  One of three… that’s me and my brothers. I call myself Balthazar because I’m one out of three. I can still remember how it all began, my first thoughts of my brothers… I was like dale (our sadistic and mentally imbalanced cousin). I tortured Gaspar when we were very young for the simple reason I was being tortured by my older sister. ( I don’t mean it as an excuse, but a conclusion) I didn’t know how else to act as a child to my younger brother. I was always bullied by my older sister, I though bullying my chubby little brother Gaspar was what was expected of me. So I bullied him for the better part of his childhood. Then jobert came along, then we were three.
It was when Melchior came along that things changed… he was the smallest of all three of us brothers and as well as the smartest child I have ever know. I had no need to feel superior over my brother, so I took as much care of him as I saw my parents did. When Melchior could learn to run, we both tortured Gaspar… We told our mother that we chased him around for him to lose weight.
We would chase him from room to room, down the stairs and out the drive way. My mom got mad at me for my malice and told me never call Gaspar Fat. I stopped, it was that simple. I was the obedient son, and I stopped when she told me that. Then me and Melchior stopped chasing Gaspar around. We had not much toys… we were poor and everybody around me had toys. In ateneo gradeschool and preparatory school I watched my car pool mate play with his voltron toys, his voltes V and all the toys I drooled to have. All I had were my brothers… Gaspar played with what toys we had. Melchior was already reading so I always bought him a book for 10pesos every week.
Then the first computer came to our house. EGA graphics and midi sounds…. WOW!!! Of course the dungeons and dragons games there did not work… all we had was a box with a great art and a manual of what it was all about…. That’s when the story telling began. I was around 10, Gaspar 8 and Melchior 6. I read through the manual and immediately found a world I wish I could run around in.
It was the images and the anime that I was exposed to early on which molded my imagination early. The lack of toys established a need, and my brothers… my only companions. It was Iron Jack and Nimrod. Iron Jack was a bounty hunter and nimrod a thief magician. Rules never came up, nor did game balance. It was our toy, a toy that can be anything we wanted. Iron Jack had a sword called the Devil’s Toy… Nimrod had his magic and roguish abilities. We played and played, till we ended with them saving the world. Then we made the next generation, playing their children… then playing their children’s children….
It was all until 13 generations. I was in high school and around 16, gaspar 14, and Melchior 12. We had made a world so vast and great, I need my brothers to help me keep track of whose who and who is related to what. In fact, you will see these characters in all my fantasy stories. Iron Jack, fleshed out to be Ivan Vladerick. Nimrod fleshed out to be Nimrodel Solfyre…. But I guess the lesson of this story is in the old saying when you have lemons… 
