Legacy of Grom the Redeemer

With Paladins being added into the game, I decided it was time to dig into my old 3.5 DnD Character sheets. I introduce to you the Legacy of Grom the Redeemer, explaining the origins of the Redeemer bloodline and the ancestry of Gartok the Redeemer, a Half-Orc Paladin I will be playing once the Oathbound Paladin goes live.

The Story:

Grom the Redeemer was born to Listria the Undead’s Bane, a human cleric who served the god of death, Kelemvor. His father was Zorum Bloodhowl, an orc warlord whom Listria was romantically involved with and eventually married. Before Grom was born, his father was slain by a rival warlord and LIstria fled from the mountains the clan called home, fearing for the safety of her unborn child.

Grom was born in Waterdeep, far from the lands his father called home. Growing up, Grom was often clashing with the City Watch due to their mistrust of half-prcs and Grom’s own rebellious nature. Often he would pull pranks on the City Watch just to see how they would react and, just as often, he would find himself in a small jail cell whenever he was caught. As he reached adulthood, he began to worship The Triad, a coalition of three deities consisting of Tyr, the god of justice, Torm, the god of law, and Ilmater, the god of compassion. He even joined the City Watch, much to the shock of those who knew him as he grew older. The reason for his seemingly sudden change was a memory that would remain carved into his mind even long after he came to Kelemvor to be judged.

When he was sixteen, a human stole from a bakery. While the guards gave chase, the human bumped into a half-orc woman. Not wanting to face prison, the human slipped the stolen baked goods into the basket of supplies the half-orc was taking to her grandmother who lived in the city. When the guards rounded the corner, the human quickly placed blame on the half-orc woman and pretended to have been chasing her to stop her. The City Watch found the stolen goods in the woman’s basket and she was sent to prison for a crime she did not commit, despite Grom, having witnessed the whole thing, trying to reveal the truth to the City Watch. The Watchmen refused to listen to him, after all he had caused them nothing but problems throughout his childhood. It was this moment that caused Grom to follow the Triad and insure that racism would never cause another event like the one he wittnessed.

By the time he was twenty five, he left the City Watch, due to having wittness the actions of several corrupt Watchmen and being ignored when he brought the matter before the head of the City Watch, and began training to become a paladin under the guidance of an elderly adventurer who was a retired paladin of Torm. His mother died before she could see him fully develop into a paladin, slain while fighting along other followers of Kelemvor against an undead uprising within Waterdeep’s cemetery, a section of the city simply called the City of the Dead. Upon finishing his training as a paladin, Grom joined a group of adventurers and travelled into the City of the Dead to bring justice to the creatures that had killed his mother. With this done, he traveled with the adventurers, the group soon became known as the Brotherhood of Five and saved the world from evil a handful of times. It was during these travels that Grom earned his nickname of The Redeemer, as he refused to believe that the humanoids and monstrous humanoids the Brotherhood often encountered could be truly evil. What is considered by many historians to Grom’s strangest achievement, during this time, was when he not only managed to stop a rampaging ogre from destroying a farm, but to also train the ogre on how to protect the farm and help the elderly farmer with his crops.

The Brotherhood of Five eventually met their end when they tried to stop a Drow invasion of Waterdeep, a battle where Grom was the only member of the Brotherhood to survive. However, Grom’s time as an adventure was not offer and after taking a year to mourn the passing of his first true friends, he was swept into adventure once more. This time the orc warlord who had killed Zorum Bloodhowl, now known to be Durak the Crazed, had finally reached The Sword Coast and was now after Grom. Unknown to Grom, the Warlord needed to kill the half-orc paladin in order to truly claim control of Zorum’s clan. While Grom was visiting his mother’s grave in the City of the Dead, a group of half-orc assassins ambushed him. Quickly joined by Talia, a human rogue, Helgar the Red, a dwarf fighter, and Felran, an drow cleric of Eilistraee, goddess of those drow seeking to escape the evils of the underdark, Grom was able to thwart the attempt on his life. Going to seek out the one who sent the assassins, Grom was joined by Talia, Helgar and Felran. During his new adventures, Grom and Talia began to fall in love. After stopping Durak the Crazed’s plans and claiming control of his father’s clan, Grom began to teach the orcs the ways of the Triad and took Talia as his wife. Grom and Talia eventually died of old age but Grom’s legacy lives on through his bloodline.

The Legacy:

Although the days of Grom are long gone and the Triad being no more with Tyr’s death, the title of The Redeemer lives on. Gartok the Redeemer, sixth of the line of Redeemers and follower of Torm, continues his father’s mission to bring law and order to those civilization would deem evil simply on their race.