Hawley Griffin — The Invisible Alchemist

Hawley Griffin is a brilliant alchemist who discovered how to make living flesh pass light instead of reflecting it. The discovery worked. The reversal did not.

Invisible beneath his wrappings, cloak and gloves, Griffin moves through England as a fugitive whose greatest advantage is also destroying his ability to live among other people. Theft becomes easy. Trust becomes nearly impossible. His growing conviction that ordinary laws no longer apply to an unseen man is more dangerous than the formula itself.

At a Glance

• Name: Hawley Griffin
• Species: Human, permanently invisible through alchemy
• Base: Mobile; currently moving between London and southern England
• Role: Alchemist, fugitive and invisible criminal
• Alignment: Chaotic Neutral, sliding toward Chaotic Evil
• Campaign status: Alive and active
• Campaign use: Fugitive scientist, invisible antagonist, reluctant patron or alchemical mystery

What Is Griffin Doing Right Now?

Griffin has learned that someone in London is buying rare glass, white mineral salts and alchemical silver in exactly the proportions required for his invisibility work. He did not sell the formula.

He is therefore stalking the buyer while also trying to steal back a notebook that could reveal how his body was changed. The result is a three-way pursuit involving Griffin, the unknown imitator and investigators who cannot see either problem clearly yet.

Encounters

Most people meet the clothes first: gloves, wrappings, hood and dark lenses arranged around an invisible body. When threatened, Griffin removes enough clothing to vanish into the room rather than fight openly.

He speaks rapidly, hates being stared at and becomes furious when treated as a curiosity rather than a scholar.

Appearance and Manner

Wrapped, Griffin resembles a heavily bandaged traveller in layered clothing. Uncovered, he is visible only through what touches him: rain across shoulders, dust on footprints, steam around breath, or the hollow depression his weight makes in bedding.

Personality

Brilliant, proud and increasingly paranoid, Griffin believes his achievement proves his superiority even while dependence on concealment has made his life smaller. He can be cooperative when another person takes the science seriously, but humiliation turns quickly into revenge.

Relationships

Alchemists and glassworkers: Griffin needs them and resents needing them.

Sherlock Holmes: Holmes treats invisibility as a physical condition that still leaves evidence.

Henry Jekyll: Griffin wants access to Jekyll’s transformation research; Jekyll considers Griffin a warning about irreversible experiments.

Equipment and Resources

• Bandages, gloves, hood and dark lenses
• Alchemical notebooks written in cipher
• Portable flasks, acids and smoke compounds
• Dagger and small purse of stolen coin
• Special powder used to reveal invisible surfaces during experiments

Running Griffin at the Table

Invisibility should create clues rather than remove play. Footprints, displaced curtains, visible carried objects, breath in cold air and animals reacting to him all give players ways to reason about his position. Griffin is frightening because he thinks invisibility makes him untouchable, not because the GM refuses to provide evidence.

Adventure Hooks

• The Empty Robe: city officers capture Griffin’s clothes but not the man inside them.
• The Second Formula: an alchemist begins selling short-lived invisibility to thieves using notes stolen from Griffin.
• Rain Reveals All: Griffin attempts a theft during a storm and discovers the weather makes hiding far harder.
• Jekyll’s Reversal: Griffin demands that Jekyll devise a cure; Hyde has other ideas about the experiment.
• The Invisible Witness: Griffin saw a murder while unseen and wants payment before revealing what happened.

Connected Places and People

• London
• Sherlock Holmes
• Henry Jekyll and Edward Hyde
• British Isles NPCs

Mythical and Historical Context

Griffin, the Invisible Man, is a fictional scientist from H. G. Wells’s The Invisible Man (1897). His original work belongs to a later scientific era; this campaign explicitly recasts him as a 1454 alchemist whose permanent invisibility formula has dangerous side effects. Invisible skin does not hide clothes, tools, blood, muddy footprints or sounds, allowing investigation and pursuit without arbitrary certainty. Read Wells’s The Invisible Man for the literary origin. The formula, encounter structure and rules on this page are original fantasy adaptations.

Literary Inspiration

Griffin originates in H. G. Wells’s The Invisible Man. This version replaces later laboratory science with late-medieval alchemy while retaining invisibility, isolation and escalating paranoia.

Rules Notes

The invisibility mechanics and campaign relationships are original adaptations for the stated rules editions.