Summary
Knight-Protector Grissom tel’Delian is an ancient vampire and the last surviving member of the Delian Knights, who protects, serves, and advises the young queen of Mirranor. There is a great darkness within him, both in terms of his vampirism and the burden of an unnaturally long lifespan, but the strict adherence to the code, doctrine and training of his knightly order is enough to keep him on path of righteousness, even if it does little to sooth his troubled and lonely soul.
Description
Appearance
Grissom is a man of noble blood, and is blessed with the same chiseled features synonymous to the men of the von Guildenstern bloodline. He would appear to be in his forties and has a lifeless, ashen complexion; his hair is long and of a colour somewhere between white and steel; and his eyes are usually a striking hazel, but flare scarlet when enraged or experiencing a thirst for blood.
Grissom possesses the fit and muscular physique of a military veteran, particularly one used to wearing heavy plate armour. His body is covered eldritch tattoos, a remnant from his rebellious younger days of recklessly dabbling in forces far beyond his ken.
Grissom continues to wear the fine elven plate armour and heavy shield, and wield the traditional silvered sword (which sits somewhere between a longsword and an oriental blade), of the Delian Knights which, despite being antiquities created over 700 years ago, have been very well maintained and look as good as new. In addition, Grissom also wears a hooded cape and regalia sporting symbols and iconography that are strikingly similar to that of the Queensguard, a visual reminder of his position as the Queen's Knight-Protector.
Accompanying Grissom is a kes'trekel called Murphy. This now-extinct large psionic vulture is a fearful sight, but tends to circle overhead or perch somewhere out of the way when Grissom is travelling in polite company.
Personality
Grissom is driven first and foremost by his duties, both in terms of fealty to his Queen and in his strict adherence to the code of the Delian Knights, and he always acts honourably, even when doing so is to his detriment.
It is through living by various doctrines and codes, as well as sheer stubborn mindedness, that Grissom has managed to keep a handle on the darkness within him, both in terms of his vampirism, and in terms of the emotional toll taken by outliving everyone and everything you know and hold dear.
Losing his friends and family to the ravages of time has left a hole in his centuries-old soul, especially his children, so Grissom tends to subconsciously form bonds akin to the paternal with those he travels with, even if adopting such a role is unwelcomed.
The fact that time has taken so much from Grissom has also taken its toll in making it hard for him to form lasting and meaningful emotional connections out of fear of having to someday deal with yet another loss. He tends to prefer the company of longer-lived races such as eladrin, which is in part down to the multiracial nature of the Delian Knights, but mostly because they will have more in common with him, and because it will be substantially longer before Grissom must say goodbye forever to yet another mortal friend.
Grissom has witnessed firsthand the suffering of those living under a tyrant, and will take it upon himself to champion the cause of the oppressed against their oppressors. Similarly, he can never walk away from someone in need, and will always try to make things right, no matter what the personal cost might be.
It is through his devotion to making the world a better place that Grissom can just about live with what he is.
Religion
While Grissom will actively support a church of any god or pantheon of gods of good alignment, the goddess he both loves and fears greatest is the Raven Queen, for she was able to see past his unnatural immortality, judging him for who and not what he is, and has provided a divine sanction on his undeath. Grissom feels that he owes the Raven Queen a great debt for her forgiveness and he intends to repay it by hunting the undead.
In actual fact, the Raven Queen's true feelings on Grissom or his vampirism are unknown. The sanction of his undeath came instead from the Lady of the White Well, who appeared to him when he was barely a man, as he concluded a ritual that he hoped would summon the Raven Queen, and who deigned not to correct his falsely addressing her as such in the exchange that followed. Centuries later, Grissom encountered the Lady of the White Well again and, still believing her to be the goddess of death, accepted her wise council and forgiveness.
It is not known why the Lady of the White Well did not correct Grissom, nor why she allows him to continue to believe that she is the Raven Queen. It is possible that she believes that Grissom needed the Raven Queen's forgiveness in order to perform the great deeds required to genuinely earn it... or maybe it simply entertains her whimsical fey nature for the ruse to persist.
The fact that Grissom is tolerated by devotees of the Raven Queen suggests that she at least does not view him as an enemy. Perhaps the manipulations of the Lady of the White Well are a necessary evil in facilitating Grissom's redemption.
Vampirism
As one of the many evils of Mirranor that the Delian Knights were sworn to vanquish, Grissom hated the undead from the very beginning, and the horrors of the War of the Dead served only to embitter him towards the living dead even more. It was a cruel twist of fate that, following his death, Grissom would rise again as one of the undead creatures he loathes so much.
