#and playing a lot of bg3 aGAIN

[devourcr]

today is my friday!! which means i might be able to catch up with things.

[elvyn]

Anyway, I finished Baldur's Gate 3

[arlathen]

every other party member: im cursed. im going to die. im owned by someone much more powerful than me. my days are numbered for one reason or another -- the tadpole is only the latest life threatening circumstance.

halsin: i like whittling ducks :)

[loquaciousquark]

Cazador's Ritual Runes, Translated

Inner: AMPLIFY + HIM + FLOW + EMPOWR [sic] Middle: WE OFFER THE FORCE OF LIFE Outer: WE GATHER HERE TO INVOKE THE POWER OF BLOD [sic]

Mephistopheles can't spell for beans.

(Detailed analysis & conjecture regarding this text, the Rite of Profane Ascension, & Astarion's translated scars under the cut.)

The second ring was the easiest, as the characters are very similar to Latin letters and clearly read out "WE OFFER THE FORCE OF LIFE." Characters were now known for C, E, F, H, I, L, O, R, T, and W. It wasn't clear yet if there were cases.

I was struggling with the first ring, though after decoding the second, I could get a likely "_M_LIF_ + _IM + _LOW + EM_OWR". Guessing the character for P, Y, and A based on context gave me "AMPLIFY + _IM + _LOW + EMPOWR", but I had doubts over the first characters for words two and three. I suspected they would be HIM and FLOW, but the H and F characters didn't match the H from the second ring's "THE" or the F from "AMPLIFY". Also, "empower" was misspelled, which made me pause.

Abandoning those for a moment, the third ring mapped well onto "WE _ATHER HERE TO I__O_E THE _OWER OF _LO_". Ruling out known letters which were not present, I could guess "WE GATHER HERE TO I__O_E THE POWER OF _LO_", but again the P from "POWER" was not the same as the P from "AMPLIFY" in the inner ring. However, it was very, very similar, and nothing else fit, so I committed, now suspecting there were capital versions of some letters included in the text.

At this point I went digging for resources. I found a copy of an Infernal alphabet on the Forgotten Realms wiki, and while it looks like the typeface Larian used is a bespoke creation for the game rather than a 1:1 copy of this alphabet, the letters for lowercase G, N, K, B, and D were nearly identical. Y (from AMPLIFY) also matched perfectly, confirming that earlier guess. This gave a clear "WE GATHER HERE TO INVOKE THE POWER OF BLOD."

This resulted in: AMPLIFY + _IM + _LOW + EMPOWR WE OFFER THE FORCE OF LIFE WE GATHER HERE TO INVOKE THE POWER OF BLOD

Looking at the wiki for capital letters, the only ones I could find which might reasonably fit the _IM missing character (assuming the Larian alphabet was based off this wiki typography) were A, B, H, O, T, V, and Y. Of those choices, only AIM, HIM, TIM, and VIM were words, and as cheesy as Cazador is, I couldn't imagine him saying AMPLIFY TIM FLOW EMPOWR. Given the alternatives, HIM was the only choice which made sense.

I went through the same process for _LOW, but this character seems unmatchable to me. By far it looks the most like the E from the Infernal alphabet, with maybe a capital Y being a distant second. However, ELOW and YLOW are certainly not words, and absent all other comparatives, the character in question does resemble a fancy F. Barring other languages, FLOW with a capital or unique F fits best.

AMPLIFY + HIM + FLOW + EMPOWR WE OFFER THE FORCE OF LIFE WE GATHER HERE TO INVOKE THE POWER OF BLOD

I did double-check the texts available in Cazador's mansion just to make sure this hadn't been translated elsewhere (after I'd done all the work, of course), and the only written text of relevance is from the Black Mass scroll you find near Vellioth's skull. It reads:

The Rite of Profane Ascension Oh, piteous dead! Oh, ravenous dead! Immortality is your gift, but darkness is your prison and hunger its gaoler. The Rite of Profane Ascension will release you. Walk in the sun. Suffer not from hunger. Grow your power beyond anything you imagined. A pact has been made with the Lord of Hellfire. Deliver unto him seven thousand souls, each bearing an Infernal mark, and you shall be free of your chains. You shall know true power. Deliver the souls. Speak the words. Ecce dominus, Has animas offero in sacrificio, Nunc volo potestatem quam pollicitus es mihi.

