Blackrock: 6-foot-5-inch bald, male Earth Genasi. Born a smith, lives as a barbarian...but his rage is bred of tragedy, not upbringing. Skilled smith; favors hammers, hates fire, and loves the color pink. Don’t laugh, he’s rather sensitive...plus, he’ll break your goddamn face if he catches even a whiff of a smirk. Built like a cliff face and just about as smart, Blackrock was born into the life of a common human smith in Icewind Dale. His father was not a cruel or bitter man... but the only warmth in that home came from the blistering flames of the forge. Blackrock's glassy jet-black obsidian skin, cut through with jagged fissures of hot-pink crystal, was a constant reminder of both the wife's obvious infidelity and the love he once held for her; the genie never even bothered to learn her name, let alone stay to hold her hand as she died in childbirth from complications arising from the sharp edges. The boy was never much interested in books, and the father even less so...besides, the more time the boy spent anvilside, the more money there was to be made (and the less the townsfolk would be reminded of his shame). Children were hard to come by in the brutal climate of the Dale, and his only friends were the cattle he tended - at least they didn’t mock his slow wit and thick brow. Despite being little more than a golem - slave labor for the father twenty years and counting - the boy was mostly content to simply stare into the fire, to get stronger and more skillful...until a freak twist of fate burned his forge, his father, and his friends to the ground as poor Blackrock stared on in horror, sparks glancing off his cheeks. A deep, resonant anger began to swell and ripple as the genasi saw the flame that had dominated his childhood sweep up and erase his life, dancing and cackling without a care in the world for the comforts of mortal men. He turned his back on the flames and walked south.
