#But the true victim in this relationship is Orin

[y-rhywbeth2]

Durgetash is a slow motion car crash to me. It's like, yes the love was real, and that's ultimately absolutely irrelevant; if either of them ever thought it could make a difference in the end, then they were lying to themselves. This isn't sustainable.

If they hadn't ended up as a pair of corpses on the floor - a footnote in the Realms' next tale of heroism - then the push and pull in their power games that lets them stand as equals would inevitably unbalance sooner or later, breaking the partnership beyond repair: either Durge kills Gortash, or Durge ends up falling from that pedestal as either a corpse or another slave.

"...this is how it has to be."

The relationship had its moments of true tenderness, but it was fundamentally twisted, as were the people involved, and it was all inevitably going to burn - but hey, the fire is pretty and they'd be bitter and sad about it when nobody was looking. They keep mementoes as keepsakes trophies.

...although I like to imagine (my) Durge thinks of it less as the violent and tragic end of a relationship and more as the traditional Bhaalist marriage. They've spent so many years planning out this murder suicide where Lord Bhaal consumes their joint souls.

(I just love toxic crash-and-burn doom-spiral villain pairs)

[bharv]

Also re the last reblog, I’m not sure any readers caught this point in Stonemilker but also the reason I had the scenes in the temple was to show that Orin has known all of Manva’s weaknesses for a long, long time. She hides Stillmaker in the place where Manva herself had hidden her secrets, because the whole of the murder plot is a loving bait for her through the testing of Dolor, who Manva always said lacked the true discipline to be part of the temple. Starting in her old temple with her old master, moving through the other victims who all had something to say about her and her relationship with Gortash (lust, compassion, and vanity.)

[in-fair-verona-we-set-our-scene]

Something I really adore about Minthara is she's the only companion--and honestly the only major character really--who truly brings the horror and tragedy of what is being done to the True Souls to the forefront, and reveals just what an awful fate you and the companions avoided by mere chance. Because at that point you're mostly thinking about turning into an illithid and true destruction of the self, not how you would've been a True Soul--but still you--slaughtering your way across the countryside like every other infected.

Because it doesn't matter how good or noble or strong-willed you are. Every companion, from Astarion to Wyll, would've been willing to commit atrocities in the Absolute's name were it not for the Prism.

The way she describes the Absolute is so insidious. How she had no choice, or more accurately her mind had been warped to the point that whatever the Absolute wanted was the best choice she could ever make. Minthara is Minthara, she expresses absolutely no shame for some truly horrid things and proudly claims evil actions taken in the name of survival or faith as her own, and yet what she did under the Absolute's control is what she outright rejects as being in any way her fault. The way Orin tormented her and then it was remembered as something revelatory, divine, rather than a moment of fear and violation, is so fucked up. Minthara is such a genuinely proud woman, so seeing her so affected and her declaration that she'd rather die than have her mind and agency stolen again, is very disturbing.

There are a few moments where the True Souls get a bit of narrative sympathy and humanity. Those siblings outside of the Grove for example. But Minthara is the one who truly brings home how every True Soul is a person who has been taken and violated and exploited with no real say or ability to resist. They are victims and their Chosen-ness is almost a mocking parody of the relationship between the gods (Bhaal, Myrkul, Bane, Shar, Mystra, Vlaakith) and their Chosen (Durge and Orin, Ketheric, Gortash, Shadowheart, Gale, Lae'zel) where the entire farce and delusion of it is laid out for us to see. At the very least the vampire spawn have some sort of will outside of their master, the True Souls don't even get that. And you still have to kill them.

Very fitting for the tragedy-horror theme of the 2nd Act though.

[asheurbanipal]

Hand in Unlovable Hand

Ao3

Summary:

It's a century after the events of the game. An Ascended Astarion and his most beloved spawn are now installed in the Crimson Palace, spawn flooding the walls of Baldur's Gate. The Vampire Lord rules with an iron fist, his consort in hand. Oh how mighty he must be to pull the leash of a child of Bhaal, of the once hero and terror of Baldur's Gate who destroyed the elder brain, who ended the grand design. Unless...he's not the one who actually wears the collar....

