Edwin Blackthorne

Edwin circa 580AE

The Heirless Griffin

Henry Blackthorne (brother)

Edgar Blackthorne (brother)

Jayne Blackthorne (daughter)

Jasper Blackthorne (supposed son)

Bellerophon Knox (grandson)

Lord **Edwin Blackthorne** was the Patriarch of House Blackthorne from 569AE until his death in 620AE. He is one of the most infamous leaders of the family throughout its long history, due to his multiple marriages. It is not common in Aradian nobility to be married more than once, yet Edwin had no less than ten brides over the course of his life. His long reign over the Thunderlands was characterized as a time of slow decay; his father Edward had provoked war with Brecilidia, and both of Edwin's brothers had been dealing with its fallout as the Lords before him. Edwin's slow, stochastic war with the High Elves left the whole realm unstable. He was a fickle ruler, ruled by extremes of emotions and temperament, with his pride being badly wounded by the fact he had no male heir--he desperately wanted to cement himself in the Blackthorne legacy when it looked likely that it would be his uncle Balin, with his seven sons, wuld overtake him. This prompted a panicked rush to acquire a son, growing increasingly frantic towards the end of his life.

Edwin was succeeded by his only living progeny, his daughter by his fourth wife. He had named her Jayne Blackthorne. Jayne herself was eventually succeeded by another heir that Edwin had supposedly kept in secret, Jasper Blackthorne, although the circumstances of the latter's existence are treated as extremely suspicious by all but the most credulous historians.

## Appearance and Character

At the time of his ascension to Lordship at age 18 in 569AE, Edwin was considered a handsome and strong man, a direct contrast with his twin who'd proceded him. He had close-cropped red hair and a neatly trimmed beard, . However as he grew older he began to become mordibly corpulent and developed a variety of increasingly disfiguring diseases to his skin, including a flesh-eating pox and a rash of leperous boils that scarred his face severely. He balded rapidly, left with only a fringe about his temples, and was forced to shave his beard off for ease of treatment with his skin lesions.

## Skills and Abilities

Edwin was considered a modestly talented with sword, lance and bow as a young man. He owned a suit of slightly tarnished golden armor, made for his grandfather Allister. However he was eventually outdone in these pursuits by Balin's children, and by the late 590s he had stopped engaging in martial pursuits at all, preferring to drink and feast, which led to his eventual corpulence.

## History

Edwin Blackthorne was born on the 22nd Night of Obscura's Moon, in the year of 551AE, minutes after his elder identical twin brother Edgar. His father Sir Edward "Blackshanks" was away from the Eyrie Peak at the time and only met his younger sons a handful of times. He died in a futile attack on Brecilidia when Edwin was just a few years old; raising of his two youngest progeny was left in the hands of their increasingly unstable mother, the Lady Astoria.

#### Wife the Tenth; Faye Corbyjn

By the end of 619AE, Edwin's appearance had become frightening to many courtiers, so great was his grotesqueness. He required specially-built machinery in order to stand up and walk. Most of his skin was actively rotting and gave off an unbearable stench. His binging had left him so fat that he weighed over four hundred pounds, and his ceaseless abuse of drugs and alcohol in order to numb his constant physical & mental agony made him glazed and insensate so he was only conscious for three hours every day. Despite this his appetites had not abated in the slightest. One preserved missive from Deirdach's office to the Peak's kitchens at this time describes the Lord's morning meal; "two flank-steaks well done, a full roasted pheasant, a whole loaf of fresh bread, ten pounds of goose-fat-roasted carrots & parsnips, and an entire blackcurrant tart; all washed down a bottle of Crystantheum Red, two drafts of wyvern-mead and a full keg of fine gold ale, finished with a heavy dose of horse-transquiziling opiate."

His other appetites were not slowed either. The Office of the hand also frequently sent dispatches to the Everglow House of Blossoms and the Blushing Maiden brothel in Darkharbour; Lord Edwin claimed that if he did not copulate at least ten times a day, he'd experience severe migraines. An increasing amount of the treasury went to spending on sex workers as they began to demand increasingly high payouts to go anywhere near the grotesque Lord.

## Legacy

Edwin was survived by his tenth and final wife, Faye Corbyjn. She was, supposedly, the mother of his "trueborn" son Jasper.

Edwin's bloodline would live on, though not through House Blackthorne, but rather through House Knox thanks to his daughter's marriage. The Knox line would eventually rejoin to the Blackthornes, with the marriage of King Gordon I to Victoria Knox; their children, Ethan and Gwen, and the subsequent generation thereafter are direct descendants of Edwin.