#which is completely on brand for my DUrge

[sword-and-lance]

y'know I really do like how nice the "red dragon" dragon bloodline sorcerer stuff looks on Dae

[papastarion]

Having set up a pretty heavy amount of framework for my own postcanon before the epilogue came out made the epilogue absolutely, ironically hilarious.

Shadowheart makes a comment about Durge (Thea) being more substantial. Which, in game, is just referencing the fact that they’re not fighting for their lives day by day and living on the bare minimum anymore. But in my personal canon? Thea’s already a few months into her pregnancy, noticeably so. It’s completely on brand for Shadowheart to see her friend pregnant and make a little lighthearted joke about lifestyle changes/physical changes.

And then Jaheira. It’s so funny to imagine her talking to a visibly pregnant Durge/Tav as if the prospect of them having children is still hypothetical, garnished with the excellently cheeky comeback of “they won’t have anyone to duel if we only have one.” Especially when Thea and Astarion don’t have just one.

Meanwhile Astarion (father of said child) is ten feet away playing five finger fillet to impress their friends.

All this to say: Thank you, Larian, for canon that supports an array of headcanons.

[bladesmitten]

Not sure if anyone has mentioned this re: the Wyll feedback post but I imagine the main issue with using his old EA dialogue assets is that the majority of them are from when they still had Wyll's old VA who couldn't come back for the rework. So it's not like they could just pull it out and plop it back in like they could with someone like...Karlach who was also completed late in EA, but was always Samantha Beart.

Yeah the existing script might work, but actually adding it back to the game it would still involve Theo having to come in and record the majority of them as the Wyll we now know. And assuming he's not going to perfectly mimic the original reading just in his voice, the devs would need to adjust the animations so they fit Theo's reading of it. And imo, at that point you might as well just make new dialogue/animations to best suit his current form rather than trying to build off of what's leftover from before.

I think it's a matter of - "this should've been done in the first place" - considering we have stuff like the Wyll/Lae'zel flirt banter that was also in Early Access. Theo Solomon re-recorded those lines for full release, only for Larian to remove it later. (Presumably because it doesn't fit his current romance route, but I digress.)

A lot of his EA dialogue still carried over to release, which means lines were deliberately picked to be re-recorded. However, this work seems inconsistent because we still have aspects of EA Wyll that are in release.

A glaring example of this is Wyll approving of Sazza getting executed. This was left over from when he still had a grudge on goblins in Early Access; now, he doesn't. Why would current Wyll approve of a defenseless prisoner getting killed?

My point with taking lines from EA Wyll for current Wyll is that there are lines that still fit him. Current Wyll has funny lines - but those lines are locked behind specific trigger conditions that aren't always easily encountered. Like his line: "It's like I always sometimes say..." - that line is only triggered if 1) the ogres in Act 1 are dead, 2) the player has Lump's War Horn, 3) Wyll specifically tries to blow the horn (which would be unlikely unless the player is doing a Wyll origin, or they had companion Wyll do it - more likely, it's a Tav/Durge doing this action.)

EA Wyll, on the other hand, had his funny lines in his regular dialogue ("spill the whole jug", "there's a saying I just made up"). In this case, are the funny lines that current Wyll have supposed to be there? If they are, why did they remove his other funny lines from Early Access, especially if it still fits his current character?

More to the point, are there still lines from current Wyll that aren't supposed to be there? How much effort was actually put into rewriting his character if there's still stuff from Early Access that don't fit him now (ie, the Sazza approval)?

In the end, I agree that we're probably better off to have brand new written stuff for Wyll, but I can't ignore the sloppy work that was done in rewriting him if he still has apparently leftover dialogue from EA that may be in danger of getting removed. And if they can't even do this properly, it doesn't bode well for any new content for Wyll.

As an aside: I think Karlach's VA wasn't always Samantha Beart, at least in the first few versions of it. She also did not look the same way she does now.