The Latin translates (as best I can tell with my incredibly weak Latin) to:

Behold [the] Lord, I offer these souls in sacrifice, I want the power thou hast promised me.

Which is interesting, but not clearly mapped to the Infernal above. Then I started wondering what relationship Astarion's scars have with all this, but thankfully, someone else has done the work here!

Astarion's scars have been transcribed and translated in a wonderfully detailed Reddit post by northpaw_s in 2020, but the salient points are that they appear to be in a mishmash of mangled Latin and Romance languages ("Infernal") and read:

Hoyc inferiu non iurare per igneu Naec virba loquor Eoai mundo muoat

Which appears to roughly translate to:

This soul swears no oath by fire Nor words does he speak In the realm of death

This makes sense if it's a fragment of a contract. I suspect the other spawn's scars are all identical to Astarion's for game mechanics/development reasons, but it'd be wild if they did have minor differences to complete the rest of the phrases! I know the scars don't show on their backs they way they do on Astarion's outside of the moment of the ritual, but it really does make me wonder if there's a complete text of the poem in some writer's documentation somewhere.

Anyway, what did you do with your Thursday night?

[marblerose-rue]

basking in moonlight

[a2zillustration]

The desire to draw these two again but without the motivation to make something more than one of these little charts (oops)

Thank you Valc0 for making the sheet!

[trappedinafantasy37]

🔥

We should have gotten Kagha and not Halsin as the druid companion from Act 1. In the short time that she is in the game, Kagha is a far more interesting character than Halsin is. She is also someone who can either be made better or made worse and would balance out the number of companions with malleable alignments. Kagha would also be a fantastic character who would constantly challenge and question the player character's decisions as she already does this while in the grove.

I'm not saying Halsin shouldn't be in the game, I'm just saying Halsin is wasted potential being a companion and would have better served as an NPC. Especially since his entire storyline involving Isobel was cut which was a massive L on Larian's part.

In fact, I truly think that if Kagha was a companion, her helping Halsin in Act 2 with the Shadow Curse would serve as a fantastic moment for her to truly atone for her actions in the grove. I also think it would be pretty neat to see how Kagha would have reacted to Arabella now having new magic thanks to her proximity to the idol of Silvanus. I think it would be fascinating to see how she'd interact with all the tieflings in Act 2 and 3. I sometimes try to tell myself that Minthara has no reactions with them cause the tieflings don't actually know it was her specifically who was trying to raid the grove and she doesn't know any of them. But the tieflings and Kagha do know each other and they all know what Kagha tried to do. Her entire redemption arc could be saving the tieflings at every avenue, cause they always need to be saved!

And, my god, don't even get me started on the interactions between Kagha and Minthara. You would end up having two companions who wanted to kill the tieflings, but for vastly different reasons, and neither of them having any remorse for it! I would love to watch how that conversation would play out between the both of them. Especially since Kagha already has a pretty positive opinion of drow and their methods. She would probably be the least judgemental of Minthara and would be the most accepting of who she is. I can genuinely see Kagha and Minthara becoming really close friends and that would be very concerning.

Dammit, now I'm over here brainstorming exactly how Kagha as a companion would actually work on a technical level depending on the choices you make in the grove...

Also, I really want to kiss Kagha.

[redrockcanyons]

Gone off with the sunrise Reno never felt so slow Wednesday's child with a rented ride And a head that's full of woe

[pushing500]

The gang at Arwell continue to pull their weight while staying at a comfortable distance.

Mechi doesn't let his studying get interrupted by things that are definitely not bad omens.

He studied so much that he figured out how to switch off the twisted obelisk! However, we don't have enough archotech shards to do it, so it can stay put for now. That's fine. It doesn't hurt anyone so long as we keep it suppressed. Plus, it's a kind of cool, edgy decoration—if we're lucky, it might even scare visitors (ugh) away!

We finish with Mechi being easily swindled by small children with sob stories about their younger siblings. Again.

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[fenharel-archived]

The Dark Urge. Whatever that is. That is you.

[jacqcrisis]

The post game idea I had for Ronan and Astarion is after a few years of adventuring and looking for a solution to vampirism, they get a proposition from a mutual high-level adventurer they've had dealings with before. She's a dragonborn warlock needing someone to moonlight as her husband on a trip back to Tymanther to make nice with her clan to get a hold of some relic or artifact or WHATEVER. DOESNT MATTER.