Baldur's Gate 3

Ascended Astarion/Resist Durge

Explicit

Words:2,873

One-shot

Content: Toxic Relationship, dub-con, reference to sexual violence, they're fucking villains y'all

I’m not sure that Astarion ever loved me. Not really. Not in any way that mattered. I would come to learn that love, true love, the kind that dragged its victims into death, was soft and delicate. Slow. We had simply never had the time. He had only just learned to walk in the sun when I found him on the beach. He was free of restraints for only as long as it took him to carve the infernal poem into Cazador’s back before he’d surrendered himself to a new master of his own making. I was born fresh anew from the tank on that nautiloid. I had only just regained my memories of my place in Bhaal’s service before I offered myself, naked, to Astarion’s will. Only just became myself again before giving it all away.

I might have loved Enver once. In whatever way I was capable of such things in those days. I felt a strange halo of…something…when I met him for the first time again at his coronation. Even when the flashes of my life returned, the weight of the more nuanced emotions behind them were overshadowed by rage at Orin’s betrayal. He was dead before I had the chance to relearn my feelings for him. 

And by then, I was Astarion’s, body and soul, and nothing else mattered. 

“Lover. Where have you got yourself to? Not out and about, I hope.” Astarion’s voice is sharp but lilting as it drifts up through the floors and corridors of the manor. Somehow I can always hear him no matter what. I don't understand the magic, but I accept it. 

“The balcony, darling.” It was an early addition to the Crimson Palace, a prominence off our shared bedroom from which to watch the city below. We were the first vampires to ever be able to take in the sun, and Astarion wanted to revel in it. For the first few decades, he would stand at the railing every sunrise, imposing his presence across the roofs of the city. The habit fell off when the city no longer needed reminding. Now it’s usually me that haunts it, tracing the patterns of the stars as they weave around the moon. 

Astarion’s hands drop around my shoulders then over my bare chest. His lips and the teeth underneath trace down my neck ever so slightly. He’s sticky with someone else’s insides, and I feel it drip down my back. His body presses closer, feeding his soft hands down into my calloused ones. 

“Waiting and naked. Just as I prefer.” His voice slithers and creeps, wrapping through me like catgut thread and cutting my insides apart. He says “prefer,” but after close to a century I know it’s “expect.” I can get away with being clothed to some degree, but were I not home when he expected me, I’d see some time locked away in a small dark place. It was something to Astarion’s credit that confinement is the best he can come up with when pressed. He doesn't have the guts for an actual beating or general bloodletting, and delegates such things if it's ultimately required. Killing, yes. He's quite fond of that, of course. It’s an easy way to be rid of problems. But death is barely a punishment. That’s something quickly learned with a father like mine.  

“Not completely,” I say, plucking at the square blanket I’ve laid across my lap to spare the public below from my indecency. 

“All the better. That way only I get the best bits.” One hand lifts from mine and ducks under the throw, going straight for the most sensitive part of me. I let him stroke up the length of me a few times, both of us knowing that it's little more than a greeting, not the prelude to anything more intimate. Not yet, anyway. The night is still young. It always is. 

“I have a present for you,” Astarion whispers.

“Is this a before or after bath present? Because yours is ready.” 

He perks in delight, then draws his lips against my ear. 

“You always do know how to treat me, pet. Come see what I’ve brought you.” His hand trails along my shoulders as he moves back into the bedroom, leaving behind a streak of hellfire along my skin. 

I already know what’s waiting for me as I pull a loose robe over my body, something I keep nearby for when my lover-master has been given his due greeting. The "gift" is certainly a pretty thing, long ginger-blond hair pulled up above his ears and dark horns stark against his dusk-red complexion. He’d been placed on the bench at the end of the bed, and he’s laced his fingers around his calves, knees brought up to his chest, tail wrapping around his crossed ankles. When he sees me, he moves to his feet, hands touching each other over his belly. His neck stretches, chin tilting down. He’s got the pale impression of old bite marks. Most of Baldur’s Gate does, at this point

“Lord Consort,” he breathes, voice deep despite its volume. The sound of water and a gentle, bereft humming suggests I can talk to him freely without Astarion bothering to eavesdrop. 

