Early childhood
The Wretched Runt was born in the spring of 4690, two years after his brother Fargrid. They were the sons of Mej Both-Eyes, and grandsons to Mej One-Eye, the Conqueror. The Runt’s small size at birth and traces of a faint human bloodline that surfaced in him cemented the longstanding rumors about the Conqueror’s parentage. Or, perhaps, his inclinations?
The Runt’s childhood was brutal, but marked by the fierce love Fargrid showed his little brother. Fargrid was his protector. He was his champion. He gave him the name Gruk and taught him to take the ironic nickname the others gave him—Riptusk—and own it as a badge of pride, as the tribe traveled the punishing wastes of the Osirion/Katapesh border region.
The Runt was reckless and aggressive. He had to be, since he was so much smaller than everyone else. And because of the danger of his situation, nearly from birth he had to learn to adapt. To strike hard. To change tactics. To keep the other kids—who were always trying to hurt him—off balance. And, most important of all, he learned how to take a punch and keep going.
Gruk’s childhood was hard. Especially after his father, Both-Eyes, killed the Conqueror and had all of One-Eye’s technological relics purged in a return to the old ways. It was a life of struggle, defined by violence, and wrapped in the worship of a Demon.
Gruk’s memories of that period of time were always thin, but one thing that stuck was the game he and Fargrid played, where they took turns slapping each other in the face, each time hitting harder and harder, and both of them laughing and laughing as they did it.
Loss and Consequence
And then it happened. In his ninth year. At the heart of an amphitheater so ancient, it almost seemed to be natural.
It happened as Both-eyes’ reign was falling apart. The jeers about the Runt had grown to the point where Both-Eyes took the tribe to the Pit of the Scourge. Father hauled son to the center, and amidst the shards of ancient black rock, said that anyone could challenge him. In fact, everyone could.
It was Fargrid who stepped forward first.
He did so, knowing that any of the other orcs would slaughter his brother without mercy. But if Fargrid could pull his blows just enough… there might be a tiny chance that Gruk could play dead, and possibly survive after the tribe left. It was such a tiny, brutal ray of hope, but it was the only one Fargrid could see. So he stepped out to meet his brother on the field of battle.
Young Gruk picked up a rock. Fargrid stuck to his fists. And just as Gruk was winding up for his first swing…
Out of the corner of his eye, Fargrid saw the arrival of a group of Gnoll raiders cresting the ridgeline at the top of the amphitheater. And he also saw, at their head, Weiralai.
The sight of a fully unmasked Denizen of Leng froze Fargrid for a split second. But Gruk was facing the opposite way. He had no clue. And something terrible happened.
The rock swung.
A Loss.
The blow that should have only grazed Fargrid, struck true and dropped him. The Gnolls and the Stranger swarmed over the top of the rise and decimated his tribe while Gruk stood helplessly at its center, in shock, mourning his fallen brother.
When they finally reached him, he swung out in fury, but he missed. He fell forward. The howling started. And with it, came the pain. Eventually, the Stranger reached him.
And nothing was ever the same again.
The Choice
The time between that first murder and the next—that brief period of Change and Transition, of adolescence—it was rough.
Weiralai traveled with Gruk through the wastes for a time, searching for any possible remnants of her stolen technological relics. He had few Choices. And no Power.
But then something happened that was his Choice. It was a Choice he likely would never have made if his life had not already been shaped by so much trauma. But still, it was a Choice he made. And he made it alone: Gruk Riptusk sacrificed thirteen helpless captives, all to expand his power.
And a road he never would have otherwise stumbled down on his own became his Path.
Exactly as Weiralai wanted. She poisoned Riptusk’s eternal soul by engineering the situation where he bound himself to Nurgal, before she then dropped him into a life where he’d fall into worship of the King in Yellow. He would become a soul corrupted in darkness. A soul Choosing a life of ruin and waste. A soul that could be molded by Nemira and her son to labor on behalf of the King in Yellow.
Not that this Choice was an immediate flipping of a switch. But it marked what he would later identify as a Turning Point. Perhaps a Point of No Return? And it would come to haunt him, before the end.
Seventeen years ago, Weiralai dumped Riptusk with Biting Lash and told her to make his life hell.
Which she did.
Nexuses
The following two years were unrelenting hell. Much of it he suppressed for the rest of his life. He was branded, on the back of his neck, with Biting Lash’s mark. And following three separate escape attempts, Riptusk was divested of three of his fingers.
But Riptusk was brought together with Rony in Blossoming Thorn. And a bond was forged between the two of them that felt unbreakable. Without the other, neither would have survived. It was Rony who gave Riptusk the name of Grip. It was a secret name. Something only the two of them shared. Something never spoken outside of their little circle.
