A year ago, Steve Donahue was walking through a potato field on his way home from the pub when an alien ship crashed not ten yards away from him.  The pilot, Granth MkDoil, an alien like a giant praying mantis, welcomed him in and showed him around his ship.  But the crash damaged the onboard Changeling Brain-Swapper 3000, and the resulting misfire swapped their brains permanently.  And so Steve Donahue took the ship and went soaring off into the universe, leaving Granth to take his place on Earth with only a few possessions from his extraterrestrial life.

From his homeworld of Zyrk, Granth has a small holographic landscape showing the bare mountains and conglomerated colonies of his planetary home.  He also has the left mandible of his favorite sister out of 1,428.  She was the nurturer of the nest, always making Granth feel needed.  Then she was beheaded in the Battle of Tuesday (Zyrk had a battle for every day of the week).  Her mandible is Granth’s most prized possession; he keeps it by his nest-side to preserve her memory.

After he ran away from homeworld, Granth went on to explore the universe, looking for a true home and picking up souvenirs along the way.  From Jestrey’s Casino, a satellite the size of a planet, he has one chip from the game of anti-grav roulette in which he lost 5,000 Triangulum credits.  He has photo booth pictures from the brief period in which he dated a sentient meatloaf, as well as the hilt of an Archelite sword from the final days of the apocalyptic Grellican Wars.  He has pressed red orchids from Marona, planet of the mermaids, and a half-eaten jar of Slurggian slime jelly.  But for all the wondrous artifacts of the universe he has collected in his travels, next to his sister’s mandible, he is most attached to a single strand of Nessa’s hair plucked off the barstool after their first meeting.