Balathagos

Information

Profile Creator: Rigley

Name: Balathagos

Flight: Blue

Gender: Male

Preferred Disguise

Bala takes on a variety of disguises but his preferred is that of a Quel'dorei male, due to their common affinity for the arcane. He can, like others, take other forms beside this one. He has no true sense of attachment to any specific forms and thus is not always very consistent, save where it is absolutely necessary (IE: portraying a noble patron).

Short-Term Goals

• Acquire mortal servants for various assorted tasks and rigmarole unsuited for his station.
• Maintain some semblance of magical stability in the world by confiscating or destroying various arcana.
• Collect, cleanse and destroy relics of demonic origin or influence.

Long-Term Goals

• Collect, catalogue, and confiscate or destroy different relics and machinery of magical significance.
• Temper imbalances in ley lines and other assorted phenomena occuring in the world.
• Investigate failed or incomplete efforts of mortal magi and either bring them to fruition or destroy them.
• Attempt to placate tensions between the blue dragonflight and the mortal races, namely those of Dalaran.
• Solve the unsolvable.

Personality

Balathagos' mind is one which works off a complex and intensive sense of logic. This can be difficult to understand, as he is also completely mad. Or is he? It's difficult to tell sometimes. He is prone to blather on about the trove of relics he has collected-- what they do, where they came from, how much magical energy they contain, what color pigmentation a specific part is, and whether it was a Wednesday or not that he found it.

He is rather unpredictable even to his closest associates, though luckily his pleasant demeanor never dips. He views those who work under him as more of students learning from a master than servants, and commonly attempts to teach them about the wealth of magical know-how they deal with. Even if the ability to fully perceive his explanation is completely outside of their grasp. He has immense (perhaps limitless) patience for the unlearned and incompetent, and is much more prone to attempts of diplomacy that any violent course of action. His only real issue is when he finds himself presented with the work of technomagi, often finding the marriage of the two rather unnecessary and detracting from either the elegance of the arcane or the ingenuity of machines. He frequently will attempt to disprove the work of any such machine by endeavoring to replicate (if not trump) the results with magic alone.

He also has an aversion to warlocks and will not allow them to serve under him, as is evident in his policy for demonic relics; cleanse and destroy, no exceptions.

History

Balathagos was hatched in the Blue Dragonflight's home of the Coldarra, in Northrend. While not exactly the most prominent of his brood he always had an expansive aptitude for order and an immense fascination with magic, both of his flight and of the mortal races. By the time he was of age to leave the Coldarra as a drake the War of the Ancients was well underway. With the flight scattering after the betrayal of the Black Flight Balathagos and the other drakes surviving the Dragon Soul's onslaught flocked to their now harrowed aspect, seeking guidance.

To Balathagos' disappointment the aspect had little to say to his kin and himself. Besides instructions for the bulk of the remaining flight to watch over the Mazthoril caverns there was little else specified of them, many deciding to return alongside Malygos to reside in the Coldarra once more. Following the example of the other wyrms which remained behind he decided to take up the duty of researching the arcane. He frequented the stations that other drakes had taken up amongst the Highborne ruins, keen on investigating the magic which had led to the sundering of the world. As the other mortal races began to rise up as the ages passed though, Bala became much more interested in their own endeavors into the way of the arcane. As he grew into the full age of maturity he took flight to the lands of Quel'thalas and the human kingdom of Dalaran, disguising himself in the shape of the local elves in humans as he observed their own forays into magic. Through the wars between orcs and the human kingdoms he took a very passive and analytical position, simply biding his time and observing the chaos which unraveled upon the world. Though he admittedly felt some semblance of disappointment or pity when he saw the fledgling races suffer, it was never really enough to motivate him to act. Passions of emotion were, after all, not scientific-- These people were specimens to be examined, not children to be coddled when their lives went awry.

Eventually Balathagos decided it more pertinent to watch the progress of the newer races rather than those of the fallen Highborne. He took flight to a remote enough location of the world, away from prying eyes-- the crater of Un'goro being as good as any, given its distance from the newly founded lands of the Horde. From here he began to amass a trove of artifacts to observe, study, improve or destroy; Dalaran's fall left him with many such specimens to pick at from the ashes in the wake of the Scourge, and many books to peruse. All of it went back into his home in the crater, simply stocking and hiding the relics away from those who might misuse them.

When the Nexus wars began Balathagos hardly paid attention to the conflict between his own flight and the rest of the world. Seeing the mortal's work firsthand had given him some insight into their machinations, and in no way was he overly concerned with their recent developments. Beyond even that, ages of research and pursuit of higher and bolder magic had made him quite... eccentric. He had become more and more engrossed in the pursuit of knowledge, to the point that he had not even contacted another of his flight in many years. He had shut himself away in his overlook, only leaving to scavenge or observe. Most of the others were still obsessing over the Highborne's ruins still, anyways.

Of course, the Blue Flight's assaults on Dalaran had begun to make the task of visiting the mortal races difficult, and he had no intention of making himself appear a traitor to the flight by investigating the newly relocated Dalaran in person. He decided upon a rather simple alternative; send another in his stead. Mortals seemed easy enough to bribe and manipulate into his own needs, and so they proved the perfect envoy for what was effectively a sight-seeing trip of the new city. And then other regions of the world. Actually, why did he bother flying out at all? There was always some pesky archer about when he needed to land, and his size and azure scales certainly didn't ease passage when in flight.

Better to send some bumbling adventurer to do it under the service of some 'noble'.

With the luxury of outsourcing now growing on him Balathagos began to look into more tasks for his little minions to busy themselves with. Of course, not knowing of his being a dragon would likely be an issue at some point. He would have to deal with that quandary later. Until then he could have them busy themselves with his miscellaneous work, and even entreat them on some studies of their own once his inquiries began returning others interested in the world of the arcane. He concentrated on the bigger tasks at hand and they developed textbook length essays on how a mage in Dalaran devised a polymorph that turned a person into a penguin. Good times.

Of course, the only issue was time. It was rather boring and time consuming waiting to see the results of an envoy's project, and when one of them ended up violently combusting or getting teleported into solid ground in his bidding that was always an inconvenient span of time before someone sent word back that he had either gone missing or had been splattered against a wall. It would probably be better to actually take them under his wing (he found the pun amusing) and have them working in his hideaway. Perhaps he could teach them to be less inane and prone to exploding as well, or at least give them some protective spells to ensure they didn't make a mess of his lair.

The idea was quite appealing. Now to find some new goons.