He’s my gift after all. 

“I understand the appeal of being a vampire’s favorite meal, but it was a piss-poor idea getting yourself picked up by on of the foot soldiers. You had to know they’d bring you to the palace.” And people don't leave from the palace so easily…at least not the same as they came in. 

“I thought I might secure myself an actual status of some sort. I’m starting to regret it, I’ll admit.” He looks around uneasily, but his body relaxes. That’s not entirely uncommon. When I speak to them like an equal they think I see them as one.

“What’s your name?” I ask. His eyes flash wide in surprise. Whoever gave him those healed scars hadn’t bothered with names. 

“Lokezer. Lok.”

I step forward, and touch his chest, gesturing him back down on the bench. There’s wine in the cabinet, and I find us something of a reasonable vintage for the occasion. Astarion is more natural at this part, but I make due with memorizing a list. 

“If you’re looking to become a consort to a foot soldier…well...I wouldn’t recommend it, for one. They’re animals. But I can provide some advice.” I hand him a glass, and he takes a sip without questioning it. 

“I had my sights set higher, actually.” Lok gazes around. “This room. I had hoped to see it someday.” He takes another sip. I haven’t had any of mine, and I set it back down on the table behind me. 

“If you think to get the attention of our Lord Astarion-“

“Not exactly.” It’s not a coy voice. Not seductive like spawn have grown accustomed to using. More matter-of-fact. I watch him stare at me over his wine glass for a moment. 

“Most people do well to avoid me all together.” In the early decades I was out among them in our city of spawn, an extension of Astarion’s hand around the heart of his people. Then I grew tired of being someone else’s knife and not my own. Tired of holding

back for the sake of our own grand design. Tired of existing as a ghost of what I was truly capable of. 

“There’s a rumor,” Lok says delicately. “That the reason the living still exist in the numbers they do along the sword coast is because of your influence.”

Now this is interesting. Abandoning my glass entirely, I sit on the bench next to him, maybe a hair’s breadth from the heat radiating off Lok’s body. 

“I’m not much for books or poetry. But I’m practical. If we fill the world with spawn, who will we eat? Astarion can see the truth in the pragmatic when presented.” The whole truth is trickier. More complex. Astarion doesn’t actually know how to plan and scheme in the long term. He’s driven by passion and lust. For two-hundred years, every waking moment was assigned to him. Despite his desire to rule the world with a vampire army, he didn’t actually know how when granted the power to do so. He still doesn’t. I do. I was the architect of both the rise and destruction of the Netherbrain. For better or ill, the state of the city and much of the coast is greatly in part my doing, in the end. Astarion just has the physical power and charisma to execute on my plans. 

Lok glances down through the dark red of the  wine, through the glass, to the floor at the end of the bed, staring a hole that could tear the castle in half. 

“My great grandfather said he knew you. Before all this.” He gestures with his thin, clawed fingers. I cast over him. How many of the grove tielfings settled in the city? How many of them would have stayed instead of fleeing immediately once the spawn started flooding it? I can only think of one.

“Is Rolan still alive?” I ask.

“He died a few years ago.”

“That’s a shame. I liked him.”

“He said that you offered to make him a spawn.” 

I feel my chest tighten. Even all these decades later, I remember the conversation clear as sunshine on the waterfront. I was trying to offer him a way out as the city began to turn. He could have been an early addition to the army. A senior foot soldier. He said he’d rather die. I told him I could oblige him that way, too, whenever he wanted. It was my specialty, after all; he only need say the word. It was the last I spoke to him in person. When he retired ownership of Sorcerer's Sundries, I lost track of him completely. I didn’t even know he had a familial line, much less that they remained in he city. He should have left when he had the chance.

“So curiosity got the better of you?” I ask. “You wanted to see the real monster at the heart of everything, and you were willing to risk getting drained for it?”

