Salman Haseem

Salman Haseem was born in Ādīsi Geneti to unscrupulous circus owner Iago Haseem, and was callously used by his father as an attraction in his Haseem Travelling Circus after he was found to have a nervous disorder which made him unable to feel pain or indeed any touch-based stimulus. His act largely consisted of fire-eating, fire-breathing, passing sharp objects through his skin, sword-swallowing, walking on broken glass, lying on beds of nails and similar extremely dangerous stunts. As a result of this combined with his disorder, the only reason he remains alive is because of healers as he was a very profitable act. This has left him heavily scarred with much of his fur missing. The extreme abuse that resulted from his "gift" left him as a misanthropic sociopath with pyromaniacal tendencies. As such he is the least sociable of the escaped freaks and is purely kept around from a sense of solidarity rather than because anyone actually likes him.

Following his escape in And the Freak Shall Inherit... with the rest of the freaks, he somehow ends up on the border between the Empire and Manzil, causing something of an international incident due to burning down a number of Manzili military border posts. He has also gained pyromantic magic abilities from somewhere.

He reappears in Beneath the Mountain as a major supporting antagonist, having apparently joined the cult of Nox who has proceeded to further feed his more sadistic tendencies and enhance his pyromantic abilities to a genuinely frightening degree. He has also teamed up with two other cultists along the way, Al'Vn and Kilik Woteh (neither of whom particularly like him and indeed Kilik followed his orders out of fear of death rather than loyalty to the cause or to him as a person). He also appears to have been granted some kind of enhanced durability, as he survived numerous potentially fatal blows with little major injury (though did still need to relocate various bones.)

He later reappears in Tale of Tir and Nox, Part II as part of Nox's army during his incursion onto Tir, being under the command of Seaghd II mac Greimdorch. He was directly involved in the Fall of Balla (setting a good amount of the city on fire) as part of Seaghd's force that betrayed the defenders, and later briefly encounters the second incarnation of the Band of Misfits and their caravan on the road away from the fallen city. He then reappears advancing on their camp as the three, alongside allies Sir Ug of Slat, Oono, Dox, Trez and Grandrake, formed a rear-guard manoeuvre. After running the team around for a while, he was downed by an attack from Glaw Trwm before he was distracted by the brief intervention of Knox'l. He then was briefly revived as a revenant and injured Rose Dubhglas and the three Kobolds with a fireball before he was dispatched by a joint attack from Qau-dibab-āy'ḥāk-āy'āda and Ug.

In battle, Salman fights like a man who learned cruelty at the end of a flame. He is not a duellist and he is not brave; he is a controller. He wants distance, sightlines, and a battlefield that moves the way he says it moves. He typically begins by carving the field apart, forcing enemies to choose between advancing through fire and losing tempo. When pressure closes in, he does not “stand and take it”; he slips away, turns invisible, or relocates, then punishes anyone who chases as a group. His instincts are defensive and spiteful. Shield is his reflex. Counterspell is held for moments that would swing the fight away from him—banishments, crippling control, key dispels, and revivals. If you need a simple spell profile for this version, assume he has the usual pyromancer staples and the tools to survive long enough to use them: a wall of fire to shape the fight, invisibility to waste the party’s best turns, and a single brutal blast when the party offers him a cluster. He is at his most dangerous when the party is impatient.