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Durge, sick: [pours Nyquil and orange juice in their coffee]

Minthara: You would make a fascinating toxicology lesson.

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more characters should be 30+ years old

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i hate when ppl act like the only reason to not like a "sad" ending is because you can't take it or whatever. personally as a tragedy enjoyer, i hate a poorly written ending. i hate an ending that is just kind of a bummer. i hate an ending that feels mean-spirited to the audience. i hate an ending that's redundant. i love a sad ending that is thematically consistent, poignant, and bespoke to the rest of its narrative.

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Quick portraits of two of my favorite dudes

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you can always rely on your younger siblings to ruin everything

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Gale: My favorite sex position is any of them. I'm just happy to be included.

Shadowheart, thaumaturging from across camp: Job interview ass answer!

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okay but what if bg3 had a snowy area

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Something I love about confronting Cazador is how he obviously never processes that Astarion has friends until it's too late.

Petras and Dalyria must have mentioned that Astarion wasn't alone when they met him, but when you read Cazador's journal? He's 100% fixated on Astarion. How Astarion stood in the sun, how Astarion was willing and able to disobey him. And when Astarion shows up, Cazador barely acknowledges the party at all - and sure, that's partly because this is Astarion's moment in the narrative, but Cazador doesn't so much as ask why these random strangers are there! They're not part of his plans, so they don't exist.

And then they immediately save his errant spawn from the ritual and start beating his ass.

Just. What must have been going through Cazador's head when that fight starting turning against him? 'Is that... the Blade of Frontiers? Why is a monster hunter - and is that a cleric? - helping a vampire spawn? An undead? Ah, but they must be treating it as a necessary evil to have a chance to slay me, of course - hold on, why is the cleric healing Astarion? Why does that wizard keep Counterspelling everything I'm casting at Astarion, why waste the spells when I'm not even targeting him? Did... did that druid just cast Daylight on Astarion's weapons? And that brute of a tiefling - that's not just disgust in her eye when she looks at me, it's fury - and she keeps putting herself in front of Astarion, why in the hells would she - she's running right at me- '

I hope that one of the last things Cazador ever knew was the choking realisation that Astarion didn't just come back strong, or free. Astarion came back loved.

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Okay, hear me out.

You are absolutely cooking with a lot of these, though I have one particular pseudo counterpoint.

I feel like Gale would progress in a similar manner to Astarion, and that he would start incredibly skinny as a symptom of The Orb(TM).

Of the entire Tadpatrol, Gale is the one who has never worked out once in his entire life. There's no way his musculature would be defined in the slightest, he definitely has more of a medium frame over narrow ones like Astarion and Lae'zel's, and he absolutely eats and drinks enough that he should have a softer build on top of it, especially by age 31.

Were it not for that insufferable orb.

Even with his connection to the Weave being the orb's most prominent toll, its symptoms (though a tad more subtly) seem to include physical debilitation as well. It's implied through bits of Gale's design (such as his chest marking directly connecting to the subtle vein pronunciation on his face) that losing direct access to a surplus of wondrous items upon abduction was never the start of his more debilitating symptoms, nor were they purely arcane in nature. It's even explicitly confirmed in his Companion Questline that the state in which you meet him is not his default state, explaining why you meet him at Level 2 despite his backstory as an absurdly powerful archmage.

If anything, Gale's distinctive love of food (and the odds that it served as a pillar of comfort in his extended post-breakup depressive spiral) was likely one of the key factors in mitigating complete malnutrition once the eldritch tapeworm took root. After however long he's been living with that thing, Act 1 Gale would be built like he's dehydrated - much like Astarion after external starvation - because he straight-up is dehydrated.

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To pull a Gale about my own special interest for a bit, it's worth noting that almost every Companion NPC defaults to a minimum 14 Constitution. From a game design standpoint, this was clearly to ensure leeway for inexperienced players, as evidenced by the sole exceptions being Minthara (the most difficult Companion to recruit) and Minsc (who doesn't show up till the party level hits double-digits). That said, Gale is one of the most fitting characters to build with high Constitution conceptually, comparably so with even Karlach and Halsin, while you could reasonably bump anyone else down to a +1 mod if so desired.

From a lore standpoint, Gale is undoubtedly the least athletic member of the Tadpatrol, but he is one of the most durable. This may seem like a wild thing to say about the only d6 hit-dicer; however (for many of the same reasons as resident Overheating Locomotive Karlach), were Gale not physically resilient, that thing in his chest would have killed him by now.

His physical fortitude in Act 1 is easily the lowest (barring a CON-dump Tav like the one I romanced him with), but much like his low-level arcane arsenal, that's predominantly due to how much physical and mental energy is expended directly by the containment of his miniature event horizon. It's for this particular reason that I consider Resilient: CON a more suitable Gale feat than War Caster.

