Grug

Backstory

Grug is not what most people picture when they picture a troll. He stands nearly eight feet tall, broad as a barn door, with mossy green-grey skin, a nose that has been broken in at least four different directions, and hands large enough to cup a waterfall. He speaks slowly — not because his thoughts are slow, but because he learned long ago that if he speaks carefully, people are less likely to run away before he finishes. He grew up in the deep ravines beneath the Glade of Whispering Falls, where trolls have lived since before elves had words for the place. His people are not scholars or warriors in any formal sense — they are keepers of roads, of crossings, of the in-between places. Grug knows every path in the Glade and for thirty miles in every direction, not from maps, but from memory and from the particular way stone feels underfoot when a road is true. He was present at the wedding — not as a guest, exactly, but as a fixture. The Glade falls under his watch, and he had spent three days before the ceremony quietly reinforcing the old stone paths and making sure the sacred pools were clear of debris, his own small contribution to the occasion. He has known Nylle since she was a child storyteller who wandered into his ravine and, instead of screaming, asked him if he knew any stories about the falls. He has known Teryi since the young magic-welder came as an adolescent with Threadweaver tutors and was the only one who thanked Grug for clearing the path. When the rift tore open, Grug was thrown forty feet into the treeline and woke up with ringing ears and a burning certainty that his two friends were somewhere in that chaos and needed someone to carry things and know the way. Grug is not complicated in his motivations, which he considers one of his better qualities. He loves his friends. The Glade is his home and it has been hurt. These are sufficient reasons to walk into danger, and he does not require more. He is unexpectedly well-read — trolls have long memories and Grug has spent decades listening to travelers at crossings, and he has absorbed a great deal of lore about rifts, resonances, and the old architecture of Aelindra's magic simply by being present and quiet when scholars thought no one important was listening. He does not often volunteer this knowledge because nobody asks trolls about lore, which he finds more amusing than offensive. He is patient in the way of old stone, warm in the way of a fire that has been burning steadily for years, and possessed of a very dry sense of humor that tends to surface at exactly the wrong moments.