timefornonsense

[timefornonsense]

Okay, I'll have an easier time once things settle down at my (somewhat unexpected) new job, but I do want to mention the latest thing to happen in my multiplayer BG3 playthrough, because the circumstances were both perfect and horrible.

So... Patrick had been using illithid tadpoles. We just got to the beginning of Act III. Hearing an ally say he was in danger, Patrick rushed ahead of the group to try to protect him. This meant, in turn, that the game locked everyone else out of providing any bonuses to rolls.

And he just got a 20 (after his proficiency bonus) on the saving throw to resist becoming half-illithid via the astral tadpole. At a time where his allies were too far away to help him... 21 would have meant success.

According to the Narrator? "You may resist now, but it’s too late. You already embraced the powers the parasite gave you. You leveraged them to manipulate, to dominate, to survive." But that description hits different when you know a character only ever used those powers to heal others, sometimes at the cost of his own health. Never once to control anyone.

The real "actions have consequences" moment for him isn't even so much using the tadpoles, though. He has one mortal ally who knows Patrick's true nature, and in Act I, had essentially asked that friend to help him keep the ability to relate to mortals intact by not letting him go too far. All through Act II, though, he'd been hiding things from that ally when he knew they'd be met with disapproval... Patrick locking him out of his thoughts, etc.

Which meant that when this ally got locked out again here, he wasn't immediately suspicious.

Now "Patrick", in both his current form and as the ancient entity he truly is, are getting some very important lessons.

One: if you ask your friends to help you, let them. Two, and more crucially overall: irresistible temptation can be every bit as cruel and horrifying as outright mind control.

Oh, and Patrick's inability to focus for long on the horror part of any body horror happening to him because, as the god of change, he can't fully hate it or experience it as a negative? That's working against him now.

His humanity, such as it ever was, is in tatters, but if it can survive at all, this is likely to be a sanity-saving development for mortals who have to deal closely with him in any other form.

[timefornonsense]

I've been slowly starting to redo the playthrough, and today Mischief, despite my not having seen him die and him apparently still being in the party just fine, came up as an option to have Withers revive. So Patrick asked him to do that, and, well...

There is now a Level 1 version of him who won't talk to anyone.

[timefornonsense]

Since no one but Shadowheart had any interest in completing the trials in the Gauntlet of Shar, the party popped into each room just long enough to see what they'd have to do there, planning to come back later if necessary. Eventually, they wandered into the Silent Library, where... nothing went hostile at all. They were able to retrieve the Spear of Night with almost no effort whatsoever.

Then, they managed to complete an earlier deal with Raphael, picking up an umbral gem in the process which let them travel down to the door that's supposed to require additional umbral gems obtained in the Trials of Shar to unlock.

Mischief knocked. The door opened.

[timefornonsense]

Today, [after rolling a story event for the next long rest], the party finally reached the Gauntlet of Shar... where Patrick promptly got distracted trying to find a way to help a bunch of rats who were very clearly not just rats.

Can't play through it in the game itself, of course, but this is around the time that there's a good chance that, in the background, this lost soul would get another offer of help from a powerful entity -- this one genuinely intended to help improve the situation.

[timefornonsense]

Before the party could get to the Underdark, a second Lae'zel walked into camp and immediately went hostile. [I'm sure it's a mod I forgot I had causing this, but hey, a little early taste of Act III. Look at Dreams, Mischief, Kar'niss, Rugan, and the real Lae'zel, all pretending not to notice.]

And while the party did manage to rescue a group of drow mercenaries once they got to the Underdark, the efforts to cheer Patrick up probably would have gone better if Gale and Rugan hadn't nearly been killed by having every mushroom explode on them when they accidentally got separated from the rest of the party for a minute. What did help, though, is a visit with a friend.

Now, back to the Shadow-Cursed Lands to power through till the curse can be broken.

