a.k.a. the Runt, Gruk Riptusk, Riptusk the Gray, the Laughing Tyrant, the Gripper, Great Warrior, Griptusk Sellen Skywin
BRAWLER 13
A huge, hulking male half-orc; it was impossible for the others to tell how old. His hair was a matted mess of dark green dreadlocks. His eyes were an almost-glowing yellow that pierced out of his gray-green skin, but what was going on behind those glowing eyes could only be described as dull. Crude tattoos covered his arms, and he was missing the pinky on his right hand and the pinky and ring finger on his left. He’d been branded—and not recently—between his shoulder blades with what looked like a squiggly line. He presented as a wall of menace and power.
The words that echoed in his mind from the Prologue were “Destroy them.” In the shared nightmare of Chapter 1, he was clutching a hunk of volcanic rock covered in gore, matted with sand.
He developed a phobia of slashing weapons during Chapter 1, and has proved himself deadly with his bare hands. Occasionally, his dull eyes roll back in his head and he can perform exceptional feats of combat for brief periods of time. He speaks Taldane.
In Chapter 2, he claimed a suit of gray masterwork studded leather armor and a matching light steel shield. He also claimed some silver tusk caps and a constable’s badge (the latter more out of curiosity than affinity), as it seemed of a set with the shield and armor (as did a shattered battleaxe). When prompted by Dora, who intuited that his name was “Rip”, he told them he believed it was actually “Grip,” but that he didn’t remember who called him that.
At the end of Chapter 5, Grip suffered injuries as the result of a vivid and horrifying dream.
In Chapter 6, he asked Dora to use psychometry on the constable badge. He felt it was his, but his natural inclination was to challenge authority, and this badge was so antithetical to how he had come to see himself. Dora’s reading revealed two troubling scenes. Ray had a visceral reaction to this reading. Later, Dora counseled Grip to help ease some of the mental strain of their circumstances.
Grip spent the test of patience in Chapter 9 clocking the survivors behind the barricade and gauging how he would defeat them in combat, contemplating his newfound abilities, and mulling over his constable badge. In Dora’s reading of the badge, he seems most disturbed by his own laughter in the memory. During the test of charity, he made rather a fool of himself trying to help break down firewood when the survivors offered a slashing weapon to do the job—and the ensuing scene caused another survivor to remember a nasty encounter with Grip in her past, something having to do with the disappearance of someone named Dr. Trice. Grip took a shift at the barricade instead.
On the morning of the fifth day, Grip learned that he had contracted tumor infestation from the Hungry Flesh—but Ray was able to remove it later the same morning with a scroll of remove disease found in the chaplain’s office.
Upon reading his file in the Briarstone records room in Chapter 15, Grip learned his name was actually Gruk Riptusk, a.k.a Riptusk the Gray, and that he is likely of human descent, though his ethnicity is unknown. He learned he was from Thrushmoor in Versex County and was committed on 15 Lamashan 4718 along with his companions, and that he was an employee of H.P. Lowls. He has no known family or next of kin, and Lowls warned that he was “extremely dangerous”. His attending doctor was Arosh Chawar. On 16 Lamashan 4718, Grip was observed by head nurse Deliadde to mutter “Destroy them” repeatedly in the Taldane tongue overnight, and his restraints were doubled.
In the Act I Interlude, it was revealed that 19 years ago, when he was nine years old, Grip once stood beneath the unrelenting heat of the mid-day sun, at the heart of natural amphitheater, in the aftermath of something terrible. He lashed out in desperation, but misjudged the approaching danger and fell forward on his face while howling erupted all around him. Then the Stranger appeared and took him by the hand, and after saying “You will do nicely,” she asked Grip what his name was.
In Chapter 16, after the reading of the patient records, Gull believed he recalled that Gruk Riptusk was the constable of Versex County and known as the “Laughing Tyrant.” Riptusk is believed to have his fingers in most criminal enterprise in town, and is partnered with a man known as “The Triangle Man” or “The Snake.”
In Chapter 17, Grip clothed himself from the personal effects room at Briarstone Asylum in pants and boots, but noted that he cares little for fashion.
In Chapter 18, Grip learned from a conversation with Denman that he speaks the Orcish tongue. He also revealed to Denman that he had been struggling with the information he had been learning about his past.
In Chapter 19, after the fight with Mr. Gabriel, Grip had to be hypnotized in order to undergo the doppelganger test.