[blackjackkent]

Metagaming slightly here - Rakha would definitely be super aware of the magical presence at the Arcane Tower and would want to make a beeline for it (and it is technically next in the clockwise cycle we're doing), but as I happen to know that it's basically impossible to maneuver the tower without the sussur blooms, we're going to bypass it and come back after we get up there.

So next up instead is the duergar village!

Another place full of death. Rakha's eyes skim over the small settlement, trying to glean what information she can. It's a ragged and makeshift place, made of lashed-together wood and what seem to be bits of bone. An enormous creature's skeleton sits in the water against which the village is placed. The floor at the center is littered with dead bodies and pools of blood.

The bodies are short; some appear to be gnomes like the one they rescued from the windmill above ground. Others are stockier - dwarves, with the same deep blue-grey skin. It's difficult to tell which group was the aggressor - or if they both fought against some other attacker. The huge lizard creature they killed earlier, perhaps?

There's movement on the upper level. Some survivors of whatever battle took place here. Cautiously, Rakha and the others begin to make their way into the open - and (to both their surprise and mine), they're interrupted.

"Too loud, sun-scum." There's a dwarf perched at the edge of one of the upper catwalks. He squints down at her balefully. "Heard you stumbling. Can hear you blinking. Noise gets you eaten down here. Reckon I'll hush you, before something hungry comes along."

Narrator: His fist grips an axe. On his gnarled, grey skin, you see the Absolute's brand.

Rakha stiffens. Absolutists here-- the first they've seen belowground. The cult's reach extends far. Perhaps not surprising, given they are looking for an exit towards the cult's headquarters.

Kill, says the dark urge in her head. For the moment, she is able to ignore it; the beast's reaction to the kuo-toa below still has her tremendously unsettled. Besides... this is an opportunity. They need to know where the cult goes to the surface. This man can tell them.

(A/N: Several options for how to talk to this guy. The Durge option is, "I'm a rabid dirty dog, and I BITE," which is sure something. XD )

Wordlessly she lifts one palm, showing the mark Gut seared into her skin.

[BRANDED] Show him your brand.

"Huh," the man sneers. "Burning those into just anyone now, are they?" He shrugs. "No harm. Every army needs grunts to run in and die first. Even the Absolute's." He leans forward a little, his eyes narrowing. "But spoil my hunt and you're dead."

All right... now he's starting to irritate her, which unfortunately doesn't change her need for his information. "What are you doing here?" she asks between her teeth.

"Told you," the man says coolly. "Hunting. Slave ran away. Took Sergeant Thrinn's boots. Got to kill the slave and fetch back the leather, or the bosses in Moonrise'll have Thrinn's hide."

(A/N: Oh, this is so much fun. I need to do everything out of my previous order like this. I never saw this cutscene at all before and while none of this is new information, it sets it all up from a completely different angle. I love this game.

Also one of the dialogue options here is, "Would you really kill someone for a pair of boots?", which in the context of a Durge playthrough is hilarious.)

Slavers. Karlach explained this concept to her some time ago, in the context of her conscription into the Hells. Forcing work without choice, without pay, without release. Ownership. Karlach left no doubt of her opinion of such people, so Rakha has no interest in helping this man.

So kill... whispers the beast. Climb and grab him by the collar and hurl him down, down, down to snap his neck against the stone...

She gives a sharp shake of her head. "I'm not helping a slave-catcher," she says tightly.

The man snorts. "A bleeding heart, are you? Reckon I'll just roast and eat it."

And then all her restraint is for nothing, because he attacks them anyway.

----

This is my new favorite fight that I have ever experienced in this game, because Gekh Coal here jumped up next to his buddy Lurgan on the next level up, and then Shadowheart cast a spiritual weapon next to them, and then Lurgan, in an attempt to attack the spiritual weapon, cast Glyph of Warding directly under himself and killed both himself and Gekh in the process.

Incredible. 10/10, no notes.

[masterskywalkers]

Questions for Tavanna [Part One]

As a little celebration for finishing the first of Tavanna's stories [Rising Dawn, which you can find an AO3 link for on the linked post], I figured it's about time I start introducing my girl in better detail here on my blog. Expect major spoilers for a Dark Urge run.