[timefornonsense]

Though there were bright spots in helping Halsin as he rescued Thaniel from the Shadowfell, then seeing Bex and Danis reunite, things largely continued to get worse. Between all the people suffering fates worse than death, Patrick's total inability to help, his failure to find the means for Thaniel to recover right away, and having to tell a little girl her parents were both dead... Patrick was becoming increasingly despondent, and it was starting to affect him on a deeper level than most of his mortal friends could know.

Mischief, worried, struggled to find a way to snap him out of it. Dreams, equally so, convinced the party to make a brief return to the Underdark.

[timefornonsense]

Today Patrick wandered around Reithwin with the others, causing all sorts of unfortunate accidents.

Like with the toll collector he was trying to have a civil conversation with and let her know she didn't have to keep mindlessly fulfilling her role, only for her to die the moment she started considering his words.

Or when his curiosity ended an... un-life, once he asked too many questions after sharing his own stories.

When he got to the House of Healing, though, causing Malus Thorm's death was very intentional. Just not the death of the patient Malus decided to take with him. Patrick clearly got a little upset about the latter.

[timefornonsense]

Time to go into the prison to rescue the tieflings and gnomes! Patrick was a little on edge because of the soul coin incident and people saying things like this.

Along the way, Dreams found and helped Minthara.

When Patrick heard one of the guards tell the other "you should be kinder to the prisoners", he immediately stopped to listen to the rest of that conversation, thinking he was going to have to change all his plans to ensure the safety of this particular guard. But he dismissed that idea after learning it was only due to the possibility that they could convert and become True Souls, and said guard did not rebuke her colleague for savagely saying she'd have to "keep them busy begging for mercy from other gods".

Disappointed, he went to talk to the gnomes, and well... this is the only screenshot I have because I wasn't really expecting anything interesting to happen, but...

Somehow, all the guards died during that conversation. In-game, I reason that Mischief slaughtered them all while the rest of the party was distracted. (Apparently, he really doesn't like it when the mortals disappoint Patrick).

[I have no idea what weirdness took place with the coding to cause it, though.]

[timefornonsense]

So, of course, when Rolan stormed off alone to rescue his siblings, the party went off to find him. While this isn't an option in game, Patrick wouldn't have been opposed to a joint rescue attempt, if everyone would refrain from being at each other's throats. But they found him so deep in the Shadow Curse that the Blood of Lathander was no longer useful. Only Kar'niss was immune, along with people who stayed very close to him, so they could only bring a party of three to fight the Shadows.

Once Rolan and most of the others had returned to Last Light, Kar'niss, Patrick, and Lae'zel continued on to Moonrise, where they then helped the rest of the party find a quicker and safer way in. And then came the Soul Coin Talk I've known would be coming since Patrick met Karlach.

...No, Karlach. Patrick was not into using human souls as a power source and destroying them in the process. Instead, he took all the soul coins collected to this point and is being very protective of the souls inside, vowing to find a way to free them. [There are apparently several, in lore, but Karlach may not know that.]

[timefornonsense]

Once inside the inn, the group split up and went their own ways for a bit.

Mischief helped Mol win a lanceboard game

Dreams spoke with Jaheira, and was intrigued by how perceptive the woman was, despite the tendency to attribute it all to a mind flayer tadpole. (Astarion, meanwhile apparently decided not to stick with just any one group.)

Kar'niss found a kitty cat!

And Patrick, perhaps unfortunately for them both, went to speak with Rolan. Anyone who's seen how this full dialogue goes knows it's brutal. Patrick worked hard to show more patience the more he was verbally attacked, but he's fully aware of the possibility that that just made the tiefling angrier.

[timefornonsense]

So, when the party found the dead tieflings near Last Light, I knew Patrick was going to find some way to resurrect them... but that Asharak's situation would be tricky, given that the cultists gouged out his eyes and ripped out his tongue before killing him. As it turns out? When Patrick learned what had happened, he abandoned his corporeal form for a moment, took out the eyes and tongue of the dead cultist lying on the ground nearby, and used them to ensure the revived Asharak would have full sight and speech.

