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Description
Alternate title: "How to Melt Fiends and Immolate People."

Give a man a fire and you'll keep him warm for a day; set a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life. - Terry Pratchett

Since my Palladium Fantasy Roleplaying campaign consists of players from two households, there are occasions when one half of the team can't make it to the game table. When that happens, Aedicina runs a Dungeons & Dragons pickup game, set in a land of darkness and undeath.
My character, Balthazar Trake comes from a line of caravan nomads called the Pashar, who roam the lands to the north. Reviled and persecuted by the settled lords and their vassals, they struggled to make a living and were frequently forced to flee gangs intent on running them out of their kingdoms. One hard winter, wracked by desperation and frustrated anger, they used an ancient and forbidden incantation to contact the demon lord Graz'zt, and beseech him for aid. To their astonishment, he appeared before them in person, a smile upon his obsidian lips. When he heard of their plight, he agreed to assist them, provided they surrender their seven fairest maidens. Too afraid to refuse, the people did as they were bid, and the six-fingered apparition vanished in a swirl of shadow with his prize.
The night passed, then the week and the month, with no further sign. Just as the people began to accept that they had been cheated - again - a skulking quasit demon appeared in their path as they travelled. In its arms it carried a baby - a gift, it said, from the Dark Lord. The child bore the dark skin, horns and six-fingered hands and feet of Graz'zt, but the eyes and hair of the Pashar. She was a cambion - the first of many - who were delivered now and then to the people and raised as their own. Though hot-blooded, unruly and often ruthless, they were gifted with natural might and magic, and seemed to possess an innate drive to protect "their" people. These cambions, in turn, took spouses (often multiple spouses, much to the scandal of the normally monogamous Pashar) and bore tiefling offspring.
Balthazar is one such child. His human lineage is one of wanderlust and freedom, and his demonic heritage is one of wild avarice. Thus, many of his cousins and siblings spend a portion of their youth abroad, gaining power and means before returning to stake a claim to a portion of the tribe. Balthazar means to be the greatest of these - greater, even, than his cambion parents. To this end, his is a ruthless bargainer - always seeking to get something out of his dealings. He is hindered only by his weakness for the finer things in life - things that are all the finer due to their scarcity in the scourged lands where he has found himself. He is aided by his sorcery, which he draws directly from the hellfire that beats within his dark heart.

Game note: he is a dragon sorcerer by the rules; we've simply changed up the cosmetics a bit.

Drawn in Staedtler pigment liner on low press-weight sketchpad.
Creation time: 6 hours

Description
Alternate title: "How to Melt Fiends and Immolate People."

Give a man a fire and you'll keep him warm for a day; set a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life. - Terry Pratchett

Since my Palladium Fantasy Roleplaying campaign consists of players from two households, there are occasions when one half of the team can't make it to the game table. When that happens, Aedicina runs a Dungeons & Dragons pickup game, set in a land of darkness and undeath.
My character, Balthazar Trake comes from a line of caravan nomads called the Pashar, who roam the lands to the north. Reviled and persecuted by the settled lords and their vassals, they struggled to make a living and were frequently forced to flee gangs intent on running them out of their kingdoms. One hard winter, wracked by desperation and frustrated anger, they used an ancient and forbidden incantation to contact the demon lord Graz'zt, and beseech him for aid. To their astonishment, he appeared before them in person, a smile upon his obsidian lips. When he heard of their plight, he agreed to assist them, provided they surrender their seven fairest maidens. Too afraid to refuse, the people did as they were bid, and the six-fingered apparition vanished in a swirl of shadow with his prize.
The night passed, then the week and the month, with no further sign. Just as the people began to accept that they had been cheated - again - a skulking quasit demon appeared in their path as they travelled. In its arms it carried a baby - a gift, it said, from the Dark Lord. The child bore the dark skin, horns and six-fingered hands and feet of Graz'zt, but the eyes and hair of the Pashar. She was a cambion - the first of many - who were delivered now and then to the people and raised as their own. Though hot-blooded, unruly and often ruthless, they were gifted with natural might and magic, and seemed to possess an innate drive to protect "their" people. These cambions, in turn, took spouses (often multiple spouses, much to the scandal of the normally monogamous Pashar) and bore tiefling offspring.
Balthazar is one such child. His human lineage is one of wanderlust and freedom, and his demonic heritage is one of wild avarice. Thus, many of his cousins and siblings spend a portion of their youth abroad, gaining power and means before returning to stake a claim to a portion of the tribe. Balthazar means to be the greatest of these - greater, even, than his cambion parents. To this end, his is a ruthless bargainer - always seeking to get something out of his dealings. He is hindered only by his weakness for the finer things in life - things that are all the finer due to their scarcity in the scourged lands where he has found himself. He is aided by his sorcery, which he draws directly from the hellfire that beats within his dark heart.

Game note: he is a dragon sorcerer by the rules; we've simply changed up the cosmetics a bit.

Drawn in Staedtler pigment liner on low press-weight sketchpad.
Creation time: 6 hours