Jian

Overview

Gian (also romanized as "Jian" in some English-language sources) was the leader of the Greymanes and the person who unified the region of Pailune. Under his leadershipthe Greymanes were known for their focus on peace, protecting the innocent and maintaining stability across a war-torn continent. He is dead before the events of Crimson Desert begin, and his death is the central catalyst for the entire story.

Character Profile

Leadership of the Greymanes

Gian led the Greymanes as a mercenary faction dedicated to peace rather than profit. his Greymanes as "known for their focus on peace," distinguishing them from the typical mercenary bands that populate Pywel. Under Gian, the faction unified Pailune and maintained order across the region, earning both loyalty and enemies.

To Kliff and his companionsfighting to uphold Gian's will means preserving everything they believed in: unity, protection, and resistance against the forces of destruction. The Greymanes under Gian were more than soldiers; they were a stabilizing force in a continent prone to factional conflict.

Death in the Black Bears' Ambush

Gian was killed during a period of conflict with the Black Bearswith his death throwing Pailune into chaos. The Greymanes were subsequently ambushed while mourning their fallen companion Gilesduring which news of Gian's death arrived.: "Following a devastating ambush by the Black Bearsthe leader of the Greymanes, Jian, has been killed, scattering the ragtag group to the wind."

The ambush killed many Greymanes outright and scattered the survivors across all five regions of Pywel. This is the starting point of the game. Kliffwho barely survived the attack, vows to reunite his companions and rebuild the faction. The loss of their leader threw Pailune into chaos and destroyed the peace Gian had worked to build.

Whether the ambush was purely a power play by the Black Bears or was motivated by something connected to Gian's deeper mission regarding the Abyss has not been confirmed. The timing raises questions, but the game's pre-release materials leave this ambiguous.

Connection to the Abyss

Gian was more than a regional leader. At the Library of Providencethe keeper Alustin reveals that stopping the chaos threatening the Abyss was once Gian's mission. Beings within the Abyss plan to bring "everything to nothingness." If they succeed, "all of the worlds will face annihilation." This cosmic responsibility has now been passed to Kliff.

This revelation reframes the entire story. What begins as a tale of a scattered mercenary band seeking revenge and reunion gradually expands into a cosmic struggle. Gian, it seems, was fighting on two fronts: maintaining peace in Pailune while quietly working against an existential threat that most people in Pywel were unaware of.

Key Relationships

Relationship with Alustin

Alustin is an alchemist and the keeper of the Library of Providence, a place described as being "at the centre of all worlds" where "every book is a world." He is aware that the Abyss mission was previously Gian's, and he passes it to Kliff when Kliff visits the Library. The 50-minute early gameplay video from September 2024 shows this encounter directly.

Legacy

Gian's death is the catalyst for everything in Crimson Desert. The peace he maintained died with him. The resulting chaos scattered the Greymanes, emboldened the Black Bears, and destabilized Pywel's factional balance. Kliff's journey to reunite his companions and rebuild the faction is, an attempt to preserve what Gian built.

Gian may have known about this larger threat. Restoring his legacy means confronting the same cosmic danger he was fighting before he died. The wiki summarizes the opening premise with Gian's own name in the quote that opens the game's narrative: "Jian has fallen, and with the great leader's death, our land, Pailune, once unified, has been plunged into chaos." This framing places Gian not just as a backstory element but as the emotional and thematic anchor for the entire Crimson Desert experience.

In Trailers and Footage

The January 2026 "Features Overview #1: Kliff and the Open World of Pywel" trailer addresses Kliff's fractured bond with the Greymanes, which stems directly from Gian's death. The trailer establishes the emotional weight of the loss and how it shapes Kliff's motivation throughout the game.

The 50-minute early gameplay video released in September 2024 shows the encounter with Alustin at the Library of Providence, where Gian's Abyss mission is passed to Kliff. This is the key scene that elevates Gian from a fallen faction leader to a figure connected to the game's cosmic stakes.

The Greymanes' Mission Under Gian

The Greymanes under Gian were not ordinary mercenaries motivated by profit. They were a group of warriors "who oppose those who would abuse their power to subjugate and exploit the weak, determined to preserve peace and unity in the land." This idealism set them apart from other factions on Pywel and made them both respected and resented. Their focus on protecting the vulnerable explains why the Black Bears under Myurdin viewed them as a threat worth eliminating through ambush rather than challenging in open conflict.

