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Loneliness

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A paladin on a path to redemption

…or a road to damnation?

It was a terrible act of defiance – swearing the oath and attempting to sabotage her own design. She basically sealed her fate to be destroyed. But her sister hated her way too much to just kill – she wanted to unmake the fallen father’s favorite, and in a way she succeeded.

When Maeve awoke, she had nothing but her basic urges and the words of the Oath ringing hollow with anxiety in her mind. And not all of those urges were murderous. Putting bits and pieces together, she managed to paint herself a coherent, but absolutely wrong picture of her fate: she must be a Good Person, a Protector of Life stricken by a terrible curse of unnatural want for blood, fainting and amnesia, which tries to overtake and break her. But she won’t go down easily!

The real circumstances of her condition soon became surfacing to the light, but at this point she already had something she never had before – equal allies, almost even friends, and a clear enemy found in cult of the Absolute, who obviously wanted to control them. And she didn’t want to be controlled.

So she held on to her Oath, followed it as a guiding light, even though everybody around her agreed that she had way too strange and cruel sense of humor for a paladin, and it was very unusual for a “protector of life” to whistle a tune and laugh in battle. Also… you know, that one murder in camp?

She didn’t act of her own accord then, so her Oath stood. But way later in their journey letting out almost a seven thousand vampire spawn broke it. She couldn’t bring herself to order them killed though. Because if she got a second chance, and if she gave her trust to Astarion, with all his hunger for power and blood and his (loveable, but far from kind) personality, what right did she had to deny those innocent people the same simply because of some ‘vampire nature’ that was forced on them?

And so, when the whole ordeal with the Absolute was over, she ventured with Astarion into the Underdark to create at least some semblance of a community for this people. This had… many hurdles – scuttled, distrustful people with hunger for blood and a lot of trauma don’t easily come together.

But that’s a whole another story.

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Don’t mind her, she’s just Urging in the Dark a little

Her name is Maeve, she’s a paladin/bard mix and, yes, as you can see – she’s a dwarf. Did I just introduced my player character like some people introduce their pets on tiktok? Maybe

I mean, she IS kind of a sweet puppy! After a severe brain damage caused her to forget basically everything about herself that is. But she still had that goofy energy before, it didn’t come out of nowhere.

She was very… playful. “…piles of bodies have always been your favorite, master!” and so

Before she met Orin she had very long hair, btw. Sceleritas was the one who kept it untangled and braided it since her foster family became… unavailable. She was so young back then she couldn’t do her hair herself, so he did it, and then she never learned, because why would she? He gave her pretty cool hairstyles and if she happened to soak her hair in blood (which btw happened A LOT) he would wash it clean even when Maeve became an adult. So basically, what happened to her ‘family’ was no mistake, but a happy accident 😊

But when she was called to the Temple, carved the path to the center of her Father’s sanctuary in the blood of his followers and faced Orin there for the first time, she was first met with disbelief and disdain. That soon changed to worship, but still – looking at Orin, who had all those beautiful things in her hair and did it all herself without a butler… It kind of started to dawn on Maeve, that her caretaker, servant and partner in crime might be a little overbearing.

She craved freedom and she thought her freedom was in Bhaal, but was that really so, if she needed help even to get dressed?

Cutting her hair off was the first act of emancipation.

It wouldn’t be her last

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"Can I lift an owlbear?" and "How to lift an owlbear?" - questions that should never be asked before more reasonable ones, like "Should I lift an owlbear?" and "WHY would I lift an owlbear?" yet here we are. Answers with pictures from all of the core companions below. It's actually started with me drawing this (as a gift-card for my friend) with Shadowheart. She’s gentle with animals and fairly strong (compared to male companions in camp) so here we are. But I immediately thought – what about the others?

Karlach is a BIG HUG girl and I adore her for this. Look at the joy! (I wanna be this owlbear…)

Lae’zel probably wouldn’t do it, if asked, but IF she would, she would assert her dominance and make her annoyance known

Wyll is definitely gonna try. Will Wyll succeed? My bet is ‘no’, but he might eventually

Gale isn’t cheating, he’s using his strongest muscle – his brain! Oh, and magic, of course

Astarion tries to use his brain. After all, if magic counts, then owlbear jumping because of you should also count. Come on! Up, you beast! Urgh, why isn’t this working? STOP LOOKING AT ME LIKE THIS AND JUMP FOR THE DAMNED SQUERREL ALREADY!

Bonus: Minthara and Halsin.

And how would you (for an unknown reasons) lift an (extremely friendly) owlbear?

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