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tavqotd about how the crew holds up first thing in the morning

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There was a father’s day TavQotD I did over on bluesky that I wanted to expand over here. I am way late to this one, but I wanted to spend some time on it, because apparently I had things to say.

I didn’t realize there was so much Dad Stuff in the background but several of my Tavs in HatG have it pretty prominently in their characterization.

Long lore post incoming.

CWs for this thread include

death of a parent death of a child domestic abuse mention of CSA

Jack, my bard, lost her dad in her mid teens. He taught her everything she knows about music, and they were super close. Their town was briefly overrun by gnolls. They were repelled, but there were a lot of deaths, Jack's dad among them. His actions that night were heroic, and, sadly, fatal.

He got on the roof of the house to pelt them with Vicious Mockery as a distraction while his family and several others escaped. It was a halfling town. The roof wasn't that high. They were always going to find a way up to him eventually... not much was left.

The town recovered, but was poisoned by bad memories for the family, and they moved to Baldur's Gate shortly after. Jack's brother was too young to really remember their dad or the town. Jack's mom remarried pretty quickly, which young Jack certainly felt some Things about.

Her stepdad is honestly fine, but both parents admit they rushed into it in hindsight. Both were recently widowed with young kids and got together out of a need for support more than anything. Ultimately it's a loving family, but how soon this happened really got to Jack at the time.

Jack as an adult totally understands, and is glad that her mom has someone, but there's still a part of her that feels like she's the only one who really remembers her dad, and that part will always be hurt by it, and a little resentful at how the family seemingly moved on so quickly.

That loss has informed every part of her life since. She took up adventuring in part because home never really felt like home afterward. She's lived in Baldur's Gate long enough to count as a local, but always feels weird saying she's "from" there. She always comes back, but never stays long.

—————

Belaufein as a kid had a string of what could be charitably described as stepfathers, but really just his mother’s boyfriends/parzdiametkis who acknowledged or ignored him to varying extents. He has no idea which/if any of these guys is his actual father, because the answer to that changed based on which ones mom was on speaking terms with at the time.

There were four important ones. Ta’szin was his sister’s dad, and knew this, and knew Belaufein was not his. He fancied himself Felynere’s patron, to whatever degree that’s even a thing for drow of their low status, but was very much insecure about it. He was in and out of their lives for years at a time, but if Ta’szin was in town, Belaufein was sleeping on the street for a while, because Ta’szin would threaten him and no one really cared enough to defend him. Ta’szin was a dick.

Briefly, he had Kaladaghar, who was one of the ones that took a real interest in him. He wasn’t warm, but he was relatively attentive if nothing else. Kal was heavily involved in a very much illegal Vhaeraunan sect. While his interest was in part about increasing their numbers eventually, he did also sincerely believe that becoming involved with them would improve Belaufein’s lot eventually.

He one time took Belaufein, then 9-10 years old, to a midwinter ritual that involved locking them, separately, in a sensory deprivation room basically the size of a coffin for a couple hours to be one with the shadows. Kal found this cleansing. Belaufein found it pretty horrible.

Belaufein was definitely too young for this rite, so it's not clear why Kal brought him out so early. Maybe he recognized that the kid was going to have to grow up fast, and was trying to help him do it gracefully. Maybe he knew his time was short, and it was now or never. Maybe he just sincerely didn’t know shit about children. In any case, it didn’t really stick.

Kal’s attempts at parenting were cut short when House Baenre soldiers kicked down the family’s door looking for him in connection with some vaguely defined heretic activity. He wasn’t there at the time, but the siblings weren’t allowed to even talk about him after this. Belaufein has no idea what became of him, and never saw him again.

Quildan was pretty indifferent to him overall, but that didn’t stop Felynere from almost convincing him to take the boy in. As harsh as it sounds to hand him off like that, this would have been probably the best thing for him if it had worked. Quildan’s family was not a great house by any means, but it was a stable clan with a trade, stalwartly blue-collar compared to the poverty Felynaer and her children were living in.

This went as far as asking the matriarch of Quildan’s family to essentially adopt Belaufein as a grandson. She looked him up and down and decided he wasn’t going to make it as essentially a porter and sailor, making him not worth the investment of raising him. They stopped hearing from Quildan eventually.

