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[tiredassmage]

30 Questions for your Tav

These questions can be used as an Ask Game or just answering them all for fun character development!

(Dark Urge edition here)

What was your Tav’s place of birth and raising like?

What relationship did your Tav have with their family/guardian(s) growing up? Has that changed with age?

Did your Tav receive any formal or informal education? If yes, how well did they learn? If no, why not?

What hobbies does your Tav have? How did they acquire these interests?

Did your Tav have any formal or informal employment? If yes, what was their job? If no, how did they make ends meet? How did they feel about it?

What is your Tav’s favourite childhood memory?

What circumstances led to your Tav becoming their Class/Subclass?

Did your Tav 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?

What was your Tav doing when they were taken by the mind flayers?

What would your Tav consider to be their greatest skill? Is this accurate?

What would your Tav consider to be their greatest flaw? Is this accurate?

What opinion does your Tav have about the Gods?

How does your Tav feel about the wilderness?

How does your Tav feel about the city?

What motivates your Tav to either embrace or resist the tadpole?

How does your Tav feel about killing?

How good of a liar is your Tav? How do they feel about lying?

What is your Tav’s greatest fear?

What is your Tav’s greatest desire?

What is your Tav’s greatest regret?

How does your Tav feel about love?

Has your Tav become particularly close to anyone romantically and/or platonically in their journey? If so, who, and what is the relationship like? If no, why not?

What are 2-3 songs that your Tav would relate to?

What first impression does your Tav give off to strangers?

How does your Tav feel about what others think of them?

Does your Tav have a treasured item with them? If yes, what is it and why is it special? If no, how do they feel about item sentimentality in general?

How does your Tav feel about giving and receiving orders?

How well does your Tav function under pressure?

What advice would you give to your Tav?

What are your Tav’s intentions/goals after the end of the game?

[tiredassmage]

Baldur's Gate 3: Act II (x)

[tiredassmage]

Pour one out for #vector hyllus.

[tiredassmage]

Every iteration of Khano has been the same. He's too nice. Too forgiving. Too much of a boyscout.

This iteration of Khano is turning out to be my favorite, because as a scoundrel it is more in line with him to be punching, kicking, and dirty fighting. And definitely making more dark choices.

So instead of letting him live, Khano gunned Darmas Pollaran down with Guss cheering him on.

Way more satisfying.

[tiredassmage]

“My patience is wearing thin, Father. Answer me!”

[tiredassmage]

The Blade stands ready

[tiredassmage]

new event / features to be seen in 7.5:

new spring event on dantooine! i say with genuine joy they have brought a slice of life farming vibe to this galaxy far far away

appears to be a mix of weekly and daily missions. not captured in screenshots is a daily pie making mission. players can make pies and then place them upon a community table. there is some objective about sampling all the different types/recipes of pie, so the more players who bake pies, the easier it will be for all to achieve that.

egg hunt: eggs will not have the interactable blue glow on them. jackie wished us luck in finding them all!

fishing: droids can be sent out to the green circles to catch a variety of types of fish. smaller circles appear for shorter time periods, combined with the smaller target area = harder to get fish

there's something about a farmer possibly leaving you this farm after completing some of these quests, can't tell if that's going to turn into a stronghold or if that means "expect shenanigans of a used car salesman"

gear to be earned from event pictured above!

the tan set with the goggles: there are two separate head pieces. one is the goggles displayed around the neck. the other headpiece displays them in position over the character's eyes. the team hopes this allows for further customization (and i am fucking ecstatic about it!!!)

ventures

the culmination of lane vizla's basilisk war droid efforts is bringing the very first "ventures" to swtor

when the team spoke in earlier patches and streams about moving away from companions in galactic seasons, ventures is what they have developed in place of that. these will be story-involving missions with progression

ventures are targeted to solo players; the team hopes this can be something to work towards with a sense of achievement. progression stages are involved, and will work [for this venture] the player into 'training' b3-s1 into a fully functional basilisk droid companion

in short, it's something to work toward! an achievement you will be able to show off in-game with your new companion :D [personal first thoughts: this sounds like a really cool system, and i think i'll like having another motivator to work on daily stuff, something i can actually see physical progression in!]

if i heard correctly, ventures will be subscriber only. they will involve assignments to different daily areas across the galaxy [at least for this venture, and i presume as the ongoing formula]

[tiredassmage]

as for actual story details for 7.5, they're real damn sparse, but! excerpts from the livestream below the cut.

the recap at the end that had me laughing way more than it should, paraphrased lightly: "sa'har phones a friend, you're the friend.... and queue 7.5"

sa'har will be a companion during 7.5 events

i hesitate to say anything explicitly that the team didn't because i know how that does expectations, but the implication felt to be that player's decisions/handling of sa'har during this update will influence her... reactions? her experience?

again, this is implication. this is what i, personally, took from the additional dialogue the devs had about this slide. remains to be seen exactly what effect this will have on the story

general vibe of you may be able to be more encouraging and supportive of her in her role as a jedi padawan, or harhser, more strict, etc.