When he had to be hard, he used the name Riptusk, but when he thought of who he really was, he was Grip. A survivor. Someone who could hold on, no matter the shit thrown at him. No matter what Chaos fell into their lives.
Fifteen years ago, Riptusk and Rony were sold to Lowls and brought under the same roof as Vatticus, Thema, and Ray. Thema, of course, immediately seeded them.
And the thing about Xhamen-Dor is that once He’s up in there, entangled in your brain folds, entwined in your consciousness, He whispers to you not just of Unspeakable Secrets, Endless Life, and Immortal Power, but also of Change, of Transformation, and the secret, undeniable Truth: that you are the worst version of yourself. You are less than the shit scraped loose by the cloak of an Elder God, in a stinking sewer, in a forgotten city that fell to ruin before it was even built.
Yet even as lowly and wretched as you are, you can be a Change Agent in the universe and bring about cataclysmic Transformation.
After The Nexuses
Riptusk and Rony were drugged into compliance, and then eventually into the devoted worship of Hastur.
Mun made the drugs. Vatticus administered the drugs. And Riptusk and Rony fell into their jobs with gusto. They came to simply love murdering people. Soon, they were fully Lowls’ agents and dutiful servants of Carcosa.
That’s the thing about Hastur. Show people enough just enough, through a little crack in the door of Reality, and all they thought they knew about the Natural Order, and the Way Things Are—show them just a hint of the deeper Truths out there—and they walk through that door on their own. For some, it’s about the pure, unbridled chaos and nihilism. For others, it’s all about power. And control.
And for Riptusk, who had never truly known power, who had never been in control, who had come to see existence itself as kind of Prison… the appeal was real.
Riptusk and Rony were on the drugs for five years, but were weaned off them ten years ago when Melisenn proclaimed their conversions complete.
At some point in this period, Daria was born. And died. At another point, Ray left for university in Cheliax. Thema was always neck-deep in dark tomes. And then Riptusk started dreaming that he was traveling a desert to find something, or lose something, but he didn’t know what it was. He told Rony about these dreams, and Rony was pretty sure he knew what was going on: Nurgal.
Riptusk’s soul now belonged to two gods: Nurgal and Hastur. But he couldn’t be fully Hastur’s until he broke all ties with Nurgal. This would take ruthless discipline. He would have to break the sigils, reconstruct his soul, and discipline his mind: no drugs. No dwelling on the past. Live in the present.
Live for the King.
It seemed to work.
So, for a while, Riptusk was doing great. Hiding from the Sun God. Crushing skulls.
Five years ago, the hedge wall went up around Iris Hill. Lowls’ and Thema’s studies were progressing. The world needed to REALLY be kept out.
‘Cuz Lowls was cooking on something.
No one was totally clear on exactly what Lowls was trying to puzzle out. But isn’t that the way of closed little cults? No need to ask questions: Hastur and Xhamen-Dor have all the answers. Take the little rewards that make you think you’re doing GREAT, and just keep reading, cultivating, and killing.
The years passed. Riptusk became the constable. Lowls spent all the county’s money on books. Rony and Riptusk would kill the book dealers who wouldn’t sell (or who Lowls just didn’t feel like paying), while they stuck their fingers in every pie of graft and extortion they could bake up in Thrushmoor.
Lowls stared visiting Zandalus in Briarstone Asylum. He wasn’t getting the exact access he wanted, so a change in leadership at the Asylum needed to be arranged. Rony obtained The Chain of Nights, and Thema’s research practically exploded.
Eventually, Lowls’ and Thema’s research lead them to the Oasis.
The Oasis
On the 6th of Sarenith, 4715, the party entered the Dreamlands for the first time.
Rony, Riptusk, Ray, and Vatticus knew almost nothing about what they were heading into. They knew they were going somewhere. They knew they needed to keep Lowls alive. They knew they were seeking someone called the Mad Poet. But that’s about it.
Lowls and Thema kept from them all knowledge of the Dreamlands, what it was, that that was even where they were going. They explained that they’d be going Somewhere Else, and that their only way back would be a command word which only Lowls could speak.
So they didn’t understand that they were in a dream. But they sure found out.
They met the Mad Poet. It didn’t go well. And they all died.
When they woke, it was almost a month later.
The Quests
Upon awakening, they were all mad. None of them truly understood how lucky they were that Melisenn didn’t kill them when they were helpless. When they eventually recovered, Lowls learned about the need to bring Gifts to the Mad Poet, and the hunt for suitable Gifts began.
Everyone was filled in on the basics of Dream Travel. To a point. Just what they needed to know.
Lowls, in his paranoia, made sure that the others were drugged every time they went. He wasn’t comfortable with the idea of his being asleep while the rest might wake up first. Mun sent drugs that would keep their minds active and alert, but their bodies unconscious long enough that no matter what happened, they would always wake last.
