Bust of Grimm Hellmaw as drawn by @jubilation--set

Grimm Hellmaw’s Adventure Logs - Grimm’s Backstory

Hello friend,

    My name is Grimm Hellmaw, and after recent experiences, a friend I hold dear to me suggested I document my experiences in case... well... I don’t get up from the next beating I take.  I take a lot of risks when fighting alongside my friends, and let’s just say that my recklessness has my girl worried about me not coming back to her.  That story will come, of course, but I figure I should start from the beginning so y’all can get to know me more, and I get to reflect on some of the highlights of my recklessness for posterity’s sake.

    I don’t have a lot of memories from my early days.  My mother was the streets of Glimmer’s Grove, and my father was the constant hunger I had to fight day in and day out.  There aren’t any specific memories that stick out, but there’s this general feeling of despair that comes up when I try to think back on my childhood.  People were awful.  Whether it was me being a dreg of society, me being a half-orc, or me being a sore sight for the eyes of the bourgeois of the city, I never had any favorable interactions with the townsfolk of Glimmer’s Grove.  It’s alright, though.  Even if these people didn’t think I would amount to much, I wanted to prove them wrong with selflessness and my earnest smile.  I wanted to be able to protect and win over the very people that wouldn’t think twice about a useless street urchin such as me.  The people of Glimmer’s Grove may not deserve me, but I want to be THE example of that old saying “don’t judge a book by its cover.”

    In my young adult days, I ran into a man that changed my life.  Tibalt Grey would normally be looked upon as an unassuming man, but if you got a good look at him, you would see this wild, yet contained look in his eyes.  This offputting observance aside, he was one of the kindest souls I’ve ever had the pleasure of meeting in my life.  He saw me in my tattered clothing, but was one of the first people to approach me and treat me like something more than the dirt beneath his boots.  I don’t know what made him so comfortable with me, but he started talking to me about how he’s the last living member of the Grey Syndicate, a crime family that I had only heard stories of in the deepest, darkest alleyways of Glimmer’s Grove.  I would see some of the toughest, battle-worn men cower at the mention of this group, and I would see some of the seediest, nastiest criminals speak of them fondly.  While public reactions varied, there was a consensus that they would land on: the Grey Syndicate is not what it used to be.  Talking with Grey, it couldn’t be any more obvious.  He was a warm, gentle heart that was willing to talk openly with a social pariah such as myself, and take genuine interest in me.  

He asked me about life, what my dreams are, and he also enjoyed interjecting with an odd fact or two about ghosts.  I’m normally a guarded person, so while I tried to resist as well as I could, he ended up prying out of me my dream of protecting the people that would sooner spit at my existence than treat me as the living being that I am.  Upon hearing that, he started to talk about how he wanted to right the wrongs his family committed during the height of the Grey Syndicate’s rule on the shadows of Glimmer’s Grove, and since he could see a similar light and fervor in me, he wanted to take me in and provide me with room and board at the cost of going through some special training to assist him in his path of redemption.

I have to be completely honest, I didn’t even think about what that training would entail.  After living on the streets for all my life, I would have given up everything for a roof over my head, and regular meals.  Little did I know at the time, Grey’s well-intentioned training would send me through literal hell.

Old man Grey’s fascination with ghosts stems from the training that he has been through.  His family, while a successful crime syndicate, was also a long line of Blood Hunters that specialized in all things ghosts.  You wouldn’t believe how he spent his free time.  He’d take me to the sick wards of Glimmer’s Grove, help tend to the people there, offering up all kinds of money, goods and relief that he could to the healthier people, and observe the soon to be extinguished lives of the sick and elderly.  I’ve been numb to death since I would see it on the streets regularly, but the kind of death you see in these wards is different.  Lives being claimed early by disease, elderly people that say they’ve experienced all that life has to give, but have that dread and and a look of yearning in their eyes, it’s sick, really.  Death on the streets equates to either falling down on your luck, or crossing paths with the wrong person.  The people in these sick wards, for one reason or another, are dying too soon, and have no control over when and how they die.

Alongside the regular trips to the sick wards, Grey taught me a lot of what I needed to know to become a Blood Hunter.  He taught me how to fight, and about all the different kinds of Blood Hunters that walk the earth.  I’ve always been a quick and adaptable learner, since I’ve needed to think on my feet to survive.  He was pleasantly surprised with my progress, and I quickly became established enough to start to figure out what direction I would take in my path of the Hunter.  I abhorred the trips to the sick ward, and while I was pretty decent with my alchemic studies, I figured if I wanted to truly deal with the evils I will face, I needed to become what I hate the most.

I spent days on end researching the fiends of the world.  Grey, knowing I will not be following the same path he and his family have been following for generations, let me stay home on his trips to the sick wards, letting me have free reign of his library.  I tore through those books, trying to find a worthy source for my new powers, and upon reading one of the last untouched books in his library, I came across one of the Lords of Hell, Belial.  It’s amazing, really.  One of the Lords of Hell, whose name stems from the word “worthlessness”, came to me in one of the last books I haven’t read.  The Lord of Pain, causing me pain by taking so damn long to even reveal himself to me.  It was a match made in, I want to say heaven, but really, hell.  

