eleasis20

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Who knows how much longer I'll lay on the floor

Touch me till I vomit

I'm not scared of god, I'm scared he was gone all along

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Thinking that it’s entirely possible that Astarion had other siblings that didn’t survive Cazadors abuse - those that fell out of favour or were caught by vampire hunters or didn’t get home in time for the sunrise.

If another vampire is the biggest threat to a vampire, and to become a True vampire you must drink the blood of your sire which usually means killing them. But killing the sire gives all their spawn free will..

Then it’s possible that Vampires like Vellioth culled their spawn before ascending their successor, possibly culling them over a series of years.

Cazador may have done something similar when he chose his 7 sacrificial spawn. Anyone who didn’t make the cut died or got sent down to the dungeons - given time Astarion may have even recognised more spawn aside from Sebastian.

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Alien pulling your sleeve to get your attention: and who is this Cunt you all serve

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I feel like Astarion's clothing should always be a little dated. Like he did get to go outside when prisoned regularly because Cazador needs to eat apparently, but it's only in those brief times that he does get out. I assume. How much of the world's passing can you really see by going out a couple times a month maybe, always in the night? And just being focused on survival, completely apathetic, I think Astarion's fashion sense would have long began to lag.

So, what if just for funsies by the time the game begins Astarion's outfit would be considered dated? Like that's what my grampa used to wear (and still does tbh) dated. Vintage vampire.

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mirrored viconia theory? do tell :3

Okay, so a lot of people have been calling Larian's Viconia out as being out-of-character compared to her BG2 characterization.

For context for people that don't know her outside of BG3:

Viconia abandoned Lolth because she was ordered to kill a baby and refused, losing her entire house's favor with the Spider Queen, which is DISASTROUS in Menzoberranzan. Her mom desperately tried to get her to apologize to Lolth, but she refused, and mom was going to have her taken away to be sacrificed until her brother killed her mom to save her. Then she fled the Underdark and turned to Shar.

Said brother got drider'd, btw.

She went to the surface, became a sex slave, slaveowner had a heart attack and everyone thought she killed him, so she fled THAT, went off and managed to get a little homestead for herself in the countryside, had a neighbor that she THOUGHT was a friend, but kept herself hooded from so he wouldn't find out she was a drow.

Friend figured it out anyways and had his sons TORTURE HER AND BURY HER ALIVE.

God's favorite princess poorest little meow meow.

Anyways.

If you don't romance her in BG2, her ending epilogue is this:

"No longer with [main character], Viconia went on to found a cult dedicated to Shar in the city of Waterdeep. One of her followers betrayed her, however, prompting the slaughter of the whole tainted lot. Shar admonished Viconia strongly for this, but she was unrepentant and again wandered the Realms. Viconia was still formidable, and went on to prevent an attempt by the Knights of the Shield to take over Calimport, even worked with Drizzt Do'Urden to save the elven city of Suldanessalar from a Zhentarim plot. For this last act, the elves accepted her, and Queen Ellesime bestowed the highest honors of the Seldarine, an accolade never before given to one of her dark kind. Viconia reportedly bowed without emotion, and then left. Her fate remains unknown."

Not something that would point to her returning to Baldur's Gate, let alone doing so to become the Mother Superior we get to see.

However, in BG3, she says this:

Which is more trustworthy? The word of a Sharran? Or the word-of-god narration of an epilogue?

Then we've got this conversation @anderstrevelyan found:

I want to circle back around to Astarion for a second. We all know the song and dance with Cazador, but Cazador was also in Astarion's place; everything Cazador inflicted on his spawn, his own master, Vellioth, inflicted on him.

You can actually find remnants of Vellioth in Cazador's evil basement. Copied from the bg3 wiki:

Vellioth's first lesson is always to dominate. Allow none to be your equal

When Cazador tried to speak with an old friend, Vellioth drained the friend dry while he watched as punishment.

Vellioth's second lesson is that power comes from solitude. To share with others is to be weak, and to be weak is to fail ... and die.

When Cazador rebelled against Vellioth, he had him impaled for 11 years - for his failure.

Vellioth's third lesson is to act not in haste. A near immortal has time to plan, time to act, only when others will pay the price of action

When Cazador had learned all his lessons, he killed Vellioth in The Rite of Perfect Slaugher while they both laughed.

BG3 has a huge theme of abuse, but most specifically, the cycles of it. So many of its villains took the abuse they endured and inflicted it on others. So many of the "bad" endings are the companions perpetuating that cycle themselves.

Gortash was sold to the Hells, to Raphael. He then sold Karlach.

Cazador was tormented as a spawn. He then tormented his own spawn.

Shadowheart was controlled by a cult. She then becomes the head controller of said cult.

And so on.

Back to Viconia.

I believe that the BG2 epilogue did happen as said. Viconia started a Sharran cult in Waterdeep. They betrayed her, so she slaughtered them. Then she went off and helped Drizzt Do'Urden save a city, and got accolades no drow has ever gotten.

My mirror theory:

Viconia was caught by Sharrans after all this. After she got her "happy ending." No one knows her fate, the epilogue said.

I think, as punishment for leaving her cult behind, Shar sent her faithful after Viconia, took her to the mirror, and molded her back into a loyal pawn, making her forget everything but the bitterness that turned her towards Shar, and fed lies about what really happened in Waterdeep.

