 The griff (A) / (B) The griff captured, 1037 (A) / (B) / (C) / (D) The griff totem in time tunnel, 1067 (A) / (B) The griff rescues AFGNCAAP, 1067 (A) |
This unknown famous griff was born approximately in the year 717 GUE. As a neurotic, whiny cross between a runt dragon and a small winged lion, the griff was principally defined by his neuroses and fears—which were numerous, but included a crushing fear of heights that made flying difficult, if not impossible and hyper-neurotic tendencies which mandated a strict adherence to state and federal law. He had a rather extreme dragon inferiority complex, and above all, he tried to avoid pain, discomfort, and heroic actions of any kind. His highly-developed superego kept these basic tenets of adventuring in check.
The powers of the griff, and his sphere of knowledge, corresponded with High Magic pelagic. He knew bits and snatches of the Old Tongue, which enabled him to translate sections of spells and encrypted magic riddles/objects. The griff could read the weather and predict it with some accuracy, and he knew bits of a few good growth spells. He had an instinctive compass of above ground navigation, and was excellent at riddles, true to his breed. He was something of a wit, as a result. He was interested in magic, but fearful of its results, and far too neurotic to ever sleep.
In 1037 GUE, Dalboz of Gurth met the griff in the deepest forests of Antharia. Though of a cowardly nature, this sort of minor-league dragon agreed to help Dalboz search for time tunnels, so the items necessary to bring magic back to Quendor could be retrieved. Unfortunately the Inquisition proved dastardly for many races of magic, halfling-magic, or barely-magic creatures that lived in Zork, including the griffs.
One day, when a lone member of the Inquisition Guard was patrolling a singularly dense forest glade near Port Foozle, he came across the winged one thrashing in a trap they had set the week before. The griff’s tail was caught by a rope, which was tied to a stake in the ground and prevented him from flying away no matter how hard he strained at it. As the guard pulled at his rope, the creature began to hiss and grimace, as if he were trying to breathe fire from his little feline jaws. The soldier burst into laughter, and began to taunt the fellow in a most unfortunate manner. At that point, the griff began to babble in the most idiotic fashion. He was trying to speak in the Old Tongue, the ancient runic language that empowers dragons above all magical creatures. Of course, he did not actually know the Old Tongue, which hampered the effort considerably, and he was not a dragon.
Then, he began to shout, “Avert your eyes! Look away! I’m a dragon, you know. If you dare look into my eyes, I will turn you to… to… jelly.” The shouting became stammering, because frankly, there is not anything too frightening about jelly, and everyone knows that looking into a dragon’s eyes will turn you not to jelly but to stone.
The guard came closer, grabbing the griff by the chin and staring into his eyes. “It’s stone, you idiot. Not Jelly.”
The griff, who was by nature quite timid and could not bear to be touched in anything he interpreted to be a rough fashion, shrieked and cowered to the far extreme of the length of rope, flapping his wings as hard as he could, and begging-above all, not to be hurt. He was not a bad fellow, he was just a simple coward, a bit of a tragedian, and a touch neurotic about anything potentially involving pain of any sort. And if he did seem to imagine that nobody liked him, that everyone talked about him the second he flew out of the room, and that he was the butt of every joke, you must take a moment to consider how it must feel to be compared every moment to a dragon, and to always suffer by the comparison. The griff was not so fearsome, so loathsome, and, in a terrible kind of a way, so handsome, as a real dragon—he could not smash things with his tail, had no protective dragon scales or powerful dragon breath, and his belly was not armored in golden treasure. In fact, he only rarely had any treasure at all. This particular griff had never been in a battle, or for that matter, even a fight, and he was petrified by the idea of fighting this guard. It was only a matter of minutes before he was reduced to a blubbering pup and captured.
And it was only a matter of days before he stood at the top of the Totemizer machine, begging for clemency. But a magic race is a magic race, and there was no room for any sort of magic in Yannick’s new regime. The troops had been teasing the griff for some time, provoking him until he began to sob with such vigor that even Yannick began to feel a bit uncomfortable.
Just as Yannick gave the signal for the griff to be pushed into the machine, a brogmoid guard, conveniently named Brog, who had felt badly for the griff, and had shown him many preferences while in jail, 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.
A whirr… and smoke… and sparks… and a metal totem clattered to the stone floor. A rider picked it up and bit it, as if checking to see if it were a real coin. He rode away with it, down the Great Highway and the griff totem was later dumped into the bottom of a well (which was a secret entrance to the Great Underground Empire) on the outskirts of Port Foozle.
On the 34th of Frobuary, 1067, the adventurer who would become the Fourth Dungeon Master (who was carting Dalboz around in a lantern) soon met up with three other traveling companions who wished to join the quest: the griff, Brog, and Lucy Flathead who had been trapped in totems. The griff had been found along the Great Underground Highway near the Secret Entrance of the well which he had been thrown in. 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 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. The griff had a good overall sense of the big picture of the adventure, due to his aerial perspective on life and his age. 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.
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 heisted the Coconut of Quendor straight from the mouth of the great Watchdragon. Firstly, to accomplish this deed, the submerged head of the dragon had to be raised to the surface. This was done when the griff stuffed an inflatable sea captain into one nostril and an un-inflated boat into the other, then inflated them both. With both nostrils plugged, the Watchdragon lifted its head out of hte water, allowing griff to fly inside the maw. The dragon did not seem to mind that the griff was within its mouth, but any attempt to remove the Coconut resulted in its mouth slamming shut. Sneffle the Baker, hoping that the griff would pull him out of the throat, tossing up a coil of rope. Ignoring him, the griff took the rope and a golden chipped-off piece of one o the dragon's teeth. He placed the Coconut into a pouch on the inflatable boat (one half which was sticking out of the nose, and the other into the maw). He flew outside the mouth and tied the boat to the sea captain's leg so that both inflatable devices were connected. Reentering the mouth, the griff popped the captain with the piece of the dragon's tooth. The deflating captain shot out of the nose and whizzed around in the air for a few seconds with the inflatable boat in tow before crashing into the water and sinking. Realizing that the Coconut was stolen, the Watchdragon attempted to close its maw, but the griff escaped before being trapped inside, and then quickly vanished into the strange walking castle of Dalboz and returned to his proper time period. This fulfilled a prophecy of his race, which spoke that only the bravest, most important griff in the world would defeat the old Watchdragon and reclaim the Coconut for his race.
The griff additionally went through an alternate time tunnel to the White House where he sent a sealed GLORF spell to Hades after placing it within the mailbox.
On the following day (1067-02-35), the totems accompanied AFGNCAAP to the Flathead Mesa, where the three magic artifacts were bound togother on the radio tower there. The blast of powerful magic, which hit the top of the antenna 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. Fortunately, the adventurer was caught by the griff and survived the fall from the tower.