While he is able to maintain his outward composure more or less through various regimens and duties, beneath the surface he is a deeply troubled soul. Mortal minds are not designed to shoulder the burden of many centuries of life and loss, and to lose everything and everyone you know and love to the ravages of time might have broken a lesser man. Worse still is that he has become the very thing he hates, and every moment is a constant struggle against the monstrous impulses of his dark curse.
Often, Grissom will isolate himself, to process and to brood. To his thinking, the curse of vampirism is his and his alone to bear, not to mention that he feels deeply ashamed of what he is, in particular that he allows himself to persist rather than to simply end it all.
While they were unable to teach him to accept himself, the Vistani he once travelled with were at least able to open his mind to the possibility of the acceptance of others towards him. In addition, the Lady of the White Well managed to convince him that the measure of a hero is in who he is, not what he is, and that his unholy might could just as easily be used as a force for good as a force for evil. Ultimately, though, it is the sanction of the Raven Queen that is of the greatest comfort to Grissom, for her revilement of the undead is possibly even greater than his own, and if she feels that Grissom is worthy of redemption, then so too should he be driven to seek and to earn it.
From noble to knight
A misspent youth
Grissom was born into nobility as the only child of Lord Alain and Lady Ana von Guildenstern. He was raised on a grand estate near to the village of Avavale, which was barely a stone's throw away from the lands the family owned around the capital, Nyminty City, and his childhood was fairly standard fare for the sole heir of vastly wealthy parents (which is to say that Grissom was spoiled rotten).
As Grissom reached his teenage years, he became wayward and rebellious, using his parents' wealth and privilege to obtain eldritch texts from which he would recklessly perform rituals and meddle in forces beyond his ken, covering his body in arcane tattoos of a dark and intimidating nature, and favouring clothing that would not have looked amiss on a warlock or any other wizard of black magics. Worse still was that he openly worshipped not Aurom, as all goodhearted folk of ancient Mirranor did, but the Raven Queen.
Naturally, much of this 'alternative' lifestyle was simply for show – to shock and to intimidate, to stand out and to be mysterious, and ultimately to attract the attentions of the pretty girls of Avavale – and although Lord and Lady von Guildenstern found these years troubling to say the least, they were confident that it would just be a phase, something that Grissom needed to get out of his system before growing into the great nobleman that they knew he would soon enough become.
The Lady of the White Well
One of Grissom's misadventures in magic was an attempted to summon the Raven Queen. The ritual failed to conjure the goddess of death; however, his attempt did catch the attention of a demigod – the Lady of the White Well – who appeared before him in her stead.
A teenage Grissom, seeing this beautiful and otherworldly female appear before him at the conclusion of his ritual, naturally mistook her for the Raven Queen, and in the exchange that followed, the Lady of the White Well never once corrected his addressing her as such.
To this day, Grissom still believes that the Lady of the White Well is the Raven Queen.
Von Guildenstern to tel'Delian
There aren't many things that can stand between a boy and his inheritance; however, love is one such thing, and Grissom's heart was captured by a beautiful young elf called Keyleth. While his mother and father were naturally relieved and overjoyed at their son having turned from tearaway to gentleman through her influence, the bigoted laws of ancient Mirranor were quite clear – only a marriage between one human and another would be recognized by law. As much as it pained them, Lord and Lady von Guildenstern provided Grissom with an ultimatum – abandon Keyleth and marry a human girl, or else forsake his family, title and inheritance. Grissom, being very much in love, and still rather hot-headed, chose to disown the von Guildenstern lineage, much to his parents' dismay.
This was not the only hurdle that the young couple needed to overcome in order to earn their 'happily ever after'. Just as human law prevented interspecies marriage, so too did the laws of the elves; however, the tendency for elven script towards flowery wording and poetic phrase did provide a potential loophole – Grissom did not need to be an elf, only that he belong to a recognized elven family, and there was one family that was recognized and held in high regard by humans, elves and dwarves alike: the Delian Knights. Thus, did Grissom become a squire to the legendary Delian Knights and, now that he counted many, many elves as his brothers and sisters, was able to take Keyleth as his bride as Grissom tel'Delian.
Grissom and Keyleth tel'Delian bought a cottage in Avavale, and had two half-elf children – a boy whom Grissom named after his father, Alain, and a girl called Valna. Their household was a very happy one, filled with much love and laughter, right up until the War of the Dead.
