#twill cavander

[bardnuts]

Shadowheart will camp across the river

[bardnuts]

But how long did they think we could walk, we could sing

Before our voices gave out and our limbs gave in

x x

[bardnuts]

Hideous Laughter

continuing my bard propaganda campaign

[bardnuts]

by talos this can't be happening

[bardnuts]

read Sound & Fury

[bardnuts]

[bardnuts]

> You're one thirsty night away from betraying everyone

[bardnuts]

Be Gay, Do Drugs, Hail Satan - Chapter 6 - katabatic - Baldur's Gate (Video Games) [Archive of Our Own]

My fic is not dead my fic is not dead my fic is n

Now you’ve really done it. Crouching in the shadows behind a cracked sarcophagus, you listen to the ambient popping of bones and frantically review your options. 

Abandoning that wretched bard to his fate has probably bought you some time. While the risen undead are devouring Twill, you can creep your way to the exit and escape into the—

—the wilderness, where, finding yourself once more alone and friendless, you will be at the mercy of any hunters Cazador sends your way—

—or else doomed to hideous transformation in some fetid swamp, succumbing to ceremorphosis, tentacles spilling from your beautiful face—

You shudder violently. No. It won’t happen. Across the chamber, Twill cowers against the wall, brandishing his lute as the risen scribes advance on him. You unsling your bow and nock an arrow. You can’t let that fool bard die. He’s your only asset—you just collected him. 

You need him. 

Your arrow punches through vertebrae and propels the scribe into the path of Twill’s lute, resulting in a discordant twang and an explosion of bones. The remaining undead cast about for you, skulls swiveling on their dusty necks, but you’ve already slid across the floor and into the shadow of a broad pillar. Safe. 

Twill takes advantage of their lapsed attention to fling himself into an open tomb. 

Think, you command yourself. You’re going to get out of this alive if it kills you again. You can’t escape the way you came in—even through several layers of stone walls you can hear the muffled explosions. Your best way out of here is a break in the chapel wall, a V-shape of cascading stone, through which you can see slick limestone stalactites and a distant mist of sunlight. 

Unfortunately, five clattering undead stand between you and safety. They’re searching for you in an aimless, meandering fashion, still just a little too mindless to know exactly what they’re looking for. 

You peer around the pillar for a better look. The skeletons are well-armed, for scribes. That one is definitely a wizard. And Twill has risen head and shoulders from his hiding place and is making frantic hand signals at you. This idiot is going to get the both of you killed. 

Then he strums his lute.

In the shadowy recesses at the other end of the chamber, something meows. Bones rattle as the scribes turn to face the noise, and you whip your head around in time to see a spectral feline wave its tail in a languid taunt before it turns and slips into the darkness. What in the—

Wait. Their backs are turned. The path to the doors is clear. This is your chance. 

You break out from behind the pillar with an arrow nocked, draw the string, and fire mid-stride, sliding home into your new cover behind a crumbling sarcophagus as one of the scribes explodes into pieces. By the time the others react, you’re hidden again and a few precious steps closer to escape. With the blood pounding in your ears, you glance toward Twill’s hiding place.

The bard winks at you, wiggles his fingers, and plucks a single bright note. 

Meow. 

The scribes cast about wildly. A kitten leaps off the top of Jergal’s mossy statue and vanishes on impact with the ground.  You draw. You step out of cover. You fire. 

Another one bites the dust. 

You drop back into the shadows and press yourself to the floor as one of the scribes clatters past, only feet away from you. There’s only three of them left. By the gods, that’s almost manageable, so long as you’re both careful. Your deranged bard is turning out to be quite the find, isn’t he? 

With a silent breath, you set down your bow and draw your dagger. It’s a dull blade with a long, sordid history: until quite recently, it was Cazador’s favorite cheese knife. When the scribe passes your hiding place, you surge up and slip the dull edge between two dusty vertebrae. The skeleton collapses.

Dexterity: Critical failure

A cloud of bone dust goes straight up your nose. You double over, coughing uncontrollably, and sag against a pillar. 

There’s no hiding now. The two remaining scribes are charging toward you, both heavily armored and sporting spiked clubs, and although these weapons are rusted halfway to the hells and flaking away before your eyes, the ravages of time has not diminished their ability to transform a humanoid skull into an explosion of brain matter, and in spite of this your unparalleled instinct for self-preservation has been overridden by a fistful of inhaled dust and so you can do nothing, nothing, except watch their charge through streaming eyes,

and then Twill hurls a chunk of rock across the tomb and knocks one of them clear off its feet. The other falters, and you manage, just barely, to dodge its poorly-aimed blow and stumble around the side of the pillar, gasping for breath. 

“Ho, ugly!” 

Your stomach drops to your toes. Twill is standing on a sarcophagus, in full view directly in front of the doors, with one hand resting against his instrument and the other cocking back for another throw. The scribes turn immediately for this easier prey. Twill’s second throw misses by a mile, and now he’s armed only with a lute, and for the second time in as many minutes you resign yourself to finding a new source of protection. 

Twill plays a strange, discordant chord, one-two-three-four. 

MEOW. 

The doors behind him burst open and a wave of spectral cats crests and crashes into the derelict tomb. 

Hundreds of them, cats and kittens, shorthairs and longhairs and tabbies and tressyms and ugly flat-noses with bottlebrush tails and you think you even see a lion in there somewhere, all rising and breaking with the graceful fluidity that only cats and running water possess. Their shapes bleed into one another as Twill’s fingers blur over the neck of his lute, each note steering the tide in a new direction. 