To create this pact with Belial, I needed Grey’s help.  When I approached him with this, he was reluctant at first, but knowing I wouldn’t be able to realize my full potential, he assisted me with reaching out to Belial.  He led me to a void of space, where I called out to Belial.  It was a surreal experience, communicating with one of the Lords of Hell.  He was amused in finding a surly half-orc, looking nothing like others that seek pacts with him, commanding his attention.  Off of amusement with this, and a rather graphic comment on my… erm… appearance, he wanted to hear what I had to say.  Knowing that he is the Lord of pain and suffering, I spun a tale about how I come from nothing, knowing nothing but the pain and suffering of the streets I raised myself on, and I mixed in a lie about how I wanted to cause this same kind of suffering to the people that ignored the streets.  Upon hearing that lie, Belial went from being amused to upset in a blink of an eye.  He saw through that lie and chastised me for my arrogance.  That aside, he decided that he didn’t care what I would use his powers for.  He agreed to the pact, but there was an additional cost that came with it.  He gave me an insatiable lust, and demanded that I feel the pain that I cause, condemning me to only use blunt weaponry as my rites for calling his powers.  With my pact complete, Grey and I went back to the mansion to continue my training.

Grey went into uncharted territory as he helped me train with my newfound abilities.  He’s known a couple Blood Hunters that cross into Warlock territory, but he didn’t really know what to do with me.  He did the best he could with the resources he had, but I had to do a lot of self study to catch myself up to speed on this whole Warlock business.  Grey’s library had a few books on the subject, but I had to take to the streets again to find some local clerics of Belial to help me understand what I’m capable of.  They were a lot easier to convince than Belial, of course, so they helped me hone my newfound abilities, and… well… quench a certain thirst that has started to eat at my conscience.

Once I had a better handle on my abilities, and my newfound drive to bump uglies with just about anyone I came across, Grey started getting me in contact with various groups around Glimmer’s Grove to start hunting some of the local evils.  I’m not one to brag, but my adaptability and desire to learn helped me excel with these groups, leading to even taking down a manticore with Elena, an Aasimar that’s not only kickass with a blade, but someone I’m still adventuring with today.  There will be more on that coming up, but there’s still a bit more I need to wrap up here before I get this journal caught up to the present day.

One night, after coming home from another successful hunt, I came home to the Grey estate, noticing that something felt off.  Old man Grey normally greets me on my return, but I walked in to a quiet mansion.  I immediately ripped through the mansion, trying to find Grey.  Outside of the difference in my welcome home, he’s not normally a quiet guy.  He likes to read aloud, and he’s got a rather noisy way of existence that wasn’t present that night.  After looking for an hour, I found him collapsed in the library, clutching at his chest.  I’ve seen and now caused a lot of death in my life, so I knew he was knocking on death’s door, but a mass genocide of the world as I know it wouldn’t have prepared me for what I was about to experience. 

I immediately elevated his upper body and tried to get him talking and normalized, but there wasn’t anything I could do for him.  I tried to talk to him about my hunt that night, and keep the conversation light, but I think Grey could tell that I was starting to get frantic and shushed me.  He told me that he didn’t have much time left, and was upset that he wasn’t able to see me through my full training, but that he had an old friend at the Adventurer’s Academy that would be able to help me continue my training.  With that being said, he said that he was thankful that I was in his life, and passed in my arms. 

I was absolutely torn up with Grey’s passing.  I thought I’ve had to deal with a lot of pain and suffering in my life, but having one of the only people I care about passing in my arms tore me apart.  I swear I could feel Belial smiling at the misfortune I experienced that night.  I’ll spare you the details on my grieving, since it was an ugly experience all around, but I’ll tell you that I did promise on his dead body that I would uphold his life’s work, and go tell his friend at the Academy about his passing.

There’s really not much to say about what happened after that.  I donated the Grey estate to the sick wards of Glimmer’s Grove with no intention of coming back to his mansion.  The memories of my life in the estate are painful, even to this day.  When your source of happiness and fulfillment in life is gone, and that’s all you have to remember it by, there’s no reason to keep it around.  I needed to keep myself moving forward, especially since I need to continue Grey’s work, and find his old friend at the Academy.  With no reason to stay in Glimmer’s Grove, I made my way to the Adventurer’s Academy, where I’ve caught myself in a whole, new mess.

I’m getting tired, so I think I’m going to keep it at this, for now.  Stephanie is knocking at my door now, and I would like to spend some time with her after getting my ass handed to me today.  Oh yeah, I guess I should clarify: Stephanie Nitro is the girl, and the friend I mentioned previously.  I don’t know who the hell is going to stumble across these logs, and even though I know who she is, if these logs end up in someone’s hands, they should at least know what’s going on.  I could write about her for days, honestly, but I’ll save my gushing for a later entry in this journal.  Also, about that whole “insatiable lust” thing I mentioned earlier, let’s just say that my self control has improved greatly from those days.  Things are sweet with her right now, and even though my loins are feeling something fierce, I want to keep it sweet.  She’s a good girl, and she deserves as much, especially after what my… uh… friends I quess?  After what my friends and I ended up doing to her family.

Once again, more on that later, but for now, I’m going to enjoy a nice evening with my girl.