Lowls went to the Dreamlands night after night, sometimes with his crew, sometimes with hired mercenaries, sometimes with a mix. They did it in the guest rooms upstairs at Iris Hill: he and Thema had the beds, some of the others would get pallets to collapse on. Brayden and any mercenaries got the floor.
Then, every morning when it was required, Riptusk and Rony would murder the mercenaries and dump them in a mass grave.
This got old, after a while. They started to feel like flunkies rather than key players in service to their King. What were they even doing? What was the Endgame here?
Need-to-know.
That’s what the Endgame was.
Over and over they went. In the Dream, Lowls learned about the Mad Poet and passed the information on to Thema. Thema researched gifts. In the waking world, Riptusk and Rony secured books about ritual magic and brought them to Thema. Thema learned that you could use passphrases to bring you to a specific spot in the Dreamlands, but she had to create the passphrases—a process that took time. Months, in fact, for the first one she made.
They went after the Signet Ring first, on the night of the 3rd of Calistril, 4718.
They arrived in Brellin’s ballroom and arranged a meeting with the viscount, which Lowls took alone, while the others waited. For hours. And hours. Riptusk looked out the windows and saw that huge sun hanging immobile in the sky, and idly wondered how they’d managed to chain Nurgal like that.
It was an idle thought—a framing from his early childhood—but it brought his mind onto the Shining Scourge, in a way he hadn’t thought of Him in years. And standing there, at the window, as the sunlight hit his arms, he started to itch.
They secured the ring and woke.
In the waking world, it took a few weeks for Thema to finish the passphrase for direct travel to the Enchanted Wood. And as she toiled away, Riptusk couldn’t shake the itch. He couldn’t tell whether or not it was just in his mind, so he started dabbling in Jane’s drugs. Just a little, at first.
Just a taste.
They went after the Pard Tail on the 21st of Calistril.
Lowls was hopped-up and excited, talking up a storm. Thema thought they should negotiate with the Zoogs, and Lowls agreed. So they started doing so.
But Riptusk was immediately freaked out about how bad his arm was itching under the light of the Dreamlands sun.
So he abandoned his tattoo needle—he left that piece of himself behind—hoping that clearing his person of anything attached to the Shining Scourge would help his situation.
Ray eventually ran out of patience and strong-armed the Zoogs into taking them to the Pards, and the fight that followed was brutal.
Within moments, Vatticus, Lowls and Thema woke themselves up, just to ensure their survival. Over a dozen Zoogs died. The only one worth his salt in the fight was the one they called Mortimer. Eventually, they finished the fight, with Riptusk claiming the killing blow on both Pards.
They grabbed the tail and woke.
They went after the Skull of Ghoul Royalty the very next night. Thema wasn’t sure she had her next passphrase sufficiently honed, but Riptusk egged Lowls on.
Fighting, even in a dream, was better than thinking, after all.
They arrived outside of Igguzqaiz on a cliff overlooking the Leng Ghoul necropolis metropolis. (Thema pointed out that this wouldn’t have happened if she’d been given more time to work on her passphrase.) There was a civil war brewing between two halves of the mighty civilization, and a group of insurgent arcanists were summoning outsiders to help them in their battle.
As the party materialized there, they all got glimpses into alternate lives and the experience was INTENSE. Riptusk saw himself as a mentor to a bunch of kids and he had no idea how to process that.
Lowls called an abort and everyone woke themselves up.
Except for Rony, apparently. He stayed. And he secured the ruby-encrusted skull.
In the waking world, once again, Thema begged for more time before they went after the Idol. She knew she could land the party somewhere in Sarnath, but she didn’t know yet if she could actually get them exactly where the idol could be found. But nobody was listening to Thema.
They went after the Green Stone Idol of the Water Lizard the very next night.
They arrived in the palace of King John of the Bone Crown, on the 10th anniversary of the razing of Ib. The mood of the place was muted. First, because of the storm brewing out over the lake. Second, the green stone idol (stolen by Lord Dunsany and his conquering army when they destroyed the city of Ib) had vanished the previous night. It had been held in the temple of Tamash the Illusion, but the high priest had been found dead that very morning. Before his demise, he’d scrawled a single word onto the empty altar: DOOM.
The idol wasn’t in Sarnath anymore.
The next logical place to check would be Ib, but they hadn’t really thought of this quest in trekking terms, and so they wondered if they weren’t better off waking up, having Thema see if she could learn more, and then popping back in. Not having processed yet what happens when you leave the Dreamlands and return to the same location, they woke.
In the waking world, Thema dove into research. And for many weeks, Riptusk declined. He was doing more than simply “tasting” Jane’s drugs by this point.
Eventually, Thema said that she couldn’t find any writings on what happened to the idol, and said they should just return, and think of this quest as a longer-term, exploratory hunt.
