#ltb tav deep dives

[lutethebodies]

How do Cannor and Minthara deal with culture shock in their relationship? Like differences in etiquette or general stuff like that?

Tav Deep Dives: Cannor/Minthara Culture Shock

Excellent question, thank you! I’m not a drow lore expert so I’m going from what I know of her in-game personality and my homebrew headcanon of his, and will toss off bulleted observations instead of making this a Full-On-Thesis-Essay about Cannor (my utterly ordinary human swords bard) and the killer-drow-paladin love of his life. This will still probably be long and messy, so thanks also for the indulgence.

Our couple's in-game canon ending was destroying the brain and then leveraging that notoriety to take over the city. They’ve accurately concluded that exploiting all their cumulative alliances is the best way to accomplish this, and to do so tactfully they’re posing as performers to tell their own story (because they hate Volo) and remind everyone what they’ve done. However, as @coolseabird noted in their question, there’s still tons of cultural differences with this couple and honestly I’m not sure how long they’ll last post-game. If they do, it might go like this:

Cannor and Minthara are both mature enough to realize that they've got lots of frictions—little and large—that could derail their relationship. When you’ve lived your life a bit (which at 37+ human years he has, and 200+ elven years she really has), you learn that great gobs of Your Past can be jettisoned at will when no longer relevant. Her story has plenty of this (which you likely already know), but the bard’s background has his share too, on a different scale. With so much of their past selves abandoned, our heroes are free to focus on mutual loyalty, devotion, and common goals—in a very “us against the world” way. He’s her home now, and she’s his purpose.

The primary cultural difference is obviously the surface-human-versus-Underdark-drow mismatch, but there are others. She's noble, he's…sort of, but much less so. She's feared and detested, both prejudicially and justifiably, but he can make friends anywhere. She will almost certainly outlive him. She obsesses over multiple schemes, but he can only focus on one project at a time. She can't shake homesickness, but he's returned to his adopted home city. I imagine they might deal with the day-to-day stuff with whatever (substantial) means they now possess, since money is no object:

Acclimating to Baldur's Gate, in both its old ways and new/rebuilt ways. Cannor's adopted home has changed a lot during his 7-8 year banishment, so rediscovering the city through Minthara's initial experience of it can expose and interrogate aspects of it he's taken for granted, and can help her understand surface culture using the city as a good, bad, or neutral example.

Avoiding danger. He still doesn’t truly understand that people can try to get to her through harming him which—if they finagle their way into a prominent position of leadership—can still happen. Acquiring a dwelling that is well-appointed enough to sate her tastes, but modest enough to avoid the wrong kind of attention (say one that straddles the Upper and Lower City, or even the Wyrmway, which is canonically what she'd choose) is essential. It would delve underground enough to suit her sunless sensibilities, and be secure enough to soothe her paranoia about political retribution or anti-drow prejudice. More practically, she can use this to show him how to appreciate staying in one place. They can each have a corner to retreat to and recharge, to “enjoy their time alone as they enjoy their time together,” as it were.

Resolving the issue of "servants", because as someone who's comfortable with menial tasks like cooking, he won't have it, and as a noble-born she's got lots to learn about self-sufficiency. This might be a big sticking point, but perhaps not an insurmountable one given their maturity and backgrounds (more on the latter below). But at some point, she's gotta put recent lessons in humility to use, and he may appreciate that having someone take care of the basics allows them more time to manage their various plots and plans.

Homesickness: Should she miss her banquets, there's enough gold to import rothé ribs, fungal delicacies and spiced Ulaver wine for special occasions (Astarion’s underdark connections are handy!). Furthermore, learning Drowic and Undercommon is a good educational challenge for him.

Family. Whatever desires Minthara may or may not have for children, let alone a "new dynasty", she understands this situation is not ideal for that. Like Mary Stewart's Uther and Ygraine, Cannor and Minthara are lovers for each other, with not much left over for anyone else—and that means a family is unlikely. But to be sure, they agreed to check in with each other every five years or so. At their age, though, there's only so much time.

Speaking of age, that specter is always there. She is much older chronologically and used to outliving lovers (for different, deadlier reasons), but he fears becoming so feeble and useless as to embarrass her. She has not yet convinced him that embarrassment won’t happen, because deep down she may not be sure of it herself. The best thing they can do about this is appeciate each day with each other—which they've learned to do via the whole defeat-impossible-foes adventure that threw them together in the first place.

Minthara’s already had to give up a good many trappings of her upbringing (let alone the more sociopathic ones of her past), but she’ll always lust for power and control. Luckily for her, Cannor’s past—he’s the bastard son of a long-lost noble mother—is exploitable. Done tenderly and considerately, but done nonetheless. He barely remembers his mother, and she’s realized those hazy memories are more idealized than true, making him miss the idea of someone and not the actual person.

She’s accurately guessed that as long as she can approximate some of that, she can feed that need, but his lack of focus can rankle. His ambitions are too inchoate; he always needs a project but can only handle one at a time. Why not put those charismatic talents to a use beyond self-pitying confessions? He must choose a direction in life, and she needs that to be what they can do together.

Cannor is discovering what living with a noble—even an exiled one—is truly like. They don't always see eye to eye on ambition. He said things during the game that he didn’t mean to get on her good side, because they had more urgent problems. He hoped destroying the brain would keep her from getting in over her head again. Their current shared goal of taking over the city will either unite or break them forever.

