Time for another villain:
While his teacher Magister Ophenos uses the image as evil black mage just to scare the locals away to leave him alone with his research, at least one of his scholars took the evil part of the image too much to heart and in his youthful naiviety believes his destiny to be committing evil deeds.
As its common for a mages to choose their own name, this particular scholar picked Balphemor al'Ifriitim in reference to the famed black mage Balphemor of Punin, who is still active today, a career spanning 16 centuries and al'Ifriitim is a tulamidian expression for "from the demons" or shorter "the demonic".
It would be easy to discount Bal (as he lets his non existent close friends call him) as a pretentious brat seeking attention and not being a real thread, but Magister Orphenos, while failing in forming his character, tought him the black arts very well.
Following the Way of the Netherhells (with a focus on spells and rituals with the properties spheres and demonic), Bal can be a mighty enemy if he gets time to prepare and has hordes of demons https://ulisses-regelwiki.de/bestiary_demons.html available on standby to serve him. Using the spell enhancements of his summoning spells he gains 2 additional services per demon and the demons loose only one service a week instead of one a day so he can prepare over the course of multiple weeks. And if he has time to regenerate since summoning his main servants, he can quickly animate a few skeletons or even his own shadow to fight alongside of him or set you on fire or maybe just stop your heartbeat. Over time he will also learn how to use human servants and mercenaries to further his goals but at the moment arrogance lets him rely on just his own strength and the creatures of the Netherhells that he summons. This could give a group of heroes a chance to stop him, especially with strong support of blessed ones. If he escapes, he could return more powerful with vengeance on his mind.
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