#like cazador took everything from him and then abused and tortured him for so long

[thranduel]

i'm so proud of him you don't understand

[animentality]

You ever think about how the fandom will go nuts trying to explain how Astarion is ~basically~ an elven child and how he’s absolved of all guilt for everything he’s done by the abuse he endured and yet… on the other hand we also have Gortash, who very literally was a child when sold to the hells and put through who knows what manner of abuse, saw who knows what messed up shit, who has had chances to do better, yes, but has also had to fight to survive and be more than just a beggar on the streets once he escaped. And he’s the totally evil and irredeemable one according to most fans. I’m not trying to woobify him btw, it’s just always interesting how every other character gets defended on the basis of “but cult conditioning/abuse/etc” but Gortash is uniquely the worst man alive. Which he is, but also. Cmon. Astarion has a long list of innocent victims and is a razors edge away from becoming the next cazador in any given play through and yet he’s a perfect uwu angel apparently. This isn’t about saying Gortash isn’t evil, this is about saying he’s not drastically more evil than a lot of other nuanced characters in this game who get defended by the fandom masses.

ANON if I could kiss you, I would commit tax evasion with you.

THIS.

Like I know Gortash is awful, but so is fucking everyone.

Shadowheart can become a Dark Justiciar and do awful things for Shar. Lae'zel and the githyanki are a bunch of pricks who kill their own kids for showing weakness and kill innocent people all the goddamn time. Minthara obviously slaughters a bunch of innocent refugees, if you allow her to, and as a drow, probably committed a cavalcade of evil actions.

Gale's blind ambition could've nuked a fucking town. He might not have intended to become a living bomb, but he did, and by running around Faerun, he WAS putting literally everyone within like five miles of him in mortal danger. Wyll would've killed Karlach if you weren't there, and he expresses this horror, because he has definitely killed innocents for Mizora before.

Astarion would've gladly become Cazador 2.0, if you didn't stop him. He might've started out ok, but he would descend into that same evil, using you until there was nothing left of you, and treating others the way he was treated, because he sees himself as a god now.

Even fucking Karlach...who is a sweetie, and god I love her...well fuck, didn't Gortash accuse her of knowing just how shady his shit was? She was a desperate kid, yes, and he definitely took advantage of her, but he explicitly calls her out for working for him, even though she knew he was shady (if not a Banite). Plus she was his bodyguard for years. As if your bodyguard wouldn't know you were being a peace of shit?

The WHOLE POINT of Baldur's Gate 3 is that you and your companions are defined by your choices.

The option EXISTS to SAVE THESE PEOPLE.

THERE IS NO OPTION TO SAVE GORTASH.

The game gives you the option of seeing him die one way or the other way.

I'm just SAYING it's not totally fair to act as if Gortash is truly irredeemable, when out of all the villains, he at least had an idea of a better world, even if it was still self serving and frankly awful.

He was slightly better than the Dark Urge, and they GET the choice of redeeming themselves.

He never does. And maybe he wouldn't have taken it, but that's really not the point.

You hit the nail on the head, bud.

Gortash is evil, no doubt, this is true, he is not just a victim of circumstances, he made every wrong decision he could've made...

But the fandom has no problem woobifying Astarion even though that scene with Sebastian is fucking soul wrenching.

They raise their hackles at Gortash, as though he's been alive for 200 years and lured thousands to their deaths/vampirism, and they forget that Lae'zel is absolutely awful, and approves every time you murder children in front of her.

And Shadowheart spent her childhood learning to torture people.

You can say well their crimes aren't equivalent- and yes, that is true, HOWEVER.

Remember that you have met them when they were powerless.

If given power...if they had never been mindcontrolled by parasites...well shit, they might've fucking killed you.

They might've become tyrants themselves. I know it's purely conjecture on my part, I just kinda...I don't even necessarily want a redeemed Gortash storyline.

I'm fine with him just being a villain!

I just also have a working brain that doesn't understand the reflexive urge to say, he couldn't redeem himself if he tried.

I think, in this fictional world of course, that redemption should be possible. I think if they are honestly trying, and they repay the debts they incurred, then it might be justified.

But we didn't get that choice, and neither did he, and honestly, with what the game presents...I can whole heartedly say no, he wouldn't have redeemed himself. Even if he could, he would not have done it.

But the possibility does exist.

Trying to deny it makes you look like a hypocrite as you insist Ascended Astarion is still an uwu baby.

Like nah, sweetie. Good luck with that.

