Brog totemized, 1043 (A) / (B) / (C) / (D) / (E)
    Brog totem/time tunnel, 1067 (A) / (B) / (C)
    Brog falls from radio tower, 1067 (A)
BROG

Brog, whose presence would be essential to the return of magic in 1067, was a rare hairless blue-skinned brogmoid born circa 867 GUE, who resembled a cross between a troll and bigfoot. Living in a sod cave, Brog loved to pick up rocks, smash rocks, throw rocks, and of course, eat rocks (those with a creamy quartz filling were his favorite flavor). ("Brog like rocks! Mmm. Rocks. Brog thinking about rocks. Brog thinking about rocks and how nice they are. Nice for his tummy.") His favorite color was rocks. His favorite game was rocks. His best friends were rocks. Brogmoids love to pitch rocks more than anything else. It was not advised to ask him things such as a complicated physics problem about the nature of rock throwing, or even how many fingers he has on his right hand. ("Which right hand?") He loved all creatures, especially little animals, and he was able to tame any animal. He could read any animal environment and immediately knew who has been there, and who they fear will come there--because he could speak the creature languages.

The brogmoid's powers, and sphere of knowledge, corresponded to the powers of Deep Magic, the magic of the Underground. The magic of the Underground involved transmutation and change. Brog understood these spells and could recognize a shape-changer anywhere. In 1157 GUE, he was about 200 years old (which was enough time for one to have grasp hold of the entire workings of magic by now), but was one of the worst at magic. He was even worse with magical objects and was terrible at providing magic advice.

Towards the mid-tenth century, he was employed by Madame Sophia Hamilton of the Frigid River Branch Conservatory for a zorkmid a week to attend basic needs, such as the refiling of her gas lamp and cleaning the key slot.

While Syovar III was Vice Regent (c. 997~1047), Brog became part his honor guard.

During the Second Inquisition, Brog was a member of the Inquisition Guard. When a certain griff was about to be totemized in 1037, he felt badly for the creature. But this brogmoid, in particular, possessed a singular, if instinctual, compassion that made it physically impossible for him to sit and watch while a harmless and defenseless creature like the griff was tormented for pleasure. This big-hearted brogmoid was one of the nicest fellows a griff could ever hope to meet; in fact, there was no creature, great or small, that would refuse to converse with him, no matter how dull the conversation would invariably be. Already the brogmoid had shown the griff many preferences while in jail.

Brog leaped up out of the crowd and, ripping a massive iron tube off the side of the Totemizer, knocked a guard down into the machine instead of the griff. And, for one tense moment, Yannick himself wobbled on the edge of the Totemizer; he would have fallen inside, if he had not caught the guard with his hands, and knocked him into the machine by way of keeping himself from falling. Chaos ensued, and when the chase was over and done, it took six men (each twice the size of Brog) to hold down the wrathful, growling brogmoid, while a seventh stuffed the griff down the hatch.

As you can imagine, Brog made a quick visit, the next day, to the court. The brogmoid was forever in trouble as an Inquisition Guard, seeing as his locker was full of all sorts of forbidden things the prisoners would implore him to bring them. Not much harm it could do in there, he reasoned (if you could call it that), though personally he did not see what was so appetizing about a honeycake with a metal file or skeleton key stuck in the middle. When he tried them, they got terribly stuck in his teeth. But if someone needed something, however much their tastes differed from his, he would do it for them. He was just that sort of a fellow.

That did not make much of a defense in his speedy trial in the Court of the Inquisition, but Brog did not understand much of what was said in there to begin with. When asked, “How do you plead?” the brogmoid looked at the magistrate like he was stupid, and said, “Like this.” Then he got down on his hands and knees and said, “Please, Please, oh I beg you.” The rest of the trial was executed along those same lines.

When he was finally taken to the Totemizer machine, it was in a massive metal collar, and two sets of chains. Twenty guards hoisted him up to the top of the machine, and the Yannick did not waste a minute dawdling, this time around. Despite all of the precautions that were taken to ensure his capture, Brog somehow managed to break free from the guards and escaped his imprisonment, but his fate as a totem was inevitable.

