{
  "character": {
    "id": "c81a7b86-2d27-4de1-b07b-43cea5e55213",
    "slug": "balgrin-durstansson-blackkettle-the-anvilbreaker",
    "name": "Balgrin Durstansson Blackkettle, the Anvilbreaker",
    "race": "Dwarf",
    "character_class": "Fighter",
    "jan_favorite": false,
    "is_ff_portrait": false,
    "profile_url": "https://framedfantasy.com/pages/hero?h=balgrin-durstansson-blackkettle-the-anvilbreaker",
    "character_url": "https://hall-library.framedfantasy.com/characters/balgrin-durstansson-blackkettle-the-anvilbreaker",
    "character_json_url": "https://hall-library.framedfantasy.com/characters/balgrin-durstansson-blackkettle-the-anvilbreaker.json",
    "character_markdown_url": "https://hall-library.framedfantasy.com/characters/balgrin-durstansson-blackkettle-the-anvilbreaker.md",
    "original_image_url": "https://obadckrukccwkjgpbsxa.supabase.co/storage/v1/object/public/portraits/1786018733197_z2exm5.webp",
    "image_url": "https://hall-library.framedfantasy.com/images/balgrin-durstansson-blackkettle-the-anvilbreaker",
    "thumbnail_url": "https://obadckrukccwkjgpbsxa.supabase.co/storage/v1/object/public/portraits/1786018733197_z2exm5_thumb.webp",
    "crop": {
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      "y": 50,
      "zoom": 100
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    "story_excerpt": "Balgrin (that's Balgrin Durstansson Blackkettle, the Anvilbreaker to you) is the party's tank, and co-founding member (with Fenwick Larkspur). Beneath the least assuming simplicity, he may be holding the biggest secret of all. On the surface: a typical earthy dwarf, a fighter, a drinker, a bawdy sin",
    "story": "Balgrin (that's Balgrin Durstansson Blackkettle, the Anvilbreaker to you) is the party's tank, and co-founding member (with Fenwick Larkspur). Beneath the least assuming simplicity, he may be holding the biggest secret of all. On the surface: a typical earthy dwarf, a fighter, a drinker, a bawdy singer, a stalwart companion. Underneath: the reason every other member of this party could become what they seek to become.\n\nBalgrin Durstansson Blackkettle, the Anvilbreaker will insist you call him by his full dwarf name: given name, patronymic (son of Durstan), clan (a kettle-and-cauldron forge-clan that crafts cooking pots and war helms with equal pride), and earned deed-name. To be fair, he will prefer, strongly, you call *everyone* by their full name, at all times. It's not surprising he's the party's namer; \"Ye can't just have the one name; when they sing yer song they've to know who they're singin' about!\" He's the one who insisted Beryl Truevein could not just be \"Beryl,\" and gave who gave Coalwing Sunkettle Grimfeather a name people could actually pronounce. He half-complains Beryl should also be \"Stonekettle\" and has *not* said (out loud) the additional names he's personally attributed to Fenwick Larkspur, or Melilot Oldclock, but three names is pretty much his preferred minimum. It's a strange sort of curmudgeonness that somehow helps every soul in his circle be someone. \n\nBalgrin is, almost, exactly what he looks like: a hearty mountain dwarf who drinks excessively and sings... well, he sings, and holds the line so his friends don't have to. He remembers every grudge and every good turn, and insists, loudly, endlessly, that everyone have a proper name and use it. From the start, he was and is the stable ground the party stands on. He seems, of everyone, to be the one without a depth other than dwarven heritage.\n\nBeneath it all, however, Balgrin is a sliver of a god; a shard of the dwarven Soul-Forger walking incognito; and, moreover, self-forgotten, the way Beryl doesn't know her curse and Coal won't speak of his death. He is not a god slumming for irony, merely hiding his true power; he genuinely is a gruff, loyal dwarf who loves the people around him. He also carries a compulsion he's never examined: to make, though not in the corporeal crafter/smith sense.  Still yet, to take something half-formed and hammer it into its truest self, and to name it tue; only the *something* is a person - a soul. In this way, quietly, unassumingly, his party of adventurers and friends is his masterwork.\n\nBut a masterwork isn't finished until the last piece is. Balgrin pours a spark of himself into each of of his companions on their individual quests; as each comes fully into their own: Beryl the Uncursed, Millie and Tock of the Living Clockwork, Coal, Huut Netjer of Dawn and Dusk, Fenwick, Singer of Released Secrets. Then, when the spark returns to him, it is amplified. When the great work is done, Balgrin himself can wake. As he helps forge them, his companions re-forge him by becoming fully themselves. His arc, in the end, is the sum of theirs. And then he will have a choice to make - will he re-assume the mantle of a god? Or choose to stay, the smith himself reforged into something smaller, but perhaps just as great.\n\nBalgrin is built here at level 7, at the threshold of the party fully taking on each of its members' true quests."
  }
}