#Karlach is her bff for real

[mariana-oconnor]

Look, I may have accidentally created an aroace character, but now I'm going back to make a non-aroace character so I can romance the disaster wizard and live in his magical library.

This is a completely rational action and not in any way weird.

[alpydk]

✨❄️🫧

✨Which is your favourite platonic BG3 dynamic and why?

I probably can't mention my OC's... Because otherwise it would be Nana and Astarion and their enemy to friends' route. BFF's forever!

Otherwise it's probably (And this is total headcanon) Minthara and Gale. I like the idea that she hated him to begin with but over time and defeat of the Netherbrain as learned to respect him as a wizard, and dare I say it, like him as a comrade. I can imagine the two of them drinking together and him asking questions about Menzoberranzan, her lightening up a little, getting to talk about her home. He would chuckle at the quite obvious insults to him, knowing that's just what she is like.

Yeah, that's what I'm going with...

❄️Which BG3 companion is your most/least favourite to write?

Most favourite is Rugan easily. Get to relax so much into my natural way of speaking, use all the dialect and just chill. There's no poetry in the language or fannying about with in game terms. It's just hard and fast (like Rugan)

Least favourite is probably Shadowheart (Or Læzel who I dare not write for. Love Devorah, can't stand the gith'yenki). But yeah, Shadowheart is a bit too uptight in how she talks. Nothing really stands out to me personality wise with her language unlike with Astarion or Gale. It's sort of like writing generic NPC number 56 and I find it incredibly difficult.

🫧If you were to write a BG3 AU, what universe would you pick?

You mean aside from whatever is going on in the Gale x Rugan fic right now (fucking zombies!?! WTF!). I don't know. I've found AU's lose characterisation real fast so I avoid a lot of them entirely. Sort of do want to see some cross over type things if that counts. Maybe Astarion in Silent Hill or Gale in Dragon Age.

Astarion and Gale at Disneyland was what my kid was going on about yesterday. Shadowheart meeting other princesses. Karlach just being Karlach. Wyll seeing the dragon at the main castle. That'd be fun.

"No, Astarion. You cannot take them off. It is custom that you must wear the helm of this nation's god."

"But Gale, they look fucking awful. And which maniac decided a mouse should be a god?"

"I'm unsure of the logistics behind it, but I do believe it was the high priest Disney that wrote the original manuscripts."

"Quite the narcissist to name a land after himself, don't you think?"

"I can't disagree with you but you have to admit it is bringing much joy to those around us. Now... Let us locate the source of the magic here...and is that Shadowheart riding a float?"

-----

I may be getting carried away. Sorry... Thanks for the ask <3

[aboxofcereales]

I won’t be able to play the game until august 8, so here’s a list of things I’d like to see and theories that I believe will be proven right at the full launch of Baldur’s Gate III.

warning: contains spoiler based on last panel from hell of July 7 and datamining + bunch of misspellings

Think it’s pretty obvious but the three chosen of the Absolute are in one way or another connected to the Dead Three: Ketheric Thorm - Myrkul, Enver Gortash - Bane, Orin the Red - Bhaal

(might be wrong but) Larian did confirm some time ago - the Mindflayers won’t be the Big Bad. To my mind undoubtedly the Dead Three will play a significant role, but I also think that Shar, Vlaakith and someone from Avernus will be involved (Zariel maybe?)

To add the last, somehow Astarion’s scar, Mizora, Rafael and Karlach are tied together

Withers’ question and our answer is some foreshadowing and is gonna bite us on the neck later on

Withers is Jergal

Seluna might be the reason why his helping us

Daisy is not what we think they are, not just personification of the parasite

* I’m not sure how much of seduction narrative has been left, but I think it would be fun to see Daisy to take a form of our LI or vise verse at some point

Raphael’s interest in the brainworms is due to netheres magic

Lorroakan, the wizard of Ramazith's tower, is Edwin Odesseiron

There’s something very dark about Gale, not in the way “don’t trust the wizards”, but in way we’ll learn that he way more sinister than he makes himself seem. But I doubt that he’ll betray (if we play our cards right) though. Let me make him my bff

To add to that, when we first meet him, he says that he’s in need of a archemage, later we learn that he also need to consume the weave… can he consume it from the living creatures?