The Delian Knights
While Keyleth had managed to turn Grissom from miscreant boy into a perfect gentleman, the Delian Knights went a step further and shaped him into a noble knight. The Delian Knights stood for all that was good in Mirranor, and would never waver in their opposition of the wicked creatures that would prey on such goodness.
The Delian Knights instilled in Grissom a knight's code, along with a strong sense of honour and duty to uphold it. His noble upbringing provided a robust foundation on which to build upon his swordsmanship, and he took to his training like a natural. It was soon noticed that Grissom's heart and talent lay in the defense of others, often with little regard for his own wellbeing, so it was not long at all before he ascended from squire to the well-respected rank of Knight-Protector.
While intelligent and charismatic, Grissom never aspired to any sort of command role within the Delian Knights. He preferred the camaraderie, to stand beside his brothers and sisters in battle, rather than to lead them, and he never had the stomach for making the tough calls required, preferring instead to volunteer himself for them.
Despite his apparent lack of aspiration, Grissom was nevertheless a model knight and a paragon of what the Delian Knights stood for.
Death in service
The War of the Dead
A few decades after Grissom joined the Delian Knights, the land came under siege by an undead scourge lead by a dreaded lich lord – an enemy far more powerful than Mirranor's military or the Delian Knights had ever faced before. The war was long and brutal, and Grissom witnessed many, many horrors that still plague him to this day.
It was during this war that Grissom began to manifest the ability to channel divine power. While he could not be certain of the source, he suspected that it was a blessing from the Raven Queen, and one that he would put to good use in protecting the innocents of the various settlements he was posted at to defend, in watching the backs of the men and women he fought alongside on the frontline, and in smiting the hated undead that had brought so much suffering to Mirranor.
Grissom's last stand
The War of the Dead was decided by one final battle. With his forces diminished, the lich lord marched his remaining army on Nyminty City – if he could just take the capital then he could replenish his undead horde fivefold, but this was far from guaranteed as Mirranor's forces had inflicted heavy losses.
Grissom was amongst a number of knights tasked to protect the outlying village of Avavale from wayward undead during the main battle. It was not supposed to be a difficult assignment, but it was an important one, and it made Grissom's heart swell with pride to be tasked with protecting his home village, family and friends.
During the battle, however, one of the lich lord's lieutenants, a powerful vampire lord by the name of the Red Prince, broke away from the main force to slake his thirst for blood on helpless villagers in the surrounding countryside. The Red Prince found Avavale, and tore through its defenders as if they were nothing. All except Grissom, that is. While he knew he was no match for the vampire lord, he also knew that all he had to do was survive long enough for the beast to be called to heel by his dread master in the main battle, or else risk defeat. Through sheer grit and dogged determination, Grissom remained standing, despite receiving mortal wound after mortal wound, and each time the vampire lord thought to leave Grissom for dead was its flesh seared by a painful radiant blast of divine energy.
When the Red Prince was finally ordered back to the main battle, he howled in fury and frustration at having been bested by a mere mortal man. In an act of pure savagery and a sheer thirst for blood, the Red Prince lunged at Grissom, who was almost literally dying on his feet, and tore open his neck, draining him in moments and finally slaying him, before returning to his master's side on the battlefield.
Resurrection
With the lich lord defeated and his army scattered, Grissom was celebrated as a hero. None from Avavale would sully his great sacrifice with the exact details on the manner of his death, and such was the bestial nature of the Red Prince's feasting that the torn flesh and gaping wound could have been attributed to any number of undead creatures, so Grissom was entombed intact, with the other fallen legends of the Delian Knights.
As with any other creature killed by a vampire's bite, Grissom rose again in the image of his undead murderer; however, through some divine miracle, Grissom's soul was not corrupted by the curse of vampirism. He was a vampire, but he was still the same man that sacrificed himself for the safety of his family and that of the villagers of Avaside.
Murphy
Murphy is a kes'trekel that consumed Grissom's flesh prior to his resurrection as a vampire, and is now bound to him through the sharing of the same dark curse. While not invulnerable, Murphy is able to regenerate from any mortal wound as long as Grissom still persists.
Being intelligent birds that possess psionic abilities, Murphy is able to communicate and share thoughts with Grissom telepathically through their bond, though is limited to cawing when it comes to other creatures. It's in Murphy's nature to be merciless and cruel, given that kes'trekels are predatory scavenger birds of prey and, while Grissom is very much in charge, it is not uncommon for Murphy to attempt to play the devil on Grissom's shoulder, and he can often be seen eyeing up the weak and defenseless with hungry eyes.