They returned to the Dreamlands on the night of the 8th of Gozran.
They arrived in the reign of King Edward the Learned, on the 37th anniversary of the razing of Ib. The city was celebrating. The anniversary of the slaughter had become a local holiday. They were partying—and the waters of the lake were rising. The group trekked around the lake over the course of four days and found the ruins of Ib. They walked the empty streets until they found a small stone altar on the lakeshore, upon which sat a glowing green idol. When they approached, Ib Shades rose and killed the whole party before they could wake. All except for Lowls, who got himself out in time.
In the waking world, everyone but Lowls “woke” in a catatonic state. It took a month, due to the general lack of healing and counseling he had access to, but he eventually got the group on their feet again.
They went back on the 3rd of Desnus. They arrived during the reign of King Howard the Mad, on the 75th anniversary of the razing of Ib. Nobody died this time, but they had to prematurely wake themselves.
And then this just went on, and on, and on, and on.
They’d go. It would be later. The waters of the lake were higher. The storm was closer. They’d trek around the lake. They’d enter Ib. And the Ib Shades would be too numerous to overcome.
They went nearly every night. Sometimes they’d pause briefly, but never long enough to truly recover.
During this stretch of months, Riptusk’s drug use grew worse and worse. And the relationship between him and Rony took a steep nosedive. Their conflict came to a head over Nixon. There was a confrontation. And the two were never publicly seen speaking to each other after it.
When the party went to Sarnath on the night of the 26th of Sarenith, they finally cleared the Ib Shades, but as Lowls stepped forward to grab the idol, Bokrug rose from the lake and the sight drove them mad.
They all woke blind. Their eyes, according to Melisenn, seemed to be functional, but none of them were receiving visual input. It took time to heal and cure this psychosomatic damage.
On and on this went. Over and over. Sometimes they’d make through the Shades, and sometimes they wouldn’t. Sometimes they’d avoid seeing Bokrug. But sometimes they wouldn’t. Trauma. Madness. And mind-numbing repetition.
In the end, it was Ray who finally got the idol.
It was all falling apart, but there were still three more gifts to get.
On the 11th of Lamashan, they went to Dylath-Leen. They orchestrated an attack on Quaveandra and left with the Heartstone.
The party went after the Captain’s Tricorne on the night of the 12th of Lamashan. But the bleakness hanging over everything was so bad at this point that Riptusk didn’t even bother to show up. He was high. He didn’t give a single, solitary shit about anything anymore.
He was broken.
Apparently, Thema descended the stairs alone. And she returned with the hat. But she never talked about what she did to get it. And Riptusk didn’t care.
On the 13th of Lamashan, they went to Arventon for the Red Webbed Foot.
When they arrived, there was bitter disagreement about how to put together an expedition to the Black Lake. The fighting got so heated that Lowls just pulled the plug and decided six gifts were enough. So everyone poofed out.
After leaving Arventon, Riptusk dreamt of standing on the battlements of Fort Hailcourse, his arms thrown wide. As the sun burned him alive, he called out to Hastur and dared him to stand up to Nurgal. He no longer cared which one of them claimed him.
He just wanted it all to be over.
So when Thema came to them all on the 14th day of Lamashan, the day they would return to the Mad Poet’s oasis, he listened to her. He listened when she spoke of freedom. Of an end to the struggle. An end to Memory. And the Self. An escape, not only from the bleak pointlessness of life, but from all the horrors awaiting them after death.
And rather than killing Lowls, they all chose to march to their own Oblivion with full knowledge of what was about to happen.
Lowls had thought he’d outsmarted them, but in the end they outsmarted him and welcomed with open arms the Sacrifice he intended to make of them. He would steal nothing from them. They would make a Choice. And they would finally be free of the lives Weiralai had cursed them with.
On the night of 14th of Lamashan, they entered the Dreamlands and traveled to the Mad Poet’s Oasis a second time. They presented their Gifts.
And Lowls made his Sacrifice.
He drowned them all in the pool.
The Sacrifice
But when the Moment came—the moment Riptusk felt everything he was, all he knew, all he’d learned, and all he’d lost—from the depths of his soul, clinging to the faint belief that he didn’t deserve this, that this wasn’t his fault, Riptusk raged in blind fury as the water filled his lungs. He had been born weak, and after all he’d overcome, he was going to die, weak and helpless yet again.
But no: FUCK THIS SHITE. He wasn’t ready, as it turned out. He wasn’t going to go down like this. Not like this. Not on his knees.
His soul cried out: DESTROY THEM!
And this mind, entangled with a Great Old One, fueled by reserves of rage and anger beyond the grasp of most mortals, it clung to the urge to be given a chance to DESTROY THEM ALL…
As he slipped into oblivion.
First Reference: Chapter 150 (Part 3)
Other Notable References: —