The last of these guys that was around while Belaufein was still living at home was Zekoj. Their relationship was a complicated one. Zekoj genuinely believed that he was doing a good thing when he decided “someone needs to toughen this kid up or he is going to actually die” and started trying to teach Belafuein to fight. It did sort of work, so to some extent we can credit him with Belaufein’s continued survival, but all he had ever known in the world was brutality, and Belaufein was terrified of him, even more so than Ta’szin.

Incidentally, Zekoj and Ta’szin 100% did get into a legit fight, which Zekoj won. Training from Zekoj is how Belaufein lost the tooth that he’s missing. He was doing his best with what little he had, but he didn’t really know when to stop, and he had a temper that controlled him more often than he controlled it.

The relationship was more or less open abuse interspersed with the odd moment of awkwardly delivered tenderness. He was doing his best with what little he had, but he didn’t really know when to stop, and he had a temper that controlled him more often than he controlled it. Training from Zekoj is how Belaufein lost the tooth that he’s missing. Once, Belaufein was knocked out in yet another stupid fight that Zekoj had involved him in, and Zekoj carried him home afterward.

When Belaufein was sexually abused the first time by Chaltana, an adult friend of his sister, it was Zekoj who looked after him in the immediate aftermath. The best comfort he could offer was “this happens to every male eventually, you’ll enjoy it more when you’re older,” so he was as ever not doing a fantastic job, but on some level he gave a damn in a way no one else really did.

Zekoj died violently in an incident that may or may not have involved Ta’szin in some way. He lay dead in plain view in the alley behind the house for more than a tenday with a beetle swarm crawling over him before the bones left over eventually disappeared. Edible mushrooms grew on that spot for years afterward—all said, he did a lot for the family in the end.

———

Alakil has a daughter in her sixties, so only almost an adult by elf standards, but old enough that she's on her own adventures now and not dependent on him so much anymore. That's kind of bittersweet for him. He's proud of her, but this is a new era of his life he's not sure what to do with.

He has a strong impulse to look after the party. For some members this is welcome, but others find it super annoying. He doesn't really know how else to be yet. He can take it pretty personally when his attempts at caretaking are rebuffed. He tries to be chill, but it hurts his feelings.

Before his daughter, he had a son who died less than 24 hours after being born. There's nothing he can blame this on beyond "sometimes there are problems." It was just a thing that happened. It's been over a century and it's still one of the most painful things for him.

There's also the fact that Alakil is a trans man who transitioned later in life, so it's only in the last fifty years or so, out of a few centuries, that he's been seen as a father at all. His relationship with that fact is complex, and closely tied to his relationship with his physical body.

Despite that prior tragedy and the kind of tumultuous period surrounding his early transition, Alakil's time as a parent has been pretty normal and stable overall. Imberlar tend to do things communally, so he's had a lot of support, and has had a hand in raising his siblings' kids as well.

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Laws…oh boy.

The initial breakthrough Laws had as a sorcerer pretty much went "I'm ten and I just realized if my shitty father tries to hit me again I can zap him with lightning, and now no one can tell me what to do ever again."

This was several problems rolled into one.

He could, to some extent, protect himself, but no one else. By the time he was about 15 he had gained enough control to really go toe to toe with the old man, and the proudest moment of his life was forcibly evicting him from their house. This was, once again, several problems.

His mother's reaction to this was both relief and resent, because damn that guy was an abusive piece of garbage, but the new situation also put a lot of economic strain on her, and because this was a tiny rural hamlet there wasn't a lot of social support to be had.

Laws had a reputation after this. That one level in storm sorcery was enough to make him the toughest tough guy in the backwater they lived in, and his fucked up relationship with authority, courtesy of his shitty dad, meant he became a kid who couldn't be reined in. Several more problems.

His inclusion in the father's day post takes a turn here, because Laws is actually a father himself. He was in a shotgun marriage when he was 19 years old, which lasted less than a year before falling apart like it was threatening to all along. He hasn't seen his kid since she was a baby.

She's 11 now, and wouldn't know him if she saw him. Under some admittedly extreme external stress, Laws started showing signs that he was going to fall into the same fucked up pattern he had fought to escape. Ex saw the writing on the wall and got out before things could get worse.

The worst thing is, she was right to leave. Part of him knows. He doesn't want to believe that he would have ever treated them the way his father treated him and his mother, and it fortunately never reached that point… but it could have. As of act one he still can't admit that to himself.

A huge part of his personal quest is trying to mend that fence. The romantic relationship is dead forever, but at this point things can at least be civil enough that he can be in his kid's life.

This is, of course, provided the character development sticks.

