#astarion is so done with aurelia’s shit

[kellerybird]

the brain rot has returned with a vengeance (reblogs ok!!!!!)

[ryttu3k]

Thoughts on tiefling!Astarion, inspired by this art by @poofroom , this art by @nebelimlim , and the knowledge that he actually was a tiefling in concept stages. CW for canon-typical mentions of Astarion's backstory, plus discrimination.

I imagine him still being a former magistrate, upper city snobby type. Tiefling Astarion, I think, would have had to fight like hell to be respected, potentially to the point of using more underhanded techniques. He wouldn't have the inherent high elf snobbery, but has a much more… at the risk of using a kind of classist phrase, but a much more 'new money' attitude, up until he's turned. He's looked down upon by so many just by virtue of his origins that he's holding on to whatever power and status he can get with his teeth; he may well have set aside any more humble origins in favour of climbing the ladder to success. It's fine! He's not like those other tieflings, he's a magistrate, he's upper city now, he can fit in fine!

Maybe he was turned a bit younger than 39, maybe mid-20s - still an adult, yes, but also still a fairly young one by the standards of his people. Either way, he is turned, and spends nearly two hundred years going through pure shit at Cazador's hand; if Cazador remains a high elf, and Aurelia remains a tiefling as well, there's another layer of power issues in there, potentially a closer bond to his older sister (or, alternatively, a stronger sense of competition, the need to be the 'better' sibling), and potentially an element of fetishisation as 'the other'.

By the time he gets captured and tadpoled, he's got this iron-clad mask in place - a flirty, confident upper-class noble, but now with a sense that he's worked hard for everything he's got instead of just that typically high elven entitlement. Look at all he's done! Imagine what else he could do for the group! He'd have a bit of a rude shock meeting the Elturian tieflings - they're desperate, he wants to put them aside, he's nothing like them, they reinforce a lot of his, "This is why people look down on us" attitude - but at the same time, these are his people, and the first time he's really spent any amount of time with other tieflings. He might actually find some common ground with them, especially the clearly ambitious Rolan, and I can see him developing a genuine soft spot for the thieflings, teaching them new sleight-of-hand tricks and encouraging them to rob anyone they see blind.

(Tiefling!Astarion holding up Mol: "Is anyone going to adopt this child, or should I go ahead?")

Still, overall, there's some resentment that the only other tieflings he meets are desperate refugees. That is not the image he wants to project. That is not an image that will keep him safe and protected. Helping the refugees means being inevitably lumped in with them, and he wants to be seen as better than that. He wants to belong to the upper class he pretends to be a part of, not… them.

Karlach would be fascinating, too. She's a heroic figure to a lot of the Elturians, who had actually witnessed her fighting firsthand in Avernus. To Astarion, she's brash, crude, and loud - and worse still, good-natured. Ugh, how annoying! And then because it's scientifically impossible to dislike Karlach, and because she gets protective over people but that includes him too and that's… quite nice, actually, and because her good-naturedness and kindness is balanced with an absolute willingness to hit things with a battle axe bigger than he is, he just… ends up bonding with her. Two tieflings, displaced from anywhere they've called home for the past ten years / two centuries, either physically (in Karlach's case) or emotionally (Astarion feeling distanced from other tieflings by dint of climbing the ladder of success and in the process alienating his community, and from his mortal life by dint of being a spawn), starting to find a sense of home and connection with each other.

Another potential plus side where my hellspawn tendencies start to show - tieflings have innate fire resistence. It might not be enough for him to actually seduce her, forcing him, like in canon, to actually get to know her and develop more of a relationship first before any intimacy ends up on the table at all, but - it might be enough for a hug I think both of them desperately need. Just casual, non-sexual contact, linking their tails together as they walk side by side, little brushes of hands. Just this brash outer city punk who became a conscripted warrior in the Hells, and this nu-upper-city snob who became a vampire spawn, slowly working out what freedom looks like with each other.