In Chapters 19 and 20, Grip had some heart-to-hearts with Airwynn, at the end of which she shared her story about when she’d last seen him. She indicated that he played a role in the murder of Dr. Trice, the former Administrator of Briarstone Asylum.
In Chapter 24, Grip was exposed to leprosy in a fight with two Boilborns.
In Chapter 25, Grip experienced the terror of being paralyzed at the heart of a mob of Ghouls.
In Chapter 28, Grip struggled with despondency, frustration, and isolation as he waited to learn whether or not he had contracted leprosy. In the end he managed to avoid that disease, but Gull had to break the news to him that he had been infected with ghoul fever.
Grip kicked off the battle for the chapel in Chapters 29 & 30 by sucker-punching Ratch Mamby during a supposed scroll exchange. In the mayhem that followed, he nearly single-handedly dispersed an entire rat swarm summoned by Jenny Two-Tails, and ultimately pummeled Ratch to death to end the melee.
In Chapter 33, Grip suffered more sanity damage from the encounter with the Esipil.
In Chapter 34, Grip finally recovered from ghoul fever, just in time for the final encounters of Act I.
In Chapter 35 (Part 1), when he was able to make out the words Zandalus was chanting, Grip learned that he had some familiarity with the Kellish language.
In the Act I Epilogue, a 9-year-old Grip told the Stranger to call him “Riptusk.”
In the Act II Prologue, Grip learned that he had been brought to Cassomir and the stewardship of Gulliver Vatticus on behalf of Count Lowls fifteen years previously. At that time he had fewer tattoos—they were still crude and hand-drawn, but there were actually recognizable objects among them: a sun, perhaps a leering face. And since then, they had been built upon in order to break the meaning of the original symbols.
In Chapter 37, Grip was recognized by Skywin Freeling, who said that the rumor was that he was dead.
In Chapter 38, Grip came face-to-face with his past as Dr. Trice returned to Thrushmoor as a Revenant, determined to destroy him.
In Chapter 39, Grip’s armor and cloak (formally owned by Winter) were recognized by an inquisitor at the Sleepless Agency.
In Chapter 42, Grip (along with the rest of the party) heard the name of Xhamen-Dor and was seeded by it.
In Chapter 43, the party studied Grip’s tattoos more carefully and determined that they appeared to have been specifically changed in order to have their meaning broken by the adjustments. Dora recognized that, effectively, they were some sort of binding runes—binding him to a powerful outsider or god. They looked remarkably like obeisance and binding symbols to a Demon Lord, which made Ray think he might recognize the laughing demonic face that used to be there as representing the demon lord Nurgal. Dora thought of these runes as being unbreakable—unless one’s memory, experience, or everything that makes you you were to be lost.
In Chapter 44, Grip came to enjoy feeling the reactions of fear the villagers of Thrushmoor gave him.
In Chapter 46, Grip read a contentious letter from Rony that indicated some rift between them and the other members of the party in the “before times.”
In the Act II Interlude, Grip (then known as Riptusk) was was an Unchained Barbarian/Fighter and carried a +1 fury-born battleaxe named “Dog Reaver.” In that chapter, Grip was observed to have died in 4715 (three years before the start of the adventure) at the hands of a wish spell cast by the Mad Poet.
In Chapter 61, Grip participated in a conversation with Dabwick about Carcosa (where he clearly went out of his way to protect Dabs) and Rony’s behavior, providing them some comfort and reassuring them that they were of vital importance to the party.
In Chapter 68, Grip had to grapple with the serious damage to his sanity he was suffering as the party made their way through Iris Hill. Shades of the “Laughing Tyrant” began to surface as Grip howled with laughter in the face of danger.
In Chapter 81, heading down to the sub-basement of Iris Hill, Grip was tired and drained, in every way. Descending the stairs, his legs shook in an unfamiliar way. He had never been as afraid of dying before, and he hoped he was prepared for whatever awaited him at the bottom of the stairs.
In the temple to Hastur below Iris Hill, while speaking with Melisenn, Grip gained some insight into his tattoos. He embraced something he had tried very hard to forget, and became a bit better at resisting spells and conditions. But at what cost?
In Chapters 81 & 82, Melisenn taunted Grip with her belief that the eye of the Shining Scourge would find him again, and that it had only been through the use of drugs (specifically flayleaf) that he had kept himself hidden. When his attention was called to his tattoos, they briefly flared with power and an itch settled into his skin.
