#he went thought the goblin camp like the Murder Incarnate he is

[maegalkarven]

I like the theme of missed opportunities/chances and the single minor detail what can derail the course of one's life.

It's especially brightly presented in Levi's life.

There was that missed chance in his life when he was six and in the custody of the Flaming Fist. If Duke Ravengard stayed in prison for a night, or took the child with him, Sceleritas would not be able to reach the boy then, and Levi would not go to the Temple of Bhaal.

He would not become Sarevok's ward, but instead would be Wyll's adoptive brother. Both of their lives would go by the different scenarios, Wyll would never make a pact with Mizora, Levi would never become the Chosen of Bhaal.

But because it didn't happen, his life went the way it did. Sceleritas killed the guard and took the child to the temple, Sarevok taught him what it means to be a child of Bhaal, etc, etc.

Another one of these chances is the one what did change Levi's life.

He hasn't always been a druid. When he was around 10 years old, Sarevok took him on a hunt (to kill someone, yeah) to the Lower City. Sarevok chose an old druid as a target. If he hadn't, Levi's entire life would go by the different scenario. But he had.

The druid changed Levi's life profoundly yet by a very small gesture. It created the entire opportunity for Levi to be more than just a bhaalspawn. It made Levi be able to relate to the druids in the Emerald Grove, and Halsin, and Jaheira.

And all because when Levi was killing an old druid, the druid grabbed him with his weak, shaking hand, touched his cheek gently and said:

"You're such a bright young soul, there's so much life in you. Do not let this life die out."

And it made Levi stop on his tracks, bc it was the first time someone he was Actively Killing wasn't crying or screaming or calling him a monster, but so calmly accepting the fate and being...kind to him.

It was strange and it stuck.

The last thing old druid said was: "Plant my bones", and both Sarevok and Leviathan were like "wtf. Druids, amirite?"

But again, because of how Different this was from the way things usually went, Levi did as the druid asked. And something grew out of the bones, a small, weak plant. Laughable thing, really, but it struck some cord in Levi's soul again, and he returned to the druid's home and went through his things, found his diary about the circle of life and the death being just the beginning.

Again, if this druid was a normal, traditional kind of a druid and mentioned Silvanus at least once, it would immediately make Levi retreat from that knowledge. But the druid was the odd kind, the strange kind, and his thoughts resonated with Levi's and his experience with death. In them he found an answer to his own questions about death and the meaning of it, and so he started to practice the rituals from the old man's book.

He learned, piece by piece, to feel the nature, to be the nature. He self-taught himself what it means to be the druid both using his bloody background and old man's notes, and it made him who he ended up being. The blood druid, something new, yet something...not exactly evil. Just a force of nature to be reckoned with.

And this is what made him save the Emerald Grove and kill the goblins instead, because nature he understood, it spoke to him through the death and the blood. And it demanded sacrifice.

And sacrifice he gave.