Balthazar

1. Briefly?!? A young man who was kidnapped as a child and experimented on. The experimentation - which Balthazar remembers as a painful torture - left him with horns. From what he was able to gather, the experimentation was done on the orders of a mysterious entity known as the Sun King. Balthazar was given a mission, and released back onto the streets on a coastal city in the Old World; his mission was to investigate the source of a mysterious Black Water, far to the west.

At some point, in a fit of disgust and self-loathing, Balthazar broke on one of his horns, which he keeps as a memento - to what, he’s less sure.

Balthazar hired on as a deck hand on a trading vessel bent on braving the Straights of Grinding Ice. As they navigated the passage, they picked up an unlikely recruit: Storr Windriver. Balthazar and Storr became friends based on their shared other-ness.

As the ship neared the shore of Noorglas, it was attacked by pirates, and taken. Storr and Balthazar managed to escape in a small rowboat one night, and landed on an uninhabited island, before making their way slowly and cautiously toward Monsoth, where they met a party of strangers at the Twelve Spoked Wheel.

  1. Not So Briefly
  1. # Background

About me? Okay, uh, early thirties, six feet, covered in burns. No I don’t have six feet. I obviously meant height. You don’t think I’m six feet? Oh my god I don’t have to explain myself to you, just write it down please. Oh right the burns, yeah check it out. From chest to cheeks. Pectorals to necktorals. Nips to lips? I’m still workshopping that, I’ll get there, I’ll get there. Anyway, I don’t know why I singled out that one small area. I said I was covered in burns and I meant it, goddammit. I know, looks real bad, right? Or maybe it looks real bad… ASS! I don’t think you’re coming with me on that. Which is fair. But hey you should see the other guy. Nah, just kidding. I’ve never actually seen the other guy. But it’s weird, I feel like I know him you know? Like I feel like I know that he’s a giant fucking ass dick. I feel like I know that. Oh the horns? Sorry about that. Here, I’ll put my hood on. Like it? Really makes my JET BLACK EYES pop. No, not out of their sockets. Who would interpret it that way, it’s a common saying. What the hell is wrong with you?

• Personal item**

Look I know I look brave, and tall. Which, I am tall, I’m just not brave. At least, not where it counts: in my biceps. Because these horns are really, really hard to break. And this one night, I don’t know. I was in a bad place.

Things were bleak. You have to understand, at that time I had nobody. I mean, I’ve always had nobody, but that’s a sad story, and I’m not going to start telling stories inside of stories because that’s how you get infinite recursion, my friend. But, yeah it’s just… that night, somehow it felt like I had even less than nobody. And then it hit me that this feeling was never going to go away. Because now I was a monster. Because someone took me, and made me this way. Took me when I was only a child and spent years, so many years, just… torturing me. Pitilessly. And once, during an unnecessarily prolonged session in my opinion, something changed and I seemed to break from time, and I journeyed, still paralyzed, still enduring the devil’s scalpel, but conscious - so conscious! - journeyed through impossible realms, places haunted by the dreams of dead gods, echoing with answers I knew I needed in tongues I didn’t understand to questions I didn’t know I’d posed , and — sorry, what I was I saying? Oh right. The next day they set me off bread, cheese, and an edict to cross the sea, discover the source of The Black Water, and report back with my findings.

And so there I was, utterly alone, raging internally at my abusers, and in what must’ve been an instant of blind desperation, I fought back in the only way I could in that moment, and destroyed the work of my enemy, breaking one of my horns off at the base and leaving an uneven stump behind. I think after that I just wept for a few hours and then went to sleep.

All this to say, this unsavory looking horn worn around my neck? This is the item that defines me.

  1. # To Monsoth

@TODO

  1. # Info Dump

Foe:

I was thinking that there was an especially cruel handler that almost seemed to have a personal grudge against Balthazar, and delighted in the more sadistic applications of his “training”. I’ll leave those details to you, but let’s call her Mali.

