hunts
- + Rat Authority - His natural bond with one animal completely transcends all the rest: rats. For whatever reason, he’s so completely in-tune with rats that they lack any fear of or hostility toward him, even in huge numbers. He knows how to take good care of rats, and ‘his’ rats listen to him almost unconditionally, obeying his orders like trained dogs and exhibiting unusual intelligence, strength, and dexterity. This goes double for his four favorite rats: Pepper Jack, Rick Otta, Wensley Dale, and Reggie Ano. If Gru is the general, they are the captains. Working as hordes under his command, his rats are capable of astonishing feats, so much so that one can’t help but wonder if this bond is supernatural
- + The Chuck Wagon: Named after his father Charles, Gru’s personal method of transportation is possibly the most impressive thing about him. It’s one of the largest wagons in the Pilgrim’s Caravan by far, and isn’t just a living space, but a mobile cheese factory that he’s put huge amounts of money into perfecting. It’s divided into ‘wet’ and ‘dry’ halves, each with their own doors on the right side. The wet half is essentially a laboratory, with multiple vats and tanks for liquid storage, milk coagulation, curd separation, brining, and so forth, all watertight and able to be locked down during travel. There’s even vat for the crushing and fermentation of grapes The dry half has shelves for drying and aging cheese (and also wine), and is where Gru lives. The top floor of the Chuck Wagon, about a foot in height and known as the ‘attic’, is a compartment reserved exclusively for his rats. They have little houses in there with straw bedding, food stores, etc, and on good days Gru can open up the top of the wagon to make the little village open to the air. On the left side of the wagon are two large silos, one filled with water and the other with rat food, including grains, seeds, and nuts. Perhaps most interesting is how the wagon moves; instead of being drawn by horses or other beasts of burden, it has eight enormous wheels, four in the front and four in the back. These are hollow and function as giant hamster wheels, making the Chuck Wagon entirely rat-powered. The rats work the wheels (and, under Gru’s supervision, the kitchen) in shifts and go up into the attic to rest
- - Noncombatant: Gru isn’t really a fighter. He doesn’t have the constitution for it, nor the interest. He prefers to get others -people or otherwise- to do his fighting for him, especially if there’s serious risk and/or publicity involved
- - Something Irreplaceable: Although Gru’s greatest strength, the Chuck Wagon is also his greatest weakness. It’s very important to him, and he’s extremely averse to any damage to it. Losing it is practically out of the question, and there’s very little he wouldn’t do to keep it safe. After all, it’s not just the source of his livelihood; it’s everything he owns, and without it, he’d be almost nothing. The same goes for his rats. While losing them isn’t the end of the world, they’re all his friends, and not just tools for him
- - Unlikeable: In contrast to animals, people generally don’t like him, and he doesn’t like them. His generally acerbic attitude makes it difficult for genuine relationships to form, and he prefers businesslike arrangements of give and take where expectations are clear and no strings are attached
Mycomancy
Gru isn’t just a businessman. He’s also a practitioner of a dark school of magic that manipulates fungi, especially mold–a fact he’s gone to great lengths to hide. He only ever practices it in the privacy of the Chuck Wagon’s interior, and even then in very small scale, manipulating mold to make cheese and the yeast that ferments wine to speed up the processes. In his time with the Caravan to date, he’s never needed to resort to using it for combat in front of the others, instead relying on his rats for self-defense. However, it’s possible for him to infest living things with mold that corrupt and weaken them from within, reducing their speed and defense so much that even he can kill them easily, let alone his rats. This mold can also be used to break down and dispose of dead organic matter, and create mold creatures under his control
Gru also owns four cheese-making tools that he keeps in his Chuck Wagon which happen to be usable as weapons. This includes:
He could try fighting with these if he wanted, but they're mostly wielded by his favorite rats when they become Rat Kings. This is when Gru commands them to use swarms of their fellow rats to create large, bear-shaped rat masses that Pepper, Rick, Wensley, and Reggie 'pilot'. These Rat Kings are very strong, but since at least a few rats die whenever the Rat Kings take a hit, they'll typically fall back to regroup if threatened with serious losses