Given the stark contrast in personalities, Grissom and Murphy's relationship is more one of sufferance than of companionship, though the two have learned to accept their differences and work together, and they have both lost much to the ravages of time, given that kes'trekels have been extinct in Mirranor for centuries.
Dead and not loving it
The curse of immortality
For years, Grissom existed in a state of limbo. He was a monster and had no place amongst the living, and yet life continued so painfully all around him. Grissom had to endure watching his family grieve for him, and his children grow up without him, fearing what they might think of him if he approached, and the dishonor it would bring them should he be seen in his shameful, undead form.
It was better to let them live with the memory of a hero, immortalized in carved stone at the heart of Avavale, than to step out from the shadows and reveal the terrible truth of it all.
Then came the Mirranor civil war, where the downtrodden men and women of Mirranor rose up against the tyrannical King Rosencrantz I. The Delian Knights, who were sworn to oppose all evil, stood alongside the common man during the war, and in Grissom's honour, so too did the von Guildensterns. While King Rosencrantz I was ultimately defeated, his son, King Rosencrantz II, launched a devastating counterattack which utterly defeated the rebellion, scattering its forces to the four winds. The Delian Knights were outlawed and the von Guildensterns were exiled. Even Grissom's family, who had supported the rebellion, were forced to flee Mirranor for fear of reprisal at the hands of the new despot on the throne.
Grissom watched over his families, both old and new, on their exodus into neighbouring Rarkonir, and felt a great swell of pride as his parents acknowledged his wife and children as von Guildensterns during this journey. He stayed a while as his reunited family settled down and established themselves in Masrin City, long enough to secretly attend the funerals of both of his parents, but he could not bear to see his wife grow old and die, much less his beloved children, so he departed once he was sure that they were safe, never to return nor ever see any of them again.
The best part of the century to follow was spent by Grissom seeking out other monsters that he might fight and that might finally put an end to his torment but, regardless of how powerful the monster was or how hard it fought, nor how badly they wounded Grissom, he just could not seem to die – his immortal body would mend in minutes.
The Vistani
In Grissom's darkest moment, he sat atop a hill and awaited the sunrise to purge him of his curse and to end it all. However, it was not the sun that crept over the horizon first, it was a convoy of gypsy caravans – a Vistani clan.
He expected the travelers to simply pass him by; however, the convoy instead stopped at the roadside, allowing an old female dwarf to climb down from one of the finer caravans and approach him. Her name was Vistra, she was the elder and mystic of the clan, and she spoke as if she knew all about Grissom and what he was. More specifically, she spoke as if it didn't matter one iota to her nor would it to the rest of the clan, and then she invited Grissom to travel with them.
Grissom was surprised at the level of acceptance that he received with the Vistani. When he was asked about his vampirism, the tone was genuinely one of curiosity (albeit occasionally loaded with an ulterior motive, such as asking for assistance or a favour), rather than being confrontational, as Grissom had come to expect. Similarly, the Vistani were very open about themselves, with thieves speaking freely about their trade, and charlatans doing the same.
The Vistani were not about what you are, more who you are, and their loyalty towards their clan and those of its number far seemed to somehow far outweigh the outward dishonourableness of the community which most outsiders would have seen and judged them on. While they could not break Grissom's inability to accept himself, they succeeded in persuading him that others could, and do, accept him, and that was a measure of peace that he had not known since his resurrection.
Grissom received the Vistani blooding ritual, and travelled with the Vistani for nearly a century. In that time, he saw countless places across many different planes, even learning a psionic trick upon travelling a world that was little more than sand and sun.
Calliope
Calliope was a very young hamadryad who had just lost her tree home when Grissom found her on his travels through the Feywild with the Vistani. Given Grissom's tendency towards paternal feelings, it was unsurprising that he made the decision there and then to adopt the young fey child there and then, and raised her as his own.
Grissom doted on Calliope, and she loved her adoptive father unconditionally. He would often tell her stories and teach her about the great many things that he had seen in his centuries of life, and his heart was filled with pride at her every milestone and achievement.
The world can be a cruel place, however, and when Calliope was in her early teens, she contracted a terminal disease that no healer nor ritual could cure. In desperation, Grissom consulted Vistra about siring Calliope as a vampire, but Vistra was wise, and informed Grissom that she would not be able to resist the corruption of the curse as Grissom somehow did, thereby condemning Calliope to an eternity of evil and unrest, and that she expressly forbade him from doing so.