Neutral or uncertain:

Someone, a young man called Enger, found Balthazar as he spent his post-training days on the streets, reeling and confused by his experience, and claimed to also be a former “trainee” who had escaped. He ultimately gave Balthazar the tip about the sailing vessel that was looking for deckhands and suggested Balthazar take that opportunity to get away. Balthazar was never sure he could trust Enger, but saw the logic in getting far away from his torturers and ultimately took his advice. Curious that Balthazar ended up exactly where his handlers intended, despite his best efforts…

  1. # Background From the DM

The things that you’ve seen in the town we’re currently in (Trenewydh) remind you of legend.  The Red Blade, as well as those guardsmen all look like something out of the stories.  You remember - from your torture - something about an old contest between a Black King and his queen, who was Mother Night.  You also recognize that tensions exist between, say, the women tending the garden around the temple where The Abbot’s body was laid, and the guardsmen’s orders.  They live in an uneasy truce.

You also know that there was some sort of prophecy that the Sun King was interested in, but you know nothing about its contents, or where/when/who it was made.

You would have heard stories about three siblings (you have this information: Torval - fire, Ceridwen - naming/song, and Mons - The Wheel).  As well as the names of Osgog and Bremphyr (who’s name means “One Eye”) - the twin sons of Mons and supposedly great artificers who made great weapons for their father and his siblings, and helped them to overthrow Darkness.

I think that’s what I’ve got for now.  It’s a little murky, but I want you to know that this whole time in this town (Trenewydh) would be making you very uncomfortable, like you’ve walked into legend.

  1. # Q&A

• Who was torturing Balthazar (the Sun King, right? anyone else of note? Mother Night?)
• Balthazar wasn’t being tortured per se, he was being “built”/“experimented on”.  He has vague memories of a time where he didn’t have horns.  He thinks the people who did that were related to the Sun King, but he’s never been told directly about the whole thing.
• Why were they torturing him specifically? (did they target him due to his deformity, which made him sort of a pariah that wouldn’t be missed?)
• Why he was picked is not clear, but the deformity seems to be a result of the “torture” rather than the “cause”.
• Apart from investigating the source and nature of the black stream, were there any other specifics related to his mission? Was there some implication that he would be contacted at some point to check in?
• There were not, though finding the source of the Black Water was important, whether that’s a source/spring or a source/how it manifests.  (I’m trying to say that the Black Water may not come from one source per se, and your “handlers” certainly wouldn’t know.  They’d want to know “where it comes from”.  Does it come from one place?  Does it come from all places and coalesce?  What is it, exactly?
• Did we decide that Balthazar broke off his own horn in a fit of self-loathing? Or was it damaged during his torture? I think this would affect the nature of the “magic” this talisman possesses.
• He broke it off in self-loathing.
• Have we decided yet what “magic” is? Or will that be revealed in time?
  • You may not have, but I have.  And you’ve begun getting hints about it.

Also note that he:

1. Wouldn’t have heard of the Sun King in the Old World outside of his “torture site”.  And he wouldn’t have brought him up elsewhere, either.  The Red Blade and the Guards are famous stories, the Sun King is not.

2. Mother Night would sound like elements of folklore - think the Morrigan, Baba Yaga, Morgan le Fay, or even the Raven King from JS&Mr.N.  You’d not have heard of her specifically (though “Mother Night” is fairly generic).

3. Some time would have passed between the time he was “released”, and when he was again contacted by the handlers who sent him to investigate the Black Water.  Presumably that’s when he got some experience as a rogue and ranger.

Now I’m reading back and I’ve told you that you have heard of Mother Night - but only in the context of what I said up there, and the generic nature of the name means that you shouldn’t assume it’s the same thing.  A lot of this is very murky, and you don’t have more information or insight than what I’ve said (what I’m trying to say is: both are true, and I haven’t screwed up).

  1. # **Trenewydh Dream:**

Last night, you had a dream.  You were being played with as a doll by a young child in a dark place amidst ancient trees.  He was dressed all in black, with pale skin and straw colored hair, illuminated by a full moon.  When you looked at your body, you were made of black cloth as though made from  rags that were made of the night’s wind.  You were taken from the child’s hands by and woman, and heard her voice though her face was hidden in the shadows of her dark hood made of the same black material.  She said “my poor broken child…” as she looked at you, then cast you aside.  You sit up, and look at the broken off horn which you hold in your hands.  As you stare at it, you seem to hear voices coming from it which you only hear snippets of “He is hard to see … We may have lost him … He is not following his task…”  You wake up suddenly in a sweat…

  - Notes from Pondering your horn on [[Raven Island]]:***

A note from your pondering of your broken horn the other night.  I think you heard some voices that seemed far away.  Hard to know where it came from, or if it’s all in your head.  Most of it was fairly incoherent, but you got the sense that people were rushing around trying to deal with a major setback.  Different voices, and rushing bodies.  Some raised voices, and bickering.  Finally, a strong voice from someone who is used to having orders followed saying: This seems essential.  Do what you must.  My will be done.

