#i was romancing shadowheart but i want to do a karlach romance playthrough sometime

[do-you-know-this-adhd-character]

Do you know this (noncanon) ADHD character?

Evidence below the cut!

Karlach displays distractibility and diminished attention span, squirms and fidgets regularly (having the most exaggerated and fidgety idle animations of all the origin characters, even), is markedly restless and is often "on the go", is talkative, and speaks impulsively, thus displaying symptoms for combined-type ADHD per DSM-5 criteria.

[theiyah]

features I'd like for future bg3 patches:

- manual grouping: [exists!]

sometimes I dont want to move the whole party at once, or split everyone. I would like to have the option to group party members to each other. Like grouping my 2 rogues together because they give each other proximity advantage for sneak attacks, or grouping the melee fighters together, while leading the casters to a save spot where they can attack from above and be save. Something similar is already happening in multiplayer but I would like it for single player aswell (I have been informed this feature already exists and I just didnt know. Very cool)

- scenic spots:

Exactly what it says. I just want spots where I can move the camera more freely and have a good view of something cool or beautiful. It does sound pretty hard to implement though.

- more enemy last words:

I would really like the option to get an additional cutscene or something if I don't kill boss enemies or important npcs in a fight, but instead knock them out in the fight. I was honestly expecting a cutscene after knocking out Gortash or Raphael. Even if it's just them begging for mercy and we have the chance to kill them or to spare them. Banning Raphael from the house of hope and making him aware that you could easily kill him seems more satisfying than just plain killing him and then its over. (Especially because the fight was a bit too easy.) I know this is a lot of effort and the voice actors would have to be up for it aswell so I dont expect much but it would be really cool!

- Zevlor romance.

You heard me.

- illithid memory sharing cutscenes

I'm all for more story cutscenes. We got one for shadowheart and I would absolutely adore seeing other characters backgrounds in visual form. As much as I love the narrators voice I just want to see baby Lae'zel and tiny Wyll. OH young Gale in his mothers kitchen with the bunnies! I have a lot of imagination and visualisation skills, but other people don't and I want them to experience those scenes aswell!

- consequences for using the tadpoles and mindflayer powers

I used the mindflayer tadpole powers ONCE in my entire playthrough. Didn't put any more tadpoles into my head. I was a bit bummed out when I found out there were no consequences for using/not using them. Seems like the final fight should be harder the more tadpoles have made Tav's little pond of a brain their home.

- manual insight and perception checks

This one is not going to happen but I would like to have it anyway. In DnD I'd sometimes ask/get asked "what do I see?/Do I believe them?/Can I use an action to check the room for anything like traps etc before entering?" Some of that is already happening automatically but I would like to have the option to manually trigger it ONCE every scene/location. Not once per character. Just one check, no reroll.

- access companion inventory

this might already be possible but I'd like the option to access the inventory of companions who aren't on my team currently. It would be incredibly helpful for un-/equipping items when a character isnt on your team currently. maybe the solution to this would be items being stored in a chest when the companion isn't in your team. a chest that is bound to their camp, cant be destroyed or moved etc. and once they join your team youll have to reequip them BUT they'll already have all their stuff right there? idk how hard it would be to implement the auto reequip option when you have the companion join your team

- give Karlach a good ending dammit

She deserves to be happy and I know you can go to Avernus with her but you have to leave your love interest behind unless you romances Wyll and that sucks so much ass.

What would you like to see in future patches? What do you think won't ever happen but you'd wish to see anyway?

[lockescoles]

BG3 Tag Game

thank you to @riddlerosehearts for tagging me!! 💖

tagging @rainbowmateria @dekarios @rusya-pics and anyone else who wants to participate! no pressure, just tagging a few mutuals who i've seen post about the game.

Favorite romance: The only one I completed for now is Astarion's and I absolutely adore it hfdhd 🥰 I love the way it progresses, I love how deeply these two come to care for each other. They're just so cute and they have beautiful scenes together! The first time she hugs him and he seems so surprised and wonders why she cares is just gfgd 😢 I want to romance Gale in my new playthrough because I heard his romance is very good too, but I need to resist Astarion for that and I know it'll be hard for me 😂

Favorite class to play: I only did one playthrough for now and I was a rogue, which was very fun! I always love playing as a rogue/assassin whenever I can, it's just so damn badass haha! Now I'm playing a paladin and it already seems very fun too `3

Favorite NPC: Ahhhh it's so hard! I absolutely love Scratch of course, we always stan a good boy! Dammon is also very precious, I love how he wants to help everyone. And Mol is so cute, I really like her too!

Favorite song off the soundtrack: The soundtrack is very hard, it's good to say! The Nightsong Theme is very good, I Want to Live, the music during the fight against Raphael... it's a very, very good ost!!

Tell us a little about your Tav: Her name is Hecate, she's a high elf, noble, rogue/assassin. She has a resting bitch face and she can act like a bad bitch sometimes, but she has a great heart. She's just very good at manipulating the bad guys LOL Her romance is Astarion and her best friend is Shadowheart, but she's also very close to Gale and Karlach.