As ever, there are many problems.

———

As a wrap up to the thread, I will shout out Aubrey Blackiron as well. He has no kids, but he's the party's dad lmao

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if Zav'dos could talk she would be such a grandma lol

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Shapes under fabric experiment that resulted in a restful if not terribly comfortable looking evening for Belaufein. Local rat boy catches a break for once.

I wasn't even going to post these but the little Zav'dos face snuggled up with him on the left put it over the edge.

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35

<-PREV

NEXT -> Coming Soon

I always love it when there's a page like this at the end of stuff. These gags predate most of the comic so far lmao.

REGULAR PAGES RESUME JULY 1

The Issue 2 cover will be sometime either this week or next week, and then I'm taking a break for the rest of June. Happy Pride month, y'all!

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this was another TavQotD over on bluesky

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I realized I never really added a description of the characters for the summary of my comic beyond "a bunch of my Tavs," so here's the gist of what we're dealing with in practice:

Guy who was just trying to do crimes and is furious to realize he has just become a paladin accidentally

The skrunkliest little rat boy of a drow you've ever seen

Disney's first forest gnome princess

Halfling bard making heart eyes at Karlach from approximately knee height (gay)

Dwarf cleric banned from the set of Mythbusters for safety violations

Good Eilistraean dad of Imberlur origin who will make you tea after your big, dramatic character moments

Exactly one (1) competent project manager fighting all the gods at once to make sure we don't game-over because someone lost a Nether Stone in the bottom of the camp chest.

Also one of these people may or may not be The Dark Urge, which surely will not become a huge problem later.

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Welcome!

What is this?

HatG is a Baldur's Gate 3 fan comic where I tossed a whole bunch of my Tavs together into a single huge party. Hilarity ensues.

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Do I need to have played the whole game for this to make sense?

Not really. It helps if you check out the opening cinematic from the beginning of the game [here], but otherwise it should speak for itself for the most part.

Obviously there will be spoilers all over the shop, so if you care about that sort of thing watch out.

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Content Warnings?

About the same as the game, so there are some pretty dead doves in here. Various kinds of abuse, including sexual violence, gore, death, and suicidal ideation are probably the big ones, but by no means the only ones.

There is probably going to be some level of nudity at some point, but I'm on the fence about how actually spicy I'm willing to make it.

Mature rating overall.

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Where should I start?

Here's the cover of Issue 1: Bam.

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What's up with your asks page?

That actually links to a separate but similar looking blog [here]. I want this one to be ONLY comic updates, while that one will have any asks, reblogs, or other extras I might want to post. It just keeps the archive over here cleaner.

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When is the next page going up?

It'll be variable, but you can check my progress [here]. I made myself a little google drive sticker chart to keep track of my update goals. Currently I'm trying to do a panel a day, with some allowances made for the fact that this is not my job, so there should generally be a pretty close estimate as to when the next page will be ready.

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Start of Issue 1

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The prompt was "your tav has been turned into a cat for 24 hours" and damn that really does sum up the entire character very neatly lmao

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Concept: what if I make a drow that isn’t cool? What if he was just a skrunkly little rat boy of a character instead?

As one of my friends phrased it, a drow assassin is going to be cool kind of by definition. Rat Boy is the exception that proves the rule. He ceases to look like a credible threat once he takes his hood and mask off. He still can and will stab you! But look at him though, he needs a hot meal and a nap so bad it might actually be killing him. He’s more scared of you than you are of him, and will lash out because of it. He’s fighting for his life at all times.

This is essentially a cannon fodder soldier for a great house that he’s not truly part of. He’s a guy your party can kill 50 of during an underdark campaign and never really think about it. Professional evil minion. Will do literally anything you tell him to if you yell. Will do it 200% more and give you undying loyalty if you are nice instead.

Permanently tired on an existential basis. Poor self care, cause what’s the point. Kinda grungy as a result. Hair keeps escaping. His proper name (Belaufein) translates to approximately “fire-eyes,” but if that ever was descriptive, then said fire went out long ago.

He’s sick and tired and if you reach toward his food even jokingly he is going to bite you like a wild animal.

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I’m gonna post some lore about the Tavs. I’m not super worried about spoilers for either the game or Host At The Gate so beware of that I guess? This isn’t necessarily a detailed profile, the final version of the story, or even really coherent as a meta, it’s just kinda the quick rant style explanation of the OC.