For Astarion's main storyline, the temptation to Ascend, I think, would be even stronger. People look down on tieflings? Well, they're not looking down on him now, are they? If Aurelia and Astarion both have infernal scars, they could potentially read them to each other; Astarion may even start the game knowing it's a contract of some kind, even if he doesn't know the details. The drive to learn what exactly he's scarred with would be even stronger, even if dealing with a devil as a 'devilspawn' is a lot more fraught than dealing with a devil as a high elf (especially given that the deal is with Mephistopheles - imagine if he was a Mephistopheles tief? Same sort of power issues that Karlach deals with, being a Zariel tief). He would see Ascending as more than just overpowering his abuser - he would see it almost as his birthright. And that's a hell of a thing to try to turn down…

Also, there's some possibly fascinating interactions with Gortash, who's gone from 'child of a pair of cobblers' to 'devil's slave' to 'Archduke and architect of the Absolute plot'. Gortash personally betrayed Karlach - would Astarion be more tempted to ally with Gortash, given that Gortash may be an aspirational figure with how he's gained power from nothing? Or would any relationship with Karlach put the kibosh on that permanently? Lots of fascinating options!

[theautumnpicker]

When Gale disappears, Astarion is a little unnerved, but he watches him go, telling himself that he can take care of himself, and that he won't be long. Astarion occupies himself with relatively minor tasks— when the rest of the party returns, he joins a group of them investigating a group of people plagued by a hag.

But he also enjoys a trip to the baths, the purchase of an additional outfit, some oils to mix for Gale's perfume, which he experiments with. Yet as the sky dims, Gale still fails to return. Surely that wasn't what he intended? Astarion is deeply unnerved, assuming that Orin or the Bhaalists may have done something with him, but he is persuaded by the others that they'll look for him first thing in the morning.

Even so, he's unusually alert during his reverie that evening, when his siblings appear and fail to surprise him. His eyes fly open and he's on his feet grabbing his knife before Leon can even say, "Shit."

The rest of the room has ceased to exist to Astarion. He makes no effort to cry out for help— such a thing would be terribly undignified. Just as Aurelia begins to explain the purpose of their visit, Astarion can see the door to their second floor room open and Gale walks through. It doesn't relieve him in the way it ought to. His gaze slides away, and he lowers his knife.

"Don't we deserve better? I know what you want. More than freedom. More than to walk in the sun. You want Cazador dead. I will attend the Rite— and I will complete it, as the Ascendant. And then I am going to kill him. Now is your chance. Name me your new master, and we'll all share the victory."

He's relieved, suddenly, that the others aren't awake. He doesn't want any contradictions. Aurelia and Leon are already looking deeply uncertain. But, even as the tide of control turns towards Astarion's side, he can see the wave of compulsion behind their eyes.

"Cazador gave us our orders," says Leon, "but he didn't say we couldn't talk."

It's as much an agreement as Astarion is capable of getting, but he knows what's coming; it's Astarion that strikes first, a brutal stab through Leon's chest, though the others move to surround him immediately after.

Gale can see it, the blood red eyes of a cornered animal coiled and ready to strike. He drops his head, avoiding the source of the vitriol, still it wrings his heart like a muscle riggored by poison.

"I apologize that my words are not coming across as well as I have intended them. Do you sincerely think I have said all this to lord my intelligence over you?" Though he tries to cover it, there is an inflection of hurt upon his voice.

[fangsandfeels]

And there's whatever this is, from Leon: "Runt, we've spoken of vengeance time and again, and you never listened." As in the spawn actually plotted to be free, and Astarion sabotaged it/wouldn't cooperate to save his own skin?;

It may be both. Since Leon is supposed to be the most recent "addition to the family", he may have been the most active in conspiring against Cazador (once again, to save his daughter) - he might have even been successful in inspiring some of the spawn, but Astarion (as one of the first spawn) having endured his fair share of tortures and sabotage from siblings, refused to believe him or had been too traumatized by his punishment for letting the victim go to attempt something again. Moreover, he hated seeing Leon hopeful and confident because he knew it all was temporary -- in a mere 60 years there would be no trace of that will to fight back.

I don't think Astarion ever ratted him out or directly ruined his attempt (Leon wouldn't just despise him, he'd forever be furious with him), but he probably told Leon to forget all his plans and never talk to him again because he wasn't going to get flayed because of other's stupidity. At some point he might have even made Leon stop pestering him with his escape fantasies by being outright vicious in his arguments - like telling him that his daughter would die anyway because Cazador has no intention of keeping her unharmed.

