First appearance: S4E15, Vythorn’s Return Part 2 · watch it on YouTube
Biff is a grung, a short and poisonous tree frog, with feet that slap through the mud like pancakes and a backpack full of junk. Fil, the God of Fate, raised him from the dirt as one of two companions to watch over Vythorn on his quest for Morir’s Cataclysm. He spent the journey being loudly, stubbornly kind to everyone around him. In a story full of gods, schemers and shapeshifters, he was the one who kept insisting that the people on the side of the road mattered, and he walked away from immortality rather than give up his freedom.
Story
Called up from the dirt
Biff had already failed one of Fil’s tests before he ever met Vythorn. He had set out with a group of his grung clansmates, all meant to come home together as heroes, and he sacrificed himself so the others could win their prize. It turned out that was not what Fil had intended, and in the end they all failed. Biff became dirt. In Fil’s silent forest, the earth beside a muddy path rose and took his shape again, alongside the shapeshifter Ise. Both had been plucked from moments before their final breaths and returned in their prime, and Fil shoved them forward to be her “eyes and ears and mind.” Biff told her that their definitions of fun differed. When Ise asked what would happen if he refused, Fil threatened to step on him again (“did you miss being dirt?”), and Biff conceded: “That’s a pretty good argument.” The promise of candy won him over completely.
Fil gave Biff an hourglass that measured about two hours, enough to reach the Ruins of Giant’s Breath. Biff warned everyone that “We Grung have a pretty terrible sense of time.” He then discovered that the sand fell the same way however he turned it, and he declared it “a pretty poorly made egg timer.” On the road he pulled a spiky six-foot glaive out of his backpack, which made the weapon more than twice his height. When he tried Ise’s lesson in quiet walking, he caught his foot on a sharp rock and cried out. Vythorn turned back time so that the trip never happened, and Biff’s verdict was: “Oh, that was trippy.”
Kuro and the gnoll cave
The group found an abandoned carriage, and Biff suspected a trap. He was right. A frightened tabaxi child named Kuro leapt onto Vythorn’s back and stabbed him in the neck. “I did say it was a trap,” Biff pointed out afterward. Kuro explained that his mother had gone to investigate a voice and then screamed. Biff was the first to suggest they help, and he fed the starving boy a stale roll from his pack. When Vythorn and Ise went after the mother, Biff stayed behind to guard Kuro: “I’ve got a glaive.” Ise sent a magical message into his head, and Biff shrieked, which made Kuro shriek too. Biff then built a heroic and entirely useless barricade of books, backpacks, a dead tree and the dead thing from his pack. It put the boy at ease. After counting out two minutes of sand, Biff slapped off into the woods to follow the others.
He crept into a gnoll encampment by dragging his feet so they wouldn’t flap, slow but silent, and Ise told him he was proud of him. Then Biff strained to call up his Echo, his face looking so much like he was about to fart that the table assumed he was. His shadow peeled off his feet, crawled up the cave wall and became a shadowy double of himself. (“Somehow I feel like I’ve made this worse.”) Vythorn, invisible, laid a false trail of magical footprints, and they were Biff’s pancake prints. Once the fighting started, Biff charged a gnoll screaming “the well-known battle cry of the grung,” ran it through, and finished it off by spitting poison in its eyes. He pulled his glaive free and roared, “I’ve got a glaive!” The gnolls panicked (“It’s got a glaive!”), and they became convinced that cave frogs were coming back to claim their caves. Biff’s Echo grew arms and pancake feet of its own, cleaved into the gnoll nearest the cage, and then threw itself in front of a spear aimed at the captive mother. Once the spear missed, the Echo flipped the gnoll off. Biff ended the fight with an ultimatum: “We can do this the easy way or the hard way. You’ve seen the hard way. I’d run!” The last gnoll ran.
Compassion, the hourglass and the door
The rescued mother had a mangled foot and didn’t trust Ise’s shapeshifting. Biff became the group’s conscience: Ise asked him whether he should heal her, and Biff said yes. Vythorn was in a hurry and threatened to punch Kuro when the boy clung to his knee. Biff leapt between them: “An unarmed child?” He took Kuro back to his mother himself, saying, “One of us has to be a little less selfish than the rest.” His kindness paid off. The mother turned out to be a guide, and she lit a glowing green shortcut to the Ruins of Giant’s Breath. Biff chased Vythorn down to show him. “Like I said, you always have time.” When Vythorn asked why she hadn’t simply said so, Biff let him have it: “Why didn’t you just ask or stop to help or consider anything other than yourself for more than a minute?”