Something you wish was in the game: More interactions between the companions, especially at the camp! They often comment about each other but they don't have much interactions, and I'm sure it'd be fun :3

Do you create fanworks? Share something with us: I definitively need to do BG3 gifsets! Ngl I had more inspiration and motivation for gifsets when people were reblogging gifsets more 😝

[tragedy-peanut-gallery]

Okay I know like two people liked the one post about my bg3 characters but FUCK IT!! I’m posting them anyways for those two people!!! (And for myself cause these are my enrichment hours tee-hee 🤭)

Got some sweet sweet lore under the cut for em too >:) (a bit of a spoiler alert for the Dark Urge so….. yuh-)

Okay so this first one’s name is Dahlia and she’s from my first ever playthrough of the game. I based her off one of my old dnd characters and she was supposed to be this disney princess-esque character who’s super sweet and polite and charming- only for me to realize that there’s almost no polite options in game 💀 so she’s more neutral good but a bit of a bitch with enough rizz to convince a demon to kts so…. That’s kinda neat, ig. Her whole story is that she’s a runaway noble who abandoned her siblings because she wanted to pursue a career in puppetry instead of being in some stinky betrothal and then got yoinked by the nautiloid so decided that Cool, I’m An Adventurer Now. Of course she’s romancing Karlach cause that’s my wife <3 unfortunately tho I didn’t like what was going on in that playthrough cause again, it was my first time I had no clue what I was doing, so Dahlia has been abandoned in the saves until I have enough strength to restart with her some other time rip sweet princess :(

This second one is Pearl, my current tav playthrough! She’s not a tiefling, believe it or not, I just had a mod that let any race have horns so she’s just a kinda fucked up half elf. Girlie’s chaotic good in the sense that she does the right things sometimes, mostly if she can make a profit while doing it, honestly she was supposed to be a criminal but I messed up during character creation so she’s an acolyte so…. Idk, her story’s that she was on the path of becoming a criminal so her parents sent her off to a temple to straighten her out but she just ended up running off and becoming a cool city bounty hunter (and learning abt religion which is RICH cause she’s a fucking dumbass and int’s her dump stat) Was planning on making her the Superslut run character who sleeps with everyone but she only successfully slept with lae’zel before falling head over heels and simping for wyll, so she’s getting a silly lil fairytale romance, good for her <3

Third one’s Clover, my durge, my sopping wet sad lil rat that I found in the dumpster. She’s just a plain ol human who’s trying her darndest to be a Lawful Good Person™️ but whoopsies! She’s a dark urge person and has to constantly resist her endless bloodlust! Ngl she was a pretty bad person pre-tadpole (which is a given cause…. Bhaalspawn), but ever since she has her memory wiped she’s become convinced that Actually, I Am A Good Paladin! The weird happy feeling she gets when killing people is because she has a strong sense of justice guys, she promises!!! Currently she’s romancing Shadowheart and trying her best to convince her friends to do the Right Thing, and she’s severely fighting violent thoughts every time they point out that she does bad things sometimes *cough* ALFIRA *cough*. It’s okay when she does tho cause she has very big sad eyes and cries and feels guilty after doing a bad thing!!

[faorism]

niche crossover of the day that im too lazy rn to clean up and post to ao3 but may in the future: alec hardison (leverage) plays bg3

hardison balances playtime with hacker hours well, which means he moves through hyperfixations but has learned through working with the crew how to prioritize when there's a friend's life on the line. (there will be no more repeats of his crew sitting on a bomb without him right next to them.) sometimes though his partners lose him for a week after a new release, but now that they live together at least parker can drag him to bed for cuddles (and to sleep) and eliot will kept him fed.

it should go without saying that hardison loves baulder's gate 3. he heard such good things about it during early access from his dnd buddies, but hardison refuses to play EA because he will end up encountering bugs and basically writing the code that the devs will end up doing anyway, so why waste his time.

he plays without any prior knowledge, doesn't even know the characters really except from glimpses at their promo pics. but he's excited. he downloads the game, kisses his partners """goodbye""" for the foreseeable future (as long as a job doesnt spring up, but even then it would be a quick one because eliot sprained his ankle and needed to rest it no matter how much he complained he was good).

he decides to play his chaotic good halfling wizard mendula from two campaigns back - fresh enough in his mind to remember the character, but not too recent so that he wont feel conflicted if the tav storyline doesnt allow for precise oc characterizations. hardison gets super into it, but he doesnt linger on side quests, not yet: he wants to get a feel of the game without mods and follow its arc. hardison doesnt usually romance on a first playthrough, but wyll!!!!! wyll was right there being perfect and beautiful and righteous and black and bi and yeah, hardison had to fan himself off during the dance sequence

his party is wizard tav, shadowheart, wyll, and lae'zel, and barely switches them out. when astarion drains him dry and kills him, hardison is so annoyed he kills astarion. he feels very proud of himself when he sniped wyll's devil karlach without much fuss. then he skips a lot of the companion sidequests because he just wants to rush to the end. he gets married to wyll, then starts right over and plays wyll origin, now able to take his time and understanding the mechanics of the game. he also downloads QOL mods that have already come out for EA, and he has notes about ones he will make if no one else does when he's ready for playthrough #3. he purposefully avoids any major ones (so no Polyam Mod for him, though he does eye it, but he wants to see how multiple romances play himself).

