An eternal force rather than a conventional person.
The Baron is the character around which almost everything else revolves.
I’ve always imagined him as an eternal force rather than a conventional person. He doesn’t entirely understand where he came from himself. By the time we encounter him, he’s effectively trapped within the Minker-Verse — but also possesses extraordinary control over it.
From the outside, he appears to be the villain.
His influence bleeds into our world. Cults form around him. Governments want access to his realm. Other characters seek his helmet because they believe possessing it would allow them to become the next Baron and control the Minker-Verse themselves.
But the deeper the story goes, the less straightforward his role becomes.
The Minker-Verse is a place where imagination can physically manifest. Human beings entering it without restraint can therefore be extraordinarily dangerous. The Baron increasingly reveals himself not simply as someone keeping us out, but as something attempting to keep an immensely powerful creative force from being exploited by minds incapable of controlling it.
His actions can look cruel. His intentions are more complicated.
The original witch-doctor-like Baron I created years ago is essentially the form through which humans are capable of perceiving him when he bleeds into our reality. It’s theatrical, spooky and occasionally almost clownish — a distortion he uses to interface with a world that couldn’t really comprehend what he is.
I’ve started thinking of that version as the Baron’s shadow.
Behind it is something much older, stranger, more intelligent and considerably harder to classify as simply good or evil.