In 1043, that same half-witted member of the already half-witted brogmoid species, accidentally broke into the Steppinthrax Monastery. Seeking for a place to hide from the Inquisition, he had squeezed up an air-duct from the Great Underground Subway station below. This quarter-witted creature activated the Totemizer machine and crawled inside, believing that the machine was some sort of cavern ("Pretty Buttons. Pretty buttons not nice for tummy. Pretty Buttons make big machine go BOOM!"). A whirr… and smoke… and sparks… and a subsequently, the machine dumped Brog at the gates of Hades. There he would sit for a long time thinking about rocks.

On the 34th of Frobuary, 1067, AFGNCAAP met up with three other traveling companions who wished to join the quest. All three were one-time magical creatures who had been stripped of their magical faculties and imprisoned within totems. The three were none other than the beautiful and telepath Lucy Flathead (within the Steppinthrax Monastery), the thick-fitted, all-brawn no-brain brogmoid Brog (within the gates of Hades), and the whiny, neurotic griff (at the Secret Entrance to the Underground), who suffered a dragon inferiority complex and wanted desperately to avoid physical pain. Together, they formed an unlikely band of adventurers who joined forced to recover the three lost relics, destroy the Grand Inquisitor, and finally return magic to its rightful place in the Empire.

The group dynamic was interesting, to say the least; Dalboz of Gurth, another of their companions, was hungry and bitter and betrayed, skeptical as to whether the Grand Inquisitor could even be stopped, and in as foul a mood as any fellow stuffed in a lantern of that size was likely to be. Dalboz oversaw the posse with what limited respect a bodiless voice could command.  Lucy, for herself, was not accustomed to taking orders from a man, and found the arcane nature of Dalboz’s magical knowledge, when combined with the insane nature of his utilitarian uselessness, somewhat aggravating.

The big-hearted Brog was the warrior of the party, and was intensely loyal to AFGNCAAP and the other companions. He was gifted with a keen sense of right and wrong, an overwhelming compassion, and a sense of honor that was only slaked by revenge. He had an instinctive inner compass when in the Underground, so he was able to help the party from getting too lost in that region. Although the griff spent a lot of time and wit haranguing the muddle-brained Brog, the two were friends, if opposites. The griff liked nothing better than to order about Brog, duping him into performing his own share of the work and more, and then blaming Brog when these suggestions backfired. Brog did not mind; he simply liked to talk with the twittering birds and the chirping insects, and instinctively find his way throughout the Underground, as he had since he was a pup. He was content just to look at Lucy, though more than anything he wished he could touch her. Though he lived in a sod cave, rather than a glittering nest, Brog loved jewels and metals as much as the griff, and they tended to bicker over these. But the brogmoid always backed down when the griff offered him a nice rock.

To retrieve the three artifacts, it was necessary to send the spirits of the three totemized victims through three time tunnels, which had been erected back in the days of Dimwit Flathead for the very purpose of restoring magic to Zork. The griff went back in time and recovered the Coconut of Quendor straight from the mouth of the Watchdragon. Lucy Flathead was sent to Port Foozle in the year 931. Brog returned to the White House shortly before 966 GUE, where he took two torches for companions ("Like wood no talk much better."), broke through the front door ("Boards hutning house! Leave house alone, nails!" and "Big toothpick, good for pebbles in teeth."), descended into the grue breeding ground, cooked a hard-boiled grue egg, retrieved the Skull of Yoruk by bashing the shrine holding it with a board, and returned to the present day in the walking castle.

On the following day (1067-02-35), AFGNCAAP took the totems with him to the Flathead Mesa, where the three relics were all placed within the radio tower there. AFGNCAAP quickly cast MAXOV upon the tower to bind the energies. The resultant blast threw AFGNCAAP, the totems, and the Grand Inquisitor from the tower while sending a shockwave of magic across the land. Exposed to the burst of magic energies, the totems sprung back to life. Brog's fall was broken by his head. Magic had returned to Zork and the Inquisition had ended. Thus the Second Age of Magic dawned.

A majority of the Second Age of Magic was plagued by the Great Monster Uprising. Throughout this chaos, Brog and the Fourth Dungeon Master concluded the Magic Wars, an epic confrontation between the Eastlands (the good guys) and the Westlands (the bad guys). No details save a fragmentary mention of this conflict have survived.


TRIVIA:


SOURCE(S): Zork: Grand Inquisitor (game, timeline, official guide book), Zork: Nemesis, Activision's public announcement about the last two games of the Magic Wars trilogy.