he plays will as accurately as possible, which means engaging heavily with the very companions hardison spent ignoring because wyll? wyll cares (and fuck, hardison loves him for that because yes yes, that's him too!). and......

ah. okay so. maybe hardison shouldn't have ignored the companions so much since they do add a lot to the game! and..... maybe, just maybe, hardison was too hasty killing astarion and karlach the first go around. maybe a lot. he thought they would be companions for evil tavs/origins only! he played kotor and [insert game references here, i dont play games like this usually...], so he thought he knew what was up.

anyway, he is drawn so much to these two out of the novelty of them that he puts them into his party (the fourth spot he switches around, thought once hardison gets him, halsin is a fun mainstay because BEAR. hardison gets up romancing both astarion and karlach (and a little halsin, HALSIN IS SO EASY TO FLIRT WITH, larian WANTS you to fuck him)

and....... okay. okay. maybe romancing them both at the same time was a mistake because. because he loves them both. so much. for very different reasons. hardison feels so deeply and then he's forced to make a decision, and hardison crumples a bit. considers downloading the polyam mod but opts out of it to suffer vanilla game logic to its very end.

when he breaks up with astarion, who plays it so damn cool, hardison had to walk away from the computer to mourn by burying himself in his nearest partner's arms (eliot, this time).

he finishes the game, makes wyll go to avernus with karlach (as he made them do during this tav playthrough) and... thinks about astarion.

hardison had carried over the breakup scene save this whole time, and he decides fuck it, and goes back and tries it the other way this time.

he didnt know karlach will just... die on the pier. wtf. wtf. or wyll will go and there wont be any interaction with astarion?? hardison is Distraught. he downloads the polyam mod and while it doesnt force the issue, he can just feel at the edges that nope, this isnt authentic

finds partner's arms again. parker this time. she asks whats wrong with his make believe people, and he pauses for so long that parker thinks he fell asleep or didnt hear her, and then he quietly says that wyll has a heart big enough for two, a romance can be fairytale when made for three, dont they know there's nothing more beautiful than being held between by both the people you love?

parker kisses his temple as tears legit well in his eyes (and he feels embarrassed) and she yells for eliot for emergency group hugs.

eliot, with hardison squished between his two partners, usually doesnt get involved with hardison's gaming but this time he's just like, okay what is it about these characters that's getting to you like this? and why them together? who are they?

and hardison had already talked about wyll a little because disney prince. so he reiterates some of that with a major case of projection. and then when he turns to talk about the companions, hardison stops. and just.

oh.

a black man who was forced to make impossible desperate choices when he was still a teen, which got him into trouble as a consequence, and then being alone and wandering for years until he ran into a pack of different people come together for a common purpose. trying to be good, the best he could be, and hiding behind a flashy name to hide some of the more raw parts underneath. ravenguard and nana have strikingly similar cheekbones.

then theres a rogue with a deeply traumatic past who can be selfish and kinda insensitive and likes shiny things. a pale thief who likes a little bit of chaos even when running good alignment, and who can't help sticky fingers reaching for unsuspecting belts and also... well, also is a top, through and through. a top who likes to bite. vicious when upset. also... also touch adverse and who at first laughs at sincerity and then basks in it but only once your commitment is fully and well established. the only bit of code hardison wrote as he played his wyll origin was to remove astarion saying dont touch me when you switch to him; hardison flinched every time, hearing the cadence of parker's voice scratching at him when she's triggered.

then, a barbarian who handed from one handler (who ended up being a totalitarian dick) down the road until being owned by the literal devil. body put through hell, scars littering a body that spells strength at a distance. once escaped from the nightmare, only wanted their own perseverance. their own life. wanting so desperately for a touch, to be loved, to be held in a way that didn't spell murder. "heartless" after years of working for, again, literal devils, but so full of life and kindness and (also eliot is more coy about it) a deep sense of joy for the world. kind to children. protective of children. wary of deals too good to be true. willing to die than return to a life they once lived. death feels imminent, despite the protestations of everyone around them. really good bedroom eyes.

so.

yeah.

maybe... maybe

hardison couldnt get the words out to say all of that. all he says is, they're a lot like us. (like with astarion, if hardison spelled out the exact overlaps of the characters.)

the games dumb then, parker says. or at least broken. if the game isnt right, just go fix it?

and hardison has protests about the limits of what is possible within someone else's game and...

