#Kar’niss I love you I’m sorry

[ellekhen]

Hand, Hearth, and Home

Chapter 46 - The Voice in Your Ear

Chapter Summary: Church joins in on the Harpers’ ambush of the Absolutist convoy in hopes of retrieving their moonlantern. Much to the alarm of his companions, the warlock faces the unexpectedly brutal consequences of returning to the shadows.

Pairing(s): Astarion x Male Tav (Main); Past OC x Male Tav Rating: Explicit Length: 229K+ words; Chapters 46/70

Except Below:

Wyll watches in amazement as the drider stumbles in his step, faltering at the sight of the tiefling before him.

This is more than fey charm, he realizes.

More than even their illithid authority.

“What is it, Majesty?” the drider mutters fearfully to himself. “This heretic… no… an imposter! Feeding the lesser god’s shadows! No — no! My Queen, please—!”

“Queen?”

The tiefling tilts his head, advancing towards the terrified drider. He leaves a trail of black smoke in his wake, puffing into the air as he speaks.

“I answer to no queen. No god.”

The drider slips upon the rocks, collapsing backwards with a pathetic wail. And then, with yet another burst of inky mist, Church reappears just in front of the cowering drider — yanking his torso down and gripping his inky-black hands around his captive’s pale, anguished face.

“N-no! No!” the drider howls, his head shaking and eyes blinking frantically, asynchronously, between the warlock’s hands. “We cannot! We won’t feed the shadows! Majesty! Hear us! No! NO—!”

“She can’t hear you,” Church taunts him, smoke spitting from between his smiling lips. “And you’ll never hear her again.”

The tiefling takes his shadow-swathed hand and considers it curiously. It’s a bizarre contrast to the harried skirmish going on in the background with the two remaining cultists.

“See?” Church says softly. Mockingly. “She forsakes you. Just as Lolth had forsaken you.”

“Ah, Church—?” Wyll asks tentatively, half-heartedly reaching out as if he could somehow stop this.

Stop him.

But all he can do is gawk in shock as the tiefling slowly drives his blackened, taloned fingers into five of the screaming drider’s eyes. And with whatever unspeakable spell Church has cast, shadows begin to overflow from within him, spilling from the drider’s orifices and splitting open his thorax.

“Hells!” Wyll gasps, his mage hand fizzling out of existence as it deposits the moonlantern near a few Harpers. His eyes are fixed instead upon the confrontation before him.

The unfortunate drider’s eight legs spasm frantically beneath him, tripping one of the half-orcs backwards just before Branthos drives his sword down to finish him off. Wyll watches in horror as the wretched soul writhes and gurgles in agony for far too long.

This… this is wrong. This isn’t like Church. He wouldn’t…

…would he?

Wyll focuses upon his parasite, wincing at the storm of anguished, half-formed thoughts bleeding from the drider’s fractured mind. Among them, he barely makes out his companions’ own tadpoles, and even fainter still is the suggestion of Church’s somewhere buried beneath the din.

“That’s enough, Church!” Wyll beseeches him. “Just end this!”

He doesn’t know if his friend hears him. With the rest of the convoy finally dispatched, all he hears are the Harpers’ curious murmurs and the drider’s final, gurgling plea.

“Ma…jesty… pl…ease…!”

He shudders with a last death rattle before his legs curl up completely beneath him.

And then the drider is finally, mercifully still at last.

Wyll stares at the other warlock, aghast.

“Good gods,” Astarion drawls, astonished yet clearly impressed. “Well that was… certainly something.”

“Church!” Wyll calls sharply to their friend, hurrying over to pull the tiefling off of the dead drider. The cursed drow’s heavy, monstrous body collapses unceremoniously to the ground. “It’s over. We’re done here!”

“You just always have to spoil the fun,” Astarion grumbles as the tiefling’s eyes clear at last.

“...oh,” Church utters, disoriented as he stares back at the other warlock’s worried face. “…Wyll?”

He looks down at his hands in disgust. “What… in the hells?”

— and then his eyes slide over to the corpse of the drider before him.

Start from the beginning!

[wellthebardsdead]

Kar’niss: *curled up amongst the hay in the last light inn stable, trembling at every sound beyond the warm glow of the small forge, and the faint glimmer of the moon maidens blessing beneath him*

Isobel: *walks into the stall and smiles placing a blanket over him before stepping back as he flinches awake rearing his legs with a hiss* shhhh, easy. You looked cold friend.

Kar’niss: p-pretty moon priestess… *lowers his legs and curls them back beneath himself, all eyes focused on her* I’m sorry- d-don’t be scared o-of me. P-please.