SO. My guy Laws:

I made him the POV for chapter one bc I needed a character that was gonna Do Stuff. Rat Boy chapters are gonna be stealthy and variable amounts of sad, the Nautloid needed a punchy guy who was going to charge in and touch stuff. He is a decent improviser and is useful as a character for immediate and decisive if kinda impulsive action.

Laws and Rat Boy are basically perfect opposites at the beginning which is fun.

He has hit some stuff and said some swears so far bc Laws is all in for whatever the first thought is that he has. He’s highly reactive to Situations.

[Rat Boy is also reactive but in a different way. Anywho.]

There is some old piece of lore (I think 4e maybe???) where it is tradition for tiefs to get virtue names, I like to take that a step further and do fully puritan names, hence Keep The Laws. Laws just comes from a backwater where everyone has names like that but I wanted to reference it. SO.

Name: Keep The Laws

Background: Criminal

He has heard every version of the joke, haha fuck you.

1 level in storm sorcerer made him the toughest tough guy in a little town somewhere but he isn't holding up well in the rest of the world so far and has gotten legit hurt in every fight I’ve scripted so far because he feels like he can tank and actually just cannot. He's gonna become a sorcadin later by accidentally swearing an oath while essentially cursing the heavens. The actual content of the Oath is something like “I Am Not Going To Let This Shit Keep Happening” and now oops that little sliver of conscience he has that makes him keep charging into situations for people[1] is now ENFORCED and he HATES it.

 [1] bc like Rat Boy on his own would not, for example, save Shadowheart on the Nautloid. Not with Lae’zel yelling at him the whole time. He might poke at it for a second but he’s just too easy to bully, and she is fully Giving Orders at that point. Laws meanwhile is contrary enough to be like “get off my back, frog lady, I’m doing something.”

His quest essentially involves this robbery he did years ago that went really motherfucking sideways and a bunch of people died in it that he very much did not intend to, and he ended up making a run for it with a bunch of marked currency he can’t use for anything without broadcasting “I STOLE THIS” and immediately getting caught. Its been buried in a swamp somewhere for like 10 years while the heat died down on That, he JUST retrieved it and was gonna be looking for a way to make it useable but oops mind flayers. So he enters the party carrying around fucking. Case-breaking Evidence of a Large Crime lol.

Could just be a case of stupid choices multiplying, but it will gradually come out that there were actual reasons for it

The way this came about was

Okay first of all. His life is like the bad ending for a lot of the tief kids at the grove, it was this self fulfilling prophecy of "yeah its only a matter of time before THAT kid graduates to robbing caravans or some shit.”

The sorcery broke through while getting belted for some stupid normal kid shit that shouldn’t have been as big of a deal as the adults around him turned it into and he realized oh wait I am ten and if my shitty father hits me again I can zap him with lightning, and now no one can tell me what to do ever again. Like it was justified initially bc he was defending himself from abuse but it lead to some Behaviors being reinforced that maybe could have been reined in if the situation were less Bad to begin with but the cycle of rule by fear carried on and he turned into kind of a shithead.

So he becomes the local delinquent, just this shitty, angry teenager who steals stuff and gets in fights.

Enter Blessings Be On Thee (Bless).

Girl from the same shitty town, with similarly shitty family, who kinda like. They got together pretty much bc the people she was most scared of were a little scared of him. [DO YOU PERHAPS SEE A PARALLEL WITH A THING IN ONE OF THE CANON ROMANCES?]

TLDR this lead to a shotgun elopement when they were like 18 and Laws goes DONT WORRY I have this excellent plan that will get us out of this shitty town and unfuck our entire situation in one brilliant move.

And if you’ve gotten this far. You have probably spotted. What the brilliant plan was, and how it went down.

Bless was not happy about The Crimes. The reckless homicide and running from the law pretty well tanked the relationship, as one might expect. So she basically went, "I'm taking our kid and getting the hell away from you before you get us all killed"

And he has this stupid thought in his head of like. He has retrieved the gold and now if he can JUST find a way to make it usable, he can wrap up this whole incident and go make amends and everything will finally be okay. and like bud! This relationship is not gonna come back! You don't even want it to! Not even sorta! You're not gonna get that time back!

He can’t admit to his mistakes, he had to FIX IT because he is EXACTLY That Guy. Laws my dude my guy It Cannot Be Fixed. You can maybe. MAYBE. Make things civil enough with your ex wife that your fuckin kid will know who your are the next time you see her. You cannot go back and start over. You can find a way to pick things up from here, but you’re gonna have to actually Do that.