In Chapter 84, Grip wrestled over an identity crisis with Stazi.
In Chapter 85, Grip lost patience with Vik’s paranoia and snapped at him after he refused Dabwick’s recovery spells.
In Chapter 86, Grip learned from Lowls’ journals that he was Garundi in origin and had been purchased fifteen years ago by Lowls from Weiralai and was drugged into compliance for many years, until his interest in Hastur kept him secure. Previously held for years by a long-time associate of Weiralai’s called Biting Lash.
In Chapter 87, Grip determined that one of his dreams in Briarstone originated from his previous time in Okeno under the slaver Biting Lash.
In Chapter 88, Grip realized that Stazi had been successfully helping him through his fear of bladed weapons as he spoke bluntly with Vik about Vatticus.
As the party set sail for Cassomir in Chapter 90, Grip contemplated his past choices and his increased ability and willingness to work through things non-violently. He began a path of apprenticeship as a sailor aboard the Starling.
In Chapter 91, the Inmost Blot dreamed Grip’s dream: Grip dreamt that he was traveling to find something that was lost, but he didn’t know where he lost it, or even what it was. Viktor might have been with him, but his face kept changing. Grip never found what he sought, but continued to search, right up until waking. The dream felt true but not real.
In Chapter 93, Grip discovered that the crawling, wound-knitting sensation of his tattoos was eased when they were not exposed the sun.
In Chapter 94, Grip finally rid himself of his phobia of bladed weapons for the first time since he woke up at Briarstone Asylum. He later got into an altercation with Wreben and, fearing the return of his Laughing Tyrant nature, “invented” meditation to calm himself.
In Chapter 97, on his second visit to the Dreamlands, Grip experimented with the amount of control he had over his lucid dream body, and manifested himself with solid ink across his forearms, and the absence of his brand. In Chapter 98, on his next visit, he successfully imagined himself appearing with all of his fingers intact.
In Chapter 100, Grip began to experience physical side effects from prolonged Xhamen-Dor seeding.
In the same chapter, he and Wreben made peace after the “sail incident.”
In Chapter 101, the Inmost Blot dreamed Grip’s dream: Grip dreamt of learning how to tie nautical knots, but he didn’t have any fingers. He sensed that he was being taught by crew members of the Starling, but their faces were blurred and indistinct. He kept working and working at this futile effort because there had to be something he could do that was productive and not destructive. His training was interrupted by a the sound of a sail ripping behind him. The dream felt true but not real.
In Chapter 103, when arriving at Viscount Pietro Brellin‘s ball, Grip manifested a dream body bedecked in military dress, with the armor he used to wear as Thrushmoor’s constable.
In Chapter 105, the sight of the Nightmare Ettercaps in Viscount Pietro Brellin‘s palace drove Grip mad and he began suffering from delirium.
In Chapter 107, when arriving in the Enchanted Wood, Grip manifested a dream body dressed in practical safari clothing.
In Chapter 108, Dora shared a psychometry vision of a young Grip enacting a sacrificial ritual dedicated to Nurgal.
In Chapter 111, Grip’s lucid dream body was slain by the alpha Tree Tiger. In Chapter 113, he walked the Dead Roads back to his waking body on the Material Plane, and lost his mind. Again. While struggling through a vast, confusing desert, he saw alternate versions of himself making different choices at key moments in his past—choices that would not have led him to a life of violence and murder—and watched as the possibility of those choices dissolved into sand. The vision ended with him encountering the looming figure of Brayden Vatticus.
Following this vision, Grip began talking to… someone(?) that wasn’t present. By Chapter 115, it was clear that he was talking to a delusion of Ray.
In Chapter 116, Grip had a dream without the influence of Xhamen-Dor: he dreamt of running across a desert landscape (akin to his first dream), and as he looked at the mountain toward which he ran, he saw that the Sellen Starling was atop it. He climbed to the crow’s nest and looked out over a landscape flickering between desert and water, and then he heard Ray address him from below, asking what he was doing up there and pointing out that he was surrounded by spiders. Suddenly, Grip was on a catwalk with giant spiders. Ray was there to say he told him so, before turning into an Ettercap as Grip fell.
In Chapter 118, while pursing the Captain's Tricorne gift, Grip’s lucid dream body was nearly slain by a single blow from Captain Vadrack‘s scimitar, and Grip was forced to take an extreme amount of damage to his waking body to avoid a second death in the Dreamlands. In Chapter 119, in the aftermath of the trauma, he revealed to Stazi that he had been seeing Ray.