Isobel: *shakes her head with a gentle smile* you don’t scare me my friend. I’ll leave you to rest now-

Kar’niss: w-wait- I… wanted to ask about the moon maiden… I- s-saw her.

Isobel: *blinks* you- saw the moon maiden?

Kar’niss: *nods* sh-she was beautiful, l-long silver hair. Smiling at me, she m-made me feel safe and told me to trust the moon. M-my oath to lolth is broken. The absolute trapped me and forced me to declare loyalty… I- I want to swear my oath to the moon maiden, sh-she will not abandon me? Wi-will she?

Isobel: *thinking he saw a vision of Selûne after she gave him a blessing too* oh? Oh! No no so long as you don’t do something truely evil she will guide you with her light. She will not turn her back on you.

Kar’niss: *smiles and rises up, feeling comfort in how fearlessly she stays in place and doesn’t back away from him* I-I would like to fight in her name.

Isobel: *smiles and takes his hand* come inside then, I have some books you can study to begin your path. *leads him from the stables, oblivious to the cloaked drow like figure looming on the edge of the barrier*

Eilistraee: *smiling as she watches one condemned by her mother Lolth find happiness and salvation at last* walk in the light child. May you return to your true body some day, And be loved now, as you will be then. *disappears*

[karniss-bg3]

Something I think about an bit is spiders are cold blooded so are driders and if so how dose kar’niss del with winter or the shadow lands they look quite cold and last question could you ever tell me how you think an drider book lung works (aha sorry that’s all and I love your posts)

I had to go down some wacky rabbit holes to really hash this one out. One thing I will say for this blog, it’s made me more educated about topics I never would’ve considered before. I expect by the time my tenure is finished I’ll walk away a certified genius.

...Or just as goofy as I’ve always been. Either way it’s a net positive.

Here is the problem I run into when trying to work out the intricacies of fantasy creatures...I don’t know what rules to use. By that I mean there are nuances to consider when asking “How does Kar’niss _____?” Am I basing this off of real world examples or examples from the world in which they are from? If so how does that impact the overall conclusion I come to? Is it fair to compare a drider to an animal from our planet without knowing the physics of Faerun? Is their gravity the same, the climate, the oxygen distribution, the atmosphere? It’s the classic “Adrian overthinks bullshit because he doesn’t know how to do otherwise” story hour. That isn’t even taking into consideration how magic may impact the answer especially considering magic is intangible and a made up concept whose rules change from medium to medium. This is the world’s most frustrating fun house where every mirror reflects a different outcome and I’m too derpy to consider them all.

Now that I’ve got the long winded non-sense out of the way, here is the best assessment I could cobble together.

The problem with Kar’niss’ anatomy is it’s unclear how the two halves work together. Spiders in our world do have lungs but they do not have active breathing mechanisms like a diaphragm in humans. However, Kar’niss has the ability to speak, ragged as it may be. This leaves me with the assumption that the lungs in his torso still function, giving him the ability to inhale and exhale in order to talk. But Kar’niss’ heart and lungs would be far too small and pathetic to maintain the spider half with as large as it is. So I have to conclude that even if the two halves of them are attached, the only thing shared between them is a digestive tract. The blood he consumes has to go somewhere and he can’t nourish only one half and neglect the other. I believe all of his digestion is done in the spider half and the stomach in his drow torso is basically non-functional as a result.

Where we run into a bit of a hitch more stems from how big Kar’niss is. Even if his spider body doesn’t have to worry about maintaining the drow torso via heart and lungs, it has another issue; Available oxygen. Prehistoric insects from the Carboniferous period were huge, far larger than anything we see today. This is because of how dense our air was with oxygen which allowed them to increase in size without side-effects. So I have to ask, how high is the oxygen content in Faerun? Does it matter? Probably not! It does make me wonder how an arachnid body that large, whether drider or giant spider, survives if the oxygen in the air is low. Humans, giants, demons, driders and all manner of creatures can co-exist in a fantasy realm where the rules are made up and the points don’t matter.

While I could go into detail about the difference between human lungs and spider lungs I think I’d be splitting hairs at that point. When it comes to Kar’niss I think both bodies have working organs that are suited to the body they are in, which is the only reason this macabre union works at all.

As for how Kar’niss survives the cold that is also an interesting question to answer. Driders don’t usually wear armor but they can if so inclined, which means they aren’t worried about being naked as a jay bird. This question is a bit compounded by the fact that most driders don’t leave the Underdark, an area notorious for lack of sunlight. So I had to tap dance my way back to real world spiders to find a reasonable answer for this.

