Character Name: Gnolls Royce
Nickname: THE Gnolls Royce
Aliases: Gnolls Fitzgerald, Royce Gnollsberg, Gnolso Ruiz
Race: HE’S A ‘FRICKIN GNOLL
Age: 8
Deity: None
Alignment: True Neutral
Occupation: Lawyer
Hobbies: Heroism, music, wine-tasting
Faction: Guvners
Rank in Faction: Entry-level
Place of Birth: Unknown plane
Height: 6Â’10
Weight: 240 lbs
Eyes: Green
Fur: Brown
Complexion: Spotted
Physical Build: Lean (for a gnoll)
Physical Features: Fur, without fleas. Sharp, clean teeth (he brushes them!).
Skills: Oration, diplomacy, modeling, singing, sword-play, banjo-play
Equipment and items: Custom-made faux dragonskin business suit. Briefcase, equally great for bludgeoning miscreants or holding on to important documents/lunch.
Known languages: Common, Gnoll, Abyssal
And more detailed information
Appearance: Short and wiry for a gnoll. Still bigger and tougher than an average human. He would totally kick ass in a fight, but heÂ’s like, too afraid of his own strength to go picking fights. No, really! He knows kung-fu, donÂ’t mess with him.
Personality: Naive, cheerful, adventurous. Is “hungry” a personality trait? No?
Relations: Ladies only ;)
Accomplishments: He once ate twenty strips of bacon in under ten seconds for a bet.
Goals: To be the best lawyer he can be.
Possible Plot-Hook Ideas: Need a lawyer for a high-stakes murder/arson/burglary/insurance fraud/jaywalking case? Gnolls Royce is your man. Er, gnoll. He plays defense AND offense prosecution AND defense. Se habla Abyssal!
History: Gnolls Royce was born to unimportant gnoll parents on a Prime Material plane. Their tribe lived the typical gnoll dream, slaughtering merchant caravans for weapons and food (and fun!), and occasionally raiding villages for weapons and food (and fun!). One day, the tribe of fun-loving gnolls was brutally slaughtered by a murderous band of hired adventurers. All but one of the gnolls was killed, the last survivor a pitiful cub. Not wanting to get his mace dirty, the groupÂ’s cleric, a cleric of Torm, thought it more prudent to drown the wailing cub in a nearby river. The cub had quite a sharp set of teeth, however, and managed to bite the clumsy clericÂ’s finger off whilst being held under the waters. The gnoll cub was swept away by the water currents as the cleric sputtered and cursed. Little did the cleric know, his bloody baptism would reach into the very essence of the young gnoll, imbuing him later in life with an unquenchable thirst for JUSTICE!
As luck would have it, a traveling slaving caravan was crossing the river a few miles down from the failed drowning attempt. Hearing the loud wails of the helpless gnoll cub, and seeing a strange glint of gold on the creature, the kindly caravan master quickly sent several of his best-trained slaves to fetch the young furry bundle of joy. The slaver was overjoyed when at least one of his slaves returned from the frigid and dangerous waters with the gnoll cub. Clutched in the gnollÂ’s tiny paw was a recently severed finger with bite-marks, around which a golden and diamond ring was set. The slaver was overjoyed at this occasion, and celebrated by setting five of his slaves free, and hunting them down for sport. The gnoll cub was immediately enslaved, and priced at a deep discount.
After a month, the nameless gnoll cub had learned to walk on his own and was able to ingest solid food, mostly slop, but occasionally marrow-filled chicken bones. The slaver was beginning to lose heart, as he knew that the profit to cost ratio on gnolls was very low, and it would be nearly impossible to sell the scamp once he stopped being cute and turned into a vicious, cannibalistic, flea-bitten, less cute adult gnoll. As luck would have it, the evening before the slaver had planned to give the gnoll a last meal of cyanide-coated bacon, an eccentric planes-traveling wizard by the name of Mortimer Royce bought the gnoll. Gnolls and the wizard teleported away to MortimerÂ’s laboratory-home in Sigil, and they immediately began training for what was to come.
The thing that was to come was, of course, the annual Sigil’s Got Talent. Mortimer’s singing magician act had fizzled out in the quarter-finals for several years in a row, but he was sure that a dancing and singing gnoll would really WOW the judges. Over the course of several months, the gnoll learn to speak the Common tongue and learned to read text, as he was drilled relentlessly on song and dance miscellanea by his wacky adoptive father. He was sometimes called “filthy creature” and “little furry runt” by Mortimer, but was usually just referred to as “gnoll.” The gnoll took to calling himself “Gnolls Royce” after a particularly hard day of drinking caused Mortimer to slur his words and yell “GNOLLSH, YOUR POSHTURE IS WRONG AGAIN” after a failed pirouette. Gnolls… it almost sounded like a real name! So, he took it for his own.
Unfortunately, as the unlucky mage would discover, gnolls are not a race terribly well-suited to singing and dancing. The gnolls’ singing and dancing, even after months of training, never rose above above “decent to good,” and eventually Mortimer declared the gnoll to be a failed experiment. The final straw came when Mortimer realized that the gnoll would never be able to tap-dance like his trademark musical finale required, as gnoll feet are ill-suited to tap shoes. Mortimer took leave of his magical laboratory-mansion, and went on a drug-and-alcohol-fueled interplanar bender for ten months. Gnolls Royce, now six months old (basically a teenager in gnoll years!), was inadvertently left behind to curate the Royce estate.
Gnolls ran out of food at the house after two months, and was forced to the humble and unpredictable life of a street urchin and pickpocket to stay fed. At his lowest point, he raided a trash bin and forced himself to eat a rotting sandwich to stay alive. Luckily, he then realized his gnollish constitution was well-suited to eating garbage and generally awful things, and his life became much simpler as he saved money on food shopping by eating from the garbage.
Gnolls became enamored with the law and lawyering after reading a few adventure novels about courageous lawyers via the thousands of books in MortimerÂ’s study. At roughly six years of age, he took the Namer test for the Guvners for the first time. By the time he was seven and a half years old, he had finally managed to pass it! Gnolls was overjoyed, and immediately had business cards printed declaring his status as the FIRST Gnoll Guvner Lawyer. Unfortunately, on this day Mortimer came back from his months-long interplanar trip, and he decided to celebrate GnollsÂ’ achievement by kicking the gnoll out of his house and changing the locks.
THUS BEGAN THE JOURNEY OF GNOLLS ROYCE, LAWYER, INTERPLANAR ADVENTURER, SINGER/SONGWRITER, AND BANJO-PLAYER EXTRAORDINAIRE! HE FIGHTS CRIME AND INJUSTICE INSIDE THE COURTROOM AND OUT, SO LONG AS THE CAUSE IS JUST, AND THE PAY IS GOOD (and paid by the hour, with fair adjustments for working nights and weekends, plus hazard pay and meals provided on site, bacon preferred)!
The Secret Origin Story Of Gnolls Royce
