John Grome

John, like Steve, is descended from noble blood - or more exactly, royal blood. The connection is much more ancient, though. The name Grome is a variant of Glome, a kingdom shrouded in the mists of antiquity. The name has mythic connotations as the legendary birthplace of the consort of Adonis. This consort was daughter to King Trom of Glome, and while legend has it that she fell in love with a God, history records that her sister Orual married a prince from a neighboring province in Asia Minor, and bore him three sons who each took the throne in turn. The kingdom was absorbed into the Alexandrian Empire after the last of these sons died, and the royal family fled for their lives before Alexander's conquering armies.

They had the misfortune, however, to flee in exactly the same direction as Alexander's armies advanced, and kept fleeing all the way to the Indus river, where they finally tired of the chase and surrendered to the great Macedonian, who was quite surprised to find out that he had been giving chase to this band of royalty. The Glomian princes and princesses were taken into Alexander's personal caravan and treated well, and thus passed back to Greece with him.

Subsequent generations of the royal family of Glome were treated with respect more for their connection with the mythical union of their great-aunt with a God than for their royal heritage, and the family fortunes were borne along on this tide until one Janus Grotus Glome was sent by the Roman Emporer Nerva to assist in the consolidation of Britain. The family of Janus served Rome throughout the final days of Roman glory in its most northern province, serving finally under Marcus Aurelius with pride and distinction, and then siding with the insurrectionists when Marcus' son Commodus dropped the ball, and the Roman Empire began its centuries-long slide into the abyss.

John's great-great-great-grandfather found the detailed history of the family (merely sketched here) in a small bronze casket in the cellar of the family estate in Sussex, England, and the discovery of the family's adventurous roots encouraged him in his dream to emigrate to the new world.