In Chapter 125, after much rest and recovery time, Grip shook off his visions of Ray.
In Chapter 126, when arriving in Arventon, Grip’s lucid dream body manifested in spelunking gear.
In Chapter 130, when the party arrived in Igguzqaiz, they were given visions of an alternate life. In his, Grip saw himself as running a small dojo, training young people of many ancestries how to defend themselves. He manifested his lucid dream body dressed in the uniform of his dojo.
In Chapter 132, upon catching sight of a Gug, Grip was again driven mad, this time filled with a sense of his own insignificance against the darkness they faced. In Chapter 133, this madness manifested in a profound crumbling when he began to contemplate the stars while working with Othah on navigation.
In Chapter 135, Grip took up pipe smoking. He later managed to overcome his profound despair while working on a difficult navigation task given him by Othah, and through long talks with Stazi.
In Chapter 136, Grip was promoted to the rank of Able-Bodied Sailor, and made a member of the crew of the Sellen Starling.
In Chapter 137, when arriving in Sarnath, Grip manifested his dream body dressed in adventuring clothing, but quickly changed his Monk’s Robe to gold when he saw the party he was surrounded by.
In Chapter 139, Grip informed Skywin of the name he had taken for himself: Griptusk Sellen Skywin.
In Chapter 140, Grip finally recovered from his melancholia and began working with Katsin on learning the logistics of being a quartermaster.
In Chapter 142, when arriving in Dylath-Leen, Grip manifested his dream body dressed in olive drab fatigue pants and vest.
In Chapter 145, while the party discussed their imminent visit to the Mad Poet’s Oasis, Grip stated that his desire to kill Lowls and get his memories back had abated, but that he felt bound to prevent Lowls from doing whatever he was trying to do, especially since they were all part of helping him in their former lives.
In Chapter 150 (Part 1), while crossing the Eastern Desert Grip felt his belief that he could ever sufficiently atone for the evil deeds he’d done in his previous life slipping further and further away.
When asked by the Mad Poet what in and of himself he valued most highly, Grip responded, “My belief in my body. My belief that my strength can carry me through what others cannot work through.” In return, Grip received the boon of a +2 bonus to his Strength score.
In Chapter 150 (Part 3), Grip recovered his lost memories and learned his full history.
When Grip woke in Chapter 151 he was devastated by the news that the Starling had sailed without him. The loss was overwhelming—what the ship and its crew had given him was something he’d never had. After Dabs read him Barnabus’ letter, he got lost in his head for a time, musing on how he would never pick up an axe again. He knew he was truly Griptusk Sellen Skywin. And that’s who he would choose to be.
In Chapter 151 & 152, Grip was confronted by a messenger from Nurgal: a terrifying Shachath Demon. The creature indicated that it had previously had a difficult time locating him and commanded Grip to prostrate himself and re-swear oaths of fealty to the Shining Scourge. When Grip refused, combat ensued. During the battle, Grip grappled and pinned the creature, eventually forcing it to cast Greater Teleport to escape.
In Chapter 154, Grip removed his tusk caps, cut off his dreadlocks, and shaved his head completely.
In Chapter 156, Grip took the life of Etham Baler at the old Gnome’s request.
In Chapter 168, Grip was driven mad at the sight of the Dark Young of Shub-Niggurath and began seeing Sholn in Mun’s attic, hiding behind the creature.
In Chapter 170, after the party’s third fight with the Shachath Demon, Grip began to wonder if his tattoos (which he was still drawing magical power from) were the source of the demon’s ability to track him, and in Chapter 171 he asked Bash to help him with removing them.
The tattoos were successfully removed by the party with a ceremony they enacted in Chapter 174. During the ritual, Pandora helped Grip to recover a memory from his childhood relating to the Nurgal binding ritual.
Also in Chapter 174, the party discussed their preferences regarding Reincarnation and Grip revealed that he would not be willing to return from the afterlife in that manner.
In Chapter 176, Grip experienced life with all of his mental ability scores buffed, and lost a little of his “ignorance bliss.”
In Chapter 185, Grip reflected on his years spent in Blossoming Thorn and of what little he knew of the Corpse Orgy.
In Chapter 189, Grip slew Biting Lash with a devastating series of punches delivered from fifteen feet away.
First Appearance: Act I Prologue