Grobber ('Lives of Kos' Bonus Content)

Following is a biography for Grobber, a somewhat bizarre and decidedly unsavory character that might be encountered in Skirmisher Publishing's Swords of Kos Fantasy Campaign Setting! This personage was developed as bonus content for "Lives of Kos," which contains 115 detailed biographies of characters affiliated with the campaign setting. Like Grobber, all can be used either within the Swords of Kos milieu or used as background for characters in almost any other fantasy campaign.

Find out what happens when a 300-pound pile of waste matter becomes self-aware ...

Grobber (Slum Quarter of Kos City)

Grobber appears to be a large, somewhat misshapen and slovenly Human male who is distinguished by a number of disgusting characteristics, including an ashy coating on his skin that tends to get rubbed off on things he touches. Grobber is, in fact, a self-aware construct fashioned from waste in the sewers of Kos by a powerful but extremely deranged excremancer who, when he saw his creation, was so revolted that he immediately disposed of it.

Grobber is as soulless, intellectually limited, and amoral as he is entitled, grasping, and vain. As an automaton he cannot reproduce and does not require sustenance but can go through the motions of eating, copulation, and other normal human functions, something he believes makes him exceptional and worthy of special treatment. He is, in fact, able to consume almost any sort of organic matter and has no sense of taste, and is therefore not averse to eating garbage, carrion, or the like.

Grobber sometimes tries to attach himself to adventuring parties as a lackey and will generally serve them as well as he can — within the limits of his relatively low competence, energy, and intellect — for the duration of a single mission. After that, he will actively try to betray, steal from, and otherwise harm the interests of his former associates, even if this reverse of loyalty appears to make no sense and is contrary to his own interests.

Grobber dwells in a collapsing townhouse in the slum district of Kos, where he cohabitates with his "wife," a fat and dowdy Gobliness, and his "mistress," an obese and extremely unsavory she-Orc. He periodically creates "children" from waste matter, believing he has the innate but not-yet-mastered ability to animate such pooplings in the way he himself was created. He also enjoys the company of heavy humanoid men and has been known to offer himself to them, an indiscretion that has caused him to fall afoul of the beefy proprietor of the Minihouse of Broyhoysel (q.v.) and led to his being banned from the popular establishment.

Grobber collects masks and hats and keeps a bag full of discarded body hair that he uses to create flamboyant mustaches and beards, and will sometimes draw upon this collection of props to "disguise" himself (i.e., in the vain hope that he might convince anyone he was a different 6'6", 300 -pound, walking pile of feces). He also goes by various assumed names as it suits his needs, including Smasher and Eugenos. Other characteristics include habitual mispronunciation of or insertion of additional syllables into common words (e.g., "I have always wanted to travel to the city of Ath-i-ens").