On the way to the ruins, Biff and Ise each shared the choice that had failed them in their tests. Biff’s refrain, “you always have time,” led Vythorn to look more closely at the hourglass. Vythorn found it held together by binding magic and shattered it. The trip also included a long digression about eggs, during which Biff realised he had a cloaca. At the table he was rewarded with a little extra intelligence “for learning a little bit more about yourself today,” and he spent the rest of the tunnel staring at his own junk and screaming. At the great door of Giant’s Breath, Biff read the carved inscription, because he could read Giant (“only the big letters”): “I am thirsty.” He poured in Ise’s water, which vanished, and he was the first to realise that the door didn’t want water. Once Ise’s blood had opened it, Biff propped up his bleeding friend as a crutch.
A free grung
Inside, Master Skreca explained that his museum’s visitors could take one item and one item only, and those who couldn’t choose one did not leave. Biff’s hope of finding his lost clansmates came to nothing. “That was a long shot,” Biff said. When Fil appeared to pass judgment, Ise bound himself to her as a pet. Biff turned down her candy and her offer:
“I would like to return to the dirt. I would rather die on my terms as a free grung than live as a pet in any capacity.”
He told her that his moments of breath had been beautiful because “They were mine.” He said that giving up your life so others may succeed had been his fate, “And I’ll take that to my grave.” He would only reconsider if she had lemon drops. She didn’t. Fil lamented that she would miss his stories and have less to bet on, then granted him eternal sleep, so that his story would be written and done.
Personality and Abilities
Biff is about four months old, short, loud and tirelessly earnest. He claims to have lived with giants “long time ago,” and he admires how easy their big letters are to read. His sense of time is terrible, and his motto is “You always have time,” a line that led Vythorn to crack his trial. He is the self-appointed moralist of any group he joins. He is quick to defend the helpless and quick to lecture the selfish, and when he’s asked whether he ever stops talking, he answers simply: “No.” He is also cheerfully clueless: he thinks “c’est la vie” is Tabaxi, and he admits he’s “terrible at people.”
In a fight Biff is an Echo Knight. He swings a spiky glaive far too big for him and can summon a shadowy copy of himself that fights alongside him and can leap in front of attacks meant for others. Being a poisonous tree frog, he can spit poison into an enemy’s eyes. His shrieks are piercing enough to put a biting gnoll off its aim. He carries an enormous backpack of nonsense, including stale bread and “something that looks like it should be dead.”
Relationships
- Ise: His fellow companion and fellow failed test-taker. Ise taught him to walk quietly, said he was proud of him, and agreed that Biff’s “idealism is not misplaced,” though when the shapeshifter caught Vythorn in a fireball, Biff told him “Isi, not cool.”
- Vythorn: The one he was meant to watch and judge. Biff spent the trip pushing him toward compassion and told him “fate only smiled upon you because I was here.”
- Fil: The God of Fate who raised him from the dirt and bribed him with candy. He refused to become her pet.
- Kuro: The tabaxi child Biff guarded, fed, defended from Vythorn and returned to his mother. “Stick with me, kid. You’ll be fine.”
- Master Skreca: Keeper of the Ruins of Giant’s Breath. Biff mocked Vythorn’s “baby hands” alongside him.
Memorable Quotes
- “You always have time.” (S4E15, Vythorn’s Return Part 2)
- “I’ve got a glaive!” (S4E15, Vythorn’s Return Part 2)
- “Everything’s connected by kindness and morality and compassion. You ungrateful dolts.” (S4E15, Vythorn’s Return Part 2)
- “One of us has to be a little less selfish than the rest.” (S4E15, Vythorn’s Return Part 2)
- “He’s got baby hands.” (S4E15, Vythorn’s Return Part 2)
- “I would rather die on my terms as a free grung than live as a pet in any capacity.” (S4E15, Vythorn’s Return Part 2)