As the undead scribes reel around in the bewildering thrall of this illusion, you manage to scrape your jaw off the floor and hurl your dagger into Twill’s feline crescendo. The knife turns once in the air and decapitates its unfortunate target. The sole remaining scribe finds its objective—you—and takes a single unsteady step.

Sparks play around your fingertips, swelling into flame. You raise your arm.

“Ignis!” 

Your last assailant is thus reduced to a pile of scorched bones and smoldering rags.

Twill strums a moment longer and lets the melody resolve. The flow of ghostly cats drops away like a receding wave from a tidepool. Some linger longer as the music fades away: a litter of kittens tumble across the top of a sarcophagus; a tressym shuffles its wings and licks its bristling shoulders; a scrawny tabby stretches and stalks back into the dark, kicking its hind feet as if to bury a shit. By the time the tomb is silent again, every one of the cats is gone. 

Quick, say something irreverent to distract from your astonishment.

“You know, I quite like cats. It’s nice to see the sentiment returned for once.” 

Twill is sitting on top of the sarcophagus, kicking his feet. “I consider myself a cat person, too.” 

“After a display like that, I would be confused if you didn’t.” You retrieve your bow and your dagger, kicking old bones around nervously as you traverse the chamber. “Now, shall we go? I think we have well and truly exhausted this place and I’ll remind you that we still have found nothing whatsoever with which to pay a healer.” 

Twill points across the tomb. “Secret door.” 

You’d forgotten about the ill-fated button press that started this whole mess. You follow Twill’s gaze to see a new opening in the cracked wall. Secret rooms in ancient tombs are, of course, typically lousy with treasure. You feel a sudden twinge of fondness for the bard: perhaps he does have his priorities in order after all. And he’s more than proven himself useful in a pinch, even if his methods are frankly insane. 

It seems that you are stuck with this unserious fool. 

Well, you had better make the most of it. And ensure his loyalty as quickly as possible, before he inevitably discovers what you are. Already, your thirst is threatening to get the better of you. You’ll need to hunt tonight, even if it means sneaking away from your camp. You wonder: would Twill be receptive to your usual seductions? That’s the simplest way, in your experience, to set an arrangement in stone. He’s not entirely repulsive. You might even find it enjoyable. 

With your next course of action decided, you draw your attention back to the matter at hand. 

“Well now,” you say, rubbing your hands together, “let’s see what we’ve discovered, shall we?” 

You have no way of knowing, at this moment, how much you are about to regret your discovery. 

[bardnuts]

CHAPTER

Ch 19: Twill Receives a Visitor, in which Astarion has a nap

Sound & Fury - Chapter 19 - bardnuts - Baldur's Gate (Video Games) [Archive of Our Own]

(plus a bonus chapter that's just a collection of fic-adjacent doodles i've done so far)

-

Let’s go over this again.

Start with your name.

[bardnuts]

HERE'S A CHAPTER FOR YOU

CHAPTER 21: ASTARION SEES TOO MUCH

Guilty Elf Elated to Rediscover Powers of Breaking and Entering, less elated by immediate consequences of actions

IN WHICH there is a bargain, a ghoul, and a tragically discarded mimosa

[bardnuts]

on Astarion deciding to try and seduce you - if his approval is high, he genuinely likes you. You've known each other for just a few days but this is also the first relationship he's had in more than 200 years that wasn't based solely on fear or deception.

"It was easy ... instinctive." He wants to lock it down, to hold onto it, but he doesn't know why. On the surface he sees you as a point of security--you're providing blood and physical protection. The only way he knows to be able to secure that, to keep from losing it, is to seduce you.

"Seduce you, sleep with you, manipulate your feelings so you'd never turn on me." His intentions here aren't malicious. They're selfish, yes, but there's an earnestness to his selfishness I find refreshing, because he's not really being deceptive or dishonest.

[bardnuts]

adventures in faerun

[bardnuts]

I was listening to Bremen after re-reading the chapter you put it in and was wondering: what does Twill's singing voice sound like? Do you have a particular artist in mind?

OK I have been sitting on this and turning it over in my head all afternoon. On the one hand, Twill is trans, and trans men tend to have a higher/smoother timbre to their singing voice (in my experience). On the other hand, Twill in-game uses Character Voice 5, and I think it really suits him and that's what I imagine when I'm writing him. (Baldur's Gate 3 - Orin's Speech with character voice 5 - The Dark Urge (youtube.com), spoilers for the Dark Urge ending)

And on the other other hand, Twill's transition was magical. He wasn't shooting up testosterone in the Temple of Bhaal--he had his form re-sculpted with divine power and I think his vocal tract would have adjusted accordingly.

Then again, singing voice and speaking voice can differ radically from one another. Twill is an okay bard, but he isn't a musical genius by any means, so his pipes are serviceable but not sensational.

I think he sounds like Johnny Flynn. Sort of rough and folksy.

[bardnuts]

update!

Be Gay, Do Drugs, Hail Satan - Chapter 12 - bardnuts - Baldur's Gate (Video Games) [Archive of Our Own]

~

“Relax,” says Twill. “You’re safe. No one ever suspects a bard.” 

“Don’t make me laugh. You’re not a bard. You’re a homicidal amnesiac with a savior complex.”

“You don’t mean that.”

“Your chords are rancid, and your singing is toneless.”

~

[bardnuts]

its possible im. putting entirely too much effort into this stupid bard

[bardnuts]

idk if we're coming back from this one lads