“I risk getting drained walking to the fruit stand too close to dusk. It’s part and parcel of living here. And even if I had the money to leave and start somewhere new, what’s to stop me from being dragged into the hells or turned into a mindflayer or ripped apart by shadow creatures? At least here, the danger is consistent, and I’ve gotten at least one chance to look my tormentor in the eye before I die.”

A sound of draining water suggests that Astarion is done. Our time alone is short. I snap his jaw up in my hand, turning his face to me forcefully.

“Your body’s going to be used in some way or another tonight, Lok. You had to know that.”

“I did…” he admits softly. 

“Then I’ll give you a choice. Quickly now.”

He gasps, gulping through his long neck. 

“I don’t want to die. And I don’t want to be a spawn. Not yet. I want more time.” 

“Alright.” And I grip his jaw tighter in my fingers. 

“Oh!” Astarion’s surprised voice is sharp in my ear, cracking the tension. “I just assumed I’d come out to guts scattered across the floor.” I feel Lok clench tight under by hand. 

“Oh, he’s too pretty for that,” I coo. “And he worked so hard to get this far. I thought I might play with him for a bit then kennel him. As long as you’ll permit it?” Astarion flutters to the bed, robe barely tied, exposing every beautiful line as he sits. 

“Of course, dearest. What kind of gift would it be, otherwise?” 

A pretty typical one for him, honestly. He lives to give just to take again. This time he seems more sincere. Lok’s deep brow grows tight, tense. Desperately questioning. Poor thing really thought there was some kind of softness in me. I appreciate the vote of confidence, at least. 

I’m not gentle on Lok. His optimism inspires me to at least try, at the start, to see if it's something I'm capable of. I know I must have been at some point, but whatever was left of that is gone. Long gone. 

He isn’t torn apart, at least. I let him live, allowing him that requested privilege. And he’s only actively bleeding from the puncture wounds on his neck and chest. The bruises won’t start showing up until tomorrow, and the one I thrust into the back of his throat is mild, at best. I even let Lok rest on the bed afterward, allowing him to curl up at the foot of it. 

“You held back,” Astarion sighs into my chest, hands running down my sides, kissing and nipping at my flesh. He likes to start slow, build up, pretend for a short while we’re something different than what we are.

“I’d like to get some uses out of him, but he seems more delicate than most. I don’t want to ruin him too fast.”

“Hm, you’re so clever.” He drops lower and sinks his teeth into my proffered inner thigh. I push the groan of pleasure down. Make Astarion work for it. He pulls back after a few quick drags, letting me free bleed on the bed as he lifts up to straddle me. “He made rather a scene when the foot soldiers brought him to me. Prostrating himself. Begging. ‘It would be my greatest honor to give my body in service to the Lord and his dread Consort.’ Cute as a button.”

“You usually drain them on the spot when they do that.”

“They don’t typically offer themselves to you, as well.” He crunches another bite into my shoulder, enjoying the feeling of a deep muscle puncture. I trace my fingers down the length of his spine slowly as he drinks in more of me. 

“So you wanted to see why. I get it. I’m afraid it’s not something terribly interesting. Just a touch of morbid curiosity. He's an odd little thing.” I think, truly, that he came here to die, but when faced with the practicalities of death, he recoiled. Retracted. Regretted. But a bit of mystery will keep Astarion from getting bored of having him around. Astarion pulls away, again, dragging my own blood across my body as he bends his face to my chest. 

“You’ll have to tell me when you’re done with him. He’d make a rather delightful spawn, I think. Pretty to look at. Eager to please.” Astarion hums in consideration. 

“Maybe. I’ll break him a bit, and find out.”

“I look forward to it.” This time he doesn’t bite, just lays his body across mine as though he were listening to a heartbeat I don’t have. “Why did you let me turn you?” His fingers dance across my clavicle. 

“Because I love you,” I respond automatically. 

“Yes, yes, of course.” He taps a bloody finger to my lips. “You could have left. You could have forced me out. All while still loving me. Yet you kneeled.” I sigh. He was going to use some manner of torture or another to get this out of me, and he was going to start with pouting. I would have preferred he go straight to sending me to the flayer. 

