Gruoni Tidemann

Gruoni Tidemann, who responds to being called Gru, Gruoni, Li'l G, the Grutarist, and Hey You, is a young fish folk man who lives the life of a traveling musician, bard, skald, bum, or adventurer depending on who you ask and when you ask them. His involvement in ROCK QUEST™ is mostly due to his best friend Sid hearing the voice of a demon inside his head, but he had a large part in convincing Sid to help as well, which is important because Gru will wither and die if he's away from Sid for too long (OK, not really, but he wouldn't be happy). Currently, he's 24 years old, and has been traveling far and wide since he left his hometown, even to Acetate once or twice.

Aside from being able to swim really fast and breath underwater, Gru is a truly talented musician and a fairly experienced outdoorsman, which comes in handy when you can't afford to stay the night under a roof.

Background

Gru travels with Sidney Vance, performing for fun and profit and honing his art. To an observant person, the faded, almost invisible marks around the eyes and his shredded ear fins tell of a hardship in his past.

Personality

Gru is friendly and welcoming to most people, human or monster (he thinks monsters are exotic and interesting). He's curious, and also a bit of a trickster and a lover of playful teasing. Sometimes, he can take it a little too far, but he's usually very good at not being too pushy. Most anything thrown at him, he'll take in stride, and he rarely ever gets angry. He's quick to trust and usually has confidence in a person's basic decency, but tends to be more cautious these days. When he puts his foot down about something, he won't change his mind, but this doesn't happen very often.

Early Life

Gru was born in the town of Silence on Lith's coast, the third of four children and the elder twin to his sister Ghel. He had a stable, comfortable childhood and grew up with a loving family, but gained a reputation for being a class clown and occasional troublemaker along with his sister. He was capable but disinterested in studies outside of music and focused his efforts on what he liked to do, which was not a very viable way to make a living in a small town called Silence. After a scandal which somewhat sullied his reputation in Silence, and having longed to see more of the world anyway, Gru left at the age of 19 to travel around Lith and learn from more experienced musicians. After a few more years of aimless wandering, avoiding his hometown, and generally going nowhere in particular, Gru decided he wanted to see Acetate for himself. Despite warnings from his family -- especially his father and brothers, who had been there themselves -- he went alone.

Traveling to Acetate

At first intending to keep to the coast and far away from areas he knew to be unwelcoming to his kind, Gru enjoyed Acetate. The conveniences of technology far more advanced than anything he'd seen before was exciting and new; and more importantly, the vastly different styles of music and new types of instruments he found were something he took to studying and enjoying. Though he was met with discrimination and sometimes outright hate, enough of the people he met were kind to him that he decided to explore farther inland. Unfortunately for Gru, his luck eventually ran out, and after a run-in with a remote small town's police he was imprisoned and then handed off to be sold as a slave, ending up in Acetate's capital, Navroya.

Time in Navroya

As a half-blood slave, Gru was owned by cruel masters and suffered greatly under their care. Over several months his condition deteriorated to the point where, believing he was going to die if he didn't escape, Gru attempted to run away . Though this backfired and he was quickly caught and beaten nearly to death, the noise of the beating outside his apartment window attracted Sidney Vance, who rescued Gru and helped him recover his health with the help of Yantzey Feiring. However, Sid's act of kindness would not go unpunished. After a short, bloody conflict involving Gru's captors, in which two men died, Sid (who had planned to stay) and Gru (who wanted very much to leave and never return) were forced to get out of Navroya or face the full force of the gang the dead men were members of.

Presently...

Gru, along with Sid, became involved in the search for the sanctuary stones after Sid saw a demon in his dreams and eventually set it free. He's put quite a lot of work into helping find what stones they have, including traveling to the Last Forest with the rest of the crew to get one of the stones from Trifold's king (though at this point he was doing it because the king requested it), literally going to hell to bust it open and let the Demon King out, heading back to Navroya and helping hide the evidence of a horrifying multiple murder (they kinda had it coming though), and infiltrating a castle full of bees and beekeepers while evading police.

Needless to say, at this point, he's gotten pretty used to seeing all manner of things, no matter if they're magical, gruesome, or surprising, he's good at taking it all in stride and staying focused.

Abilities and Powers

Apart from the natural abilities of a fish folk, Gru has no supernatural abilities. However, Sid and the rest of Gru's family agree that he has oddly good fortune at times, and oddly bad fortune at others.

He is a skilled musician who can play several instruments as well as sing. Some of these include the guitar, harmonica, piano, fiddle, and flute, though those are just the ones he can play proficiently. Gru is a good person to have on a camping trip, as he knows several useful skills and tricks to survive in the wild, and is adept at hunting due to participating in hunting trips with his family. Gru is a fantastic marksman (vastly superior to Sid), but rarely trains or uses this skill and has gotten a little rusty. He also lacks the instinct for violence that Sid has, and while willing to defend himself or others, admits that he's really not much good in a fight, which relegates his good aim to mostly being useful for shooting pieces of paper and game animals.

Relationships

Sid

The boyfriend. They've been together for a few years now, but it's only been a few months since Sid officially admitted they'd been dating. They've been through a lot together and there's no one Gru trusts more.

Raz

It's Sid's demon child, and Gru is in a relationship with Sid, so you do the math. He's not as close with Raz as Sid is, but he still cares about him, especially after almost getting the dream god to kill him.

Sully

He's not such a bad guy, and it's fun to tease him because he's so easy to tease. They have more in common than he expected, at least in terms of life experience.

Crow

At first, Gru thought Crow was really weird, but also very intriguing. That hasn't really changed, but after some time working together and trying to break through the mystery surrounding this bird wizard, Gru had the opportunity to meet Crow's actual, real family, who were remarkably normal and not at all what Gru expected from someone as weird as Crow. This was a big turning point in the relationship, as Gru ran interference for Crow when they asked him awkward questions, and after some other things, Gru is pretty sure Crow likes him now. The shiny sticky sequins Crow got him to wear on his face probably mean that, anyway.

Braelii

She's reliable and has a good sense of humor. Pretty good coworker, all in all! He gets along with her really easily.

Ghel Tidemann

It's Gru's twin sister! Despite being the younger twin, she's pretty much always been far more mature than Gru. She worries about him a lot after what happened in Navroya and tries to see him at least once a week just to make sure he's not getting into too much trouble, especially because they've drifted apart in the last few years.