As a result, Leon had to delay his vengeance plans because not all spawns would cooperate (and therefore, there was a risk of uncooperative spawns telling Cazador) - and Astarion became just a selfish lickspittle in his eyes.

(Ironically, Leon might have even not known that other spawns would have done worse than instantly refuse to work together - they would have deceived him and sabotaged his plans or set him up out of the same fear of Cazador; Violet didn't really like Leon for outperforming her and making her lose her privileges, Dal was eyeing his daughter as an experimental cure -- the betrayal would have happened anyways because of how fucked up the things were)

Also, Leon hadn't been around to see Astarion's most outwardly rebellious side snuffed out and probably whenever Astarion acted out in any smallest way possible, Cazador made sure to punish him and others, which accumulated the resentment.

Like when Cazador tortured whoever was sent to retrieve Astarion when he didn't come back -- I can imagine that the spawns actually blamed Astarion for getting them into this, instead of hating Cazador first, and foremost. And probably, as Cazador was preparing for the ritual, telling them that if only Astarion was there, they all would have been free and rewarded (while still punishing them), their bitterness just kept bottling up.

Aurelia also thinks he's a selfish little shit, apparently, she's used to Astarion ruining things for them: "This is our only chance to be free, to end centuries of slavery. You will not ruin it, Astarion!" She's also siding with Cazador: Aurelia: Of course not, the master's no fool. He needs us. Astarion: And when he doesn't need you anymore? What then, sister? Aurelia: We have been his servants for centuries, he has always needed us!

It's a popular headcanon that Aurelia is the first, and therefore, the most "broken" spawn out of them all (with Astarion being the second Turned spawn). When doing The Pale Elf quest without Astarion and interacting with the freed spawn, depending on the dialogue choice Aurelia will beg for mercy and call Cazador's killer Master. Aside from Yousen, she is the only spawn doing that, which tells a lot about her mental state.

She might have forced herself to believe in complacency, that her hatred for Cazador doesn't matter (she should say how smart he is and how he needs them even when he isn't listening), and that the only way for the pain to end is to stop resisting and hope that one day the obedience will be rewarded. So in her case, she might have been angry with Astarion for ruining that illusion, for making them suffer unnecessarily, for not being good enough for their master - why does he always have to ruin everything?

What makes this entire story more tragic is that each of the spawns is an unreliable narrator - they see things and siblings through the prism of their own trauma, way of coping, and experience. Therefore, they might be seeing Astarion as selfish for entirely different reasons.

Still poking around the dialogue and have discovered that Dalyria has indeed chosen that coping mechanism of living far, far away in delulu land, pretending that they're a genuine found family rather than a bunch of kidnapped abuse victims trapped together in a torture chamber like rats:

Dalyria, to Astarion: "I can't believe you'd turn on us - on your own family." - Astarion: "Listen to me, damn it! I'm trying to save you, even if you're too stupid to see it" Roll (Charisma, Persuasion) vs 18 Dalyria: "You... you really think the master would kill us?"

Yes??

Petras also gets in on it:

Pale Petras: "The master has always been... strict. But we're better for it."

...hmmm. If you say so.

And then there's this:

Pale Petras: "You believe this? You believe that most self-centred, arrogant, egotistical one of us all is here to save the day?" Pale Petras: "When has Astarion ever done anything that isn't in his own self-interest?" Astarion: "I admit, I wasn't the best brother to you, so let me make it up to you. Let me save you." Pale Petras: "No, you were a piece of shit. And you're still a piece of shit. Let's go. We don't need to listen to this."

I do believe that the conflict between Astarion and the other spawn wasn't one-sided and the other spawn probably aren't innocent victims of the antagonism (Petras in particular is an ass) but... Astarion, what did you do to piss Petras off so badly? That sounds personal.

It could very well be "what did Cazador make it seem like you did to isolate you" but to be honest it could very well be a mixture of the two. I can imagine that the other spawn would be forced to share in Astarion's punishments, at least sometimes, even when they weren't part of his behaviour. Seems like a good way to make them turn on him whenever he defied Cazador. I can also easily imagine Astarion lashing out at the other spawn, if he got the opportunity.