Gale’s relationship with Halaster Blackcloak. WHY THE FUCK DID HE LEFT TARA IN HIS CARE?!

And the heartbreaking ending Crystal was talking about? That’s Gale’s one. Mark my words

Shadowheart is not her real name, duh, hope we get to know the real one

I don’t think Shadowheart is brainwashed cleric of Selune, most likely she chose freely to join the Night Church due to loss at young age, previously worshiping Selune

Her strange magic is Selune-ish, I think

Would really like to see Viconia in the Shadowheart’s hideout in the city

The Temple of Shar, Ketheric and those Shar worshipers will be key in making Shadowheart rethink her devotion (and our previous decision ofc)

Astarion was a nasty person before he become a vampire spawn, pretty sure that his abuse of his position is what got him in Cazador’s grip

There’s got to be one ending where he turns Tav into his own vampire spawn

Not sure how much the changes in Wyll character will affect this, but… even though it’s seems that Mizora is no longer captured by goblins, I hope there some specific interactions with her if we follow Wyll romance

Wyll is part of the Eltan family

WHATS WITH HIS EYE BEING A QUEST OBJECT??

Really wish we’ll learn about companies families: I want to meet Wyll’s father, to learn about Gale’s parents, to help Shadowheart remember her family, to learn about Astarion’s past, to know their last names and etc. Let me know theirs ages, Larian!

Also, Larian, my dear, give Wyll and Gale their unique armor

The artifact will cure us

I really wish there’s some reference to Honor Among Thieves, as they both take place around late 15th century

If Zevlor is Absolute’s servant, I really hope there’ll be a horrible way to make him pay

Auntie Ethel loot is cursed

[skyberia]

Hi, I read your about on Nephos and I'd really love to hear more about his companion quest! Like, she lied but is the curse 1. not a curse, 2. a curse used to leash a powerful sorcerer, or 3. A curse that was put on her that she transferred to him. Also: How do the other companions react to things as more is learned through his quest line? You've drawn romantic things with him and Astarion, so does he have more/different reactions to companions who are just friends?

And finally: What is the end game of his quest? Is it just revenge or no revenge, with no real way to fix it? Is it a situation where you can fix it or he can accept his death and each has their own sacrifices? If it can be cured, do the tendrils covering half his body remain as permanent scars? Or will they fade in time?

Anyway I love your sorcerer have a nice day.

these are fantastic questions. thank you so much. i wrote out a whole thing under the readmore (basically the rundown of the entire quest as i envision it lol) but given how it's Really long and i don't expect anyone to want to read through all that, here's just the answers to your questions. a TL;DR if you will

it is very much a real curse, just not the ~mysterious~ affliction he thought he was born with. it's actually dark magic concocted by his "mother figure" and placed on him as a way to use him (so your option 2 is kind of right!) but the true point of it is to basically channel his lightning magic in such a way so that it can be used to power one of her inventions... basically turning him into a humanoid battery. so it's not really a death curse in the way he thought it was, but only because it's a "fate worse than death" curse i guess. lol

due to (waves hands) reasons it takes them a Long time to tell the others about their "condition" and everyone else takes it differently... i guess most interestingly it changes their entire dynamic with karlach, where she goes from begrudgingly tolerating them (because they're a huge asshole when they first meet) to sympathising with them and then to just truly bonding over essentially having the same fate. she still thinks he's kind of a dick though. because he is kind of a dick

when he figures out what was done to him, he rallies everyone into taking his "mother figure" down (for revenge, but also like. prevent part of the fate worse than death) you fight her, but before you deal the final blow she starts pleading. promises that she can reverse the curse, but only if you let her live. if you spare her, she'll get to work on a cure.… allegedly. if you kill her, néphos is stuck with the curse and everything that implies, but at least no longer under her control or threat, and free to spend however long he has left in whatever way makes him happiest.