Living together and truly knowing someone can grate within the strongest and longest relationships (let alone those with Big Plans). The opposite of love is not hate—it’s apathy—so if it’s not cultivated constantly, passion can curdle into an aggravated hate that only lovers know. Our power couple understands this, so they’re lucky that their relationship is acts-of-service based and realize they both have to work at it every day. If they last, it’ll come down to that. Wish them luck, because they’ll need it.

[lutethebodies]

Tav Deep Dives: Olini/Wyll Friendship

On my Olini "Tav Tuesday" post, @n1ghtmeri asked:

"I was like, 'I like her,' then I saw Evangeline Navarro mentioned and went 'I LIKE HER.' I wonder what is her relationship with Wyll like?"

Good question! I think it's important to answer because it's a relationship that should be obvious based on Olini's backstory, but it's one that I hadn't considered enough when integrating her into the overall BG3 plot (I am not a Wyll expert). Mechanically, the answer is simple: Olini's approval with Wyll maxed at an exceptional 100 in early Act 3 of her solo run (he's an infrequent party member but they talk a lot) but sits at a neutral 14 in my multiplayer-Tav run (where I divided play between four Tavs so approval came at a premium, with romances taking priority, and hers is with Shadowheart).

The mechanical stuff can be fascinating, but it often feels bloodless and easy to metagame, so the less-quantifiable ways to measure relationships can often be more compelling. That's not news to most people who've played this game, but as someone who literally got back into video games after a 30-year layoff thanks to BG3's character relationships, it’s been a fun revelation for me. That goes double for those I haven't considered yet, like this one. The TL;DR is "their relationship is very good, like one of close siblings." Maybe the best way to go about this is addressing each of their overlapping connections.

Ulder Ravengard

Olini and Wyll are connected via his father the Grand Duke, and Ulder's background as the Flaming Fist's leader. Olini's 5e backstory involves investigating her own unit for war crimes against frontier nomads; in BG3 I translated that to her being an ex-Fist who's back in the city to expose her unit commander's war crimes in Chult. She tends to be annoyed by the unwritten rules of social hierarchy (she grew up mid-to-low class), and she has no patience for the subtleties of political power and how it works. Her misadventures with the Flaming Fist destroyed any respect she might have had for military rank, because she's seen how it can be abused.

So she'd soured on the Fist's general corruption anyway, but is perhaps naively convinced that Ulder (who was not born rich and powerful) would quickly right that ship if he hadn't been waylaid in Elturel. Learning about Wyll's complicated relationship with his father might disabuse that notion, but it would definitely strengthen an Olini-Wyll bond. She has a similar rocky past with her drow exile mother (a mage who became incapacitated by her own Weave experiments) and hyper-idealized memories of her long-lost human father (also a ranger).

Mizora

Olini is ambivalent about Wyll's warlock powers. As a ranger she's only a half-caster, and understands the Weave can be dangerously volatile. She's sympathetic to Wyll's situation—protecting the city from a dragon cult's abuse would have been an easy choice for her as well—but surely there were better options than a literal devil's deal. Though maybe not more successful options, which Wyll persuaded her to understand (here's where mechanics come in, i.e. Wyll's high CHA and Olini's high WIS/low INT).

As for Mizora herself, Olini despises her. The cambion's smarmy legalism reeks of hierarchy's sneaky tools of leverage and abuse, which flusters and frustrates Olini. The mental lanceboard of trying to outwit Mizora is utterly beyond Olini's ability, even if she were interested in doing so. She's an experienced ranger, but she's yet to fully appreciate the natures of other planes (though only in BG3; in 5e she's a Horizon Walker), so the fact that Wyll's survived Avernus' fine print to this point is certainly something admirable and worth emulating.

Shadowheart

Our favorite faux-goth princess is the most important reason why Olini and Wyll aren't going to be more than friends. Olini prefers women anyway, so if it's a contest between two attractive people who could help her understand the finer points of subtlety and tact, Wyll's always gonna lose out to Shadowheart. For all that Wyll and Olini have in common, the ranger and cleric have more (and more to learn from each other). That goes beyond whatever a shadow priestess and gloom stalker could talk shop about, too. I mean, two half-elves with nebulous parental issues, plus a shared thing for frontier fauna and urban wildlife? Sorry, Wyll.

Strong Siblings

An Olini-Wyll romance was always gonna be off the table for umpteen reasons. They really are like siblings from different parents. I don't care how clichéd that sounds; clichés exist for a reason, because their truth can be so frequent and common. Meeting and recruiting Wyll at the Grove would have been a relief for Olini well before he revealed whose son he was, because by even that early date the other companions had all rubbed her the wrong way. Sure, Wyll's a bit of a pompous dork at first, but she respected his ideals and the way he behaved when teaching the refugee kids how to defend themselves.

She also handwaved his "hunt the devil" quest as the cost of doing business, especially since he was relatively forthcoming about motivation compared to everyone else (except maybe Lae'zel). However, once Karlach was recruited and that truth unraveled, Olini backed Karlach immediately (another good reason to hate Mizora) and, as awkwardly as she and the tiefling could do so, conspired to set up Wyll and Karlach. The fact that this worked out well for Karlach in the end was an unintented bonus—but who do you think might have inspired Wyll to be a ranger-in-hell Blade of Avernus anyway? Perhaps his ranger sister from another mister.

That's all I've got for now. I hope that answered the question! Thanks again for asking and as always I'm open to more similar Tav-deep-dive prompts.

Whiny Side Note

Would it kill Larian to clean up the way gear clips on itself? I get that it might be a frustrating whack-a-mole task to do every piece, but so is slapdash-photoshopping Olini's scale mail scarf to match the Hood of the Weave every time I want to post a screen shot.