  - Notes from the Abbot’s Hut:***

In the middle of the night as you lie in the Abbot’s hut, the ancient version of Mali - who was sitting by the well/spring - walks into the hut.  Others within the company stir in their sleep, but she waves her hand in the air and time seems to freeze.  You find yourself immobile.  She walks slowly toward you, and places her face uncomfortably close to your face, staring at you in the dark.  She examines your face and your horns, and says they’ve stolen from me to create the bones again.  It didn’t work last time, and it’s dangerous to use tools you don’t understand.  She stands up and cracks her back, uttering something between a laugh, a cough and a moan.  Then she walks back out into the night.  In the morning, you aren’t sure if it was a dream or not, but you find this poem crumpled in your bed:

Long ago some one carved me in the semblance of a god.

I have forgot now what god I was meant to represent.

I have no consciousness now but of stone, sunlight, and rain;

The sun baking my skin of stone, the wind lifting my hair;

The sun’s light is hot upon me,

The moon’s light is cool,

Casting a silver-laced pattern of light and dark

Over the planes of my body:

My thoughts now are the thoughts of a stone,

My substance now is the substance of life itself;

I have sunk deep into life as one sinks into sleep;

Life is above me, below me, around me,

Moving through my pores of stone—

It does not matter how small the space you pack life in,

That space is as big as the universe—

Space, volume, and the overtone of volume

Move through me like chords of music,

Like the taste of happiness in the throat,

Which you fear to lose, though it may choke you—

(In the cities this is not known,

For space there is emptiness,

And time is torment) … . .

Since I became a stone

I have no need to remember anything—

Everything is remembered for me;

I live and I think and I dream as a stone,

In the warm sunlight, in the grey rain;

All my surfaces are touched to softness

By the light fingers of the wind,

The slow dripping of rain:

My body retains only faintly the image

It was meant to represent,

I am more beautiful and less rigid,

I am a part of space,

Time has entered into me,

Life has passed through me—

What matter the name of the god I was meant to represent?

  - The Tree: *** As you touch the tree, you feel a kinship with it, and come to recognize that your skin feels like the bark of the tree.  You think of the turtle, who said that you shared the same bones, and feel your bones made of rock within you.  You feel the bark of the tree meld with your skin, and you think that when you were re-made, this wood and bark were part of what formed you and you feel that you know more of yourself.

  - The Stone Circle: *** You see an elderly couple, who look as though they are composed primarily in shades of grey.  Their feature are hard to distinguish, and it seems to you that they change into various faces you’ve seen before, often so quickly you aren’t able to catch hold of the face, but most often you think you see an old man with horns, whom you take to be [[Mog]], somehow, and standing next to him is a wife who looks fitting for him, flaxen haired, lithe and with delicate horns of her own.

  - Wooden Armor***: As you sleep, you dream of the [[Ancient Tree]], and the kinship you felt with it.  You reach to touch it again, and peel off its bark, smoothly layering it onto your skin.  When you wake in the morning, you find that Mannix’ armor has disappeared, but your skin feels tougher than before, and you see that all that’s left is a small wooden ring on one finger that you find you are unable to remove.  When you try to put on your old armor, you feel great discomfort, and immediately take it off.  You feel a kinship with the ring, though.  And concentrating on it, you feel your skin taking on the bark of the Ancient tree.

  - The Horn While Crossing the Plains:***

You listen through the horn for a long time, hearing the sounds of stirring, or breathing, but you’re not able to hear any words.  You get the sense that someone is on the other side, but right now not much is happening.  You are unclear if the connection is constant, or how or why the connection is made.  Tonight you hear nothing, and it seems that perhaps the person has gone to sleep.  But you suspect that at other times, you may hear more.