#graywall steelclaw

[riotrenegade]

janthir wilds spoilers ig, i’m just kind of stream-of-consciousness rambling about my commander

Gray is having a very interesting time in Janthir. With the dragons gone and his initial mission on Tyria complete he finally has the headspace to process the events that brought him to Tyria in the first place. He didn’t really do it during SoTO and didn’t really do it during Gyala and it’s finally hitting him here, because Janthir and the lowlanders are reminding him of home, of Earth. And it’s fucking killing him.

Nostalgia mixed with grief mixed with joy. The lowlanders look so much like the Ursine of Earth, and the wilds remind him so much of the wilderness, the Midlands and Grunes Tal and Swineland before the disaster. He finds himself sitting silently out in the wilderness, reliving memories of the people he’s lost and dealing with bursts of emotion at inopportune times. He refuses to explain to his peers and withdraws into himself until he can’t hold it in anymore.

Caithe doesn’t know the details of Gray’s past, nobody does really. He came through a portal at the Henge of Denravi, said he was a “Broccan from Earth” when asked, and refused to explain further. And that was that, for twelve years. He never really talked about the details, there was never time or space and he always changed the subject promptly when pressed. Until now. One evening at the homestead, after the first bout with the titans, Caithe finally catches Gray off his guard, sitting and staring at the fire in the hearth. Staring through it. She asks him what the hell is up with him, why he’s been acting so strange since coming to Janthir. And he finally tells her the details. About Earth. Djall. His friends. All of it. Years of adventures and joy and guilt and promises kept and broken, all consumed in an instant. All lost forever, beyond even the Mists.

He tells her how he still relives it all, how the memories are coming back stronger here. How the lowlanders remind him of the Ursine, how every time he looks at Poky, despite himself, he sees someone else in him. How he feels guilty about it, shameful. Poky isn’t him, now isn’t then. How he’s frustrated with himself; how he doesn’t want to keep living in the past but has to remember them, has to keep them in his heart so they aren’t forgotten completely. Not even the dust of the Earth remains. If he doesn’t keep the fire going, no one will. No one will remember them.

Caithe didn’t know any of this. Couldn’t fathom how deep Gray’s emotions ran. This is why he’s been so passionate about saving Tyria, stopping the Dragon Cycle. Because he had already failed once. He couldn’t let another world slip through his grasp, not after he watched the first one literally crumble in front of him.

This puts him into perspective for her. In the dim firelight, looking at his twisted and scarred face drawn into a pensive and sorrowful expression, she sees the weight of not one, but two worlds on this one small broccan’s shoulders. He suddenly looks very small to her. And for the first time since she met him, she sees him crumbling, breaking from the weight of everything he’s been through. He weeps openly, in front of another person, for the first time in twelve years.

[riotrenegade]

quick graywall steelclaw sketch, gonna clean it up some more later hopefully. quick facts about him:

- his snout is in fact twisted, it’s a birth defect called wry nose. he kind of has a permanent sneer because of it. affects his speech to a degree.

- he’s intersex

- he has a scottish accent

- he’s 4’7”

- formerly a rogue, in Tyria he becomes a Herald! Still dual wields claws though, canon revenant weapon selection be damned

- he’s polydactyl on all four limbs, so kind of a thumb-and-a-half per hand or foot

- his tail’s a bit longer than expected for broccan

- most of his hair does have a gradient from black down to white at the tips

- big ol face scar is a remnant of The Departing, idk how well you can see it in this sketch. i think i accidentally shaded over part of it 😬

[riotrenegade]

Finally wrote a little mini-fic about my commander, who isn’t Tyrian at all and is in fact a direct import of my fucking Earth Eternal character if anyone remembers that game. If you don’t know what I’m talking about it was a furry WOW clone, and it was objectively mediocre but is still very near and dear to my heart. I played a broccan (badger) rogue by the name of Graywall Gunmen, whose name is now Graywall Steelclaw. I was finally inspired to write this because a certain weapon in the new expansion reminded me of my boy’s penchant for only using claw weapons, hence the last name change. Also because there were never guns in EE. In my defence I got his name from a dream I had once— Anyway, this guy had to end up in Tyria somehow, and that’s what this is about. Sorry for the shameless crossover fanfic you can stone me to death if you want

You failed. And now you’re running for your life as the world crumbles around you and your heart crumbles in kind.

You wish you had been stronger. Braver. You wish the odds hadn’t been so heavily, so impossibly stacked against you.

But there’s only so much you can do against a God.

And now all you can do is survive. Save your own skin. And you feel like a coward for running, even though your friends picked you up and threw you off the battlefield and told you to go. You can’t help but feel like you’re betraying them, even when their last words still echo in your skull.

You look back as you sprint through the wilderness, and you see the shadows growing. You hear the groan and snap of trees ripped from the ground, you see boulders lifted from the earth and tossed into the growing darkness, and you turn your head forward and try to run faster. Ahead of you, the peak of a nearby mountain begins to crumble.

You can see the Henge just ahead, a small unassuming ring of stones in the middle of the deep tundra. Magic still pulses around them as you draw closer, but you can see it flickering. You hope you make it in time, hope you remember the spell your God taught you; a last resort if things didn’t pan out.

You reach the center of the stone ring and begin reciting the words, your hands glowing with familiar magic. You try your best to keep your concentration as you look on into the approaching darkness. Two of the pillars in the ring begin to shake, as though trying to hold on against the all-consuming power of the World-Eater.

Tears run down your face and your voice cracks but you know you cannot stop for even a moment. There will be time to mourn after, wherever this spell brings you. Your God never told you where it would take you, refused to answer your questions with anything other than a solemn shaking of the head. “Somewhere safer, is my hope,” is all she ever said. You had hoped you would never have to find out where that was.

As you speak the final words of the spell, the world winks out in front of you and you feel your body wrenched apart— Henge travel is a strange sensation, but this feels different. More intense. Nauseating— and then sudden darkness.

The next thing you remember is a voice. Strange, raspy, accompanied by something that sounds like ice— or a windchime,

“Welcome, child of Gaia. Welcome to Tyria.”