parker is like, you made a guy hold up a bank in like, 10 min? on a laptop with spotty internet and without a mouse or any preparation?

and this takes some time between other projects he really has to get to, but.... he does it. codes like a motherfucker and bribes eliot & parker into mocap and also genuinely pays the VAs to voice lines for him. shit hardison does for the love of his ot3:

script out unique banter for karlach and astarion in your party that hints of their attraction to one another

code in an extra option when astarion or karlach confront you for to prompt them to consider their own feelings for the other (different from the current but i want to be with you both! line)

a short nighttime cutscene that with dialogue that implies the three have just finished talking and have agreed to be together. they are all holding hands

include astarion and karlach in each other's act iii scenes (they arent the most chatty, admittedly, but they are there and integrated)

outside of camp, if you three are standing near each other, you can cast a spell that cuts to astarion and karlach kissing either of wyll's checks (this is admittedly somewhat buggy but!

edits out astarion cowering on the pier from the sun, just rushes the three to avernus which hardison doesnt have to edit; just uses astarion origin version for wyll.

nexusmods community begs desperately for him to do this for some other ot3s and he is willing to hear them out for shadowheart/lae'zel/tav, he absolutely refuses to break up karwyllstarion and only offers wyll pov. will not even allow for edits being made for a tav/karlach/astarion mod. he deeply pisses off some people, but overall this mod is downloaded a fuckton as the only truly viable polyam romance option in the game. people start writing fanfic specifically for this one mod and eventually it is just integrated into canon lore that karwyllstarion exists as an option

[vodkacheesefries]

I officially have three saves going and I realized my Tavs accidentally fit the "McDonald's coffee" meme a little too perfectly

Info dump under the cut! Spoilers ahoy, read at ur own risk

Io the Cleric (she/they)

Very practical sort, camp mom even though their girlfriend Shadowheart is the dedicated healer. Carries snacks for everyone.

She gets very upset at first when people default to her choices and sorta view her as the leader and then get mad when she makes a choice they don't like. Doesn't do great with the pressure.

Secretly also only recently learned how to swim but gotta be brave for the girlfriend

Also romancing Halsin because I couldn't in Gritty's playthrough (because they romanced Wyll) but I'm also a sucker for the tall/small trope

But goddamn do both Shadowheart and Halsin make me/Io blush sometimes

Technically broke her oath for her paladin mutliclass because she wouldn't kill the vampire spawn and released them but we had 1000 gold handy so everything's fine, totally didn't send them into their own mini faith crisis

Very much has a Ninth Doctor "Just this once, everybody lives!" moment when she somehow managed to successfully keep all of the Harper's alive at Moonrise. However they do feel deeply guilty for not being able to talk Ketheric down.

Has two moms who love her very much and will be thrilled when she brings home a boyfriend AND a girlfriend

"Gritty" the Druid (they/them)

What's their real name? Who knows! Gritty doesn't care, and likely, doesn't remember.

Being a druid they are frequently actually gritty but if they were able to they'd stay in a hot bath for hours

Favorite wild shape is the spider. Actually quite fond of spiders overall. They think they're misunderstood, sorta like tieflings.

Hooked up with Lae'zel at the tiefling party, but broke it off because Gritty has a chill kinda stoner vibe and Lae'zel's intensity was just a biiit too much for them, though they grow to be best friends. Gritty is super depressed when she leaves to go back to take care of Vlaakith, even tho they are completely supportive.

But boy did they fall head over heels unexpectedly for Wyll

Secretly really relieved he didn't want to take over as duke. They weren't keen on staying in the city.

Like your typical newlywed couple, their honeymoon is going to the Hells to kill a demon 💕

Knox the Rogue (they/he)

I literally just started the Dark Urge origin so I know as much as they do about their past so there's not a whole lot for me to work with outside of how I'm building their personality

Trying their damnedest to resist the urge and squash it down

Sorta sardonic, but it's mostly just to cover up how fuckin scared they are

They're jealous of folks like Karlach who can let their guard down enough to feel jovial, even despite the stress they're all under

Right now feels safest with Astarion, and that will hopefully continue because I neeeeed to do his romance route

Feels really bad about Alfira. They want to want to help people, not to want to hurt them.

[alexissara]

Baldur's Gate 3 - Amazing and Sometimes Awful [Quick Review]

Baldur's Gate 3 is a herculean feat of game development with amazing voice acting work spread across it's many many hours, fantastic character designs, interesting gameplay and more. It also suffers from D&Ds character progression systems, the way the games worlds are set up, and the system of true RNG that it is emulating. Beyond that the game despite it's own beauty is extremally buggy and faces significant late game performance issues. However, the game does some stand out things for queerness that a lot of other RPGs fail at. This game is a mixed bag that might also be game of the year.