(^ bffs forever or until we both die shortly)

anyway. here's like 1.6k words about how néphos' companion quest goes down. if you're interested in rambling

his companion quest (named "The Eye of the Storm", because he's a storm sorcerer with a plot significant eye. this isn't really relevant to anything i just think it's fun) has one key player in it: that being the "mother figure" character, the one who "saved" them and who they think quite highly of due to, being convinced that they kind of owe their life to her. Néphos knows her to be an old halfling cleric named Hosana Stillwater.

in the years since she left due to her poor health after using all her power to slow down the progress of his curse, he has kind of kept in contact with her through letters but has not seen her personally, with the reasoning that she's too sickly to have visitors. fair enough. he doesn't want to cause her more grief than he already did.

anyway jump ahead to the events of the game. after a frankly ridiculous amount of time (somewhere around act 2), they finally come forth and admit to their companions that their blacked out eye and the "tattoos" they have on their face are actually signs of a curse, and it's getting worse a lot faster than it was previously, almost as if it's having a reaction to the tadpole. So It's, Uh, Not Looking Really Great For Him

it takes a while for them to come forth to the others with this info (despite being badgered about it all the time) because he, sincerely, had a firm belief that this was none of their business. something about Néphos is that he spent basically his entire life turning away from others and only establishing connections if he saw some sort of benefit or reward that could be earned from it. entirely transactional stuff, never saw a point in "friends" and never understood the idea of doing things for others, what, out of affection? … until being abducted by a nautiloid and having a worm shoved into his eye and forced into an actual adventuring party.

(by this point he's starting to form actual relationships with the others and it's making him question Why he ever thought like that in the first place… but anyway)

they're not convinced that there's any way around the curse. his quest doesn't suddenly become "we need to look for a cure!" because he's very much deadset on the idea that there isn't one. he spent a good few years trying to find one and only found that nobody can even tell him what it is, so it would be a complete waste of time to run around looking for curse experts, specially when they all have Bigger Issues to deal with.

However, through basically interrogating them over their backstory and what they do know of the curse, strange things start to jump out to them. info that doesn't really match up or make much sense. doesn't this whole story about him being rescued by a good samaritan who just happened to be capable of slowing down his mysterious curse seem too good to be true? and about the good samaritan, there's so much about Hosana that he doesn't actually know and never questioned that seems weird now…

So in act 3, when the party reaches baldur's gate, he requests that they try to find Hosana's whereabouts so he can finally talk to her and maybe clear some things up. going to the house of healing he always sent his letters to, they all find that… nobody knows of an elderly halfling cleric named Hosana Stillwater. nobody by that name ever stayed there for any period of time. by all accounts, she doesn't even exist.

Néphos is in disbelief over this. sure, he last saw her, like, 40 years ago, but he remembers her! he spent time with her! she took care of him! and he sent letters to her here! and he got responses! after pressing some of the employees over it, they spit out that someone else came to collect those. one of the benefactors of the house, a rich elf lady named Alodie Aello.

the next steps are finding out more about this woman so maybe SHE can explain what the fuck's going on here. eventually you all find where she lives (it's like, a mansion) and infiltrate it. she's not there currently and security's not that difficult to take down, so there's plenty of exploration that can be done.

on the surface, she doesn't seem at all connected to Néphos, nothing that indicates her even being able to know of their existence. seems she's an inventor of sorts, her place's littered with pretty magic-powered machines and other types of devices, but there isn't anything particularly revolutionary.

but they all keep looking. and eventually they find that she has a hidden, secret room or basement. and THAT'S where you find the real shit. there's a huge machine that nobody can figure out the use for, and around it there's plans and documents and journals and letters (that look a little familiar…) that are ALL about néphos and the curse. there's so much and a lot of it is just straight up incomprehensible or gibberish, but this shit is basically detailing his entire life story, including shit he did not know about.

in summary: she had been on the lookout for people who had some aptitude for lightning magic. she found Néphos when they were basically a baby, which was perfect. they were the child of a poor drow woman who'd just ran away from the underdark on her own, so getting rid of her to get access to the baby was Really easy. and then she cursed them with dark magic of her own creation.

