First appearance: S4 Ep3, Swindlers - Griff v Cappin Fodder · watch it on YouTube
Griff is a satyr hustler with beaded horns and a phoenix made from a rat. He was pulled into the Void during the reign of The Shadow King to face the halfling pirate Cappin Fodder. He talks a big game, and unusually for a trash-talker, he backs it up. Griff won the fight with patience, fire and a well-timed disappearing act. He is also the first champion of that grim season to escape the Shadow King’s idea of a prize.
Story
The Grandmaster summoned Griff and Cappin Fodder through her blood amulet in the throne room of The Dread Fortress. The Shadow King had been losing at Bop-It and bopping goblins instead. Griff introduced himself as a games player and a bar fly. His game was not pool but Stratego, Go and Pente, and he loved to “convince people that they’ve got a chance of winning when indeed they do not.” The two traded insults before a single blow landed. Griff warned that his kneecaps bend the other way, which would make the pirate’s kneecapping harder than expected. He also reminded the halfling that “the first 40 years of childhood are the hardest.” The Shadow King bet on Fodder. The prize was a seat at game night.
The arena was a cold, broken temple with no ceiling, where thousands of Acolytes circled above like ghosts. A great statue of Vythorn stood over the fight with its palms open. Fodder struck first: he whipped Griff’s staff out of his hand and hurled it into the stands, where it lodged in the head of an Acolyte named Harvey. He then did a satyr’s truffle-hunting dance better than Griff could, which left Griff almost a little ashamed. Griff answered by grabbing a passing rat and transmuting it in flames into a burning phoenix spirit, which he later named Griffy. When the Acolytes summoned Dolly, the haunted doll, Griff immediately pointed at Fodder and said, “He will. He’ll do it.” Fodder shot off three of her fingers, and she burned his toes and fingers in return. Then she turned to Griff and asked, “Will you be my friend?” He sang her a non-copyrighted “Happy Birthday” and struck her with three rays of fire. Dolly exploded in a cloud of poison that ate at Griff’s throat and lungs. The stench was foul enough that the Grandmaster asked, “How’s that ceramic Dutch oven?”
When the Box of Chaos came into play, Fodder threw Griff’s staff into it to claim a prize for himself. Griff spent a gift of luck from the Acolytes to stop him: Griffy snatched the staff out of the air, Griff enchanted it, and then he tossed it into the box himself. “I literally have hops,” he explained. “It’s on my sheet.” The box’s shadow crawled up his body and branded him with a ghost step tattoo, a picture of “Drippy,” that could turn him briefly incorporeal. Fodder whipped him on the backside (“Booty hit. Booty hit. Whip it good.”) hard enough to leave a limp. Griff healed himself and strutted “like a gangster I saw in a movie once.” Then he turned to ghost and bit his thumb at the pirate. That ghostly form paid off when Fodder dove into the box, where its fire melted the skin and bone off his right arm and the shadow jammed a life-stealing sword into the bone sticking out. Then the box tipped over and launched him at Griff like a cannonball. He passed straight through Griff’s chest and hit the floor head first. Griff flipped a Go piece as he watched and diagnosed him with “an acute case of hey look at me disease.”
From there, Griff burned him down. He called a pillar of holy fire from above while lecturing about gods of fire and deception. He sacrificed his Go set to the box, although the shadow’s soul-coin gamble backfired and healed Fodder instead. He also sprang free of the pirate’s death grip on his leg by vaulting off his knee and shoulder, earning a perfect score for prancing. Then he flicked Fodder on the forehead, said “stay there,” and froze him in place. The statue of Vythorn then woke and hammered the helpless pirate halfway into the ground like a nail. Griff set a copper piece on Fodder’s head, told him to “go down to the corner and buy yourself a clue,” and brought the fire down one last time. He swept the ashes into a tricorn hat with Griffy’s burning tail feathers and dumped them into the box: “From whence you came.” The Grandmaster added, “Asses to asses, butts to butts.” For his reward he asked the Shadow King for the original, platonic master set of Go. The Shadow King walked him to the ledge, announced his rewards to the Acolytes, and shoved him off. As soon as the King turned away, Griff and Griffy teleported to safety. At the table afterward, his player said Griff would now lie low, watch how the chaos works, and look for a way to win and get out alive.
Personality and Abilities
Griff is a medium-sized satyr with goat legs, backward-bending knees, and hooves that clamp onto cobblestones. He wears brown leathers over a green tunic, and his horns are strung with beads and baubles of different sizes, with a tight braid between them. He has a gleam in his eye. He is unflappable, smug and very quick with a comeback, and he likes to let opponents think they are winning. He claimed to have arrived at the temple early to disable the fire extinguishers so they would explode instead. When he wins a wager, his player says, he takes something inconvenient, like the sheath to your sword, “but now you’ll remember me forever.”
He fights with fire. He throws scorching rays and calls down flame from above, and he can also heal his own wounds and hold an enemy frozen in place. His constant companion is Griffy, a phoenix spirit born from a mangy rat. Griffy speaks with a Southern drawl, burns enemies and teleports alongside him in bursts of flame. Griff came to the fight with a simple staff and later a Go set, and he gave both to the Box of Chaos. He left with a ghost step tattoo on his left forearm.
Relationships
- Cappin Fodder: His opponent and sparring partner in insults, burned to ash and swept into a chest.
- Griffy: His phoenix spirit, made from a rat. Griff calls him “an extension of me” and will not tolerate disrespect toward his “flaming bird.”
- Dolly: She asked Griff to be her friend, and he agreed shortly before setting her on fire.
- The Shadow King: He bet against Griff, admired the kill, then pushed him off a ledge in place of a reward.
- The Acolytes: Griff got the whole arena booing on his behalf, and Harvey eventually pulled the staff out of his skull and threw it at Fodder.
Memorable Quotes
- “I get that the first 40 years of childhood are the hardest, but it doesn’t mean that you have to just say the first thing that comes to your mind.” (S4 Ep3, Swindlers)
- “If they really wanted to kill themselves, they’d climb up your ego and jump off your intelligence.” (S4 Ep3, Swindlers)
- “I literally have hops. It’s on my sheet.” (S4 Ep3, Swindlers)
- “I am so sorry for your illness. You appear to have an acute case of hey look at me disease, and I will cure you of it.” (S4 Ep3, Swindlers)
- “You might even call me a prancing pony.” (S4 Ep3, Swindlers)
- “Why don’t you go down to the corner and buy yourself a clue?” (S4 Ep3, Swindlers)