#: ( at least shadowheart and the dog still like me lmao

[dogcollarpunk]

Hmm. The choices I made when starting my first bg3 run…

[nikomedes]

(thinking about my durge again. normally)

i realized i rly don’t think shrike ever saw orin as a threat, but not in a dismissive way. i think he was grateful. on a certain level once he’d been brought to the cult of bhaal, sprayed with a garden hose (so he could be re-blood-drenched properly), re-domesticated, and filled in on the religious dogma of bhaal, i think he looked at younger orin like. okay she is blood of bhaal but she’s a descendant of a descendant. bhaalist worship loves children of bhaal fighting to the death, but that made shrike cagey around sarevok, not orin. orin was a bright spot. dangerous enough not to need coddling but young and full of surprises and just as fucked up as he was. i think having been functionally dragged out of the woods as a rabid animal and then made to lead a church, her digging at him or dogging his footsteps or ambushing him wouldve made him feel more normal, almost? like i imagine theres a sharp division between bhaalspawn and bhaal devotees, and orin was technically on his side of the line but not a clear and present danger. predator pups will play fight, play hunt each other. i think thats how shrike saw their relationship

on the other hand, i think orin fucking hated him lmao. she killed her own mother and was cosseted by sarevok and likely knew from a young age that because sarevoks time had come and gone she was to be the scion of bhaal, at least in baldurs gate. and then sceleritas fel drags in this nonverbal twitching cannibal elf and is like “actually this guy is MADE from bhaal and thus supercedes u.” and sarevok presumably just accepts this once shrike does enough killing. and shrike unintentionally always broadcasts the fact that he doesn’t take her seriously. he finds her cute. he won’t even just kill her off and be done with it— for some reason he likes the idea that she’ll just hang out in the temple with him forever. they can braid each others hair. no one in this temple has the rational thinking or emotional intelligence to try to really understand each others perspectives and hash out this utterly fucked family dynamic. bhaal would probably see them killed for trying. so shrike dotes on orin in his way and orin seethes and then finally she bashes his fucking head in and gets everything she wanted. but then of course he comes out of the woods again to ruin her life

and god. this is so crucial to me bc for me canonically shrike will always handle cazador with astarion before facing the temple of bhaal. he helps strike down the monster who ruled over astarion and pitted him against his siblings, and astarion gets to kill him, is free of him, and while theres no touching reunions his “siblings” are free too. it all (from a truly fucked perspective) works out. and shrike rejects bhaal bc he’s taken onboard shadowheart rejecting shar, lae’zel rejecting vlaakith, astarion killing cazador, etc, he knows he has a choice now that he didnt when he was compelled to kill his clan and then dragged feral out of the woods. and shadowheart still got to meet nocturne, lae’zel finds kinship with kith’rak voss, astarions “siblings” lived. i rly think he goes into the temple of bhaal thinking he can somehow get orins netherstone and save her too. and that is not what she fucking wants. its fucking insulting. even after she nearly succeeded in assassinating him, he won’t take her seriously as a scion of bhaal. i rly think its only moments before shrike has to kill her that he realizes a fight to the death was all she ever wanted, because at least in this he has to acknowledge her as an equal, finally. and shrikes misery is 100%. he rly went in and thought, even if hes now remembered in gory detail killing his foster mothers and their whole clan, he might leave bhaal with a sister. and that was never going to happen

literally if he didnt have a new sort of adoptive relationship with jaheira, his comraderie with the other companions but particularly lae’zel, and his relationship with astarion, withers couldnt have called him back. he just wouldve let bhaal kill him and been added to the wall of the faithless. on a fundamental level he was born a predatory wild animal, taught the warmth of a hearth and place to belong by his mothers in a way bhaal has been trying to blot out ever since, and no amount of devolution of him as a person could get rid of the knowledge of love on a basic, maybe instinctual level. if someones kind and loving life can be shattered by an act of violence, i think someones life of violence and misery can be shattered by an act of love. i think he carried love like a disease even when he repressed his childhood to survive in the wilds, and he tried to spread it the first chance he got, to orin. it just didnt take. it wasnt something she needed the way he did (she thought she had it. thats why her reaction if u convince her sarevok betrayed her hits so fucking hard. shes destroyed by the loss of love, even as fucked as it was). and if he’d made his way back to the temple alone to face the truth about orin he wouldve died of love like a terminal disease. rabies parallels but not the obvious ones

anyway. is there anything as undoing as a sister. etc. god i gotta write for shrike again