Grimouir

Greg Bynum was destined for great things—his teachers knew it, his parents knew it. They were right, they just didn't know what was in store. Greg's real destiny began the day he purchased an interesting tome from a used bookstore on a trip to Harborview. The clasp of the book was rusted shut, but he was sure that he could get it open. After two weeks, he did. It was a spell book. The tome of Tyrgoth Loreseeker, amended by the master bard Vanis before it was returned to Yenre Loreseeker, then stolen by the Scarlet Order and lost in Europe. It took Greg two years to decipher the opening pages, containing the Tongue of Babel enchantment, granting fluency in all languages born on Earth and literally opening the remainder of the text.
    Unfortunately for Greg, the next spell he cast was a Panorama: it showed the caster the future and was never meant to be cast alone. The spell showed time to him and him to time, locking his position into the skein of destiny. He woke fifteen hours later, knowing all that would happen over the next decade: all possibilities, all paths, and all his impotence to stop certain things from coming to pass. He also knew that if he didn't take action, the world as we knew it would end.
    Greg disappeared from school, from home. He took up residence in the East End of Harborview and began fevered study of the tome. The first half of the book contained mystical enchantments, toning the mind, body and aura and allowing slippage into the Twilight. The second half held sorcerous spells, drawing vast energies from this dimension and others to alter the world. He mastered as many as he had time for, but his three years of lead-time vanished all too quickly.
    The One Hundred and Seventh Black Dragon and his disciple destroyed a Coven ritual in Cerrifin Cove, unknowingly eliminating the Coven's grand patriarch. His death created a power vacuum within the world's greatest conspiracy, changing the way the game had been played since the fall of the Great Hunt. The patriarch and his old order were the survivors of the Great Hunt's relentless persecution, of the time that saw their membership obliterated, their centuries-long plan sent into ruin. Since the Great Hunt, the Coven leadership had been taking baby steps, willing to spend two more centuries on their plan. The death of the Patriarch swept that aside—the new Coven members wanted it all, and they wanted it now.
    Masking his goals behind the persona of another of Harborview's new heroes, Greg became Grimouir. The facade allowed him to work alongside variant heroes, setting them where they needed to be, pointing them to do what they must. He worked most closely with the new Black Dragon, but also with Ground Zero, the Host, and others. His modus operandi was simple: appearing from nowhere and offering his assistance without comment, or directing the heroes with cryptic prophecies of things to come. Some appreciated is assistance, some hated his arrivals, but all did as he required.
    Grimouir directed the flow of critical events against the Coven, stifling the dimensional break in Harborview, battling Valence and other rogue daemons, and finally directing the nation's heroes in the New York Daemonwar. Through it all, Greg was in a special circle of hell—knowing exactly what was going to happen and unable to stop it. He was a marionette who could see the strings, forced to keep the Punch and Judy show playing. Millions died in New York, and he, the only one who had seen it coming, was unable to prevent it. They haunted his dreams every night.
    In the end, the Daemongrid was permanently closed, the Coven was broken, most of Harborview's heroes had died, and Greg was again living in a world where he didn't know the future. This was an unexpected shock to his system; it's difficult to get over being omniscient. Unsure what to do with himself, he moved back to his house in Harborview's East End, where he remains. Grimouir appears on occasion, fighting the obvious menaces, but without the cryptic surety for which he was remembered. Grimouir is strangely afraid to act now that he does not know exactly what effect his acts will have, paralyzed by free will. Once a day he fingers the pages of the Panorama enchantment, then walks away, knowing that he should not. Some day, he just might, to feel that certainty again. Or he might regain confidence in the way normal men live, and return to a world he no longer controls.
    Grimouir is a full mage, that is to say both a sorcerer and a mystic, using spells designed by the greatest practitioners of European magic before the decline of that art form. Bynum himself is a borderline genius, and his training has raised his presence to superior levels.
    As a mystic, Grimouir is capable of controlling his own aura and the effect it has on the world. His health is preternaturally good, as is his resistance to diseases and toxins. He has enhanced his willpower beyond human limits, well into the variant scale. He can use his aura to cause psychokinetic movement or protect his body from physical harm. He possesses considerable strength and control, manipulating up to a ton with fine enough control to grab an individual strand of hair from a running individual's head. He has mystically enhanced senses, allowing him to see without any form of light. Grimouir can sense the thoughts of others with concentration, though such contact is dangerous for him if the target possesses mental powers; this creates a painful resonance feedback. He can entrance, confuse or terrify humans with a glance or a word. He can speak and read any human language, and can initiate empathic contact with animals. Finally, he can slip into the Twilight, the dimension of what might be and what might have been, though he does not manipulate it. It is possible that his unnatural awareness of events created a mindset that prevents him from making use of the Twilight's potential for probability. If that is the case, he may have gained such powers since his awareness faded.
    As a sorcerer, Grimouir is capable of drawing energy from other dimensions or manipulating the energy of our dimension. He can freeze and solidify any form of energy, from light to flame to radiation, and mold it once solid. These solid energy constructions maintain the original aspects of the energy (e.g., flame is still hot, light is still bright), as well as being resistant to physical damage, to a degree based on Grimouir's intensification of the spell. The basic aspect of the spell uses energy from our dimension, but the intensification requires Grimouir to draw extra-dimensional energy, which can become tiring quickly. At the standard level the solid energy is as strong as clay or ice, but Grimouir once contained an atomic explosion with the light falling on the bomb.
    Grimouir can also warp non-magical energy around his body or other objects and can select which energies to choose. This can make him invisible and immune to any form of non-magical energy. This uses natural energy, allowing him to maintain it for extended periods without fatigue, even to the point of empowering the spell and forgetting about it, leaving the target invisible for weeks or years. He can generate attacks of pure magical energy from other dimensions; this nameless energy directly damages targets, but it is the weakest of his sorcerous powers.
    The greatest of Grimouir's abilities was his Omniscient awareness of 10 years of world history. While he no longer knows what is going to happen, he has vestiges of this power. For example, he can identify every person on Earth by name and face. He knows who they are and what they did in those in years. Everybody. Everywhere. This information is always on the surface of his mind, and takes no time to access. While he does not know the thoughts of all the world, he knows them by their actions, and is an excellent judge of character. You can understand how that was hard to give up.

| Top |