Maybe she knows she was mirrored at some point. Maybe she doesn't. But she's starting to slip again, like Shadowheart was—she's disobeying Shar's teachings by going for the artifact, and strikes at Shadowheart in what she sees as a betrayal, which has to ring scarily familiar to her after Waterdeep. And it would put SUCH a tragic layer onto her that she can't escape the cycle herself, just like Orin and Ketheric couldn't, because the gods have made her a pawn in their larger game.

And maybe that's why she used the mirror so much, even when that would have undone any good to turn Shadowheart towards Shar (via @trappedinafantasy37). Mirrors fix what's broken in Shar's eyes. Right?

Anyways, I think that's the direction Larian would have gone if they'd had enough time to flesh out all of Act 3. You can see the bits and pieces of stories they wanted to craft all over that city.

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I was thinking about @michanvalentine ‘s brilliant post about Cazador.

And it made me want to dive a little further into Cazador's obsession for family and children.

His reaction to the poem on the child’s body, combined with his very twisted and ambiguous treatment of Amanita and Victoria, two very young girls, makes me believe that he had a very wicked and perverted attraction to children. And after reading this analysis, I can’t help but connect it to his weird desire to create "a family".

Children are usually seen as the heart of a family, but for his own "family", Cazador has only turned adults into spawns. And among the other 7000, there are only the Gur kids, since Cazador sent his 7 spawns to seduce people. Astarion is pretty clear about it: He had never brought children to Cazador before the kidnapping of the Gur kids.

Why them? We don't know. Maybe for revenge against the monster hunters? In any case, Cazador doesn't seem to treat them differently than the 7000 other souls. They are not part of his "family". On the other hand, he seems to have prepared a special place in his “family” for one specific child : Victoria. And maybe before her, Amanita.

We don’t exactly know what his plans for Victoria were, but I can’t help thinking that whatever he was planning for her was supposed to happen after the Ascension.

After all, she wasn’t supposed to be consumed during the ritual. Now, what Ascended Cazador would have done to Victoria if Dal hadn’t killed her is up to your imagination, but something tells me he wouldn’t have just let her grow up. Something tells me that he would have probably turned her into some kind of “consort”. And the way I understand it, It was first supposed to be Amanita’s role if she had accepted to indulge in the “family rites”. Given her young age, her "Uncle" Cazador seems to have planned a different kind of role for her in his "family".

There's a whole thematic around poetry/art, children and family, turned into something sadistic and gruesome in Cazador's mind. Did he see the boy he once was in that child's corpse?

In any case, that twisted attraction, that wicked sense of aesthetics comes from the corpse of that child. "Here was the artform for him..."

I’m only speculating here, but his obsession for young children, if it makes him even more odious, also seems quite significant in regards to his characterization and his twisted idea of what a family should be… and the place an actual child should have at the core of the family.

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Suddenly inundated with headcanons of Astarion's happy childhood on a fruit farm in Evereska, before his family moved to Baldur's Gate for trade. (I thought about his eye color for a long time. I have so many feelings. I like this sort of sparkly green for now 🥺)

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i miss them sm!!!!

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Note to try this the next time I’m in grymforge! 👀👀

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the stars wept for you that night

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Baldur's Gate Timeline

I like making timelines, and so I made one for BG - mostly BG3 orientated (and colour coded to the companions for that game) but also including the other two games (+DLC) for clarity and funsises.

the above link is to a published doc, so you won't have to dowload anything or even open google docs, have no fear 🙃

Here are some excerpts:

+ bonus calendar I made to help me understand the months

p.s. there are a few headcanons in there, but I sourced as much as I could (mostly through the Wiki as OG sources were hard to pin down, and I thought better to be undersourced than underinformed) so feel free to check.

p.p.s still pending a few quality of life updates (repeats on overly long cells, eg. repeating the name of the age down the cell so it's always visible).

[eleasis20]

Dame Aylin's Timeline makes no sense

round 2 of my nonsense i guess?

So Aylin arrived in Reithwin some time after Melodia Thorm's death (given that she's not mentioned in Melodia's letter to Ketheric). Which is partly what drew her and Isobel into a romance.

Given that Isobel died in 1367 as a young adult, for a half-elf she's likely around her 40s or 50s, so Aylin likely arrives in Reithwin around 1360 - 67.

After Isobel's death Ketheric spirals and returns to worshipping Shar & eventually, with Balthazar, tricks Aylin into a trap. Aylin is then trapped in the Shadowfell and used as both a source of immortality and as a test for Justiciers.

Ketheric "dies" in 1372/3, defeated by Jaheira and Halsin's forces, so Aylin must have been imprisoned already as this was his first known ressurection.

However, this makes no sense.

Aylin is trapped in the Shadowfell, except, according to the Forgotten realms Wiki, the Shadowfell was created by Shar in 1385.

So Aylin is trapped in a realm that doesn't exist yet??

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jaheira and khalid doing the meme

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it's giving princess celestia

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cuddling proves... challenging sometimes.

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karlach... those are some strong feelings you're expressing and i've learned to accept your feelings. we listen and we do not judge.

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I draw this while listening to Ziggy Stardust