Hans Urs von Baltasar from Ashes of Middenheim
Name: Hans Urs von Baltasar Race: Human Career: Apprentice Wizard
Weapon Skill: 29 Ballistic Skill: 39 Strength: 38 Toughness: 26 Agility: 25 Intelligence: 40 (Savvy) Willpower: 31 (Shallya’s Mercy) Fellowship: 31
Attacks: 1 Wounds: 13 SB: 3 TB: 2 Movement: 4 Magic: 1 (Starting Advance) Insanity: Barking Fate: 3
Skills
Academic Knowledge (Magic) Channeling Common Knowledge (the Empire) Gossip Magical Sense Perception Read/Write Search Speak Arcane Language (Magick) Speak Language (Classical) Speak Language (Reikspiel)
Talents
Aethyric Attunement (+10% on Channelling and Sense Magic skill checks) Petty Magic (Arcane) Resistance to Poison (+10% bonus on all Toughness checks against poison) Savvy (+5% to Intelligence, noted) Sixth Sense (at GM’s discretion, and if a secret WP check is made, may sense impending danger and/or unseen observers)
Trappings
Quarter Staff Common Clothing Blanket Wooden tankard and cutlery set Purse containing 17 Gold Crowns Backpack Printed Book (Immanuel Esker’s Meditations on the Known and Unknown)
Spells
Glowing Light Sounds Drop Marsh Lights Magic Dart Sleep
Von Baltasar’s powers manifested at an early age. He was just five years when he began to experience confusing prophetic dreams and trances and to glimpse the Winds of Magic at work. His parents, prosperous burghers in a small Reikland market town, thought that their child was touched by madness and the child was sent to a lunatic asylum in Altdorf, where he spent the next two years.
There he might well have gone mad himself but fate intervened, in the form of a Celestial Magister who was attending the institute, making a study of lunacy. The wizard sensed the spark of power within the boy and took him from the asylum to the Celestial College. It has been Baltasar’s home for the last fourteen years. He has learned how to control his gift and entered the ranks of the senior apprentices.
When the Storm came, his mentor (Dietrich Tillich) was called to aid the war effort as a strategist. He called upon Baltasar and his two other senior apprentices (Kaspar and Melchior) to accompany him. Baltasar was extremely reluctant to do so. He had not left the confines of the College since his arrival and his memories of the outside world were filled with terror and pain. However, he could not disobey a direct order.
Since then, events have blurred into a horrifying melange of violence, shouting, running and chaos for Baltasar. He finds it hard to distinguish what really happened from his nightmares and his semi-prophetic visions, tainted by the ever-prevalent touch of raw Chaos on the Winds. He is somewhat certain that Magister Tillich is dead, but he has no idea what has happened to his fellow apprentices. Their detachment was ambushed early on during the Storm and Baltasar became separated from the others.
As he gradually came to himself and the Storm subsided, Baltasar found himself in the village of Untergard. He has fallen in with a group of refugees making their way to Middenheim, looking to numbers for protection. All Baltasar wants to do is wake up back in his cot in the Celestial College and never leave again.
