Gryffon

> ***"I'm a big cuddly teddy bear on the inside"***
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Gryffon is a pandaren monster hunter who sails with the Riptide Pirates, he is played by GrizzlyPlays.

## Description

### Appearance

Gryffon is a pandaren man with classic black and white coloring. He is 6’8 and very well built, his body type comparable to that of Marshall John. His right eye is mechanical, and emits a fiery orange glow. His left arm is also mechanical, with the hand acting as a very large 7 barrel gun he loads with custom ammunition. He is covered in fur, and has the same facial colorings as a panda would. His voice is very rough and deep.

When the pirates first meet him, he wears a sleeveless leather brown shirt and a brown leather vest across his chest, loaded with ammunition. He wore wide-legged, flowing forest green pants and knee high black combat boots. He wore dark shades and is often seen smoking a cigar. He briefly wore a “chair suit,” a solid black suit based off a gothic velvet chair that physically disguised him as a chair when he sat down.
He changed much of his appearance in Episode 87: Swimming in Circles, with longer, black and white hair tied in warrior braids. He switched his shirt to a long sleeved, unbuttoned black blazer with the Riptide Pirates jolly rodger painted messily on the side. His mechanical arm got more intricate gold trimmings to complement the solid black of the metal, and he got the jolly rodger painted in white on his shoulder plate. Around his waist he wears an x shaped bandolier that functions as a belt and holds a large amount of gold grenades. The belts have a skull shaped buckle in the middle. His black cargo pants are decorated with a thigh strap containing more explosives, going down to combat boots that fit the same black and gold color scheme. The geometric layered wire necklaces he wears are lined with bullet casings. On his left shoulder he wears a forest green cape lined with fur at the top with the purpose of covering his mechanical arm if needed.

### Personality

Gryffon is comes off as cold and mean at first, not caring very much about the wellbeing of others and only wanting to make money and kill monsters. He’s relatively antisocial, telling the pirates he “doesn’t really like people.” He is intimidating and often prone to violence, but despite the pirates first impressions of him he is very stronghearted and persistent. He is extremely honor bound and focuses a lot on pulling his weight on the crew, feeling very guilty about his frequent shortcomings in combat. He is extremely motive driven, often pushing the crew to move onto the next adventure instead of wasting time on the ship as they are often prone to doing. He told the pirates that he had spent his whole life on a quest for vengeance, and it was nice to be able to just live for once. He knows a lot about monsters from his years of hunting, is good with technology, and is knowledgable about geography and general occurrences in Mana through his history of bounty hunting. His primary goal is to make enough money to one day rebuild his village, if the Black Sea is ever livable again.

## Background/History

Gryffon grew up in a village in the Eastern Sea located on an island near Onawa Country. His tribe was attacked by the sorcerer Grimm, and Gryffon was one of the very few who survived. He swore an oath of vengeance against the sorcerer and went on to become a bounty hunter, obsessed with finding and killing stronger and stronger monsters. While he worked as a bounty hunter, he worked for Reuben Price, the leader of the bounty hunters guild. Bounty hunting was a lucrative profession for him, and he gained both a reputation as an effective hunter and a relatively large fortune. He got his arm and eye replaced in Edison Kingdom, and it is implied that he lived there for some time. Before meeting the Riptide Pirates he traveled and worked alone.

The Riptide Pirates met him on Noctis, where he was hunting a monster he suspected was the one who had killed his people so many years before. At the time he was still working as a bounty hunter, and recognized them from their wanted posters. He didn’t turn them into the Navy because he was “off the clock”. He recognized the scratches on Chip’s chest as the mark of Kuba Kinta, and agreed to help them lift the curse if they helped him kill Grimm. The four of them together stole enough invitations to get into Grimm’s murder mystery party, which they attended after buying the proper attire. The outfit they purchased for Gryffon was a “chair suit,” which transformed him into a chair when he sat down. During the party, Gryffon had the role of detective, and with the help of the pirates solved the murder mystery. Grimm revealed himself, and Gryffon identified him as the one that had decimated his village. The crew defeated the sorcerer and let Gryffon take the final blow on his lifelong enemy. He agreed to join the Riptide Pirates as repayment for their role in Grimm’s death, and took the oath after departing from Noctis.

He traveled with the crew to Liquidus, and was promptly abandoned by the captains while they traveled to the Feywild. During the two weeks they were gone, Gryffon along with Ollie and Alphonze started a wildly successful limonade stand. He worked as their security guard, and they made 50 thousand gold before the captains returned. He was angry with the captains when they got back, but said he wasn’t going to leave because he was under an oath and respected them as leaders.

Setting back out to sea, they encountered a creature Gryffon referred to as the “grungus.” It’s unclear whether that was it’s real name or just what he called it. He assisted the crew in defeating the large, seahorse-like creature. After this, his position as accountant on the ship was established through his repeated fights with Gillion about throwing their gold into the ocean.

