Thoren Blackthorn

Thoren Blackthorn was a player character in The Twilight Anarchy (campaign 3): a farmer and necromancer from outside Shade Hollow, who studied at Shadehollow Preparatory College alongside Kael Sunstrike and Evelina Crane. When the campaign began he was working his fields with a cloaked, faceless labourer, and his goals were to stop anyone taking away the sun "lest my cabbages wither", to keep studying magic for a better answer for his brother, and to put his raised dead to further use.

The bogoloff of the party's first shared dream came from his imagination, and he took a sliver of the socket that had held The Source in the mine. Llyana Soren taunted him that his brother needed him; in June 2024 the brother was found buried at the farm, and Thoren's necromancy later brought him back: his brother is now a zombie. He decoded the Eightfold's ciphers, made a gold skull in Rookfall, and kept Lord Cedric's soul in a box after Cedric's death in February 2025. On 2025-07-23 he disintegrated Aniketos, who had been infected with a myconid curse. He carried the Celestial Weaver Source, raised bone dragons late in the campaign, and his affinity for death won over the Raven Queen and the Silent Arbiter against The Harsh.

Backstory

Thoren was born and raised in the remote town of Shade Hollow, the second son of a family who had farmed there for generations, growing mostly cabbages with some cherry and walnut trees. A natural student, always buried in a book, he dreamed of studying at an agricultural college in the capital, Rookfall, and bringing modern methods home to make the Blackthorn farm a byword for success. His elder brother Eamon Blackthorn was the strong one, proud of the field work and always supportive.

One harsh winter the plague swept Shade Hollow and took Thoren's whole family, Eamon among them. With his college plans in ruins, Thoren struggled to keep the farm going alone. While working the fields he found an old tomb half exposed by erosion, and inside it a tome of forbidden necromancy. In his grief he performed its ritual and raised Eamon as a zombie, who has worked the farm tirelessly ever since. Uneasy with his new power, Thoren set out to understand necromancy properly, studying the restricted books of The Archive of Echoes with the help of a childhood friend (left unnamed in the backstory), so that he could bring the town prosperity without darkness. The farm grew more productive, and as rumours of strange goings-on at the Blackthorn farm spread, he has had to keep his studies secret.

The campaign's account of his brother differs: the party found the brother buried at the farm in June 2024 (real time), and Thoren's necromancy brought him back afterwards (conflict #57).