#and that he was ALL about making sure the spawns behaved (ex. comment about astarion slouching)

[lucrezianoin]

Okay, I wanna pick your brain a bit. What do you make of Astarion’s “There’s nothing more desirable in the world than a vampire, is there?” comment after the Blood Merchant thing?

It makes me wonder exactly how many of his targets knew he was a vampire and if that fact alone appealed to them. But! It’s also pretty clear that Astarion and Cazador both are wary of people discovering their nature.

Anyway, I love your blog! Have a lovely day!

OHH I was thinking about it just two days agoooo I am honored!!

So the first thing that comes to mind is that this is a meta-line. I mean, in any case it needs a meaning in world too, but I think that it was added as a way to directly tell the player "Hey, this is about the seductive vampire trope, and we are flipping it on its head". Other similar lines, imho, in Astarion's story are:

This is just a game for you, isn't it? (when you ignore his words and coerce him into having sex)

If you don't like it, maybe this is not for you (I am paraphrasing it, but basically this is what ascended Astarion tells you if you say you wanted him to love you):

So I think this might be part of it.

But of course, in game it will have to have a meaning. Given that people pretty easily tell he is a vampire (Araj, Z'rell) it is possible that some of his marks thought:

a) He was a vampire

b) He was playing the part of a vampire (like a fantasy)

I tend to agree with you that everything was mainly dedicated to hiding their natures as vampires, so it is possible that it was more of a vague game (like "ohh surely he is not a vampire, but what if"). There is also a line about how there is a small number of people Astarion slept with who are still alive, plus his comment about Cazador's pleasure chambers - so I suppose it is possible that he used to entertain for Cazador's guests? Guests he was not supposed to bring to him?

When you ask Astarion about your relationship in act 2 he kinda divides the possibilities in: victim, target, a night better to forget. While these could all be overlapping, who knows, maybe there were some nights better to forget who were not his targets or victims.

In this case it is possible that there could have been more expectations (or even knowledge) about the whole vampire fantasy, than someone he had to quickly seduce and bring back (or also slowly seduce... just someone he had to bring back).