Name: Guts Grimglower
Age: 82
Race:Punk Jerboan
Zone of Birth:Deep New Mojave, the Hammer Fields
Current Employment Alignment: Rebel
Description: An elderly jerboan whose hair has been bleached nearly white by all of the unfiltered hard sun light he's gotten racing his bike about the dunes. His body is a network of scars and tattoos on flesh that has been forged into hard, teak like muscle by a lifetime of violence and raiding. He has lost one eye, but refused to wear an eyepatch, and in general wears hard wearing, sensible leathers. The only affectation or color he wears is the tartan that has been passed down in his family since before the great relocation. His beard and mustache are elegantly groomed and almost always kept in braids locked in tight rubber ringers.
Personality: Canny, slow to trust, and weighted down by responsibility all describe Guts Grimglower. He is a patient teacher, strong leader, and decisive actor in all things between the gangs, leveraging his position as Hammerking of the Hammerhold as a peacemaker between the various jerboan gangs. He prides himself on his knowledge of the outside world, and his martial skills even as they finally begin to wane late in his life.
He believes, without a doubt, that the Jerboans are the true rulers of the new world, the only ones free from the chains of greed or corporate vassalage. He is disdainful of 'corpo' methods of just about anything, from transportation to music, and inherently understands that his people are the chosen ones, and in time, the rest of the world will fall to ruin and desert, whatever the Corpos do. There is no hatred or fear in his mind for other races, he simply believes them to be inferior to Jerboans, and while he is disdainful of anything done the 'corpo' (read: not jerboan) way, this does not make him hidebound or opposed to new ideas. He simply believes that anything worth doing is best done the Jerboan way, and that jerboans, the ultimate survivors and true masters of the new world, will always come up with something better or a better way of doing or using the same thing if given time. His inherent belief in the superiority of his people leads him to taking an almost patriarchal and patronizing view of outsiders, which seems only to have been reinforced by his travels in the world and his cosmopolitan history.
Abilities: Guts Grimglower is an expert fighter, though he prefers to fight from his bike or from a vehicle if he has a choice. He is well traveled, fluent in several datacenter slang dialects even to this day. He is well trained in mechanical sciences, and in the mechanical systems of Jerboan Vehicles, and less so in the mechanisms of other sorts of vehicles. He is largely considered to be the greatest biker in the world among Jerboans, and has only lost a handful of races in the course of his life, but never lost a biker-duel.
Relationships:
Hammerking Line - The hammerking name is given to anyone whose ancestor has sat upon the throne of Hammerhold. Grimglower's family was the first to hold the name, and is of the family that has held the throne most often. They originally recovered the Hammerfields, found the blackgold, puzzled the mysteries of fixing the refineries that allowed the early Jerboans to thrive in the desert and to raid where others were slow and weak. His family holds the crown, but traditions were strong in the gangs, and the only one with the right to command the hold had to do so through deed and acclaim. By long tradition, only the child who lived up to the most names of the long and storied history of the family, as well as added names to it, is permitted to inherit the throne. They do not need to be related to a family that already holds the Hammerking name, they simply have to earn the names themselves.
Lance Surfbreak - A young jerboan from the coastal clans with their stressed relationships with the more traditional biker gangs of the deep New Mojave, she has made it clear she intends to make a play for the throne of Hammerhold to other Jerboans, and is often considered a dangerous conservative by most of the gangs (as they consider most of the sea bound gangs, who have friendly relations with the Houses of 'Bacco), despite her firm rebel credentials. Guts Grimglower keeps an eye on her activities, as she has come to his attention despite having relatively few names earned, and isn't part of any of the established familial lines.
Important Life Moments:
Guts Grimglower has earned uncountable names in his life, his family is one of the most storied among the gangs, but Grimglower is considered unique, for he earned his name by acclaim rather than by deed, for the steeliness of his gaze which ended fights and intimidated foes. The names he has earned by deed are often reinforcements of his older familial ones given the long and storied history of his family.
Guts began his life as part of the deep delving groups of the bunker network, protecting and expanding the network of sluices, canals, and channels that funneled the precious blackgold into the reservoirs below Hammerhold. He learned the arts of patience, combat, and the necessity of understanding machines in this world. When he came of age, he joind the raider gangs that his family's gang sent out into the surrounding areas, and began working on his bike. Shortly into these raids, he fell in battle, and was left for dead, only to be picked up by a passing caravan afterwards. Guts found himself being nursed back to health by a group of traveling irrumito milkers, and ended up working on protection with their caravan. He learned the ways of the caravaneers of Ur-Um, and in time found himself traveling to Sarajevo Seven, plying his expertise in vehicular warfare to the constant interspire warefare of the region.
And so it went, for decades. Guts Grimglower traveled the world. He has visited every area of the New World, ridden with every kind of gang, participated in pirate raids, and fought corpos and rebels alike. In that time he made a name for himself and racked up a huge bounty from multiple corporations, trained dozens of adventurers who would go on to become adventuring legends themselves. After becoming a legend spoken of in adventuring bars to this day, he returned at last to the Hammerfields, where he took the throne from his father after counting his deeds and defeating the older Jerboan in single biker combat.
Guts has ruled the Hammerfields, and by extension, the primary petrol supply for the New Mojave Jerboans for almost half a century, and shows no signs of slowing down. The old Jerboan uses the experiences he earned, and the contacts he made throughout the new world to bring wealth and prosperity to the gangs of New Mojave. As the oily blackgold that is refined into petrol begins to finally run out, lost to accident, danger, and simple use, he has been inviting in Jerboans from more distant gangs, as well as those from the All-Gobi, to share their knowledge stolen from the corpos, and proceeded to investigate the viability of biofuel that will continue to power their vehicles the proper jerboan way rather than depending on the sun's power.
Quotes:
"Aye lass! If you want to try for my seat you'll convince those here you've earned the right! And then, and only then, will I face you on the sands, hog to hog and weapon to weapon. Just as I did with mah fathah."
"Ah-HA! A Slyth n' Jabbah tunnel clearah! Slamfire shotty! Good haul lad. You got 12 crates? Excellent, ye, for this we'll see to it your gang gets a few more barrels o'the petrol."
"Nay. Fuck that boy. We don't need no batteries for more than the spark plugs and lights. What are ye? A corpo sprat? That'lectric stuff just dinnae have the power of the gas bikes. We can make this fancy hover stuff work, but we have to do it our way."