Grom the ____, A (Comprehensive) Biography

[Eledaar]

A heavy, green book lies on a desk and a thin old man with even thinner white hair smiles to himself as he sits in front of it, penning the last word.  He sighs in relief and closes the book.  Then, after a moment, he opens it again and begins reading to himself, aloud, from the very beginning:

I, Barnabas Permovich, the pre-eminent Grom scholar, submit to you a tome that is neither a biography or a narrative.
It is a history of Grom the _____, pertaining to his evolution as a scoundrel, as a saint, as a murderer, a thief and a savior - and most importantly, the people his life affected, which in the end was nearly everyone's.  But, before I get ahead of myself and give away the story, I shall end this bothersome preface!

Chapter 1: A Remarkable Birth

Grom was born under remarkable and auspicious circumstances.  His mother's name was Olivia Fayesworth and his father was an unknown scallywag.  His mother, born to a medium income family in some hamlet in Mordent, quickly fell in love with scoundrels of all sorts.  Wedding (and likely bedding!) at least a half dozen who all died early deaths.  At the age of twenty four, she supposedly ran off with this pirate fellow, who we assume was Grom's father.  Seven months after she had left, she was back at a coastal Mordent port town, dropped off by the scallywag and pregnant as a... well, I'm missing a metaphor - that's fine, we'll go on.

So, she struggled to find a job for a long time.  She was unfit, due to her pregnancy, for any sort of normal work - but an alchemist was more than happy to hire her - and pay her extraordinarily well, while giving her room and board - for little to no work!

All her worries were over, she likely thought to herself, smiling.  That us, until she had to give birth.  Her pregnant belly had gotten RATHER large.  She was worried and called in a doctor - a friend of the alchemist for whom she worked and lived with.  Well, the doctor told her not to worry.  Of course, he was lying, just like the alchemist who had been slowly poisoning her with magic of the foulest sort in her food.

The doctor gave her something to sleep, and soon the dastardly pair began their operation.
[pictures to be inserted later]
I tried to hire an artist for the pictures, but nobody wanted to draw the scene - they said it was too gruesome.  POSH!  This is HISTORY, the birth of a LEGEND!  Oh well.

So, this is how Grom was born.  Except his name wasn't Grom at first, actually.
I'm getting ahead of myself!  So, in all this hubbub, Olivia awakens to find: the alchemist presenting her horror of a child to her!  Now, at birth, Grom was about 20kg, completely dark-skinned, with beady red eyes and hair that had already sprouted into a little ponytail that would follow him for the majority of his life.  She of course screamed and passed out again.

When she awakened, the alchemist explained all and told her of course that she would now be chained to her bed to take care of her monstrous child.  She named the child George Lowry, and promptlyl committed suicide while Grom.. I mean, George, watched.

The alchemist was very displeased, knowing a great deal about alchemy and magic, but very little about taking care of grossly deformed, gigantic babies.  So, he gave it rats to play with and re-named him Grom.

Grom took very well to the rats!  His large size as a baby made him an ideal meal for the rats, which would gang up on him and try to chew on him - but Grom had well developed molars and tricep muscles for a baby, so he would stick the rats in his mouth, bite down and pull has hard as he could on the tail until the head popped off.

Well, this whole mess ended after Grom found the rotting corpse of his mother in the attic one day, when he was about five years old (a good 140kg by then) and asked the alchemist about it - who promptly told him it was his mother, and that he was tired of taking care of him, and he was going to kill him like he had her - his failed experiment.  Grom didn't like this one bit, and promptly strangled the man - the rats he kept eating his corpse up until there was nothing but bones.

So, Grom descended into the sewers of Mordent, where he lived and got fat and big off of eating Rats.  There were a few other freaks in the sewers in that little Mordentish town, and he bossed them all around so much, that they started to call him Rat-Eater out of spite.

In his usual jolly demeanor, Grom returned their comment with a laugh, (according to a witness named Finklesworth, a Mordent sewer-freak), saying, "Well den lads, moi stinken' corpse ub a mum called me Lowry, but oi'm olright wif Rats!"
According to that same witness, Grom then killed half the other sewer dwellers (who were generally the smaller sort) for not laughing at a joke he told immediately afterwards.  I quote Finklesworth when I write, "Abdoo arhem eeh wuzzin fixin pickeh uhp roight bahg rahk an bashmeh, firmagh sudden foggyshite come! (He was about to pick up a big rock and bash me in the skull, when suddenly some kind of fog or mist rolled up and took him)

And, next when Rats awoke and the mists parted, he was in the sewers of Vallak, in Baroviai.  He lived there happily for a few hours before finding out that they were much, much less hospitable than the sewers of his home in Mordent.

[Eledaar]

Chapter 2: Humble Beginnings

Grom became accustomed quickly to the sewers beneath Vallaki, as a denizen of them had to.  Quickly making a space for himself at Hoth's (in)famous bar, located in the Drain, Grog spent what little treasures he had, getting drunk on grog and procuring the most basic of weaponry for himself.
He survived primarily by hunting rats.  The nickname he had earned in Mordent stuck with him, though he did not eat many rats in Barovia before finding that they were all ridden with diseases that he had no natural immunity to.

However, as any young soul might, Grom grew tired with his lot.  Ratting was hard work, and the Drain denizens paid him very poorly for his measly catches.  He would often have to run when overpowered by large packs of hungry dire rats, or the lycans that inhabited the sewers that had tough hides.

Though he had not been above the surface in years, Grom emerged from the filth of the sewer to a chill, Barovian night in the slums of Vallaki.  Something clicked for the massive mutant.  He was free, out here.  The streets were completely barren, he realized, looking around.  There was nobody there.

Of course he would try the same thing the next morning, only to be chased out of the western outskirts by a pair of zealous Garda stationed at the gates.

After a few weeks, he had gotten into a cycle: at night, go out to hunt deer and boars for good food that would allow him to grow strong, and at night emerge into the sewers.  Oh, I forgot to mention he ran into an odd little creature in the slums of Vallaki named Rulinus, who had a fondness for rats that rivaled Grom's, with the notable exception of Rulinus being immune to the diseases carried by the rats.

Once again, Grom grew bored.  He was not a stupid creature, and he realized it was because of a lack of social interaction.  So, he promptly found a big enough space to hide in around the sewers beneath the western outskirts well, and proceeded to demand a toll from everyone that passed by.  He figured he could get some money and interesting conversation, at least.
Grom's luck was good, and the first person was amiable and parted with their coin happily.  Unfortunately, the second man down was a Barovian, and was so frightened by Grom's large stature that he tried to attack him.  This ended poorly for the man when Grom shattered the man's ribcage with his ax and then buried that same ax in his back.

While Grom's luck may have been good, and even though he was intelligent enough, his judgement was sometimes sub-par.  Seeing a young-looking, full-bodied woman in armor coming through the sewers, Grom tried to charge her a toll.  The woman instead offered him her sword, if he could take it from her.  He of course tried, and promptly woke up in a pool of his own blood.  The woman was laughing, casting spells, and toying with him, but seemed genial enough.  Something about Grom must have struck her, because she took his axe and gave him a new one.  Grom, thankful, swore an (false, as was his habit) oath to serve her.  However, she disappeared shortly after.  Happy with this development, Grom took his new ax and set out to rob more "stinkin' droogs," to use the creature's own language.

It was while trying to rob aforementioned droogs that Grom met an Outlander from a place called Waterdeep, William Gatts, who he thought was at first a mark, but would become a longtime ally, and more rare for the intrepid Caliban - a friend.