Greg was never a man. He was forged.
Once, he was only a suit of plate armor, hammered into form in Valgard’s Saint’s Forge, where silver and steel were blended under holy chants. But he was not sanctified for the Church. Instead, he was claimed by a wandering mage of Draemir, a scholar of glyphs and soul‑binding. The mage etched runes into Greg’s plates, weaving wards of protection and whispers of command. The armor was meant to be a vessel—obedient, tireless, unbreakable.
But something went wrong. Or perhaps it went right.
The mage left—whether by death, disappearance, or design, Greg does not know. And in the silence that followed, the armor stirred. The runes burned faintly, and from their glow came thought. From thought came will. From will came Greg.
Greg has no memory of a life before the armor. He is not a ghost bound to steel, but the steel itself, awakened. Yet fragments of memory still haunt him—echoes not his own. A child’s laughter in Gräuhaven. The toll of the Belltower in Draemir. The clash of steel in Duskwatch’s mountain passes. Perhaps they are remnants of the mage who made him, or perhaps the armor has absorbed the memories of those who fought and died around it.
These visions come without order, leaving Greg uncertain of who he is meant to be. He clings to the present, to the companions he has found, as anchors against the tide of fractured recollection.
Greg first proved himself when he saved Sir Ulric Thornstrom from a werewolf’s ambush in the Schattwald. His blade struck true, and though no heart beats within his chest, he felt something stir—pride, perhaps, or purpose.
Later, in Crow’s Hollow, Lena Craig entrusted him with a Nimorian stone, a relic of the Dru’va. She told him it must be carried to Mournhollow in Valgard, where the veil between life and death thins dangerously. Greg does not know why she chose him, but he has sworn to deliver it.
There he also met Mike O’Riza, whose strange nature Greg does not question. To Greg, Mike is simply human—scarred, perhaps, but human nonetheless. His naivety blinds him to the truth, but it also shields him from suspicion.
Greg’s weakness is not rust or ruin, but uncertainty. He does not know why he exists, nor what he was meant to be. Without memory, he cannot say whether he was forged as a weapon, a guardian, or a prison. This doubt gnaws at him. At times, he hesitates, fearing that his very purpose may be monstrous.
Yet he endures. For though he does not know who he was meant to be, he can still choose who he is.
Greg is the Empty Knight—a suit of armor that walks without a master. He is haunted not by a ghost, but by the absence of one. In a land where every soul is trapped, Greg is something stranger still: a creation that has become its own soul.