With over 122 hours logged into the game I feel fairly confident in my ability to access what I experienced but given how big of an undertaking it is I genuinely think someone else's experience may be different. I chose to not side with either the grove or the goblins and moved onto act 2 without doing that and that may have added to the count of bugs but the fact that was an option means that it isn't "My fault" that I experienced so many bugs on my playthrough. I had party members despawning, quests saying I could do something that I couldn't do because the NPCs were not in the area they were supposed to be, getting ques for things that should have went into act 3 that were missing, in the end of act 3 characters missing from the end bits and at the very end textures just all vanishing for my last few hours.

I didn't really get to experience the romance the game had to offer. I started a fling with Lae'zel which apparently locked me out of most other romances but randomly gave me a Wyll Romance scene, a man I never deployed not once the whole game. I realized playing the game I didn't long rest enough and missed out on my chance to romance Shadow Heart whom I really wanted to romance and even though I broke things off with Lae'zel I could never progress a romance with Shadowheart, Karlache or Minthara. I want to feel this romances and see everything they have to offer but sadly the game denied me this.

The game lacks body diversity and the limited pallet of faces feels too limited in character customization. There is sadly no time in which despite being able to have a trans body I am able to talk to someone about being trans that I found not am I ever able to reject a romantic advance by stating my sexuality or disinterest in a gender. Instead it is taken as read that I am bisexual and that I am rejecting them for them and not because like from the onset they weren't on the table for my desires. I am however, not a bisexual but a lesbian and I would love to be able to say that.

That said this game does make strives to doing something I've not really seen other games do with playsexual characters which is to make them have queer history. I didn't get every characters backstories but I did get backstories for Astrian and for Shadowheart which both imply that previous to our adventures they had mostly been with their own gender. Astrian has a litany of male lovers which he courted and gave to his master, he seems to prefer men and he describes his attraction to them. Meanwhile, Shadowheart seems to have had a girlfriend before her memories were removed, perhaps an ex that was a Transgender Woman who turned to Sharr although this is more subtextual than Astrian's due to her memory loss.

These little bits of queer history make them feel much more lived and their sexualities not feel like it was because I am super special but because they are earnestly queer and I happened to have the kind of personality and body their attracted to. There is also some amount of queer NPCs not tied to our PCs although they are in the minority in a majority heteronormative cast.

The game does make some strives to fix some of the things that are terrible about D&D removing the alignment system allowing for characters to simply exist in a much more complex moral web than a box of 9 check marks for morality lets you do and a toning down of racial abilities which helps lessen D&Ds inherent eugenics. However, it does not escape D&D's racism problem with the game mostly having a lot of the characters be racist good and bad and not having counter examples of races like Goblins being good or like an important good drow or something. The companions "Racial" make up are very classic fantasy squad. 2 Elves, 2 half elves, 3 humans, 1 Drow, 1 Gith. In terms of race as we see it in the real world we got one black character and everyone else is pretty white or are a fantasy skin color and white coded maybe baring Lae'zel but idk what Lae'zel's culture is supposed to represent if there is a real world equivalent. Of course also everyone in the world able bodied and skinny or maybe if they are the right race buff. I haven't seen everyone fuck but it appears to me that everyone is cisgender. The game can't do everything but I certainty wish the game did more. The probably most offensive to me being the promoted and marketed Polyamory simply not existing and came from their own misunderstanding of the word, you can fuck around you at least in my experience can't be in multiple committed romantic relationships. That should be fixed given they marketed the game and I don't even need them to address each other just allow it to happen since it was sold to me on the idea I could kiss multiple girls romantically.

There is a total sense of wonder in doing the game thing in new ways and seeing all the ways you can handle situations and all the different outcomes. From multiple files to save scum stuff to hearing people talk about their runs I've seen tons of different ways even my highly buggy end game which did not run well I could see where if it wasn't having all the running issues I had I would have been blown away by all the options they gave me for the last 3 battles of the game. I still thought it was really cool even when it was bugging out. The game constantly threw fun new things at you, little challenges, great moments of roleplaying where it feels like your choices mattered and you could do something cool to get out of a situation. This game might be the game that has most successfully captured the magic of roleplaying in a video game.

The characters being a stand out factor in this in that I found several of the characters to be highly compelling even one man which if you know me is a massive accomplishment. I found Astrian's plot to be really captivating, I really loved Shadowheart's story, I thought some of the NPC stories were really well done too, as a character focused story teller I loved the character work that went into even characters I wasn't particularly in love with. Everyone feels like they can grow and grow in different ways too for bad or for good and often even pretending a pretty objectively bad choice can be flavored with enough deniability to understand why someone might make that choice as a character and not just like because video game let me choice bad choice. I think the characters stories make up a coherent theme I really wanna dive more into but will be restrained on here. They all deal with control. Everyone is dealing with different levels of someone's strings on them and a different relationship to those strings. How those relationships change and evolve over time is really compelling and how they compare to each other is really great. Overall, I love BG3, I think it might be my favorite game I played so far this year [but I do have a backlog, Stray Gods, En Garde!, Super Lesbian Animal RPG] and one of my favorite games in general. IF not for it's massive file size I think it's a game I'd keep installed all year round and just randomly jump into all the time. For now I am still playing, still enjoying but more than anything I am hoping by the time I beat the game a second time it is a lot smoother. If you enjoyed this kind of One Take review let me know, I wanted to try my Yuri manga format for a video game review because nobody reads my game reviews but I felt like I wanted to talk about the game. So instead of putting the huge amounts of work into the review like I normally do I wanted to just try this. If you did enjoy it one way to let me know is by supporting me on Patreon or Ko-fi or you can just reblog or comment. I might revisit the game with a more in depth review or looks more in depth at how it handles queerness or about the story and other stuff like that.