Gru isn’t just a businessman. He’s also a practitioner of a dark school of magic that manipulates fungi, especially mold–a fact he’s gone to great lengths to hide. He only ever practices it in the privacy of the Chuck Wagon’s interior, and even then in very small scale, manipulating mold to make cheese and the yeast that ferments wine to speed up the processes. In his time with the Caravan to date, he’s never needed to resort to using it for combat in front of the others, instead relying on his rats for self-defense. However, it’s possible for him to infest living things with mold that corrupt and weaken them from within, reducing their speed and defense so much that even he can kill them easily, let alone his rats. This mold can also be used to break down and dispose of dead organic matter, and create mold creatures under his control
Gru also owns four cheese-making tools that he keeps in his Chuck Wagon which happen to be usable as weapons. This includes:
- Two cheese knives the size of scimitars, curved and with double-pointed tips
- A cheese fork with a shaft so long it functions as a bident
- A spico, a kind of curd-cutting tool about the size and shape of a large mace, but with a head shaped like a round cage of blades
- A curd harp, essentially a shovel where the head is a square array of cutting blades
He could try fighting with these if he wanted, but they're mostly wielded by his favorite rats when they become Rat Kings. This is when Gru commands them to use swarms of their fellow rats to create large, bear-shaped rat masses that Pepper, Rick, Wensley, and Reggie 'pilot'. These Rat Kings are very strong, but since at least a few rats die whenever the Rat Kings take a hit, they'll typically fall back to regroup if threatened with serious losses
Greatest Desire: To never face the consequences of his actions
Alignment: Lawful Evil
Three Likes: His rats, his cheese, and his trade
Three Dislikes: Nosy people, unreasonable people, unmanageable people
Driving Organ: After seeing where his mind got him, Gru decided to follow his heart
Worst Fear: His secret getting out
Favorite Color: Wine red
Most Like The Animal: It’s hard to say
Favorite Time of Day: Dinnertime
Style of Dress: Gru dresses in the style of early industrialists, like the archetypal oil baron, with a rough, outdoorsy sort of formal wear. He’s given to large, heavy, long coats, expensive but still highly functional, worn over a pinstriped suit vest and pants with accompanying tie, ascot, or bow tie (his favorite). He prefers dark, desaturated colors, including black, brown, gray, and red. Most often he wears gray, accentuated by wine red. He’s seldom seen without gloves or boots, a mix of function and (perhaps questionable) fashion that nevertheless form a iconic aesthetic. Most iconic of all are his very small dark spectacles and his 'mad hatter' top hat. That hat's brim has upward-turned side flaps that are much larger and rounder than usual which together with its pink underside give the impression of big, floppy ears. One other thing to note is that all of his coats seemingly have a big gray fur collar. On closer inspection, this collar is actually a mass of live rats, so he literally has rats on him at all times (when possible, anyway). He also keeps one of his four favorite rats under his hat at all times, which itself wears a hat while doing so
Favorite Season: Spring, the best season for farm animals to feed on fresh growth, and thus the best season for cheese
Beliefs: That everybody deserves a second chance
Alignment: Lawful Evil
Three Likes: His rats, his cheese, and his trade
Three Dislikes: Nosy people, unreasonable people, unmanageable people
Driving Organ: After seeing where his mind got him, Gru decided to follow his heart
Worst Fear: His secret getting out
Favorite Color: Wine red
Most Like The Animal: It’s hard to say
Favorite Time of Day: Dinnertime
Style of Dress: Gru dresses in the style of early industrialists, like the archetypal oil baron, with a rough, outdoorsy sort of formal wear. He’s given to large, heavy, long coats, expensive but still highly functional, worn over a pinstriped suit vest and pants with accompanying tie, ascot, or bow tie (his favorite). He prefers dark, desaturated colors, including black, brown, gray, and red. Most often he wears gray, accentuated by wine red. He’s seldom seen without gloves or boots, a mix of function and (perhaps questionable) fashion that nevertheless form a iconic aesthetic. Most iconic of all are his very small dark spectacles and his 'mad hatter' top hat. That hat's brim has upward-turned side flaps that are much larger and rounder than usual which together with its pink underside give the impression of big, floppy ears. One other thing to note is that all of his coats seemingly have a big gray fur collar. On closer inspection, this collar is actually a mass of live rats, so he literally has rats on him at all times (when possible, anyway). He also keeps one of his four favorite rats under his hat at all times, which itself wears a hat while doing so
Favorite Season: Spring, the best season for farm animals to feed on fresh growth, and thus the best season for cheese
Beliefs: That everybody deserves a second chance