Grissom was utterly broken at the prospect of the death of his daughter so young and, in the madness of his grief, and against the will of the clan's mystic and elder, he sired Calliope as a vampire.
Calliope awoke as an undead creature, but more or less the girl that Grissom knew, and for a while he believed that, for the first time, Vistra had been wrong about something. While the clan had been nothing but supportive and understanding, even with regards to Grissom's flouting the elder's forbiddance, he nevertheless imposed a kind of exile upon himself and Calliope from the clan, which he believed honour demanded, and so the two became 'dead ones' – Vistani that had left their clan.
It was fortunate for the clan that Grissom and his recently resurrected daughter had parted ways with them, for in the year that followed, Vistra's warning proved to be true. At first, Calliope's tales would start to develop a tendency towards violence and cruelty, but then her actions started to follow similar leanings. She terrified Grissom as she turned from the pure and good girl that he had rescued and raised, into an evil undead creature that merely wore her face and spoke in her voice.
One night, after she returned to camp covered in blood, Grissom made the grim and heartbreaking decision to undo the selfish mistake he'd made a year ago in denying his daughter the restful afterlife that she deserved. Only, when the moment came to strike the killing blow, Grissom's strength failed him, and Calliope was able to use his moment of weakness to strike a blow of her own and escape into the night.
Grissom has tried many times to track Calliope down, and still keeps an ear to the ground for rumours of a vampire matching her description, but he's too ashamed to ask for assistance in what he believes to be his mistake alone to correct, and he knows that the blood of every innocent that she murders is very much on his hands.
Returning to Mirranor
When a lie is more noble than the truth
Grissom was alone in a land that he wasn't entirely familiar with, and pursuing Calliope had left him more lost than he was to begin with. He did not know the secret magical routes travelled by the Vistani, but then, he had nowhere that he needed to be anyway, and all the time in the world with which to wander, so wander he did.
It was lonesome for the most part, travelling the world with only a vulture for company, but Grissom at least had a purpose, even if tracking down Calliope was practically impossible, and he found a sliver of peace in lending his sword to the various settlements he visited on his travels (not to mention being able to keep his dark curse 'fed' with the blood of the villains, beasts and monsters he was tasked to slay), though he was far from untroubled.
After centuries of wandering, his path eventually brought him back to Mirranor. Unwilling to revisit his ancient past, Grissom was about to turn back, but then a familiar voice beckoned to him. It was the Lady of the White Well, which Grissom still believed to be the Raven Queen. She convinced Grissom that it mattered more who he is, not what he is, and that his dark curse could be used as a force for good in the coming troubles of Mirranor.
Believing that the Raven Queen had sanctioned his undeath and provided him with a quest, Grissom returned to Mirranor, blissfully unaware of the Lady of the White Well's ruse.
The young Queen's Knight-Protector
Grissom's return to Mirranor took him past the area surrounding Elanion’s Tower, where Murphy spotted a skirmish involving the Queensguard. Initially, he ignored the kes’trekel, assuming that the vicious, greedy creature was interested only in a bit of carnage and some easy carrion; however, the screams of a young girl instantly compelled him to instead join the fray. Closing in on the fight quickly, Grissom soon spotted the teenager desperately trying to elude the business end of an assassin’s blade, while her Queensguard were swamped by robed fanatics, and his parental instincts took over. Exploding into a swarm of shadowy bats, Grissom bypassed the struggling Queensguard, and reformed at the young woman’s side, filled with paternal rage, and fighting like a demon to protect his new charge. With his silvered blade, thirsty fangs, and explosions of divine energy, Grissom was victorious – though only just, for a vampire is weakest in the light of day, and the terrible venoms coating the assassins’ weapons ate through his vampire flesh quicker than it could mend – but he was very nearly vanquished for good at the hands of the tardy Queensguard, and was spared at the last moment only by the screamed order to spare him by the girl.
Far from being executed, Grissom was escorted back to the royal castle in Nyminty as a hero and, though he was not permitted by the Regent to become an officially recognized member of the Queensguard, he was instead awarded a position invented by the Queen herself and named, at Grissom’s suggestion, Knight-Protector, after his rank in the Delian Knights from his previous life.
While Grissom had saved the young Queen's life, it could be said that she also saved his by giving him a new purpose and a sense of honour. Grissom treated Naevys practically as if she were his own daughter, and he hoped that, with the right guidance, she would grow to be a fair and compassionate ruler, unlike some of her ancestors.