[avelera]

My BG3 characters can basically be described as dark mirror versions of each other and I cracked up when I noticed how predictable I am.

(Cut for some spoilers)

Play 1: Avelera - Good-guy tiefling warlock/paladin. Wants to save everyone. Romances Gale. Longs for Karlach from afar and wonders what might have been.

Play 2: Tavriel- Drow bard, justifies being “good” as playing the long game acquiring allies, short term niceness = long term power. Romances Astarion. Accidentally ends up making them both into good guys. Regrets having killed Minthara and wonders what might have been.

Play 3: Circe - Dark Mirror to Avelera. Dark Urge tiefling firestarter. All fire spells and fire resistance all the time, baby. Headcanon fire starting as her Dark Urge more than knives. Red dragon lineage sorcerer. Romancing Karlach (but sometimes helplessly charmed by Gale). Doing her best to resist the Urge.

Play 4: Zenobia. Dark Mirror to Circe AND Tavriel. Dark Urge. Drow Rogue. Middle-aged powerhouse, General of Bhaal, full co-conspirator in the original plot, and completely comfortable with her power and murderous urges before she got her mind wiped. Evil playthrough based on a love of smacking those around her with disillusionment with their gods as a twisted form of love. Does all the good guy quests before turning on the Grove. Helps out everyone before turning against them. Revels in confronting Gale with his capacity to choose evil if it means his survival, and Shadowheart and Lae’zel with the apathy and silence of their god, but only after being super supportive of them up to that point. Romanced Astarion but feels no need to disillusion him because he already understands betrayal by higher powers. Oddly makes her a bit protective of him such that when he needed a friend more than a lover, she was sincerely happy to let him go. When Minthara re-emerged she found her true partner in crime, someone who truly understands the betrayal of fallible gods and sees the world the same way she does.

[undead-potatoes]

So! Tell me about Aurora! Did they have a life before the Urge came calling? How has their journey been through the game? Are they romancing anybody or do they have any other significant bonds?

I hope you don't mind, but I decided to split this into two posts. You asked about her journey through the game, and suddenly I had written 1400 words that didn't fit with the rest. So uuh yeah, here's the first and the last question at least!

I'm still a little unsure about her life before the Urge. There's the few "canon" things we're given through bits of dialogue (like murdering their parents as a child), but I honestly don't tend to get too caught up in canon if I want to do something different.

She had a lot of nightmares as a child (thanks dad), and it made her a very skittish and nervous child. In combination with minor Urges which made her say and sometimes do off-putting shit, I imagine she wasn't exactly a social butterfly. Like once she probably bit someone when the Urge overtook her, but bc they were baby urges and she was like 6-years-old it didn't really do much but alienate her.

But I think she was otherwise a good kid, doing her best and loved by her adoptive parents, even if they probably worried about her a lot.

I kinda like the idea of her being slightly older, someone who briefly escaped her heritage due to Bhaal's death before he returned in full, and the Urge became too strong to ignore. To have the Urge hovering around in the background her entire life, but always being able to repress it, until she suddenly couldn't.

Idk there's just something to the tragedy of being so close to escaping your predestined fate, when in reality it was always going to end like that, on way or another. You never truly escaped anything, you simply just delayed the inevitable.

She could still have murdered her family, still living with her adoptive parents and possible siblings, or maybe she had her own family by then. Either way, Bhaal would have wanted them out of the way.

The Urge building and building, sending her flip-flopping between moments of bloodlust and lucidity filled with fear, until the Urge took her away completely.

(Would the Urge even work like that for any of this? Who cares, just gonna do as Larian does, my city now).

TL;DR: I don't even know, it's still stewing in there.

- - -

Though I've watched like every Durge related video on YouTube, I haven't actually played very far in Aurora's playthrough, mostly bc I'm waiting for Larian to stop breaking the game with every new patch 🙈

Meaning I haven't actually had a lot of time with her interacting with the companions and gotten a good feel for where they're at.

Wyll and Shadowheart are possible candidates for some at least surface level boding. Like Wyll's whole "self sacrifice for the good of others" thing, and with Shadowheart they both have been brainwashed and forced into cruelty in service of an evil god.

And Karlach bc I love her and I said so.