[snowfolly]

Nothing Can Make Up For That

Astarion is released from his tomb. The year of silence is finally over but he struggles to process what has happened, what is happening and what horrors are yet to come.

One shot | 1,863 words | No Beta

CW: torture/abuse/neglect/slavery/implied sex slavery/confinement/buried alive/blood/dark/bleak/self harm

Read on ao3

It's pretty sad- read under the cut

For a time Astarion had screamed ceaselessly in the perpetual darkness, scratching his fingers to tatters, to the bones. They healed in a short time, as they always did, but he would run them ragged again and again.

The pain was excruciating, but at least he felt something when he clawed at the unyielding stone sitting right above his face, weeping and wailing curses at the gods for his fate.

But it had been quite a while since he had uttered a single word. Had been forever since he had torn his fingers to shreds.

The vampire spawn had lived in a fugue state, more or less, for a time he could no longer measure. It could have been months, years in the darkness — could have been days, even, but he wouldn’t know the difference. It didn’t matter anymore, did it?

His mind was distant and blank, or as far away and inactive as it could be as his body screamed for blood, begging for the movement that he simply could not grant it.

Astarion was filthy in a way only an undead creature neglected for an extended period could be, dried out and yet oily, smelling musty and of sickly sweet rot, but he wouldn’t notice these unpleasantries. His mind is numb to all but pain and starvation…. and sound.

Rhythmic tapping, far away but growing louder, brought his poorly slumbering consciousness to the present. The spawn opened his eyes uselessly in the dark, gritted his teeth, and listened intently, realizing that the sound was of multiple footsteps, echoing against the endless stone walls of Cazadors estate. They were approaching the tomb, approaching him.

Astarion gasped as the footsteps halted before his prison and he shuddered at the sound of the stone lid grating over the lip of the tomb, the noise deafening to ears that had only known silence for so very long. The dark figures that had released him said nothing and walked away, and Astarion was so traumatized that he continued to lie still, shaking like a leaf.

He stared above in shock at a ceiling where a lid had covered the world for what felt like an eternity, his starved eyes detected the faintest grays that indicated light.

When the echoing footsteps on the stone floor subsided for an indeterminate amount of time he tried to sit up, but his unused muscles — although unable to atrophy — were so stiff that it was excruciating. He managed shakily to get an arm up on the seal of the tomb, teeth bared in agony, bone-dry red eyes wide, his downy white curls, grown long, hung mussed up and wild.

The spawn didn't need to breathe but he instinctively inhaled air raggedly like a man saved from drowning as his mind, so atrophied from the silence, could barely process what was happening, what had happened, what would come.

Astarion’s mind could barely wrap itself around the fact that he had been released. He could do nothing but cry softly into his threadbare shirtsleeve still propped up on the edge of the tomb, but no tears came from his blood-starved eyes. His body continued to tremble from the shock of the sheer amount of space that he had been denied for so long, his crying turned to wailing, and his body heaved from the sobs as his shattered mind took its time to process the situation.

He was freed from the tomb, but he was far from free. He felt no joy. He thought that he could never feel a thing such a joy ever again.

Astarion should have been furious at the world, ready to tear it and the gods to pieces for this tragedy, for this unjust torture inflicted upon him. But the anger would not come.

He was empty. Gods he was so fucking empty. Drained of everything but unfathomable starvation, excruciating pain and the numbness that his mind has created to save his sanity, a constant state of dissociation to spirit him away from the horrors of his waking life. He had been denied every emotion but sorrow.

Astarion felt the agony of complete and utter sorrow bearing down on him like an incomprehensible weight, crushing him as he continued to shudder and gasp for the damp air that his dead lungs made no use of. He despaired the life he had lost, for the parts of his memories and mind that were gone forever. He mourned for all the time that had been stolen from him and the time that would forcibly be taken from him forever.

Forever. Endlessly.

He wished that he had just died so long ago, beaten to death in that dark alley.

The spawn’s pitiful weeping was eventually interrupted by more footsteps, that of a dark figure, one that he could barely make out with his atrophied eyes. He didn't need to see who it was though. He already knew.

Cazador lurked at a distance, standing silent before his spawn in the darkness for some time as he watched Astarion cry and struggle before casting a fire cantrip to light an oil lantern. The sudden light caused his spawn to cry out once again, the flame blinding and excruciating to eyes accustomed to endless darkness.

