GreyReport
English：Grey · Characters
The Anti-Slavers' second in command, responsible for vetting every new initiate. An aged Hive Prince, and the only NPC in the game who can wipe a player's escaped-slave status clean.
WANTED: Old Grey Race: Hive Gender: N/A High standing amongst the anti-workforce cultists. Wanted for acts of terrorism, multiple murder, kidnap and industry interference. A very skilled combatant and deceiver — do not be fooled by the age. Bounty 30,000 Cats
Grey is one of the Anti-Slavers' core figures, permanently stationed in their headquarters town of Spring and sharing a room with Tinfist. Tinfist is the organisation's public face and its symbol of force; Grey handles the more tedious but more decisive part: deciding who gets in. CivilizationEX's overview places the two of them side by side as the Anti-Slavers' leadership.
He is a Hive Prince — the most intelligent and most independently willed caste in the Hive hierarchy, usually a loser in a power struggle or an exile. That background makes his presence unremarkable in an organisation led by a Skeleton whose members span Greenlanders, Scorchlanders, Shek and Hivers of every rank: the Anti-Slavers are the most racially even faction in the game.
Three ways through the door
Joining the Anti-Slavers means, in practice, passing Grey's vetting, and there are three routes:
- Prove you are the enemy of their enemy. This route requires the player to defeat a set of powerful foes — trading a combat record for trust.
- Hold the "Ex-slave / Escaped slave" status. Come to Grey with that tag and he treats the player as a refugee and lets them straight in.
- Kill the Bugmaster. That feat alone is enough to earn entry.
Passing grants +75 with the Anti-Slavers, along with −30 United Cities, −30 Slave Traders and −30 Traders Guild.
Grey's response varies with the player's record: if the conditions are not met he says plainly which one is missing; if the player has only barely qualified he asks, with visible reservation, why they want to join; and if the record is strong enough he says outright that the player is "more than just a useful asset".
Wiping the slave status
Grey's most useful function has nothing to do with combat: he is the only NPC in the game who can completely clear a player's "escaped slave" status.
- Talk to him before joining the Anti-Slavers, while still carrying the runaway tag, and he shows pity and clears it outright, with no interface popping up.
- Talk to him after joining and he opens the character edit screen each time; pressing "OK" removes the status immediately.
The cost of this shortcut is geographic: Spring sits on a mountaintop in the southwest corner of Stobe's Gamble, and a character freshly escaped from a slave camp is often not fit enough to make the whole trip.
Combat profile
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Strength | 13.6 – 18.4 |
| Toughness | 44.4 – 51.6 |
| Dexterity | 68.4 – 75.6 |
| Katana | 67 – 73 |
| Heavy Weapons | -2 – 4 |
| Melee Attack / Defence | 57 – 63 / 17 – 23 |
| Martial Arts | 57 – 63 |
| Stealth / Thievery / Athletics | 92.4 – 99.6 |
His distribution is fairly extreme: Stealth, Thievery and Athletics are all near 100, and Katana and Martial Arts are above the passing line, but his melee defence is only around 20 and his Dodge and Perception approach zero.
His armour is fixed at Specialist grade (5% chance of Masterwork), and his weapons are manufactured by the Skeleton Smiths.
Consequences of touching him
Killing or imprisoning Grey turns the entire Anti-Slaver faction against the player and feeds into the Jonin Assault event chain:
- The first variant requires the player to have killed or captured Bo, Jaegar and Grey, with Tinfist still at large. The assault comes in 3–5 squads.
- The second variant triggers after Tinfist has been captured; by design it can be led by Grey or Bo, but a bug means that in vanilla it is always Jaegar who leads.
- The third variant requires Grey to be alive and free, but its prerequisite is having beaten off the first variant — which requires Grey to have been captured. The two are mutually exclusive, so in normal play it never occurs, unless the player captures him and then releases him.
Name disambiguation
The leader of the swamp gang known as the Grayflayers is called Big Gray, a human Greenlander with no connection to Grey whatsoever. The two merely have similar spellings and are both classed as unique boss characters.