Maybe some more interesting dynamics will pop up once I really get in there with her 🤔 (Larian fix your shit already, I want to plaaay)

There's also Jay who's already wrangling every other companion and their problems, so I'm sure he'll have some fingers in her pies too eventually (it's what he does, after all).

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The only solid relationship to have formed in my head as of yet is her romance, and bc I'm as original as a pair of earbuds from AliExpress, she eventually starts a thing with Astarion.

He initially sees her as an easy target, a shy and possibly meek person quite literally removed from the others at camp (a deliberate choice on her part), but it doesn't go quite as he had planned.

I've written a whole post about it that's hanging out in my drafts, but tl;dr: he tries to bite her, but she wakes and angrily sends him away. She later comes to him one night, panicked after the Murder At Camp™, and he (begrudgingly) agrees to help her with the body. This begins this weird partnership where they keep each other's secret, and she lets him drink from her as thanks for helping her.

Their relationship is a bit rocky at first, like they don't hate each other or anything, but there's a fair share of bickering and such. She can be a bit blunt, and is too impatient and exhausted from the urge to deal with his very obvious mind games, tiredly telling him "stop trying to seduce me, you already have what you came for".

When he offers to sleep with her at the party, she thinks "why not". They're already putting each other at risk, so might as well have some fun with it. He might have tried to bed her sooner if she hadn't been so blunt and unapproachable, but it did also give him some time to rethink his strategy. Based on finds with the freecam during his party sex scene, he has set up a lil spot on a blanket, with wine and maybe some food, in an attempt to seem more genuine, which admittedly she does find a little cute.

Ultimately it's all the bits in between, the quiet moments after feeding or sex that gives them an excuse to talk, and they realize they enjoy each other's company a lot more than they first thought. She vibes with him a lot more when he's being genuine, something she sees more of when he's fed and generally less guarded.

She've kept her distance from the others bc of the urge, in fear of either harming someone, or being discovered through the tadpoles somehow. It puts her on edge constantly, but Astarion already knows, and she knows he doesn't judge her for it, so she's more at ease too.

Aurora can become ride or die pretty fast, especially in combination with other intense personality traits (hello devotion), and I think maybe Astarion picks up on that and thinks he can use that to his advantage. At least until he too accidentally catches feelings and becomes pretty ride or die himself lmao. Great job idiot.

Which is also when her more self sacrificing nature goes from something that could be to his advantage, to something that actively upsets him. Stop it! Stop sacrificing yourself for others who probably don't even deserve it! Stop putting yourself in situations that could take you away from me for no good reason.

They're note super lovey-dovey either. Like sure there's romance and tenderness there, but there's also some clash of personalities ("stop being an asshole" "stop trying to be such a bloody hero"). Nothing too bad but there's definitively something for them to work on.

This became the Aurora and Astarion post, sorry about that (not really). I hope to have some better answers to these in the future, my brain is still cooking (unfortunately it's a slowcooker).

[proffbon]

I got seduced by the idea of Companion Tav and I've been bouncing around some ideas for Saphrin (of course), mainly just themes, conflict, romance progression and personal quest, but I'm kinda stuck on the latter because I either can't think up any way to progress it to Act 3 or I write myself into a final choice which leads to Saphrin's perma death. 

And considering the endings for Karlach and Gale, the perma death option wouldn't be something out of the realm of possibilities (although Gale's death ending also ends your fucking game lol), but with Saphrin specifically, there would be no incentive to actually pursue the death route unless you have very specific views on accountability for your actions, redemption and forgiveness (or if you just hate Saphrin and want his ass gone). Basically, his situation is not exactly a lose-lose choice like Karlach's. 

It would work as a third option, like a 'bonus' to the two main ones (kinda like Karlach's mindflayer ending or the aforementioned Gale's explody one), but I just can't come up with this potential second desirable but ultimately 'bad' option.

I'm gonna go into more detail. Read if you're interested for some reason.

Saphrin's main conflict in his personal quest is basically a crisis of faith, although not as heavily accentuated as Shadowheart's one. It's more of a crisis of morality fueled by faith. In short, any kind of divine belief that Saphrin adopted throughout his life he didn't exactly 'choose' himself. It was all more or less compulsory or habitual. Being raised as a Lolthite noble, he worshipped Lolth. Because if he didn't, he would die (in the best case scenario). Once he escaped and was rescued by the Eilistraeean clergy, he started ardently worshipping Eilistraee. Even though his worship of Eilistraee is a more willing one, it's still largely influenced by 1) indebtitude to his rescuers, 2) the feeling of intense guilt he has for torturing and killing Tanrien, a surface elf cleric who, in a way, opened Saphrin's eyes to the unfortunate situation he was living in, gave him enough courage (or rather desperation) to escape and effectively 'saved' him from a society that would most likely destroy him, body and mind.

