Character Name: Gregor Marsters
Age: 21

Gregor is, for want of a slightly less tired cliche, built like a house. Tall and broad shouldered, he's got the kind of frame one would imagine emerging from some marshy swamp at the head of a ragged band of clansmen to charge, claymore in hand, to a glorious death on English bayonets.

That being said, Gregor doesn't look like some unwashed barbarian. He keeps his hair cut neatly, along with the sideburns down the side of his face, and while his dress is in line with his work, he nevertheless insists on looking the part of the country gamekeeper, much to the mixture of pride and irritation of his mother, who tends to get stuck with the ironing over the busier months.

Much as he's a big lad (towering over pretty much everyone else in the village), he doesn't move like one. While he's certainly capable of dashing around, and when he gets some speed up does resemble a charging bull, he normally moves with a slow, fluid, almost relaxed gait, and is quite quiet for a man his size, a tribute to the tutelage of his father. That being said, his recent experiences have made his movements slower and more tentative, and the bursts of activity are gone.


Until his return from Belgium, Gregor was generally seen as a cheerful, if somewhat shy, young man who loved his job and seemed entirely suited to it.

The reality was, for the most part, as it seemed. A man of some skill and confidence in his work, Gregor isn't thick, but at the same time he was aware of his place and his limitations, especially when compared to those up in the house. As a result, he tended to keep his mouth shut and fade into the background, a useful skill for a man in his profession, but one that, to an extent, either means people ignored him or or assumed he was less intelligent than was the case. In conversation, Gregor tended to surprise people with his articulacy and the depth of his thought (albeit not particularly refined), but his naturally cautious and internal nature tended to limit this view to his close family.

Since returning from Belgium, Gregor has lost much of his cheer. Where once he was shy, now he deliberately keeps himself isolated, unwilling to endure the whispers and stares of those around him. His experiences have also changed him in less visible ways; far more pessimistic and cynical than before, he also to an extent has lost his innocence and his idyll, to the point where the grounds and activities that once enthralled him now seem empty and hollow, and the prospect of spending the rest of his life in such a place seems a mockery. At the same time, he's also a lot more willing to question life around him (albeit to himself), doubting and rebelling against the institutions which ruined him and so many like him.


Gregor Marsters was born into a long line of gamekeepers to the McKinley family, and there was no indication from the moment of his birth that he'd become anything other than a link on that chain. His father, William, had been keeping the game on the estate for thirty years, and his son thus spent most of his childhood with a dog at his heels, and later a rifle over his arm.

Growing up on the estate, while not an easy life, wasn't exactly unpleasant. Uninterested in what limited schooling was available, he relished the outdoors and the life that came with it, and as he reached manhood, it was clear to those around him that he had no great desire in his life than to stay and watch over the estate as his ancestors had done before him.

Unfortunately for Gregor, events on the other side of the continent began to gather pace, and the outbreak of war brought an end to his innocent idyll. Brought up on values of duty and honour, as well as possibly less abstract concepts such as the potential attractiveness of a returning hero, Gregor decided to join up with the brigade at Inverness, to see the world and fight for King and Country. Bidding a tearful mother and a sullen father goodbye, he marched to glory with hundreds of others just like him.

Unfortunately for Gregor, as with so many of his generation, the war was not what they had thought it, and like so many others, he was consigned to the hell of the trenches. On 2nd January 1915, Gregor's company became the first to encounter one facet of industrialised war, when the Germans deployed chlorine gas onto the Western Front. While not among the hundreds who died in the attack, Gregor ingested enough of the toxin to wreck his lungs, and was invalided back from the front to receive medical treatment.

Gregor's condition was such that the army sent him home to England, consigning him to hospital for a month before discharging him in March of that year, realising that a semi-literate Scot with lungs that barely worked was little use on the Front. Returning home to a community already scarred by the loss of Lord Richard and many of his fellows from the village, without visible injury and banned from talking about his experiences by the War Office, Gregor's return was greeted with little joy from any quarter. In the months since, little has improved, and while he's recovered enough to resume light gamekeeping duties, there's few enough willing to work. Isolated, wounded and disenchanted, he continues his duties silently, walking the now almost abandoned estate and inwardly despairing for his future.