The first step in how spiders survive the winter is by adapting to the cold temperatures. They do this by increasing their metabolic rate, which helps them generate more heat. This allows them to stay warm even in the coldest temperatures. They also produce antifreeze proteins, which help them survive in temperatures as low as -10°C. Another strategy spiders use to survive the winter is by avoiding freezing. When temperatures drop too low, spiders can start to freeze with the water particles surrounding them. To prevent this, spiders produce cryoprotectants, which help them survive in sub-zero temperatures. These cryoprotectants act like antifreeze, preventing the spider’s cells from freezing and allowing them to survive even in the coldest temperatures.

While I am not sure if this is the same thing driders would do, I imagine they must come with some way to contend with ambient temperatures to keep themselves from freezing. I vote slapping a striped scarf on him and hand him a cup of hot cocoa. It’ll taste like ass to him, but it should do the trick all the same. Just don’t let him spit out the hot liquid onto your face, I am not responsible for any burn related injuries that may occur.

I hope even a fraction of this made sense. It was the long way of saying “RANDOM BULLSHIT, GO!” Eh, close enough.

Thanks for the ask!

(Side note: I just learned drider vampires exist. As if things weren't already fucked up enough for the poor bastards.)

[rottenbrainstuff]

BG3 playthrough - completely finished under Moonrise

Wow, oh wow.

From the top: first we had fight #1 with Ketheric. I made sure not to kill Kar’niss earlier because I thought I’d have an opportunity to talk to him on the roof, but nope! We just jumped straight into fight #1, and then he was just a large extra hassle to deal with. I felt SO bad killing him, because I had to incapacitate him somehow, and my bard has really good fear spells so that’s normally what I use. It felt really crummy making this poor guy cower while I slowly chop him down. Sigh. (hey what comes out of those incubating death rock egg things? I was too scared to see and killed them all immediately)

Man. I couldn’t stop staring at Ketheric’s eyes though. Even on lower rendering settings, you can see they clearly spent a TON of effort on his eyes specifically. Man, guys. You must have had a special task team that worked for months just specifically on rendering his wrinkles, and the glassy rheumy effect of his eyes. Holy shit. It’s such a cool direction to take, set up your baddie as this awful, ruthless general with all the battle remains and the chilling letters, make him creepy as fuck with the goblin and the axe demonstration, then also put a shitton of effort into making him also just a really really sad really really old man. I love it.

Then after that: wading through the mindflayer colony. Online says that the companions who have extra dialogue or cutscenes in here are Wyll, Gale, and Karlach, but :( :( :( that leaves no room for Astarion? I decided to not have Karlach. Sorry babe. And anyways, without Astarion, who else is going to take out poor old Chop in one single merciful blow?

I rescued Zevlor from the pods, thank god, thank GOD finally. (hilarious to see his tail poking out the back there) My tav has been upset about him for weeks here. Goddamn, poor guy, he’s been thralled by the Absolute but doesn’t care what you tell him, he puts the blame on himself. Even when you tell him it’s not his fault he was enthralled, he still says that that might be true, but whatever the Absolute does, it starts with something that’s already inside you. Buddy, my buddy. And they programmed so many different ways to get angry with him and blame him. Why? Why do you even want to blame this poor guy who is already blaming himself more than you ever could? I mean at best he was enthralled and couldn’t help it, but at worst he just made a bad decision that he honestly and immediately regretted entirely and was disgusted by. Leave this poor old man alone. He won’t even get angry if you pick the most aggressive and mean dialogue options, he just agrees. Sigh. Back with the other tieflings, you can mention to Cerys that you found Zevlor, and she will just be angry at him for letting them down when they needed him. And I mean. Yes that’s valid but damn it makes me sad. Poor sad old man. Anyways he leveled up in the time we were away, and he is a mean fighter now! Nice! I wish he could have stuck around longer. That was an awfully short conversation, for as much as it was all built up, with all the other tielfings mentioning how angry at him they were! Is this REALLY the only interaction we have with him now until act 3???

DAYUM this area is shitty for a resisting dark urge. So many lovely horrible things down here. Wow. My poor tav, he needs a big long rest to process all of this, but after you’re done everyone wants to talk and there’s a big old cutscene coming up. Poor guy, no rest for you.