Cazador ‘ tsks ’, laughing at Astarion’s pained and dejected form before taking a small pouch from his cloak and throwing it at his pitiful creation. It hit the spawn gracelessly in his blinded face before it fell to the floor with a gross thud.

“Dinner is served, dear Astarion,” the vampire lord smirked wickedly, relishing in his spawn’s anguish, “And how unlike you, little star, to let yourself go like this. You do need to get it together. All that I’ve done for you, and yet you lie about idly for an entire year.”

Cazador sighed derisively, savoring the view of Astarion who struggled to regain his mind and toiled to speak. The vampire lord laughed heartily, for it was such a treat to see his favorite spawn suffering so, once again.

“What a shameful, slovenly creature I have made, am I correct?” Cazador purred and was delighted as Astarion nodded pitifully, “and don’t forget to make yourself presentable, boy. You’ve got lambs to bring to slaughter, and I presume you will not fail to deliver them to me this time?”

Astarion felt like retching, dry heaving of course, as he was nothing but a dried husk after a year without blood, and he knew that he must quickly answer the vampire lord. He managed a croak with a mouth uncustomed to speech, dry as sand, “ Yes master. ”

“Enjoy your dinner, clean up your filth and then look alive! You’ve work to do tonight!” Cazador laughed once again, the sound like broken glass to Astarion, and he watched blearily as his master turned to leave, giving his spawn a dismissive wave before striding down the long, dark hall.

The spawn could barely wait until the sound of his master’s footsteps were out of earshot to cry out as he retched, his gnawing, unfathomable starvation sickening and overwhelming him at the mouth-watering stench of decomposing vermin. He would finally be satiated by the wretched contents of a bag that lay on the ground. Gods.

Astarion managed to heave himself up to step out of the tomb, his stiff legs gave out and caused him to fall to the ground in a crumpled pile during the process. He gasped, his body screaming in agony as he feebly crawled on his arms toward the bag that contained two foul, bloated dead rats. In that moment they seemed the rarest delicacy in all the world to the severely neglected vampire spawn.

And so Astarion ate, devoured, choked up on the hair and coagulated blood that he forced violently from the creatures as he tore into them like an animal starved. After he’d bled them dry he shakily pulled hair from his teeth and gods, he hated himself. He hated this, hated Cazador, hated the entire fucking world.

He sat up weakly as his veins filled sluggishly with the rancid blood of the vermin, giving him enough energy to move his body once more. He was finally able to stand, to stretch, to walk.

The spawn was still starving, still in shock and pain, but he found anger and fear steadily pushing out the numbness. He had work to do.

Astarion walked unsteadily, like a man in a horrible dream as he made his way to the dank washroom to do as Cazador demanded of him. He scrubbed a year's worth of undead grime from his skin, he washed the rot from his mouth, and he combed the wet, tangled mess that his hair had grown into.

He finally dressed in fresh clothes that had been laid out for him, well, they were some of his old clothes but at least not the rags he had wallowed in for a year. He stood in front of the floor length mirror, longing to be able to see himself, desperately hoping that he had made himself presentable enough. Attractive — at least to the damned drunks.

The pale elf ignored his siblings as he passed them in the halls, they were saying words to him, about him, but he could only hear distant sounds, no discernible language. He couldn't comprehend what they were saying because his mind was still shattered, but he knew that he had to hunt, had to not fuck up again and land himself in another year of pure shit. He knew that he must do everything in his power to avoid the most horrendous solitary confinement conceivable.

So Astarion quickly remembered how to smile again, remembered how to wear a mask and be pleasant, be charming, be fake . He had to do these things because he had to lure the stupid godsdamned lambs to a night of practiced pleasure before their slaughter.

Astarion stepped out into the damp chill of the night, startling slightly at the light rain that pattered against his face, and he glanced up into the darkness to see clouds so thick that they blocked any glimpse at the stars and moon. Another lid to block his view.

The pale elf pulled his hood up to save his hair from ruining as he crept into the night once again, picking right back up where he had left off a year before, doing as he had done for over a hundred years prior. He didn’t even have to recall the dark alleys or where the seedy taverns and flophouses were, they were ingrained into his mind, would always be. He could never forget them, or how much he hated them. Gods how he hated them all.

Astarion would let everyone in the entire fucking city die to not have to spend another year lying in that tomb. He would lure and bed every peasant in Baldur’s Gate so that Cazador could make the streets run red for all eternity if only to save himself from the horror of silence once again.

Nothing in the world could make up for the time that he had spent in that tomb. Nothing.