Heroic Quality: Ferocity

Strengths: Sharp-eyed, Quick, Weapon Specialist: Glaive

Weakness: Pride

Deeds: Princess of Griffonstone, Knight Retainer of Hearthhome, Slayer of Cold Cut the Shaper

Appearance: Tall for a griffon, with a dark brown lower body and white feathers which are red-tipped along the forehead. She has glaring green eyes. She regularly wears a chain hauberk with surcoat depicting arms of Griffonstone and Hearthhome on either side. Her head crowned with a gold diadem as a symbol of her birthright. Carries a glaive with her as her main weapon. She wears a pair of metal greaves and pauldrons, leaving her claws free in case of need.

Personality: Guinevere was raised in the griffon martial tradition, where valour and personal glory are valued above compassion and selflessness. She prides herself on being better than the ‘weak’ ponies around her, and regularly trains her skill at arms. Her war glaive was selected to let her engage ‘dirtwalkers’ from the air from a distance.

She loves a drink, and the occasional bar brawl, preferring to spend her time at the inn among other fighters rather than at court. Despite the griffons being little more than marauding bands of soldiers, Guinevere is very insistent on her being of high birth. Worse, she’s a hothead who takes insults to her honour very seriously. In a fight, she’s reluctant to yield without orders to retreat.

Background: Guinevere was for a long time the only child of the widowed petty king of Griffonstone. She trained to become a knight and showed promise as a successor, often charging into battle as part of her father’s warband’s aerial cavalry. A boisterous, carousing and unladylike griffoness who neglected the diplomatic side of court politics, she became popular with the other fighters.

When her father remarried and her stepmother hatched a half-brother, Guinevere’s right of succession was questioned. Insulted, she pressured her father into confirming her as his heir to his nobles, in spite of she herself remaining unmarried and childless.

She joined her father on one of his campaigns when the warband was waylaid by an ambushing Arimaspi. Guinevere herself was gored in the abdomen, and her father the king crushed under a boulder before the monster was killed.

Upon her return to Griffonstone she was immediately embroiled in a succession crisis. The wound she’d received rendered Guinevere unable to lay eggs, and her stepmother was raising support to crown her half-brother, arguing she was unsuitable. Angrily, she immediately challenged her infant half-brother to a duel for the crown. To her surprise her uncle, bitterly jealous he’d been passed over for the throne, elected to champion his nephew. Still weak from her previous injury, Guinevere lost. And to render her even further unfit to rule, her uncle cut off her wings disgracing her.

Unable to live with the shame, Guinevere went into exile in the pony lands, whose soft-hearted inhabitants couldn’t understand strength and griffon honour, becoming a traveling hedge knight. Vowing to somehow restore her wings, then reclaim her throne from her uncle, who had ascended after the sudden death of her half-brother.

She made an onerous deal with an evil unicorn wizard, who promised he’d cast a spell to regrow her wings in exchange for the recovery of a tome of dark magic that his more principled apprentice had stolen, alongside with proof of her demise.

Instead the apprentice convinced Guinevere of a scheme to turn the tables on her former master. Spilling her blood on her amulet, she gave it along with the grimoire for Guinevere to deliver. Convinced by the bloody necklace, the wizard cast the spell to restore Guinevere’s wings, after which she gave him back the tome. The wizard was promptly trapped in the binding curse his apprentice had placed upon the book, allowing Guinevere to slay him easily.

Word reached Lord Brand of Guinevere’s heroic deeds, and he summoned for her to become a retainer knight of his household. Guinevere was quick to accept, gaining a more secure position at the court of a noble, from where she could work towards strengthening her legacy and reputation in preparation for her eventual return to Griffonstone to reclaim her birthright as queen.