Guurda Bogbrew Champion Lore
The Ogryn known as Guurda Bogbrew began life as the daughter of the brewmistress of the Gutfiller tribe, Gorga Twice-Swill, whose duty it was to concoct the intoxicants popular among so many Ogryn tribes. It takes a great deal to get most Ogryn drunk, and brewmasters and mistresses have long been renowned for their ability to distill just about any organic matter into something alcoholic. Guurda followed in her mother’s footsteps.
These skills served Guurda well when the Gutfillers were called up to join an army of the Gaellen Pact near the Sorrowlakes. At first, Gorga and Guurda helped keep the troops in good spirits, but then an Orc general took exception to one particularly rowdy episode between his warriors and the Gutfillers, and the tribe were ordered to leave. Gorga demanded that she be paid for the supplies the army had already consumed, but was refused. Though furious, she could not see a way to pursue her claim any further — her daughter, however, had a more direct means of retribution in mind. Young and headstrong, Guurda poisoned the drinks of the army’s commanders that night, and many of them died after the Gutfillers had already set off. She later admitted her actions to her mother. Although initially angry, Gorga came round — Guurda had tried to uphold the honor of the tribe and brewmistresses everywhere, and that was what mattered.
However, a combined force of outraged Orcs and Lizardmen pursued the Gutfillers and fell upon them in a ferocious assault. In the ensuing melee, Gorga and most of the tribe were killed while the distraught Guurda fled into nearby marshes.
Guurda wandered alone for a long time, inconsolable and desolate. She worked her way deep into the Sorrowlakes, where she was reduced to consuming bog flora and fauna to survive. As she became increasingly knowledgeable about the nature of the swamps, she took up brewing again, albeit by making use of all manner of festering, turgid forms of moss and mud-plant.
Her unnatural diet, combined with increasingly strange brewing experiments, began to wreak changes upon the stout Ogryn woman. Guurda’s flabby flesh, deprived of sunlight amid the marshland fogs, became pallid and waxen, while her innards turned truly toxic, prone to all manner of festering, gaseous releases. Stories about her spread through the Sorrowlakes, especially among Ogryn.
Eventually, one of Guurda’s kin sought her out, one of the few Gutfillers who survived the clash. He told her that her mother would surely be proud of the new ground she had broken in the art of the brew, but that it would do her no good to sit and rot in the murk and mire of the Sorrowlakes. It was a big world beyond the marshes, and if Guurda was going to do the memory of Gorga and the other lost Gutfillers proud, she should venture out into it and seek to rebuild the tribe, and her family’s legacy.
Inspired, and having already rediscovered her desire to master the art of brewing, Guurda agreed, wanting to spread her knowledge and reforge her tribe. The two Ogryn set out into wider Peltas, slowly attracting a following of other destitute or scattered Ogryn who saw in Guurda not just a brewmistress, but also a leader. After several years, she — now known among her new kin as Guurda Bogbrew — had established a caravan that traveled the continents providing alcohol and entertainment for the Ogryn tribes, and anyone else willing to try Guurda’s powerful concoctions. So potent are they that the bizarre mixture of near-deadly elixirs Guurda has consumed has miraculously extended her life — though well over two centuries have passed since she first learned the way of the brew, she remains hale and hearty, her Ogryn insides only toughened by the long decades of exposure to toxic substances.
Some claim that Guurda continues what she started with the Gaellen Pact generals, spreading her poisons across the lands, but in her defense, the line between strong, gut-melting drink and actual poison is a slender one. The influence she holds over a large number of Ogryn is strong, and growing, blurring the distinction between her role as brewmistress and that of a full tribal Chieftain. If it is power Guurda seeks, she is well on her way to acquiring it. All that remains is to declare that the Gutfillers have risen once more, and are ready to reclaim their place as one of the great Ogryn tribes.