(so nobody he went to was able to figure out what the hell the curse he had was because it was specially made to fuck him, specifically, over. really fun for him)

through those documents you learn that the point of it was to concentrate his lightning magic over time so she could basically turn him into a battery for her greatest invention. at its final stage, it would have essentially rendered him a vegetable, only capable of channelling power out and nothing else. so he would've been as good as dead, except not. his soul would be stuck in the mortal plane for however long she managed to keep him.

additionally, she documents having done something Else to him: she basically magically conditioned him to have certain behaviours: stay in baldur's gate, avoid connections with others unless beneficial, work to improve his magic. this is because after a few years of trying to raise him in secret in disguise as Hosana (it's possible that kidnapping a child and cursing them in order to use them for your own means could be generally looked down upon in high society) she got sick of it and decided it was more productive to just let him loose, essentially let him raise himself. So that's why he is the way he is.

(it's possible that the tadpole, though it worsened the curse, managed to cut this specific "feature" off.)

as you're all processing this, enter Alodie stage left. she's finally home! Néphos is Not happy, but she's willing to talk. unfortunately all she has to say is excuses that are pretty easily disproven by all the info you just learned. when she finally realises that you all know Everything and she can't talk her way out of it, you fight.

but before the final blow can be dealt, she stops and starts pleading for her life: she's the only person who understands Néphos' curse, so she's the only one who can reverse its effects! if you kill her now, you lose all chances of finding a cure. and she'll find a cure if you spare her, she promises!

Néphos refuses. obviously you can't trust anything she says, you know what she did to him, what she wanted him for! there's no way she's actually going to cure him. but she has a point, doesn't she? as the person who put all this together, she's the only one who can figure out a cure. it would mean Néphos would get a real shot at actually living…

if killed: Néphos continues being cursed. there can be talk of trying to find specialists to look at Alodie's documents, to see if they can reverse engineer a cure from that, but they still don't have much hope about that. it's bittersweet, but they are overall very grateful. even if they die a lot sooner than they should, they'll die free and knowing they're around people they trust. they won't be used for their magic. they'll die happy.

if spared: she'll thank you. she Promises she'll keep her word, even though she doesn't have a cure right now she'll start figuring one out immediately. Néphos on the other hand is Really Not Happy. implies he'll see this adventure through, but after the elder brain's destroyed they're done. they don't care if they're cured, they're leaving baldur's gate and getting the hell away from Alodie as soon as they can.

(but: Alodie insists on keeping him for the evening, swears up and down she'll do him no harm, it's just something she wants to try and see if it'll ease the effects of the curse for the moment. the next day, Néphos isn't much different. curse's still the same, still visibly there, but they're much calmer. it's almost like he completely forgot what he said the day before... if you bring it up, he just waves it off and says he was just being dramatic, he didn't actually mean any of it. he sees exactly where you were coming from and thanks you for making him see what was best for him before he did something so drastic………. :) )

[numbaoneflaya]

PAPA....IF ITS OKAY...MAY I request some info about THAELEA?! WHATS THEIR RACE/CLASS/BUILD?! WHO IS THEIR BFF!?.. how do they get redeemed 🫂 ...🎤🎤🎤🎤🎤 I am brutally addicted to hearing about peoples tavs-oh god ESPECIALLYYYYYYYYYY DURGES- DURGES ARE MY FAVORITE👹👹👹 JBAVAV THANK YOU