SO.

I Played This Sorcadin.

And I did not expect this to be the character I pursued Astarion with but that is what ended up happening! Whatever, lets see where this goes.

AND THEN.

you know that thing where

Astarion: hey so um. I initially was sleeping with you to manipulate you into helping me? And it kinda got real later but?? Sorry???

COOL. COOL, BRO. IT SURE WOULD BE GREAT IF SOMEONE HAD ACTUALLY WANTED ME AROUND FOR ONCE INSTEAD OF ME JUST BEING A HANDY MEAT SHIELD, THAT SURE WOULD BE A NEAT THING. THIS IS A GREAT THING TO HEAR, THANKS.

Almost nothing could have hurt more! Muahaha, the tasty bits of a fic! When The Trauma makes you do dumb shit that hurts people you care about! It made sense to you at the time and now there are consequences!

It is genuinely not clear to me whether they’re gonna be able to come back from this! It all could have been avoided if either of you had made better choices but the universe conspired to make sure you wouldn't be able to choose anything but this!

Laws wasn’t even his first choice either. He was like Tav #4 after some other shit wasn't working! He made the list fully by hitting hard and being dumb enough to fall for this! And then he was all like “man fuck Cazador for doing all that shit I hate him immediately” and oh god, you remember the first time someone got LEGIT mad on your behalf? The real good “holy shit I am going to murder your father for being a piece of garbage” experience. Just that immediate powerful emotional response in the direction of “fuck you for doing this to someone I care about.” Amazingly cathartic.

And Laws is all about that! One of his well buried good qualities is he does want to protect the people he cares about! And he cares A Lot! He would make a good paladin if he could grow into it! He will go full knight in shining armor for you given the opportunity! Genuinely makes a good paladin if he would just bloody well grow into it.

While they are broken up he is going to almost blow their cover chewing out Araj Oblodra because the nerve of this bitch?!

The Bad Decision Brothers tbh. Not a shred of impulse control to be had anywhere inside of this duo.

Does this post get a proper ending? Lol No

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Some last scribblies from mid lineup project.

- Rat Boy in Act 1 vs Act 3. He cleaned up, got a little healthier, gained some confidence, all wonderful things. Look at my boy thriving.

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- Alakil wearing his robe properly for once instead of oops teehee its falling off my shoulders style.

- Aubrey Thorn + Helm of Smiting. This turned out almost exactly how I pictured it, which is cool. Oath of Vengeance about to come the fuck DOWN on somebody.

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HOLY HELL IT'S DONE

Each chunk has its own post that explains the each of the tavs and the design choices I made for the canon characters, if you're curious about any of these guys.

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5

I did almost nothing but this for like a week + after not drawing for months and it was super worth succumbing to the insanity.

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Now, obviously she is going to stand up and kill that thing in just a second, but there was definitely a moment there when it was like WHOA.

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Just a rogue and a fighter scoping out the path ahead, sneaky guy first because he knows the terrain better, and then oops there actually was a huge problem up ahead for them to find. Fortunately, the rest of the party is still just on the other side of that crevasse, so Rat Boy is coming back with help.

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Lae'zel was not such a fan of Rat Boy at first. His primary survival methods are going unnoticed and running from a fight whenever possible, so she thinks he's kind of a wimp [true] and doesn't see a lot of value in him [unfair].

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Then they actually spent some time in the underdark, and suddenly his jumpiness made a lot of sense. As a scout he's highly specialized to a particular extreme environment. Outside of that environment, his sense of danger can throw some false positives. Within it, he will clock on to legitimate dangers faster than almost any other early warning system you could have. You need a Rat Boy in your party down here.

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Rat Boy is still a profoundly anxious individual, and Lae'zel still isn't the most understanding of that, but they develop some mutual respect after this.

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My favorite parts of this are Wyll turning around in panel two to tell Gale and Karlach to stop getting distracted, Shadowheart doing her best short legs hustle to stay at the front of the pack and looking like she's jogging toward Lae'zel like a kid about to go beat up a bully on the playground, and the bulette's horrible gross pink shark mouth.

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My references for the bulette were a combination of a bulette mini, the game model, a shark with it's mouth open, and a snapping turtle beak. I really like how it turned out. This one is maybe a bit larger than it is in-game, but it sure feels like it's that big when you're fighting it.

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I haven't done a comic in a really long time, but they remain pretty much the most fun thing.