Balthazar of the Black Thorne

Armored Balthazar in his throne room at the Eyrie Peak

King **Balthazar**, First of His Name, Lord of the House of the Black Thorn, Lord-Paramount of the Thunderlands, Sovereign o'er the West and Harbinger of the Storm was the penultimate monarch of the ancient Storm Kings. Much of the information about him has been erased thanks to his grandson Jarvis Blackthorne, but legends say he was a powerful sorceror but a cruel, cold and distant ruler. He refused to give aid to his own people or to the peoples of the mainlands during the demon wars, and when he died it came to his only issue Jason to end the demon incursion for good.

Balthazar was the bastard child of the colonist  known as Arthur the Grey, who led a tribe of magically-talented early Humans called the Grey Folk from the mainland to occupy The Thunderlands ; his mother was a shaman of a native fishing village on Stormrise Isle, what would one day become Darkharbor. It is believed that Arthur abducted the young shaman during his people’s fight for control of the region, keeping her as spoils of war, but turned her away after she birthed a deformed and hideous child. Though physically inferior, Balthazar grew to be a powerful mage, but was shunned by both the occupying Grey Folk and the native Thunderlanders for being a half-breed that truly fit neither culture. This made him bitter, misanthropic, twisted on the inside as well as out. He turned to communing with dark spirits as a boy, and eventually reached into the Void to be contacted by the demon king Vermithrax. Balthazar agreed to help to bring the demon army into the world, in exchange for power, and so was granted the gift of Terramancy–the ability to manipulate the natural world itself. He used this gift to grant himself long life and influence. He granted himself the noble title of Balthazar of the Black Thorn, and became a pivotal figure in ancient Storm King society--a Merlin like sorcerous accomplice to many great warriors and kings such as Thormund the Bold and King Fenris of the Shadowwood, as well as the trueborn heirs of his father in the Houses of the White Oak and Red Wing. It is believed that Balthazar invented Chimaeras, including the Storm Kings' greatest weapon, the Griffin. The doctrine of the Seven Suns refers to Balthazar as the Greedy Man, an evil hunchbacked warlock, grasping and ambitious and cruel.

After opening the Void to unleash the demons, Balthazar caused the start of the First Great Demon War, a cataclysmic apocalypse which savaged the terrestrial world for years. Balthazar eventually overthrew the other Storm King leaders, personally slaying Thormund the Bold in a duel that shook the heavens, and took the marble throne of High King for himself. His power only grew as he swilled the demon’s blood that Vermithrax gave to him, and he was able to make his deformed body beautiful and strong. In time he was even able to correct his own infertility–from his seventh wife, the 16-year-old Arielle of the Red Wing, he sired a son named Jason. With this power he also forged a weapon called Zerstodhia, and claims to have used it to help Vermithrax slay Aradia, throwing her corpse into the Storm’s Eye. It is also believed that Zerstodhia was insurance against Vermithrax, so that Balthazar could betray the demon king in time--truly the sorcerer's greed was boundless. Balthazar was happy to sit on the throne of his rotting kingdom and watch the world that had spurned him burn, but in 269AE during the Battle for the Deadlands, his allies turned against him and cut out his black heart, ending the Greedy Man's reign of terror for good. In succeeding him, his son Jason set about repairing his father's mistakes, and by 1014AE the name of Balthazar had been all but forgotten--though with the looming of the Second Great Demon War, he was to become of great importance once again.