story team clarified all updates in the 7.x series are looped back to malgus's plans from 7.x series launch. they "have not forgotten about him." 7.5 with sa'har possibly a tipping point along that overall story.

new characters in the minboosa district!

adi is wearing gear that will be available from the spring event on dantooine

adi and rakit are two sort of "halves" or sides of efforts to build community and reduce the stranglehold of the hutt cartel on hutta

yusinduu runs the minboosa district and has a vested interest in technology, though (paraphrased) 'doesn't always know how to use it.' [speculation: may be related to troubles with getting this holocron from heta's control, or whatever heta might be interested in building with it/from its plans]

[tiredassmage]

alright i'll do it. very quickly grabbed (so a little messy on the crop) screencaps of the refreshed look at hutta in 7.5.

minboosa district will be a story area only. accessible in 7.5 by both factions for the story path like kessan's landing, but no dailies, unlike kessan's landing, if i'm recalling correctly.

minboosa was built with their refreshed assets, so any occasion of those assets outside of the district along normal hutta is what has become part of the "modernized" hutta.

i will be joining musco in making an agent run for this. probably. but you already knew that about me /lh

[tiredassmage]

putting on my clown wig for the swtor livestream

[tiredassmage]

Last year was pretty rough, so let’s start this one right by posting a one of the few drawings I did manage to do (´∀`)

[tiredassmage]

so there's a lot going on in act iii of baldur's gate. that's not news, lol. but if i don't start writing down my blorbo thoughts about it somewhere, they're gonna become as murky as my quest log trying to complete it all.

and ambrose has really, really become my blorbo for the game i think. which is fantastic, i missed him, she unlocked new gender since her first iteration i had a while ago, he is not having a great time!!! but there's some really interesting things coming together as companion questlines come to their close with her and. i need to gnaw on it like a bone. [so, spoilers naturally ahead.]

part of it requires me to do a lil bit of a setup since i haven't put a lot about her backstory in posts. i don't think i've really done any of such things, so! ambrose is my wild magic sorcerer, my sweet darling angel, my sweet bean finally attempting to leave the abusive teachings that raised her right as the whole mindflayer abduction business was seeing a massive growth spurt, and so thus added tadpole problems to trying to unlearn apologizing for existing wrong related to her magical talents in addition to changing his name and having an identity exploration era shorn of the master that raised her and trained her and her talents for a very specific purpose.

in short, ambrose is more familiar seeing himself as an ice- and lightning-magic inclined runepowder bomb who is somehow both... dangerously competent at her own magics as well as inherently incapable of truly controlling them. in short, a lot of internalized feelings of never being good enough, regardless of which path or action he decided to take. his one bastion of trust in it all was a paladin that grew up with her named ysabel - and ysabel is the one that got them both out of their home (if you can loosely call it such) and to baldur's gate in the first place. [you're going to ask me what happened to her and i'll admit right now, i have... not decided. which i also thought i would've done by this far in, but... here we are. <.>]

naturally, becoming the leader of a merry band of tadfooled misfits didn't exactly factor into that plan and it was... frankly overwhelming. and terrifying. as if everything they were encountering wasn't terrifying. ambrose can be timid. she's used to saying "yes" to things on reflex, because "no" wasn't particularly allowed. or feasible.

and in an attempt to keep nearly the whole game's worth of experience semi-short as just an introduction, ambrose has been particularly gifted at haphazardly discovering ways to do things i had not found in the previous like 200 hours of playing, lol. so, he's been challenged plenty. and a lot of it has been "do it downright fucking scared."

he fell first for shadowheart, which is not what i would've expected, but i think her 'take no shit' attitude, for... a failure on my part to think of a better way to describe it in this exact moment, does a lot for ambrose and i think... might've been part of the appeal. ysabel's guidance was... similar, though a bit softer. but they share a quality of not being willing for ambrose to simply lay down and take whatever is pushed on her. [it did, admittedly, intimidate ambrose at first. i almost didn't think they'd quite get along.] but then ambrose is also... well, kind of a sad puppy, tbh. and just. genuine in asking questions, when he does. i think... it's a slow process of trying to give to others the space she didn't quite have, growing up. this whole process of... being able to share freely that she cares, what he likes and doesn't like is... still pretty new. so it's... as helpful for her as it is trying to be helpful for his companions.

and then... gale and her are so painfully alike in circumstance, if not motivation. ambrose sees mystra's request and his battle with the orb in his chest a lot like her own training. ambrose's content of study still makes her feel more an acolyte than a soldier, but there's no denying that he was a weapon, meant to be handled as thing of war [with the resulting backfired fireball-related injuries concealed under long sleeves to accompany it]. it breaks her heart when gale sounds so resigned and defeated. ambrose doesn't want gale to resign himself to being what she was made to be by choice. but he also doesn't want gale's own ambition and rose-tinted askance of forgiveness to turn around and bite him. the fate of the crown of karsus is their most recent point of contention.