THE MIND JARS: wow ok. So at the very beginning of the game, you found those two green brain jars on the nautiloid. Hopefully you stuck them in your storage, or maybe you thought they were useless and you just sold them. EIther way, I’m pretty sure it didn’t occur to you to bring them with you when you went into the Moonrise pit? Why WOULD you think to bring them? It’s too bad if you didn’t, because in this area is the only machine in the game that lets you use these jars, and once you find the machine and realize what it’s for, you can’t travel back to your trunk to get them, and you ALSO won’t be able to return later on. So. Tough luck. Me, I was travelling with my team of 8 str weenies, and every mind jar I found, I sent straight to my camp! Why wouldn’t I? These guys can’t weigh themselves down with extra shit! By the time I found the machine and realized what it did, there was only one jar left in my inventory that I didn’t send back to camp.

I suppose the jars maybe are supposed to be a fun little easter egg for players who go back and play again. Too bad I’m very willing to reload and redo things for hours and hours lmao. I reloaded just a couple hours and this time brought all the jars with me. Thanks, I hate it! What a horrible and disturbing little touch. Yay. Was my least favourite the child mind, or was it the spooky singing one? Hard to say!

I was shitting my pants when Ketheric turned into the Myrkul apostle form, cause it looked scary, but damn? We just all slammed it a few times and it was totally fine? Very very cool boss though. I loved the little skeletons sitting on his shoulder with the flails. Goddamn Ketheric stayed sad right until the end huh? Driven to do horrible things in a misguided attempt to help his daughter, forsaken by three different gods, and his last dying thought and words were of Isobel. I fucking lost it when I found the little note that he keeps on him. Excellent writing Larian, excellent job of making your good guys flawed and your bad guys sad. Man I love it.

Now I have a shitton of talking and cutscenes to wade through to get to act 3. I absolutely ADORE how when the guardian talks about the elder brain, it is just ever so slightly the wrong reaction, lmao. I love how instead of being just generally horrified that there’s an elder brain there at all, it seems to be really, really indignant that mortals are controlling it. “I mean yes hey let’s go save the people of Baldur’s Gate from being turned into mindflayers, but the audacity! The audacity of putting an elder brain in thrall!” and my tav is like hmmm I feel like that’s an… unusual reaction to this situation….

Astarion is absolutely preening after the fight, saying that he never thought he’d be the one defeating the shadows. Yeah see buddy, it feels good sometimes to play the hero, doesn’t it?

Man, my party is enormous now because of all the summons I have walking around with me. I currently have Scratch, three quasits, a shadow wraith thingamajig, an earth elemental (which oh man I absolutely love) and now, the latest addition, a cambion. The cambion is hilarious. It’s a totally sentient and intelligent thing, but I can’t talk to it at all. I imagine it’s pissed off at being summoned here away from its dinner to do boring bullshit errands for this group of wankers, so it just totally and completely ignores me.

Off to act 3 now! Can’t believe I’m in the final act of the game! Can anyone tell me where I can get my own tall, hot, and intensely devoted aasimar girlfriend?

[karniss-bg3]

Hello, I have been troubled by how to set the true ending of my own story. In my story, Kar'niss is mind controlled by an illithid who loves him. They make him fully trust them and live together like a family, protect and take care of him. However, illithid's lifespan is very short for drows. When the illithid getting old and inevitably loses control of him, do you think he will kill them? (Sorry, the entire question was almost made by a translator, and I am a monster)

Greetings!

An interesting concept to be sure. I suppose the question you have to ask yourself is if you want your story to have a happy, bitter sweet or tragic ending? As I’ve not read the story you’ve written I don’t know the mind flayer’s mental state or true intentions so forgive me if my answer doesn’t fully align with what you’re going for.

Assuming Kar’niss’ backstory is the same in your tale then I’m not sure how Kar’niss would feel about his mind being messed with for a third time. His mind was broken by Lolth, then broken by the Absolute, and now he is being controlled by a mind flayer. It also begs the question on if Kar’niss can feel anything positive for the illithid considering he was being controlled rather than staying of his own free will and allowing genuine feelings to develop. Once the mind link drops I imagine Kar’niss would feel like he is waking up from the longest dream of his life. He’d be confused and frightened and that would evolve into anger. Even if he felt some level of affection for this mind flayer, he’d likely have a mental break and lash out simply because he isn’t equipped to withstand that kind of shock. Whether that attack would kill the illithid or not would fully depend on how good they are at defending themselves at the time. Also, I think anyone who is essentially held against their will would be pretty angry once they escaped their bonds even if their treatment was reasonable. At best, Kar’niss would likely have some level of Stockholm syndrome toward them and feel obligated to stay because he has no where else to go.

Of course this is just my opinion but there are a number of ways he could react that would all be reasonable. It’s more about what sort of story you’re trying to tell and what kind of ending you feel is most satisfying to the journey that preceded it. I hope this helps in some way.

Thanks for the ask!