My Blade bears my purpose, my Armor my will and my Step my tenacity. Should stand before me a foe, pray to your Gods for mercy, for I shall show you none.

- Balthazar

• 
  * Name:Balthazar
  * Species: Once Half-Giant; Shade
  * Age: Unknown; Long Dead
  * Height: In Armor 7'9; Outside Armor 5'3
  * Weight: N/A
  * Hair: N/A
  * Eyes:Yellow?
  * Skin: N/A

• 
  * Occupation: Knight
  * Place of Birth: Unknown
  * Affiliation: None
  * Home: His Armor
  * Aliases: The Shade Knight, The Revenant, "Bal"

Expert Melee Combatant: Owing to years of combat training as a warrior Balthazar is even more of a physical juggernaut now than when he was alive all of those years ago. Wielding a large great-sword, even for his size, Balthazar fears a physical confrontation with nothing, living or dead, in all of Arethil.

Indefatigable: Balthazar does not tire. He does not get sloppy and he does not waver even after hours or days of 'physical' exertion. This includes a lack of a need for sleep, food, drink and any other sustenance a physical body might require.

Necromancy Adept: Due to his inherent nature as a Shade and a creature constructed of pure dark magics, Balthazar has a limit capacity for Necromancy in his own rite. While possessing nothing near what a practiced Necromancer can accomplish and hopelessly less flexible, Balthazar can still reanimate reasonable fresh corpses when unarmored. His capacity to accomplish this however, is inherent and natural and can never be trained to be greater than what it is, barring a very powerful Necromancer making he himself more powerful.

Song of the Dead: When unarmored Balthazar can emit a deadly scream of ear-shattering volume. At close range, this ability is powerful enough to kill most average mortals, while outside of this range it is merely harmful and disorienting to hear. Strangely enough, this ability does not seem to harm those who practice Necromancy.

Balefire: When armored though Balthazar loses his capacity for raising the dead and his more esoteric Necromantic abilities, one thing remains constant in both forms. His ability to produce and manipulate and magic known as "Balefire". Taking the form of glowing red flames tinged by inky black darkness these flames not only burn away at those subjected to them on a physical level, but also eat away at, rot and corrupt most non-undead matter they touch.

Incorporeal: While not possessing his armor Balthazar can phase through most physical matter and levitates roughly a foot off the ground, or whatever material he happens to be 'standing' over. Balthazar cannot, however, attempt to possess any other creature that possesses their own soul. In his incorporeal state, even his touch is cold, chilling and draining for living creatures to experience and deadly for extended periods of time.

Bound in Servitude: Created from the long-dead soul by the Mage Vereshin, Balthazar has been bound to not only his armor for all eternity, but more specifically a Ruby that floats within the hollow confines of his helmet. Should this Ruby be destroyed physically Balthazar will not truly perish, but only a Necromancer of sufficient strength could bind him to a different item. However, should the ruby be destroyed with powerful Divine or Holy magic, Balthazar will once and for all truly be put to rest.

Eternal Hunger: Balthazar, as a Shade, feeds on the death of all living things. Whether it be a human, elf, giant or even a flower or tree... it's death will sustain Balthazar a little while longer. Should Balthazar become trapped or otherwise be unable to feed he will be forced to 'hibernate' within the Ruby that binds his essence. That is..... until something dies nearby.

Balthazar's personality changes rather drastically, and abruptly, when he dons or doffs his armor. When he states that his blade and armor contain his purpose, he is not using flowery language. Being all that remain of his previous life, possessing these objects that were so close to him fill Balthazar with vestiges of his past self. A cool, yet merciless, warrior who will stop at nothing to accomplish whatever he desires.

Outside of his armor Balthazar is surprisingly docile and passive for a being crafted from death and darkness. While still capable of thought, feeling and reaction Balthazar loses the echoes of his old life and becomes, in essence, a blank slate. Indeed in this form he forgets even the name Vereshin gave him, referring to himself as "Bal". Lost and confused in a world he should not inhabit, with absolutely no familiarity or regard for the rights and wrongs crafted by mortal society. Depending on whom one speaks to while Balthazar may be an abomination, in this form at least, he is an abomination similar in temperament to a sentient weapon than anything else. With at least a small regard for the emotions and feelings expressed at him.

The most intriguing aspects of Balthazar;s character emerge when he is in 'process' of doffing his armor. That is, emerging into his spiritual form. When this happens he seems almost... tired and melancholic, reminiscent and more than a bit disdainful of the world and it's troubles.

Balthazar has no recollection of where he was born, who raised him, and a vast majority of his past. The only moments he truly remembers are those fraught with battle and war, when others remember the embrace of their mothers as babes, Balthazar remembers the proper guard to employ against sword strokes. When other remember the rocking of the crib, Balthazar reflects on the shifting tides of battle. Indeed naught was left for the Shade Knight to remember but that which was necessary for his purpose. To be a guardian and a weapon for the one who would call him back from his restless eternity to serve.

His final battle is the memory most clear to Balthazar. He and a group of his fellow soldiers were out on patrol, he remembers the sun searing his eyes and drawing copious amounts of sweat from his body. His armor reeking of a man who had been on the march for far too long. He remembers the surety of his step, the reassuring weight of his armor as it moved naturally with his body, and he remembers the ambush.

A cry, not of warning or of terms of surrender, but of swift, merciless death left one of his brothers-in-arms as they were struck in the neck by an arrow. He remembers cutting down humans one after another as they opposed him, whether crushing their bodies underfoot or cleaving their heads from their shoulders. With inexorable determination did Balthazar push his way closer and closer to the front they had formed against their aggressors. He remembers coming shoulder-to-shoulder with now-nameless men who had fought, and died, with him and seeing a lone man stand before them. He remembers the flowing crimson robes of the man, his palm outstretched as he was charged by a fierce and howling line of metal and ferocity. Finally, in the end above all else, Balthazar remembers the fire.... the heat that met his brow and burnt his flesh to cinders, that coursed through his very being, slaying he and his brothers like they were ought but kindling.

Thus, there is was among smoldering hunks of metal, charred and unrecognizable skeletons and a ground that would forever bare witness to the slaughter that had transpired upon it.... that Balthazar laid. Lost to death's icy grip, a void of nothing that he only vaguely recalls being pulled out of nerve by nerve, thought by thought, year by year, back out... into the land of the living.

Vereshin