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But when Elminster stabilizes the orb (then even moreso if Mystra removes it entirely), its physical toll would be mitigated along with its arcane hunger. And in that time, becoming increasingly prominent over the course of Act 2, Gale would begin to fill out to a healthier, more natural state upon receiving a far more effective treatment to the parasite funneling everything into the void.

Even with any chronic tolls lingering from the orb's tenure (because there's no chance in the hells there wouldn't be), Gale would most definitely be in a far better state once it's no longer actively ravaging him from the inside-out, accumulating body fat as a visible measure of physical recovery. It would also serve as a superb narrative correlation to his simultaneous emotional recovery, following a path that's more fulfilling and sustainable, rather than relentlessly seeking hollow, conditional approval from exploitative, one-sided relationships built upon moving goal posts and sky-high expectations.

Doodle of Astarion going from starved and newly freed to eating better and getting chubbier

Controversial, but i'm six-pack hater. Out of romanceable male companions only Wyll should be allowed to have defined abs. Thank you for coming to my ted talk

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Haven't posted anything in ages, but my brain's been rotten to the core with this game, so have this sketchbook drabble turned digital.

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I'm kinda in love with the idea of a dragonborn Dark Urge who was adopted and raised by a wealthy family in the Upper City. I want a Dark Urge who had private tutors as a child. Who can play the piano. Who had servants and tailored clothes. Whose mother wanted him to become a doctor.

It makes such a fun contrast to Gortash's 'started from the bottom and now I'm here' vibe if the Dark Urge started at the top and let himself fall from grace.

Gortash clawed his way up from nothing. He taught himself to talk like a gentleman and to dress like a gentleman to hide the fact the he's common as muck. He technically only has a grammar-school education, but you'd never know it because he reads voraciously. He's not ashamed of his background, but he also wants to make it very clear that he's risen above it. It galls him more than anything to be mistaken for poor.

Meanwhile, the Dark Urge had everything handed to him from birth, and willingly gave it up to embrace his role as the prophet of the mad and the forgotten, who lives in a sewer and is constantly covered in gore, because that's what his father demands of him. He rejects his background as much as Gortash does, though for very different reasons. Death is the great equalizer. What does he need airs and graces for? Why should he mind his manners? He is Death Itself. He doesn't need to be polite or cultured. He only needs to kill.

But he remembers. Occasionally, he will thoughtlessly correct Gortash - the kind of little things you tend to pick up when you grow up rich. That's damask, not brocade. The fork goes on the left. It's pronounced Ahm-nian.

It both infuriates Gortash beyond reason and makes him wonder about his partner's background.

Once, when he was waiting for Gortash to finish writing a letter, the Dark Urge went over to the piano in Gortash's office - the one he only keeps around for the look of it and has never touched - and played a few perfect, measured scales, like someone remembering an old lesson.

On the other hand, it's Gortash, in his gold-embroidered clothes and expensive boots, who will steal an unattended apple from a grocer's cart on instinct, because a part of him has never forgotten what it feels like to go hungry.

The Dark Urge is the one who sits with perfect posture and occasionally, unthinkingly, says 'please' and 'thank you' to those he is in the process of murdering.

Gortash is the one who, when weapons and guards fail him, will put up his fists and swing for the throat or the stomach, because he knows from experience that punching someone in the face risks splitting your knuckles on their teeth.

Gortash lives in the Upper City and surrounds himself with luxury because he thinks he deserves better than the poverty that he was born into, but he can't entirely cover up the stain of the Lower City.

The Dark Urge inherited a mansion but chooses to sleep among rats and filth because he thinks it's where a creature like him belongs, but the gore he surrounds himself with cannot entirely hide the Upper City underneath.

I just love the dynamic of the gentleman monster and the monstrous gentleman ok.

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Dead and undead are the same thing right

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Halsin says trans rights 🏳️‍⚧️

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re: the debate over whether or not gale is self aggrandizing because he's insecure, or whether or not he's actually that good of a wizard . . . it's both babes. he's a genuinely talented wizard and he talks it about it all the time because he feels like it's the only thing he has to offer. it's what drew mystra to take an interest in him in the first place, it's what his whole adult life has revolved around, it's all anyone knows him for in waterdeep. if you manage to roll a 30 in balthazar's secret chamber to make the pixie lamp yourself he basically says "i guess you don't need me at all, why am i even here" and sounds like he's going to burst into tears. it's why he says "you love me for the man i am, not my magic" if you romance him; he's not used to being appreciated for anything other than his wizardry. if you pay attention to his dialogue, you'll notice every time he brags about himself it's about his magic/intellect, and if you criticize any other aspect of him, his response is just "you're right 😞" obsessively reminding people of the traits he assumes they'll find valuable because he's insecure about his worth does not mean he isn't genuinely skilled at those things. thanks for coming to my ted talk.

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Astarion: [sneaking around an Absolutist base]

Nameless Cultist: Hey!! You’re not supposed to be in here!!

Astarion: I'm not. Why did you let me in here? You suck!

Nameless Cultist, completely thrown off: I...? Wha-??

Astarion: [stabs them and keeps moving]