“I knew that once we got the tadpoles out, I would still be a child of Bhaal. I’d never really be free from him. I’m literal flesh of his flesh. So why not charge someone else with the keeping of my body?”

“You could have been free.”

“Maybe. Maybe I don’t really want to be free. Maybe I don’t know how to stand on my own two feet. Maybe I just prefer to be the vassal of someone I choose. Someone I love.”

“You do still love me,” he says.

“Of course,” I reply. Neither of us are sure if these are statements or questions.

After a few more deep bites, he pushes my knees to my chest to take what he wants from me. He isn’t gentle. He never is. It’s what I want. What I deserve. What I demand of him, my master. But for all his bite and snap, there always comes a pivotal moment. When on the rise to ecstasy, his knife pauses at my belly. When he hesitates to sink it into my flesh no matter how I beg for it. He sets the blade aside under some pretense of disinterest or denial of my pleasure. Pretends its his will that my innards remain in their home. The truth is he can’t do it. He never will. Because he never actually does his own dirty work. He hasn’t the stomach for it.

His sadism will never match my masochism. 

And in that gap is where the truth lies. He needs me more than I need him. And when I’m done being his, when eternity grows too long, too stretched…I will simply end it all. 

If I’m kind, I’ll take him with me. 

[matrinki]

27: What was their life like before the events of BG3? + 26: What animal best represents your Tav? 👀👀👀

26: What animal best represents your Tav?

I'd say a piranha. Strong in numbers, but otherwise a timid fish (especially alone!) who's teeth still carry a warning of what happens when hunger and desperation kicks in :°)

27: What was their life like before the events of BG3?

Short answer: miserable

Long answer: I headcanon that instead of creating Miseria and just putting her there, Bhaal took part in some newborn snatching in Dorsatria's family. So she grew up in mercantile surroundings but felt like forgotten by the world. Her father hated her for 'killing his wife at birth' but I also gather he had an idea of Miseria's true lineage and was stuck in this weird hate circles back to love situation as an obligation to his deceased wife. Miseria grew up in a strict routine, spending more of her days stuck at home learning all that's mercantile and taking dueling classes and then spending her free time learning about magic. It was widely known there was a daughter in the Dorsatria family, but rarely anyone saw her. So growing up like that is a sure way to feel like you don't have any control over anything and Miseria was a timid and depressed child, taking it all in. It didn't help that her urges would manifest too, which her father made sure were kept quiet.

The breaking point was in Miseria's late teenage years, where her father took her with him on a merchant trip so she learns the craft, but in reality it was a ploy to murder her away from civilization and watching eyes. Her father thought it both mercy and revenge for her state, but he didn't take into the consideration that prey animals can fight back too, with a special kind of ferocity. Miseria ends up killing him instead somewhere in the woods, confused and betrayed, and that's where I think Sceleritas Fel fully makes his appearance. She's alone and lost so she clings to him, ready to fully embrace her murderous needs if it means she's not alone. She makes her way to Baldur's Gate, tricking people into helping her then murdering them, and gets proclaimed Bhaal's chosen, upsetting the cult's balance.

Her years at the cult are equally miserable. From being kept in check by her father she goes into being kept in check by Sceleritas who is making sure she constantly stays at her worst. So she kills and it's always a miserable, making sure her blade strikes when people are at their highest to make them and the people around them plunge into their lowest, spreading misery if you will. There's also meticulous attention to it, with the victims arranged yet making sure no trace is left - in Miseria's mind, if she focuses on that, she can forget about thinking about the rest of the world. But her bones grow tired, and as much as Bhaal works to kill it, he can't get rid of her softer, scared side who just wants to be loved for once. She enters many questionable relationships too (lates being, uhm, GortashCOUGHCOUGH), but her father, her True Father, always makes sure she pays the price for it. So at one point, deep into the evil Dead Three plot, she grows tired. So tired. Sensing Orin's growing frustration with her, she knows her attack will come sooner or later - that's how bhaalists work, always trying to uproot eachother - and she lets it happen. It's a frustrating situation for Orin because Miseria doesn't fight back, taking her blows and the worm. But for her, in that moment, it's the only way out.

Rest is history :°)