Balthan

Balthan Wanderson is the subject of the quest in Lynn Abbey's The Forge of Virtue and one of the main protagonists in The Temper of Wisdom.

Biography
Balthan and his sister Althea were children of a Virtue Peer known as Simon the Wanderer. When he became disillusioned of the Virtues, Simon became a drunkard and eventually signed on as a common seaman on an merchant-explorer sailing east, which never returned. Lord Erwald Ironhawk took the children in as wards, raising them alongside his own children and those of the villa.

Jordan Hawson never got along with Balthan; any time the two of them were in contact, it usually ended in a fight. This did not make them friends, but they did come to know each other well.

Balthan showed great talent for magic, teaching himself Linear spells before being sent to the Lycaeum to learn magic.

The Forge of Virtue
The plot of the novel is for Althea, Jordan, Drumon and Squirt to rescue Balthan from the prison of his own devising. Disguised as the Avatar, the Shadowlords had come to Balthan and convinced him to combine scrolls of magecraft with his own spells, creating complex and difficult to control magical traps. His sister and her friends were able to bypass them, but at the expense of Jordan's eyesight.

The Temper of Wisdom
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