What matters is that she asks Astarion to be her 'husband' for the trip since her clan won't let her back into their home without one, hes overdramatic enough naturally to pass for a dragonborn, and since he doesnt know shit about the culture, he can be molded easier into passing for someone of a higher ranking clan than a lowborn weirdo like Ronan who would give the game away within ten minutes of opening his mouth. Astarion will be changed under True Polymorph for the time into a living dragonborn and, once she has her macguffin and they return to Fae'run, she'll use the same spell to change him into the living version of himself permanently. Simple as.

It takes some thinking for both Ronan and Astarion to come to a decision. The trip will be long, months to even a year, and all that time, they wont be making much of an income on top of being half a world away from home. Ronan isnt too keen on returning to his country of origin and Astarion certainly isnt too happy about having to spend so damn long as a lizard. There's a lot of debating, arguing, but this warlock is the only person that they can trust they've found capable and willing to cast the spell and the closest they've gotten to a solution to vampirism that seemingly has no downsides, so they agree.

Before the trip even starts, Astarion is changed in order to get him used to both living and a new body as they make the long trek to Tymanther. He takes to it as well as one would expect: doing just fine while also finding as many reasons to complain about it as he can. It's an adjustment getting used to just the sensation of his heart beating again, the general ebb and flow of biological processes, being warm all on his own, and the dysmorphia when he looks in the mirror to see a dragonborn instead of what he expects, but it's so much more comfortable and right in comparison to undeath.

Now, since Astarion needs to be her husband, one of the stipulations from the warlock is that he and Ronan are not together in any respect for the trip. Ronan is Astarion's bodyguard for this journey and anything closer than that could jeopardize the whole plot given they'll be surrounded by judging scrutinizing vultures looking for any cracks in the warlock's tale and an excuse to kick her to the curb and exile her from the macguffin she needs. Normally this wouldn't be an issue for Astarion, but there's a curious new problem that crops up when his heart is beating once more.

Love and attraction are very numb emotions when one's body is mostly dead. While he knows he loves Ronan mentally, it is not a physical feeling for him. Until he's breathing again and all of a sudden he's got butterflies in his gut when Ronan's around, he's warm when the cleric looks at him, sweating, flushed, shivering when there's a brush of a hand on him, and just thinking about speaking to him makes him smile like a moron despite himself.

Astarion can't stop looking at him. Can't stop wanting Ronan near him. Burning for him in a way he didn't before and its like he's falling in love both again and for the first time. And oh boy, does he hate that considering he can't do anything about it lest he lose his chance to get back to being himself.

That's the setup. Astarion's first taste of being not a vampire comes with being forced into a body that isn't his as he plays mental chess with a bunch of dragonborn to earn his living body back and while he's fighting with Love and Yearning in a physical sense for the first time. Theres a lot of politics, and weird magic mutants, and making googly eyes at each other over dinner, and eventually, Ronan and Astarion break and have a night together, fucking everything up. But then they get the macguffin anyways through their own means and escape and Astarion gets to be a real elf boy again.

Oh and Gale is there too. Because you gotta take your wizard on a walk every now and then to a fucked up displaced lizard continent or he'll start clawing at the walls and doing magical environmental terrorism.

[utterdrip]

idk i wish if you broke up with astarion for the “you arent ready to have a partner yet” he can like. ask to date again if he stays a spawn. maybe asks to open a courtship idk.

ascended would be sooooo “look what you missed out on ha hu he” (is desperately craving the intimacy his partner provided)

[revvethasmythh]

My Dark Urge when Morena Dekarios inevitably asks for grandchildren but I've already promised Jaheira there will be no Bhaalspawn blood matches with duelists who call her 'auntie'

[blackjackkent]

Jaheira looks deeply grim as they loot the bodies of the dead doppelgangers. Whatever good humor she'd had on entering the Harper safehouse has drained out of her, leaving her looking more tired and haggard than ever.

Her expression is carefully noncommittal as she looks at a note left on the table near one of the dead bodies.

"So it is, then," Rakha hears her murmur - the words clearly meant for no one but herself. "The tree has been cut apart at its roots."

She folds up the paper and tucks it away in her pack, and for just a moment Rakha can see a flash of brilliant pain through her eyes and across the curve of her mouth. And then it passes and her expression is unreadable again.

Geraldus is leaned against the wall of the basement, trembling with exhaustion and fear. "Did I- Did I get it right?" he asks shakily.

