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Slate Grey

Slate Grey is an Elephantine humanoid who is the only surviving member of his species, the rest having been killed during the dawn of time, while the were being created, by a terrible series of mistakes made by multiple deities. He was frozen in an icejail because another god, seeing no other Elephantids, thought he was a failed experiment. The exact deities involved do not admit to existing, and Slate doesn't remember, as of his last appearance.

In his state of confusion after being freed from icy confines, centuries later, Slate asked a man "What am I?". The Kindly Elementsor told him he was "Slate Grey, ta--" and never got to finish his description because the melting of the icejail caused an avalanche to fall upon him, but miraculously missed Slate himself, who believed his name to be Slate Grey, and for a long time thought "ta--" meant "of course". By the time somebody had the decency to tell him otherwise, the name had already stuck.

There are conflicting opinions of him, as a character. Some view his enigmatic past as a cheap excuse to not flesh out a past or take the time to fit him heavily in the continuity. Others view it as a symbol of how someone starting from scratch in a cruel world can be a hero, a statement of predestination and support of the idea that people are inherently good.

Whatever the reason for him, Slate made his first appearance in Book 3, co-created by Tycho Brahe and The Unnamed Mystery Character Designer Who Wishes to Remain Anonymous*. It is one of the few instances where Tycho asked for help on a character, and the Dark Fourteen state it as a sign of his weakness, although Tycho was heard to state that he "simply did not wish his bias as a Mesopotamian ruler to bias his opinion on whether Slate should have a literal or metaphorical trunk". The choice made, thankfully, was for literal, although, it has been argued that it was taken a bit too far when when Slate teamed up with a furniliar who could have been argued to be a clear representation of a steamer trunk.

Slate's character has long been plagued by circumstance, but seems thoroughly immortal, though perhaps no writer had the heart to kill such a creature, due to the unnatural, near-immoral love of elephants possessed by all those who write within the ELotH:TES canon. He made his first appearance battling against evil for the side of good, "battling nineteen Boar Men to death" with his bare hands, a skill he learned when he was captured after his revival and forced to fight in an arena in thousands upon thousands of bloody deathmatches before he broke free in a scene eerily reminiscent of the film Gladiator. . . years before Gladiator existed! The elephant has never been a central character, but has always been present and fighting for the side of good in nearly every major event in the canon, something few or no other characters can claim.