thalsian is a pretty important guy in the history of thedas, so important that he never comes up in the games ever at all. however, any tevinter character will know who this guy is. he's got a decent case for being the earliest named human we know of, ever, challenged only by tyrdda bright-axe
living in around 1600 ancient, well over a thousand years since the arrival of humans in thedas and about two and a half thousand years prior to the events of the games, thalsian lived in neromenian. this was one of four kingdoms established by the neromenian tribes in the area we would now know as central tevinter. neromenian is still a "modern day" coastal city in the imperium.
as i've mentioned before, the chant of light tells the story that neromenian was ruled at this time by a king antoridus, who was preparing for war with a people known as the inghirsh. he consulted his "many oracles", who in turn sought counsel from the maker, and received signs that neromenian would not be victorious. however, one of these oracles, our man thalsian, sought counsel from a "demon of the fade" instead of the maker. the demon offered antoridus victory, as long as he made offerings to it and forsook the maker. antoridus did so, and was victorious.
thalsian is known as the first priest of dumat (the old god of silence and later archdemon of the first blight), and he's also the first known blood mage, claiming to have learned the art from dumat himself during their encounters in dreams. the implication here is probably that dumat is also the demon who gave the neromenians their victory. the whole story is a little dubious because we're also told that the neromenians always worshipped some kind of dragons, so what's with this tale where they actually used to worship the maker before those nasty old gods came in? it's possible they worshipped both or that beliefs varied; the chant refers pretty negatively to even what the maker-worshipping oracles were doing, so we definitely arenāt being told they were doing things ārightā, even though the maker theoretically did answer them. considering this is the chant of light, the whole thing should be taken with significantly more than one grain of salt, even though it's really the only data we have.
in world of thedas it's also stated that thalsian in some way used his blood magic to become king of neromenian, meaning he apparently rose from merely being one of antoridus' oracles to seizing his throne. he established the first temples worshipping dumat and the other old gods, and is also credited with establishing a "mage ruling class", with many of tevinter's noble houses tracing their ancestry to his students.
despite living a while before there was ever a tevinter imperium, he was posthumously made an honorary archon by the imperium's founder. so in "modern" texts you can see him referred to as the first archon or "first of the magisters" despite the fact that those things didn't even exist in his time, or the "first dreamer" despite dreamers being mentioned long before him. he gets a lot of credit he really doesn't deserve, basically, on account of being the one guy we know about
he seems vaguely to have a troubled/controversial reputation now, which makes sense in a modern andrastian tevinter that publicly denies the old gods and bans blood magic, while on the other hand the noble houses descended from his dreamer students continue to hold sway. there's some mentions that modern tevinter chantry scholars actually now argue that blood magic was learned from the elves of arlathan rather than the old gods. it's hard to say what role they then think thalsian had, but that would obviously diminish him, maybe painting him as a liar or even as a purely mythological figure
one confusing timing issue is that world of thedas places thalsian learning blood magic from dumat in 1595 ancient... twenty years after the destruction of barindur, one of the other northern kingdoms, when the stories about that disaster strongly suggest that worship of the old gods was already well-established at the time. those dates might have to be switched around a little to make that story make sense. nonetheless it's interesting that they're so close together. framing the likely volcanic destruction of barindur as the city being struck from the map by dumat might have been something that really strengthened belief in the old gods' power in those early days when thalsian was setting it all up
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