Balzac

In human guise Balzac has orange hair streaked with white and yellow eyes. His apostle shape is a grotesque chimera: a reddened human torso melded into a horned, dragon-like skull whose tongue bears a second face. Fins sprout from mammalian legs, a serpent's head caps the tail, and each joint carries a different beast, a panther, an eagle, a wolf, and a fish. He wields a pair of halberds in either form, his eyes turning red and his hair grey once transformed.

He begins as a thoughtful lord who genuinely cares for his subjects. The strain of governing while nursing his failing wife Annette slowly poisons him, and he hardens into a bloodthirsty despot. By the end he is willing to trade even Annette's life for the power to crush anyone who stood in his way.

As a young baron, Balzac ruled with care until Annette's sickness drove him to seek a cure. He stole part of the heart of a mandragora plant sprung up near his lands and brewed from it a drug that saved her body but destroyed her mind. Undeterred, he turned the remaining fragment on his own people, transforming them into mandragorans for grim experiments, convinced the rest of the relic could restore her. His opening seems to arrive when Guts comes to town with Puck and Casca; hearing the swordsman has killed one of his creatures, the baron summons him, shows him the dungeon of the infected, and secures his cooperation by dangling the hope of a cure for Casca's own broken mind. Even after rebels reveal Balzac's true nature, Guts presses on, unaware the baron never meant to honor the deal. Balzac imprisons Casca and orders his men to kill Guts the moment the heart is recovered. Everything unravels when Zodd frees Casca on Griffith's behalf, and her presence awakens the fragment, loosing the mandragorans. Guts carves his way to the castle, where Balzac, cornered and denying them both what they seek, recounts his story to Rita and swallows a stronger dose to meet Guts as a monster. Mortally wounded, he gains a second chance when Rita unwittingly brings him a beherit she took for a pendant. He activates it and sacrifices Annette to be reborn an apostle, only for Guts to cut him down for good. The Skull Knight later collects his beherit.