While fishing with Ollie, Gryffon told him there was a “great shark” in the water and if he caught it he would get “magic powers.” This led to Ollie accidentally attracting the Electrodon to the Albatross. Gryffon smoked weed with Chip and Gillion immediately before the Electrodon took a bite out of their ship and was entirely out of commission for the whole fight. Afterwards, he told Gillion he “saw the ship flying,” and that he hadn’t done drugs in a long time but it brought him back to his childhood. Upon traveling to Canella, he took the ship to get repaired from the damage it had sustained.

During Gillion’s nightmare in episode 97: At What Cost, Gryffon told Chip, Jay, and Gillion that he had scouted out the band of thieves that had been terrorizing the town. The four of them went to infiltrate the thieves den and hopefully rid the island of it’s problem, and they successfully broke into the lair without issue. They entered a room with a trapped lever, and Gillion pulled it, sending himself and Gryffon down into a pit. They were put under a magic effect and passed out. When Gillion regained his senses, Gryffon was slumped unconscious in a corner of the cellar he was tied up in. Then, Gillion woke up.

The captains rushed Gillion to Featherbrook, telling Ollie to find the crew and deal with the real band of thieves. **Gryffon**, Queen, Drey, and Ollie rushed to the Canvas District, finding they were too late to save the hospital the thieves had threatened to burn down. Gryffon and Drey followed one of the thieves back to a cave they were staying in up in the mountains. The pair beat up the thieves and found out they were answering to a higher up named Captain Daeger, who Gryffon knew from his time as a bounty hunter. He relayed all this information to the three captains when they returned. He was angry with them for leaving him alone again, and said next time he wanted to go with them.

The crew departed from Canella after getting their ship repaired, and were immediately met by a Navy ambush led by Jayson Ferin and Kira. Gryffon manned cannons for the first half of the encounter, then jumped onto the sailing ship Kira was manning and got into hand to hand combat with her. She beat him badly, thrusting her horn through his stomach and leaving him unconscious on the deck of the ship. She was ordered to retreat to Allport, and she started to sail away with Gryffon still on the ship. Jay chased her down and exchanged a navy wizard they had accidentally taken captive for Gryffon, then flew him back to the Albatross. When he woke up, the pirates tried to lie to him about how the encounter had gone but he didn’t believe them.

Upon arriving in the Black Sea, they were ambushed by a number of corrupted creatures of the dark ocean. Gryffon was quickly overtaken by black beetles that disoriented him and made it impossible to distinguish enemies from allies. He shot Gillion and tried to shoot Queen before the effect wore off. When they arrived on the shores of Onawa Country, Gryffon told the captains this was near where he grew up, although he had never been to Onawa specifically. He assisted in the fight against the Collector, dealing the final blow with his infrared laser beam canon.

During the trek through the Spider-Lily Capital, Gryffon traveled with Gillion, Jay, and Zamia. They traveled through a corridor filled with black moss, and Gryffon made it across by himself before turning back and realizing Jay had jumped out the window under a magical affect of the mold. He rushed in after her, then came under the magic himself and shot her instead of assisting. After a frustratingly long struggle, they made it out of the corridor and through the city to meet up with Igneous, Queen, and Chip. In front of Daphne Palace, they were confronted by the crew of the Arachnid Pirates, who they were seeking out to defeat and kill. After some debate, they agreed to be chained up and brought into the palace for an audience with Captain Widow. Negotiations with the captain went downhill quickly and the ensuing combat was deadly. Gryffon played a very prominent role in the fight, taking on the crew member Glutto by himself while also assisting the captains with their own fights. With the assistance of Zamia and Igneous, he defeated Glutto. The bloody battle was eventually won by the Riptide Pirates. In the following days, Gryffon helped clear out Daphne Palace for Zamia and Stars wedding. He attended the actual wedding, then departed Onawa Country with the rest of the Riptide Pirates.

The Albatross sailed to the abandoned navy base the Promised Bastion, and the crew was left on the boat outside while the captains explored. Gryffon and the rest of the crewmates fended off the corrupted monsters attacking the ship, and they swiftly departed after Chip, Jay, and Gillion returned. Soon after setting back out to sea, the pirates learned that there was a navy officer planted on the crew of the Grandberry Pirates. The crew was forced to split up to make sure Lizzie was safe, and Gryffon was one of the few crewmates left on the Albatross in the Black Sea. Chip, Gillion, Drey, and Gryffon continued to sail towards the Hole in the Sea. They arrived at the Cumagoon, the supposed location of the hole. Along with the other three, Gryffon jumped down into the whirlpool. He fell separately from the others, and was plagued with visions of his family. He was knocked out by the fall but woke up quickly, moving forward with Gillion and Chip.

## Trivia

* Gryffon is Grizzly’s “love letter character” to Geralt from The Witcher
* His ideal diet is leaves and bamboo
* He hates puns
* His mechanical arm cost 300k gold
* He can’t read (this might not be canon but Grizzly said it)