Gruel

Non-Canon Content

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This page contains content that may or may not be canon to Databrawl.

Gruel
An email worm that disguises itself as an important update. The error message it creates has a strange fury towards a popular operating system.
General Info
Creator(s)	fireblazeice124 (Designer) Danieloftheday (Modeler)
Character Pack	#1 (former) Default (current)
Token Earnable?	Yes
Software Info
Software Type	Computer worm
Alignment	Corruption

Gruels are a species of Corruption. They have bodies which normally contain melted Program Heart liquid, though their bodies can also be filled with other kinds of liquid. Although Gruels can be filled with other kinds of liquid, they must specifically be filled with melted Program Hearts in order to function properly. Without the melted Program Heart liquid, Gruels become mindless husks.

Gruels are usually very timid and easily intimidated, giving them a tenacity to lurk and stay on the sidelines when in battle.

Databrawl Battle Zone

In the Battle Zone, Gruel is a Token-earnable character that players on the Corruption teams can get when a Special Token is acquired.

Stats

125HP, 25 WALKSPEED

Weapons/Abilities

Soup Ladle - Gruel can use its ladle (categorized as a "Melee & Ranged" weapon) as a melee weapon while also throwing soup at enemies and allies. It can also be used to do a special Soup Jump that deals 18-20 damage to nearby enemies when Q is pressed. This jump has a cooldown of 15 seconds. After perfoming the jump, Gruel gets a short x0.8 speed reduction, causing Gruel's speed to decrease to 20 studs per second. A regular soup ladle attack has a cooldown of 1.8 seconds and a 0.25 second windup. When used as a melee weapon, the ladle deals 28-30 damage. When used as a ranged weapon, each of the 4 soup projectiles deal 12-14 damage (6-8 if they’ve been airborne for longer than two second), heal 12-18 HP, have a splash radius of 10 studs, have a fly time of six seconds, a floatiness of 0.3, and a velocity of 100. The further the 3 projectiles fly, the more they will spread (one projectile will always have no spread). In particular, soup projectiles only deal 40% damage to windows.

Soup Pulse - Gruel has the ability to release a big aura of evaporated soup. As soon as an ally enters it's 48 studs radius, they restore their health by 5HP every 0.5 seconds for 10 seconds (100HP in total). Soup Pulse recharges in 50 seconds.

• Soup Pulse draws from a resource called a "soup meter." The meter indicates how much soup Gruel is currently holding at the moment. Once Soup Pulse is used, it slowly uses up the meter until it's dry.
• The meter can be lowered by taking damage, but can be refilled overtime or by 1/4 via using a Program Heart.
• Once the meter is full, the soup in Gruel's head starts to bubble as an indicator.

Real World Counterpart

Gruel, also known as Fakerr by F-Secure, is a computer worm that first surfaced in 2003 and specifically targeted Windows platforms. The worm spread through email and other file-sharing networks, disguising as a security update. Once the malicious program is run, the worm displays a fake error message containing two buttons: "Send Error" and "Send and Close". Pressing the "Send Error" button will cause the worm to mail itself to all the user's contacts. Pressing "Send and Close" will terminate Windows Explorer, eject the CD/DVD drive, open various control panel options, and display another fake error message that is unable to be closed. This particular error message is the least convincing of them all, containing a long rant against Windows.

After displaying said error message, the worm will freeze the computer, requiring the user to reboot in order to unfreeze it. However, once the computer is done rebooting, it is rendered completely unusable due to Gruel hooking every file on the computer to itself, making it so that trying to open a program will simply result in Gruel activating its payload again. To see Gruel in action, click here.

A dialogue box displayed by the real world Gruel worm.

Alternate Types

There are alternate types of Gruels other than the default type.

• Utopia (Hummingbird)
• Holly

More Facts

• The Gruel character is based off of the real-life computer virus with the same name.
• Gruel used to use "Big Fists" as a melee tool in Databrawl. This weapon was replaced with the Soup Ladle on June 19, 2021.
• The tool for Gruel's "Big Fists" were originally called "Fists" after being added into Battle Zone for its 3rd anniversary, then renamed to its current name after added into Roleplay.
• Gruel originally was in Pack #1, until moved into Default.
• During the 2022 Halloween Event, Brainstormers took the place of Gruels. However, this doesn’t mean that Gruels and Brainstormers are directly related.
• When equipped with the Grandmaster Crown, the crown will be placed slightly tilted inside of Gruel's soup.

More Images

A Gruel reference sheet drawn by fireblazeice124 that was posted on November 2, 2019.

A Picture of an older model of Gruel which was still modeled by Danieloftheday. This model remained ingame until November 8, 2020.

Concept art drawn by fireblazeice124 which depicts alternate types of Gruels, such as Pretty, Shy, Love, and Muscle Gruels. These variants are not considered canon to Gruel's lore due to Gruel being a highly specific computer virus. back to July 19, 2020.