These are taken from @raysoffrost's Dark Urge questions, which you can find here. Thanks so much for putting these resources together for our Durge's and Tav's!

1. What circumstances led to your Dark Urge becoming their Class/Subclass?

Tavanna is a Warlock, and I like to imagine that a lot of that is in part to her wanting her strength back after what Orin did to her.

There's a moment in Act 2 where you can speak with Kressa about some of what happened to the dark urge player character prior to the games beginning, and for Tavanna I think that a lot of what Kressa put her would have been a brand of hell that Tavanna wouldn't have known how to deal with. Her memory would have been gone after Orin had attacked her and inserted the tadpole into her brain, so Tavanna didn't know who or what she was. She would have - probably for the first time in her life - known fear as Kressa worked on her, in the rare instances she got a moment to breathe she would have begged and prayed to be saved.

That's when she made a pact with her patron, and they gave her the power she needed to survive and fight back. Her patron would eventually lead her to pretend to play dumb for Kressa, enough so that Kressa got bored and put Tavanna in a pod to eventually go through her ceremorphosis.

2. Did your Dark Urge have any romantic and/or sexual relationships prior to their illithid adventure? If yes, who was it with and what was it like? If no, how did they feel about being single?

When she was one of the main pieces of the Absolute plot, Tavanna was involved in a sexual relationship with Gortash.

For Tavanna, everything involving Gortash was just a means to her end goals. She didn't care for him or the alliance they had, but she wasn't as insane as Orin and knew that she had to play the part. She had to save him from the House of Hope, because Gortash knew where the Crown was. She had to keep him around for as long as he was useful, but once he fulfilled all she needed him for she had always intended to give Gortash over as an offering to Bhaal.

She didn't expect Gortash to actually end up liking and respecting her as much as he did, but Tavanna used that connection for her benefit. Gortash had a weakness, and she was able to exploit it - to a certain degree. Sex was nothing but another weapon of coercion she could use to keep him wrapped around her finger. Tavanna didn't love or really feel anything for him, because as Bhaal's chosen any emotions or feelings of those sorts were completely alien to her.

3. What would your Dark Urge consider to be their greatest skill? Is this accurate?

Her persuasion.

Tavanna post-nautiloid crash had a way of being able to convince or coerce rather easily. At times she was oddly intimidating to her enemies - which was always a little bit of an odd mystery to her companions at the start of their adventures since she seemed like such a small little thing.

She also had a rare compassion, a way to connect with her companions when it came to difficult topics and discussions. Her friends found that Tavanna seemed to know just what to say to make things feel ... right. Even the likes of Karlach - who faces her life ending - couldn't help but find a sense of comfort just by sitting with Tavanna and simply talking with one another about anything and everything.

4. What would your Dark Urge consider to be their greatest flaw? Is this accurate?

Honestly, the urges.

Tavanna hates that she doesn't have control over herself sometimes. At first she's fine at suppressing it - as painful and difficult as it can be - but Alfira's death is a turning point for her in realizing that there is something seriously wrong with her. She spends so much time pushing that part of herself away, but it becomes significantly harder to the point that it becomes a detriment to her at times. She wishes she could just rip that part of her away and leave it alone, but alas, she can't for quite some time.

5. What opinion does your Dark Urge have about the Gods?

Tavanna is a little indifferent to them.

Before, when she was fully Bhaal's proudest creation, Tavanna worshipped him. But afterward, she finds that anything connected to him and his cult terrifies her.

A lot of the Gods Tavanna comes face to face with on her adventures leave a rotten taste in her mouth. She dislikes Shar and Mystra, and the Dead Three are undeserving of any worship. When she at first thinks the Absolute could be Godlike, Tavanna feels a little put off at how quickly the cult grows.

But she knows there are 'good' Gods - or Gods that are as close to being good as they know how. She's not outrightly religious, and she doesn't hate the idea of them. It's just something that doesn't play much into her personal life.