First appearance: × Wounded Warrior Project, Capture the Flag charity crossover
Grog the Malodorous was a 7’3” centaur (“part horse,” as he put it, “built as a steed”) who was pulled into The Dread Fortress for a charity Capture the Flag Deathmatch. He loved food, singing and above all his own smell, a “natural essence” so potent that people could feel it. He couldn’t count, couldn’t read and hated riddles, but he ate everything put in front of him, farted his way through a room full of sleeping chinchillas until they woke, put a giant worm off her dinner, and was one of the last two champions standing.
Story
A Smell You Can Feel
Grog arrived in the × Wounded Warrior Project, Capture the Flag charity crossover (title not in metadata) full of swagger and short on details: “Dang, brother. All I’m going to say right now is that nobody’s got a chance… Grog’s here to play. He’s playing for keeps. Wait, where am I again?” Someone pointed him to the shower down the hall, and he politely declined: “A little zest in your life.” When he stretched out, his tunic rode up and his natural essence made eyes water across the room. He loved it. The Grandmaster did not: “It’s a smell that you can feel. That is something I never wanted in my life.”
He was put on a team with Beans the Terrible and Solid. Then Pyxis, a sweet-natured mammoth, arrived and announced that he had come looking for “a little fairy, a strange centaur person, and a cobra of some kind” who had killed his loved ones. The first challenge was a kitchen whose tables had to be cleared before anyone could move on, and that was Grog’s kind of challenge. Beans shrank the food and fed it to him while his pixies danced in a line and cheered him through the hard parts. “I don’t know who this is, but I like his style. I love food,” Grog said, and a friendship was born.
The Chinchillas and the Worm
The next room held a nest of sleeping Chinchillas, each cuddling a kitchen knife, and the team had to sneak through without waking them. Grog’s belly was now very full, and the shrinking magic had worn off. Every step let out a fart, each one louder than the last, until the chinchillas woke “with murder in their eyes” and stabbed all three champions with a flurry of tiny blades. One chinchilla in the corner wore a hard hat and smoked a cigarette.
Then Pyxis paid $100 to summon a mini-boss. The Arbiter turned Thea, the Fortress’s tiny pink imp, into a giant purple worm, “the Abyss Devourer,” and set her on Grog’s team first. Grog, who preferred her “the better way she was a little fairy thing,” launched himself off his bionic leg and landed a perfect hammer blow: “Makes me feel it down in my, deep down in my chassis there.” Thea told him, “You smell awful, but I bet you taste great.” Grog answered, “I taste like a smell,” and he was right: as the stench reached her taste buds, the worm turned away. She grabbed him with one of her many tongues anyway. When another tongue missed Beans and split itself on a stalagmite, Beans tried to comfort the monster, and Grog was charmed: “I’m going to have to take this beans guy home. He’s pretty funny.” The team got through a ring of hellfire from Dave the Doom Duck, and at last the worm slid back down into the ravine, freeing them.
The Box and the Free-for-All
On the Fortress grounds Grog galloped through a treacherous river so cleanly that Beans greeted him with “Hey, you took a shower.” The Box of Chaos asked what he wanted. “I already ate,” he said, and he handed over his war hammer in exchange for a Trident of Fish Command: “I don’t even like fish.” Moments later the Box came crashing down on him and Beans, courtesy of the Arbiter, and then the Grandmaster shrank the trees and turned the champions loose on each other in a last-man-standing fight.
Dave tried to banish four of his fellow champions, calling Grog “the horse” in Abyssal (“I’m a dang centaur”), but everyone shrugged it off. Grog then turned on Perry, the small shovel-wielding champion beside him. “I feel like Perry, he’s kind of okay, but you know what? We’re going crazy.” Two holy-charged trident strikes finished Perry, with Grog apologizing all the while: “I’m not this hateful, you know?… I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” In the end only Grog and Dave were left. He hurled the trident across the river and drew blood (“A little on the shish kabob side,” said the duck). When the Grandmaster shouted for him to throw the Vorpal Sword lying on the ground, he did that too, and it struck a glancing blow. “It’s me or this dang duck… I have to be the last one standing. I fed you!”
Dave, his draconic wings half falling off, rose “unholy” into the sky and shot a second fireball out of his butt. Grog took it full on. His last words were for his friend:
“Of all the things I’ve loved in life, I was hoping that I could eat this hell duck. I’ve eaten ducks before. They taste delicious. But I’ll go meet my friend Beans. I miss that guy. He sings like I do… So, you know, sayonara, suckers.”
His ashes blew away with the dust, and Dave rolled happily in the grass as the winner.
Personality and Abilities
Grog was enormous, cheerful and proudly pungent. He loved food more than almost anything, liked to sing, and was openly hopeless with numbers and puzzles (“How many is three?”). He hoped for “no more riddles today.” He had a soft heart under the stink. He grew attached to Beans almost at once, regretted turning on Perry even as he did it, and wondered in his final moments why he’d ever been hard on Beans at all.
In a fight he relied on raw power. He charged off his bionic leg with a war hammer, and he could call down holy force behind his blows. Later he swapped the hammer for a fish-commanding trident, which he was willing to throw. His most fearsome weapon, though, was his smell, which made eyes water across a room, and his farts, which woke a room of chinchillas. His stench was enough to make a giant worm refuse to eat him.
Relationships
- Beans the Terrible: teammate who fed and cheered him through the gauntlet; Grog’s favorite, the friend he wanted to “meet” again as he died.
- Solid: teammate in the gauntlet who wanted to “cast reflect missiles” at Grog’s farts.
- Pyxis: a mammoth hunting a fairy, a centaur and a cobra who he said had killed his family.
- Perry: a fellow champion Grog killed with the trident, apologizing as he did it.
- Dave the Doom Duck: the hell duck Grog hoped to eat, and who killed him with a fireball shot out of his butt.
- Thea: the worm who turned away from eating him because of his taste and smell.
- Chinchillas: woken by his farts, and furious about it.
Memorable Quotes
- “Dang, brother. All I’m going to say right now is that nobody’s got a chance… Grog’s here to play.” (× Wounded Warrior Project, Capture the Flag charity crossover)
- “A little zest in your life.” (× Wounded Warrior Project, Capture the Flag charity crossover)
- “I taste like a smell.” (× Wounded Warrior Project, Capture the Flag charity crossover)
- “I’m going to have to take this beans guy home. He’s pretty funny.” (× Wounded Warrior Project, Capture the Flag charity crossover)
- “He went to the Thai spot and ordered the number six, you know, six spicy.” (× Wounded Warrior Project, Capture the Flag charity crossover)
- “It’s me or this dang duck… I have to be the last one standing. I fed you!” (× Wounded Warrior Project, Capture the Flag charity crossover)