and astarion and her have been butting heads for a while now, but they've also made progress. i'm not sure they ever had a great understanding of one another, but ambrose figured enough to at least think astarion was hurting, too. just... being a vampire's snack pushed on her own fears and traumas around autonomy and control of her fate. again, astarion i think... did scare her with that whole... little incident one night at camp, but. it was important for them to have a conversation for ambrose. astarion at the time i think was still a bit allergic to being so open and vulnerable with feelings, but ambrose didn't ask to speak with him after really expecting that to change. she just needed to get across why she'd said no, and why that was important to her. he wanted astarion to stay - they are all in this together - but. he... might've gotten a fireball in the face if he'd tried again. he got a little lucky she didn't smack him with one in fright the first time. she didn't want to have to, but. she would. if it kept her feeling safe.

and i think those are the three stories i've touched on lately in act iii that are really getting me in my feelings. after a very unceremonious and startling entrance into the city that saw ambrose sign a deal with raphael - which just. agonizes me, honestly. because it's a decision she made absolutely fucking terrified. a decision he knows has no good consequences for anybody in the end. but i think it's one that came down to ambrose being more afraid of the emperor than of raphael. to be clear, he's terrified of both. but they've dealth with hellish types before on this little journey, right???

[she does not, actually, have a plan for how that's going to work out. it does, in fact, hurt and scare him that such a decision disappoints practically the entire camp.]

karlach especially oh my god i don't think i'm done crying about that reaction. ouuuuggggh. anyway. before i get entirely derailed wailing off a cliff about it. karlach thankfully has an idea and ambrose somehow pulled off the actual performance of her life lying to the emperor about making a deal at all, so stay tuned for our future visit to the house of hope to see how that all goes down.

but! we have concluded... the house of grief and cazador's palace now, so! i can now say with certainty ambrose has killed someone for her girlfriend, which is kadnfl;dsfnl; not a sentence i ever thought i'd be writing. sure, they've been in plenty of battles, but shadowheart left viconia's fate up to ambrose and... i admit i'm a little surprised he went in for a definitive kill, but also... thinking about it, i think... it is because she's seen how shadowheart has hurt so much and for so long under shar's gripping hold, and here is the person that helped facilitate that. here is someone that treated shadowheart... not exactly like how ambrose was raised, but far too similar to ignore.

and that sort of... taken with continuing to push back on gale, to question more and more plainly if that path to the crown really ends in anything good for gale, let alone the rest of them, and... still pressing astarion about right and wrong and who are we, really? is all just... a culmination of the journey. asking wyll to break his contract so soon after she caved to one with raphael felt hypocritical, but it's advice given out of a place knowing ambrose didn't make hers for the right reasons - if there is such a thing in dealing with the hells.

that deal might have been rock bottom, and i wonder if seeing these places where maybe he can still help his friends is... sort of the switch back to hope she desperately needed, especially right now. part of what i think i'd already had to start slip in regards to ambrose's deal with raphael is... it was also made in a place of there was no one 'better' in the party but her for such a role. he was already raised in a role far beyond himself, something sacrificial in one way or another. she doesn't like it, he'd been trying to finally free himself from those shackles when this all started, but she hadn't really felt like she'd made it. so it was... resignation, in a lot of ways. before the horror of what it was got a grip back on her.

and then orin got her claws around gale, and ambrose i don't think has before reacted so strongly with anger and desperation. it didn't matter in that moment what orin was capable of, only that she had gale, and ambrose needed to see him safe again. and she wasn't keen on taking on gortash - not yet. the foundry is... a lot to go up against, and... somehow strolling into a den of murderers felt really possible in that moment of anger - more so than strolling into gortash's office for more than a chat or taking on the entire city, it felt like, in going after the steel watch. and this... came up before i'd turned sights on actually going after viconia and cazador, so that. might have played into those decisions, too, i reckon.

maybe ambrose has finally given up enough. maybe she's done with being scared, being bound to that expectation that she is, that he should be. sure, plenty of enough of what they have yet to do is scary, it is no walk in a park with cake, but... these are his friends. none of them have turned away from him even with a less than stellar choice this far in. she still has shadowheart, and halsin and them have grown closer.

and i just hAVE SO MANY FEELINGS ABOUT IT. MY SWEET ANGEL... GROWTH! I THINK!

the idea of defying raphael is still. ouu that's. that's terrifying. but. but they've taken down orin now, too, right? something would have to give eventually between this deal and seeing gale's mission through anyway, right? right??? i'm rooting for her to nuke raphael. she's got this. might not know it yet, but she's got it.

[tiredassmage]

First base is violence second base is convoluted codependence third base is applying pressure to the vulnerable parts of their body to keep their entrails from spilling out

[tiredassmage]

instagram: smacmccreanor

[tiredassmage]

"Skeletons aren't supposed to be able to talk."

"Correct."

"Are you going to explain further?"

"No."

[tiredassmage]

got bae'zel brainrot and its terminal

[tiredassmage]