SWEET GIRTHWORM U HAVE AWAKENED THE BEAST I AM AFRAID… MANY WORDS BELOW THIS POINT FOR THOSE WHO DARE

THISSSSS IS THAELEA she is a DROW BARD!!! She is around 6’1 and a real sweetheart if you discount the torture necrophilia rape and murder she has committed! She was born and raised in the underdark where murder and torture were normal and she didn’t fit in there even as a baby bcs at her base she is a sensitive soul 😔 read a lot about Drizzt as a kid and always wanted to one day escape to be a hero like him. Bookworm and music lover at heart no matter pre urge, post urge, post memory loss, etc. anyway when the URGE hit when she was around 12 she killed and ate her mother and siblings and best friends 😞 tried to kill herself afterwards when she got back to herself but her little butler bestie didn’t let her! Instead took her on a long journey to ‘acceptance’ to you know the place the bhaalspawn place. There she was remade and forced to embrace the parts of herself she’d been fighting.

She was reallyyyy good at bhaaling as we all know. Daddies favorite little freak type beat. She was also in love with Orin who’s only a few years younger than her. Orin is her half sister yeah and thealea was hopelessly enraptured by her and her artistry. Unfortunately Orin is the jealous type and we all know how that goes :/ finally invites thaelea to smash and then smashes her skull in and puts a worm in it. Major L moment for thaelea NGL.

ANYWAY she’s a bard who sings about the main things she’s always held onto besides the atrocities- the vague ideas of friendship, love, community and belonging. Since she’s had her memories wiped those are the only things she knows- the ideas of those things. And those are the only things that make her want to keep fighting when she didn’t know her name- the idea that those things exist, somewhere, somehow.

KARLACH AND WYLL are her besties… at least at first. Before the urge comes back and ruins her again. The three of them, although thaelea is pretty damn evil and always thinking about killing torturing and consuming, well, the three of them are the three main optimists with, ironically, the best morals in the group. It’s a whole other can of worms when you know… she tells them all about the urge. It’s a bit of a shock for everyone to learn that the giant sweetheart therapist of the group is actually you know. A monster.

[void-botanist]

PLS KARLACH HEADCANONS ILY

In case it's relevant I have not actually finished act 3 but here we go:

Sexuality Headcanon: bi but with a not-so-subtle preference for women most of the time

Gender Headcanon: honestly haven't really thought about it but. trans Karlach is an excellent idea it's true

A ship I have with said character: other than the possibilities of Tav which Harrowben spun me a tale about, I don't have a specific ship with her but her and Dammon is good low-hanging fruit and I feel like she'd have a real vibe with Jaheira, though Jaheira is a lot older than her I think.

A BROTP I have with said character: Wyll, obviously. I don't really see them as a romantic pairing - not that they couldn't be but look at them. They are BFFs. However the funniest brotp would probably be Astarion because they disagree about almost everything except when their "I want to murder you" energy aligns so hard it practically vibrates, yet they enjoy razzing each other all the time.

A NOTP I have with said character: Gortash.

A random headcanon: yesterday I had a really cool idea about her rage and her magic/personality but I don't remember it at all now. Anyway I think she would be extremely susceptible to everything fortnite. She can do every emote and she likes accessorizing more than she would like to admit. Whenever she plays with Astarion she makes sure to drop at Tilted and he hates it.

General Opinion over said character: Karlach is the best. Possibly best companion.

Send me a character!

[madmaryholiday]

i think i've decided that for my durge run, i'm gonna be BFFs with astarion instead of romancing him. i miiiiiight try to romance wyll for this run? maybe? i'm trying to decide who would have the most interesting romance arc in this scenario. lae'zel and shadowheart are, at least in my mind, doing an enemies-to-lovers run in the background, so i don't really want to romance either of them. karlach might be fun, but i feel bad pursuing her when i know shit's gonna get real bad later. she deserves a nice, sweet romance. gale's dead, of course, so i don't have to worry about him.

wyll just seems like a good match for my durge--he's making the best of a bad situation, knowing he's doomed in the end but determined to do the most good he can before he gets dragged to the hells.