Naturally, he also brought back Ikaron, Kaldani, and many others, claiming not altogether falsely that he was a warlock whose patron was responsible for this. When they arrived at Last Light, one of the Harpers decided to step into the middle of their group, despite evidently having no interest in joining the party.

[I've made tables of options for some of the story moments, and this is the first... well, second... one.]

[timefornonsense]

On arriving in the Shadow-Cursed Lands at last, the party did not have Minthara's lyre. [Or Nere's.] Oops. Patrick had to reach out to their guide another way.

Apparently, this cosmic entity promptly decided that, despite its own somewhat conflicted opinion in avatar form, it was fond of this lunatic. Patrick, determined not to let the party outright kill Kar'niss, had unexpected help in the form of... well, himself blocking out the Absolute for a few moments in order to speak with the drider and explain the truth of the situation. Long story short? They had another addition to their group... who was presented with a newly-created artifact truly designed exclusively to protect him, and visible in the form of another bright light.

To this point, Kar'niss is the only one of them (unless you count Patrick himself) that that entity has conversations with beyond just those they can manage in avatar form.

[timefornonsense]

On the way to the Shadow-Cursed Lands, the party came across a githyanki creche that Patrick, initially, had no intention of visiting.

But Lae'zel asked him to have faith in her, and so, they had to stop in.

Which did, at least, give them a chance to save a life and learn about Orpheus, and for Dreams, Mischief, Astarion and Rugan to sneak off to get the Blood of Lathander while everyone else was busy avoiding being murdered. And of course, Patrick also met the Dream Visitor.

...And then meet Elminster, with that horrible mandate for Gale, almost immediately after escaping the creche.

There, Karlach and Lae'zel were the two companions he found himself agreeing with the most.

[timefornonsense]

Trying not to have to fight every goblin in the goblin camp, the party wound up running back into the Underdark, dragging a couple of newcomers along with them.

...which is when Raphael finally decided to make an appearance.

Acting under the belief that Raphael probably knew exactly what he was really speaking with, Patrick chose his response accordingly. There would always have been a high degree of caution, but the timing ensured his motives were very different than they would have been even a day or two earlier.

[timefornonsense]

Off to the goblin camp, where, after wandering around talking to people and freeing Liam (and Volo), Patrick somehow managed to fall into the spider pit.

Karlach decided to jump in after him. They've opened the door, but the spiders apparently do not care, despite indicating a desire to go eat goblins, and have decided to stay right where they are.

[timefornonsense]

This was where, according to my rolls, Patrick became aware of the truth about his own nature -- and also, who two of his "new friends" are -- encouraging the others to explore the village without him for a while. By this point, if not earlier, the entity that "Patrick" is had revealed the conviction that Nere was important to it, granting the drow power for reasons Patrick didn't initially understand.

Leaving Patrick to his thoughts, Dreams and Mischief led most of the party outside, where they ran into some ogres. And, well...

Long story short, by the time Patrick ventured outside himself, everyone in town was dead. Drunk bugbear? Couple having sexy time? All dead.

About twenty of what appears to be the same person (again)? Also dead.

[timefornonsense]

After killing pretty much all the duergar they met, the party rescued the deep gnomes. On meeting Nere, however, Patrick realized something was very wrong, and rather uncharacteristically chose to fight apparent mind control by "planting a suggestion" in Nere's mind himself.

A true gentle suggestion, a whisper, a temptation, would have been one thing. This was different. Maybe not direct control, but certainly a push. It was, in fact, what caused "Patrick" to begin to wake. Though not initially understanding what was happening, an unsettled Patrick urged the party to leave the Underdark now. There were tasks unfinished, yes, but none more pressing than finding Halsin and making sure the tieflings were safe. And they'd grabbed some sussur bark, so they could make a new weapon if they returned to the blacksmith's forge they'd found in that ruined village.

((Also, I forgot to ungroup Rugan, so I guess this is how he found out about the main plot. Surprise?))