For Kliff and the surviving companions, fighting to uphold Gian's will means more than faction loyalty. It means preserving a set of principles: unity, protection, and resistance against exploitation. The emotional weight of the story comes from the gap between those principles and the harsh reality of a scattered, weakened band trying to survive in a hostile world.

The Deeper Threat

Will Powers, Director of Marketing and PR at Pearl Abysshinted at the stakes beyond the faction conflict: "Getting thwarted by this other faction, the Black Bears, is the least of your problems. There's something much more insidious that's happening here that's risking the entire fabric of the entire continent itself." This quote confirms that Gian's secret Abyss mission was not a minor subplot but the game's central dramatic escalation. The Black Bears ambush, devastating as it was, is the beginning of the story, not its climax.

At the Library of Providencedescribed as a place "at the centre of all worlds" where "every book is a world," Alustin reveals that beings plan to bring "everything to nothingness." Gian was fighting this threat before the Black Bears ended his life. Whether the ambush was connected to Gian's Abyss mission, perhaps an attempt to remove a guardian of the cosmic balance, or simply a power play unrelated to the supernatural stakes, remains one of the narrative questions the game is built around.

Why the Black Bears Raid Happened

The Axiom Archive's cycle log records that the raid on Pailune that ended Gian's life was not the natural outcome of a rivalry but the chosen lever the guardians of the abyss kept arriving at across many cycles. By cycle 26 of the world's recorded history, life with Gian in Pailune had grown comfortable enough that Kliff had settled into a quiet daily routine and was indifferent to the larger crisis brewing in demeniss. He needed a push to act. The guardians repeatedly found that the only event severe enough to break that comfort and put Kliff on the road was Gian's death and the destruction of Pailune. From cycle 26 onward, that raid is locked in as the prologue of every later cycle, including the present one.

Gian's death is therefore the price the guardians decided they had to pay to keep Kliff moving toward the abyss. It does not soften the loss in any of the cycles, but it does explain the design of the prologue: the warlord Myurdin was hired through the broader Bastier conspiracy and given the false promise of Pailune as his prize, the Jackals under Ludwig were paid in the same coin, and the raid was scripted to leave Kliff barely alive in the river so that sebastian (steered to the spot by white crow) could pull him out and begin the chain of small events that follow.

Position in the Conspiracy

Gian was not simply unlucky. The political conspiracy designed in Demeniss by Grand General Bastier, House Byron, and Marcel under Duke Caliburn's authority listed Pailune as step one and Gian's removal as its first task. The conspiracy's notes (recoverable inside Windmere Manor) lay it out as: use the Jackals to kill Gian, let the Black Bears traffic Pailune slaves, then use chaos in Hernand to weaken the duchy. Gian's death was therefore the keystone of the entire opening move on the continent.

Ludwig of the Jackals confirms his own role in Gian's death in his dying confession during the Pailune reclamation, telling Unkar that Myurdin had promised him all of Pailune in exchange for removing the obstacle. The conspirators expected the Black Bears and the Jackals to tear each other apart afterward, which would let Demeniss claim the region cleanly. That part of the plan was disrupted by Kliff's return and the eventual reunion of the surviving Greymanes.

Why Gian Was Chosen as the Target

From the guardians' side, Gian's removal worked because of what Gian had built. The Greymanes under his leadership were the only force in Pailune capable of holding the region together against an outside attack, and Pailune itself was the part of Pywel where nature remained strongest. The third cycle's archive entry identifies Pailune as the only place the guardians could expect to find their champion, which meant the same region that needed to produce Kliff also had to be the region the conspiracy struck first. Gian's mercenary band, focused on protecting the innocent rather than fighting for profit, was the part of that picture the conspirators could not afford to leave standing.

The cycle log does record one alternative tried earlier. In cycle 39 the guardians attempted to leave Pailune out of the conflict entirely and let Demeniss invade Hernand first instead. The reinforcements Gian was able to send proved too little, too late, and Pywel ended that cycle faster than expected. Subsequent cycles returned to using Pailune as the initial strike, accepting Gian's death as a necessary cost of getting a faster start.

Posthumous Influence

Gian's funeral is finally held at the end of chapter seven, after Pailune is reclaimed from the Black Bears and the Jackals. Until that point the Greymanes had been carrying his memory but not their own grief, because they were scattered across all five regions of Pywel. Once the homeland is back in their hands the long-deferred farewell can take place, and the next chapter shifts from rebuilding the Greymanes to confronting the Demenissian conspiracy that engineered the loss in the first place.