With visible effort, Jaheira pastes a faint smile and a business-like glance onto her face. "Selune's Tears," she says matter-of-factly with a slight nod. "It is said no false face can stand beneath their light. An old code, Harper - but yes. You got it right. Now... I need your report."

Geraldus straightens with an earnest nod. "We had eyes on suspected cultists in the city, like you asked," he says. "We thought we were tracking them, but..."

"They were tracking you instead, evidently," Jaheira says grimly. "Doppelgangers."

Geraldus nods several times rapidly. "And they're not just working with the cult, High Harper. They're *part* of it. Bhaalists, I think."

"Sworn to Orin the Red, yes," Jaheira confirms. "We've... already had the pleasure. Go on."

The boy shifts his weight uncertainly from side to side; his gaze flicks to Rakha and the others, then back to Jaheira. "Everything seemed fine until... your latest orders. Until we started to search for the Rashemaar."

Rakha blinks at the unfamiliar word. She glances at Wyll but he shrugs uncertainly in response.

"They struck the same night," Geraldus goes on. His voice trembles just a little. "I woke to one of them strangling Chelvin while smiling at me out of her face. She said - it said - that I'd report back to you as normal. Lure you here. And... I had no choice."

An uncomfortable little shiver of pleasure goes down Rakha's back as she considers this image. A brutal way to die, whispers the beast. Our Father's servants do beautiful work... and forced the boy to watch...

Jaheira's expression twists with dismay and regret. "I'm sure it felt that way, Geraldus," she mutters. "The others were likely dragged back to Orin. Tortured. Sacrificed." Her jaw works, her eyes hooding over with effort at controlling her emotions. "I do not expect you to die for me," she says, a touch bitterly. "But to risk Entharl? Any citizen who might have wandered in?"

She shakes her head - and even Rakha can feel the sting of disappointment in her words. "There is always a choice. And a Harper must be able to make the hard ones. Perhaps this isn't the life for you after all, Geraldus."

Geraldus blanches, appalled. "No! Jaheira - High Harper - please! I'm still a Harper! I want to help!"

Jaheira frowns - and again, just for a moment, Rakha can see that flicker of pain, swiftly concealed. "You've scarcely signed up, boy," she says softly. "And there is a war coming. Why die a Harper when you could still live as anything else?"

(A/N: This line fucking kills me. :( I JUST HAVE A LOT OF FEELINGS ABOUT HER OKAY.)

Rakha draws a slow breath and hisses it out between her teeth. She can tell, from her position outside the moment, that it is a difficult one for Jaheira - but she is all too acutely aware of the dead doppelgangers around them, the smell of blood in the air. She can't focus.

"Enough," she mutters hoarsely. "What do we do now?"(*)

Jaheira flinches. For a moment, she looks as if she wants to be angry at Rakha's interruption - but then she just sighs and shakes her head. "I'll come clean," she says tightly. "I did not tell you all about what I hoped to learn here today. I will rectify that."

A pause. Then she looks at the boy, who is still watching her anxiously. "But first... Geraldus. Does your mother still own that farm in the Dalelands?"

"Yes, High Harper." His shoulders slump, feeling the blow before it arrives.

She smiles sadly. "Just Jaheira to you, now," she says quietly. "Go on. I have all the help I need."

-----

(*) In-game line is "Enough of the Harper dramatics," which didn't sound exactly Rakha-ish.

[theygender]

I've got too many games I want to play and not enough free time 😭 I still need to finish my BG3 playthrough but since Endless Ocean: Luminous came out I've been playing a lot of that instead. Also just got back into Wizard101 last night. Started playing House Flipper again last weekend. Still need to finish BOTW so I can start a TOTK playthrough and finish Pokemon Shield so I can start on Pokemon Violet. I've been fighting off the urge to start up a new Skyrim playthrough for weeks. My brother just told me that Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door is getting ported to the Switch. And now I'm suddenly feeling inspired to replay DAI... And throughout all of this I'm also playing the hell out of DragonVale on my phone. Someone just pay me to play video games all day please

[emmodii-mode]

Just finished my first playthrough of BG3. Romanced Lae'zel, but ending up turning into an Illithid because the idea of making Orpheus or Karlach do it didn't sit well with me (or my character).

I told Lae'zel to leave with Orpheus in the end (I heard she wouldn't stay with a ghaik anyway, which she's valid for, but also, it doesn't feel right to ask her to stay when I know how much her people mean to her). And like-

Her face before she flies off---

She looks so heartbroken and sad.