Sure, Saphrin believes in Eilistraee's doctrines, he especially wants to breach the schism between the surface elves and drow (in large part due to immense respect for Tanrien's fighting spirit and his willingness to reach out to Saphrin, even though he was one of Tanrien's tormentors, in fact this man is one of the main reasons Saphrin decided to be a cleric specifically). Saphrin was, after all, quite soft-hearted for a Lolthite, although he didn't really mind certain parts of drow society or at least didn't question them at the time. Some aspects he even enjoyed, seeing how Saphrin's military service is still a fond memory for him. During the main adventure, he has yet to get rid of all his old habits. Sometimes he resorts to violence a bit too quickly, he also often worries that he might say something most people would consider cruel and not realise it. But I digress. 

The so-called 'crisis of faith' comes in the form of a question: why are you doing all this? Why help the weak and unfortunate? Why get so invested in your companions' personal troubles? In my base bg3 playthrough, it's more or less resolved through internal musings and reflection on his relationship with others (and with his romantic partner in particular).

But in a companion scenario, it's something that, I think, has to be triggered. The best trigger I could come up with is Saphrin meeting someone who used to be close with Tanrien (a friend or a family member), which forces Saphrin to reflect on this event that he was trying to move on from for 11 years since his escape. It would also allow him to gain some new perspectives and insight into the situation from other companions, NPCs and the 'player'. Most likely it would have to ultimately come down to Tanrien, as he is the catalyst of this entire thing. I think quite a big part of it all would be Saphrin thinking which course of action would be right to both honor his faith and Tanrien's memory. 

In theory, it would result in two conclusions:

1) Saphrin decides that the main reason for his faith is penance for what he did to Tanrien and that the ultimate fulfillment of his beliefs would be giving himself up to be killed (and potentially tortured) by the person who lost someone dear to them due to Saphrin's actions. Eilistraee, after all, teaches to strike down evil without hesitation. He should be a villain from Tanrien's perspective, and he certainly is one from Tanrien's confidant's. And he is evil, is he not? Why else would he be so violent, why else would he still say cruel things without thinking, why else would he recall his soldier days with such warmth? Perhaps the reason his goddess reached out to him in the first place would be for Saphrin to reach this exact conclusion - he himself is the evil that needs to be struck down, to make this world better for everyone. It would end with Saphrin vowing that once they deal with the Absolute, he would be at the mercy of Tanrien's friend/family member. This obviously being the aforementioned bad option, because you keep reinforcing Saphrin's guilt and saying that even though Saphrin basically had no real choice but to commit horrible actions in the name of Lolth, even though right now he is acting as a force of good and helping everyone he meets, ultimately his penance is more important and he should be punished for what he did.

2) Saphrin decides that the main reason for his faith is the happiness of the ones he loves and cares about. It may not be about some abstract greater good or divine balance of good and evil, but it's something he wasn't able to repay Tanrien with, because it was too late for him. Saphrin's spiritual fulfillment would be seeing his friends and lover happy, unburdened, loved, as he himself was once deprived of all this prior to meeting his 'savior'. So, in this scenario, Saphrin would come to Tanrien's friend/family member and ask for their forgiveness. He would say that they are not obligated to forgive him or even believe that his guilt is genuine, but the only thing he can't afford right now is give up and die. He wants to show other people in the world that there's someone who cares about them, even if it's only one person. Even if it's just an adventurer passing by on his quest. The greatest feat he can perform in service to Lady Silverhair is showing the same kindness he once received himself. Even if it's something little, because sometimes that little something is enough to save someone's life. And, as it seems, the best way to bring happiness to the lives of his friends and lover, would be to stay with them, love them, be loved by them and, most importantly, allow himself to be happy too.

So, as you can see, there's not a lot of incentive to go the first route unless you actually believe that Saphrin should be punished no matter what, or if you become susceptible to his latent suicidal tendencies and start believing it's something he genuinely wants and needs.

Although, I don't know, maybe I'm a bit blindsided by my obvious love for my own child and there actually would be some demand for the first route, if only for the sake of tragedy or evil roleplay. Maybe it can be made to look like a desirable option through Saphrin continually insisting that it's something he should do. Idk.

The other angle could be Saphrin implying that your incessant attempts to change his mind are in some way an attempt to control him and his decisions. This could even work well for a romance-based conflict, because Saphrin has experience of being with a lover he did not love or want in any way, but who he was too afraid to cross, thus securing the time they were together as one of the most miserable parts of his life.

He probably would also need to distance himself from Eilistraee a bit (I'm thinking of him neglecting to perform his Evensong now and then because he's too ashamed of 'telling' her what's going on with him), because I can't imagine Eilistraee being entirely on board with Saphrin's wack logic. And yeah, it's kinda implied Saphrin is following Eilistraee's dogmas without fully understanding them (as I said before, compulsory faith), mostly because he's so deep in self-flagellation that he doesn't even notice the contradictions. Perhaps because of being raised as a Lolthite, he even subconsciously focuses more on the destructive/restrictive parts of the code and the perceived punishment rather than the overall hopeful messaging.