Griswold

Griswold is the blacksmith of Tristram, the town in the first Diablo. He's a friendly fellow, but will still charge you for any equipment repairs you need him to do. He also sells a wide variety of randomly generated normal and magic items (based on your character level), and is involved in various quests.

Griswold was one of the few survivors of the the ill-faited raid on the Labrynth. This raid was led by Lazarus, who, though once a holy power of Zakarum, was by that time corrupted and enslaved by Diablo. Supposedly, the raid happened just a few weeks/months before you arrived; now Griswold is a broken man and no longer has the will to venture into the depths (similar to Farnham).

Spoiler Alert (read at your own risk):
In Diablo II, when you revisit Tristram to rescue Cain, Griswold makes a surprise appearance. This time, however, he is a zombie; fully under the power of Diablo/Andariel. He's the hardest monster in the area, and is surrounded by other boss-monsters and their minions. When you slay him, he'll drop a nice prize.

Griswold is the resident village blacksmith in the computer game Diablo, and acts as a source of some (albeit slightly dark) comic relief in an otherwise sombre and serious story.

The comedic value has nothing to do with the subject matter of his brief speeches. It's the voice. Gris has a quite thick scottish accent, and has a tendency to get a bit ... wound up on certain topics.

If you walk up to any of the NPCs in Tristram and use the Gossip command on them, you will be treated to a spiel by the NPC on a topic randomly chosen from that character's predefined set. For Gris, most of the topics deal with weaponry types. Axes, swords, etc. My personal favourite is his sword speech:

"Look at that edge, that balance! In the right hands, and against the right foe, the sword is the master of all weapons. Its keen edge finds little to hack or pierce on the undead. But against a livin', breathin' enemy, a sword will better slice their flesh!!"

One can't help but picture a hapless hero trying to dodge flying spittle from the agitated blacksmith.

And if you should happen to find yourself engaged in the Black Mushroom quest, try asking Griswold about it for a real treat.

"If Adria doesn't have one of these, you can bet that's a rare thing indeed. I can offer you no more help than that, but it ... well, it sounds like a, a huge, gargantuan, swollen, bloated mushroom! Well, good hunting, I suppose."

Just when you thought Blizzard were having too much fun with this character, there's an interesting little easter egg in StarCraft. It's common enough knowledge among gamers that if you click repeatedly on a {Star|War}Craft unit, it will make irritated comments. Well, if you trigger the "angry speech" of the Protoss Observer unit, it will begin to pick up rogue radio transmissions, and one of them is Griswold's huge, gargantuan, swollen, bloated mushroom.