Marbury Grant, Humble Agent and a Mage of Some Middling Might

[Ziya]

Marbury Grant

There are a lot of screenshots that are really spoilery, so I won't paste them. I have tried to curate and select from, I kid one note, 468 mb of screenshots. If I think up of any more interesting scenes, I will add them perhaps, or if anyone reminds me of something in particular.

A shout-out to Idris (special) and Stranger for guiding me through a lot of the mechanical aspects of playing a wizard. It made me a lot less shit than when I first started.

This snippet from Grant's Agent application sufficiently captures the character that I was trying to portray...

The son of a Sembian merchant who dealt primarily in arcane trinkets and artifacts, Marbury developed with his upbringing both a knack for commerce and a middling knowledge of spellcraft. An erstwhile apprentice shopkeeper who dealt with adventurers and lacking the formal training of a wizard, he is both an educated man, but one who lacked the arrogance of his peers. With the coming of the Dread, he has one cardinal rule: 'Don't die.'

He is Human. He is a fundamentally decent man placed in terrible and incomprehensible circumstances. He is terrified of monsters, he drinks to drown his sorrows, he makes friends and seek solace, and while he is not a good or altruistic man, he is neither sociopathic or aloof. He will strive to meet the image expected of him as an Agent, but he will endeavor to retain his humanity.

Spoiler Alert: He never did retain his humanity. At the end, when he stared death in the face, he gave up his last shred of decency to grab at a chance to live - he failed, and his humanity died with him.


Humble Warder and a Mage of Some Middling Might


Grant began as a stammering, terrified man, one who knew almost nothing about Sanctuary and the Great Machine, and was impressed and amazed by everything...

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This is a sad meeting, in hindsight. It was, if I recall correctly, the first time he met and spoke with the Linderils. The irony is... He eventually dies to one of them. Fate plays its little jokes on the lives of men.

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He tried to do his job, as a Warder. He failed.

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And he had a Wisdom of 8. I played this out on multiple occasions as him making the dumbest decisions. In this instance, him using a scroll of Animate Dead in the presence of a Scrivener got him beaten up and brutally whipped. His low wisdom would eventually lead to his death.

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He was involved in some interesting things as a Warder...

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And excised from more than a few discussions that were above his paygrade...

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There a single dark when he ventured out with Vaughan. It was memorable.

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He infamously lost his Adept robes the same dark he gained them. It was epic, however. Agent Cadyr, the one who gave him the robes, challenged Ferrigan to prevent the robes from falling into the hands of the Warders who took it from Grant. Challenged, and won.

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He converted, abandoning his faith in Azuth and turning instead to the Great Machine.

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And then... he was given the opportunity to become an Agent; not because he was good at what he did, or even earned it, but because Dhimani just wanted somebody to die.

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Humble Agent and a Mage of Some Middling Might


There are much too many spoilers once he became an Agent, and thus, I must skip over a lot of things. Screenshots will be a lot briefer, here, unfortunately.

Once, he tried to lead a detachment against the Monument of Hubris. Bad idea.

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His one success, his one point of pride, was - or at least, so he believed - his ability to recruit, train and deal with the rank-and-file.

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There were a lot of scenes where he came off as a lot more imperious than he used to be. When he gave commands. Issued orders. Decided on the fate of others, their life and their death. All of this happened when he was an Agent, but, they all involve current (LIVING!) characters, and I do not wish to spoil their story.

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Marbury Grant was an absolute joy to play. He was paranoid, cowardly, and desperate to live. He wanted to do his job, but he just wasn't that clever a man. He bears upon his shoulders the weight of all the friends whom he had made and then died; Sabine, Basil, Halveig, Faust, and so on, and so on, and so on. For all that he eventually became an Agent of the Reformed Order of the Spellguard, he was, first and foremost, human.

[Starfield]

Really enjoyed inducting Marbury into the Order and getting his self-confidence up, especially the part where Marbury admitted (ICly and OOCly) that he could never make Agent let alone Adept.. Haha.


Then on my next character I encountered Marbury a formidable foe and definitely a force I had to reckon with. Good luck on your next.

[Ciorbă de Burtă]

Oh, Marbury ... harebrained, weasely, hilariously paranoid, tactless, coffee-addicted Marbury! I loved Marbury Grant, who should have been named GRANT MARBURY in my opinion!

I lost count of how many times and with how many variations Alice privately referred to Grant as a "weasel", once even quoting Shakespeare to do so!

Alice and Grant's mutual antipathy was a rivalry of legend. It was so fun to see them just endlessly bicker and argue and talk back at each other until poor Claire lost her mind and the other WaW probably thought of killing them both just to shut them up.

Grant being promoted to Agent, while Alice was stuck as an Engineer, was one of her darkest moments ... and she was convinced that Marbury was going to make her life Hell, and possibly have/get her killed, as an Agent. Hence, she desperately hoped that he would die during his trials -- something not lost on their colleagues. >___>

I do take satisfaction in the fact that their rivalry was not as "lighthearted" as it might have seemed to others, but actually deadly serious, and mostly kept in check because of common goals and outside pressures ... and in the end, despite indeed having helped and saved each other on other occasions, they ultimately very much fell victim to their own mutual paranoia, which had just been needing certain conditions to finally break out. Fitting.

Kudos for a character that was both amusing, and tragic, and dynamic, and someone that you always had to factor into your calculations ... >___>

[Vegan_Snickerdoodles]

Kassava and Grant met in a riot at the Safety Zone. She got into a fight with an NPC she couldn't possibly hope to beat but was too stubborn to do the smart thing and withdraw, so she stuck around trying to spank him until she got subdued.
Then this warder still in nipple robes looted her money, and she planned to put him in a headlock in an alley and punch him in the nose until he gave it back. It was just the principle of the matter; it's not like she had anything to buy. Then they talked, and she figured she'd drop it.

Cue an odd dynamic that I'm pretty sure ended up being a genuine friendship? She never actually trusted the Spellguard Agent of Middling Might; unlike Grant she didn't have 8 wisdom, but she liked the guy and was happy to know him.
He was a riot to be around with his fretting and his goofballery. If your intention was to play a character who always felt inherently human, mission accomplished. Well done.

[Twelve]

Didn't interact overly much with my PC, but a very well flushed out PC. 

Good job

[Jello!]

Agent Grant was a joy to play with, hope you have as much fun on your next pc!

[Svordaloz]

Oh, darn it. I so enjoyed the interactions with Grant immensly, felt very humanizing. I eagerly await to see what you'll do next!

[Pandip]

It's great to have good friends in EFU, but it's even better to have good enemies! Really enjoyed all the bickering and fighting between our characters, especially after he became an Agent. It probably comes as no surprise that Isolde was crossing her fingers with Dhimani that she'd get to watch someone die.

Welcome back to the server. <3

[zDark Shadowz]

My favourite mage to stalk, second being Claire when she was ghosting around Sanctuary.

Use See Invisibility folks.

[Yaltese]

Good PC. Well done.