#bg3 Dark Urge

[majorasnightmare]

the tadpole/brain damage thing. its like. chekovs gun to me. obviously theres very little mechanical support ingame for having a disabling injury, aside from maybe an optional voluntary decision to drop the INT score, but similarly to choosing to write intention into the lack of dark urge Lore responses from the party, i just like to make mountains out of molehills and force game mechanics into In Universe Character Problems

like when dirge repeatedly mentions that he thinks the tadpole is doing something beneficial for him, that its helping him, it isnt JUST the power-hungry psionic ambition in him. its a parasite, that needs a host. it needs a LIVING host, or its own chances of survival plummet. and dirge gets tadpoled right after a life threatening injury to the tadpoles preferred habitat. neither of them want to die!! dirges body tries to recover, but cant in part BECAUSE of the tadpole (the netherese stasis magic rejecting outside influence and binding it to its host, having an unejectable foreign object in the injury site, etc), but its not like the tadpole WANTS its host to have a life altering injury

its not like its malicious (except when it comes to Hive Activity, and then it can be a right bastard), it just cant live any other way. it cant help what it is. halsin calls the illithid life cycle abberant and unnatural, but brood parasitism exists throughout the natural kingdom. is the wasp egg evil for having been laid in a caterpillar?

its first moments of life outside the brine pool, and its new home, its new life, its host, its caregiver, its food supply, is bleeding and dying and falling apart and trying to fix itself but cant and its trying to heal around you but it cant but if it doesnt do anything youll both die, so this larva, this tiny worm of psionic potential and instinct, does what it can. holds its host together with whatever force it can muster, soft gelatinous body (perfect for compreesing flat and squeezing through small orifice openings) keratinizing outside the acidic environment of the brine, its four oral tentacles (its only source of motion and movement when so young and soft, dragging itself along as best it can) made for interweaving with dense synapse clusters to passively absorb the psionic imprint of its host, now desperately intwined with bleeding meat just to try and hold it all together. driven by survival instict and a vessel of psychic potential, forced into passivity by the commands of the Elder, further forced by circumstance to leverage all its great gifts to keep its host standing long enough to eventually eat

my thought is that the reason why dirge still gets the cutscene of the emperor tadpoling him at the beginning of the game, is that the original tadpole orin forced on him is just so weakened and exhausted by months of effort trying to keep him alive through kressas experiments and meddling, that the emperor, currently in thrall to the absolute, feels the need to replace it with a fresher healthier specimen, which then cannibalizes and absorbs the previous one, and then just has to go back to doing the same shit as the last one.

i think that dirges tadpole isnt as twitchy or squirmy as the others because of it. that when omeluum gives him a psychic MRI, the tadpole is just burrowed down and its tendrils stretched like a dense net throughout dirges brain tissue, only moving or writhing occasionally but definitely not as mobile as usual, its web of tendrils especially twisted near dense scar tissue at the back of his head. this worm is already so fucking weird and the circumstances for this mind flayer MRI have already introduced a bajillion different variables that need accounting for, that i dont think omeluum immediately groks the specifics of whats going on but CAN peg the "you have brain damage and your worm is fucking Weird" situation fairly easily. but i dont think it gets enough time in dirges head to get a full understanding of what the tadpole is doing FOR him

cuz like. imo its definitely objectively helping. its a psychic information bank specifically designed to interface with a human brain. the reason why dirge isnt experiencing too many of the side effects of brain damage is because the parasite is doing its best to mitigate them. memory issues, brain fog, disorientation and balancing issues, theyd all be significantly worse without the parasite. when he brings up how he feels its helping him, objectively hes right and its not even the kickass psychic powers hes right about.

like it doesnt cure EVERYTHING, he has chronic migraines that are sensitive to light, and before he asks halsin to make medicine, he starts every morning puking his guts out when the morning sun makes him so nauseous he cant hold dinner down. even without the Urge Nightmares, he has insomnia and just cant meaningfully sleep. but keeping track of what day it is, remembering what happened a few hours ago or the other day, standing up from a sitting position and not immediately wobbling and/or collapsing, retaining his old muscle memory. all shit the parasite is helping with

which is why i cant help but fixate on those moments immediately after defeating the absolute. like oh thats juicy

[lorithescrump]

Where tf are all these androgynous tieflings coming from and why is Cadaver the one who has to chaperone them (he’ll warm up to them eventually I promise)

Featuring Astarion, @lorithescrump’s Durge Cadaver, @ki-el-verdugo’s Tav Verdugo, and @ghostofapocrypha’s Durge Luminous

[squid-johnson]

Literally never posted my durge before on this site but this is what he looks like in a cow costume (as I was told to draw by some discord friends). This is Shiv. He looks like he's having an awful time but I'm sure he'll get over it.

[hekuuu]

he won’t bite, he's just playing 😌

[quacaserous]

has this been done already

[lucklessrat]

Having a normal one with the gang

[wetsocksinbed]

Baldurs Gate 3 is so wild when you realise how vastly different the game is depending on if you choose Tav or Dark Urge

Dark Urge Playthrough: you’re the child of Bhaal, but unlike the Bhaalspawn, you are created solely by Bhaal himself. The first true child of Bhaal. The daughter of one of your father’s previous Bhaalspawn turns on you, attacks you and tries to kill you. In your dying state, she infects you with a parasite so that you’ll die an incredibly humiliating death, and become her slave.

By some miracle you end up on the same nautiloud ship as a Sharron Cleric who happens to to be carrying a gith artefact that contains Baldur himself. Baldur, who was made a mind flayer and is now calling himself the Emperor, realises there’s an incredibly powerful Bhaalspawn on the ship, and that he can use them to his advantage. The power you have will help him destroy Gortash. Of course he picks you, it makes so much sense.

On your way to Baldurs Gate you find out through an unsent letter that you used to be into Gortash. When you get to Baldurs Gate, the man you used to fuck turns out to be an absolute loser and with horror you realise he is still into you. It’s okay though, he’s very easy to kill.

You end up facing off against Orin, your niece, and kill her. Your father appears to you and offers you the chance to become his Slayer. On the high chance you turn him down, he murders you in front of your loved ones, and leaves you to rot.

Then Jergal, the actual Lord of the End of Everything, the original God of Death, who was the very being that turned you father into a God all that time ago, who’s been in your camp for weeks pretending to be this undead scribe called Withers, appears next to your corpse and brings you back to life, basically adopts you, states that he will protect you from Bhaal, and announces that as long as he lives, you will never die. You’re essentially immortal.

Tav Playthrough: you’re a random nobody that was unlucky enough to get kidnapped by Mind Flayers. The Emperor must pick one of the many idiots on the ship to be his pawn. He sees Tav and thinks “ugh, yeah this one will do”.

[snarfflarf]

Asking BG3 characters to pick you up pads

[taygra5shaon]

how it should have happened...

Fuck cazaldor.💀

[panksage]

It’s hard to go alone. Take your Bhaalspawn. Even of they have a falling out with their family and are extremely bad at what they’re doing.

[saelrum]

I love how the only thing that can save Faerun from unhinged psychopaths is.....

...Another group of unhinged psychopaths

[rawrsatthetree]

[junorsky]

finally, a worthy opponent!

~

Yes I love suddenly making fighting screens out of fandoms that have nothing to do with the fighting genre. Lawful evil against chaotic, let's go!

[hekuuu]

first part of my Baldur's Gate 3 tarot deck!!

part 2, part 3

[ramdom-stupid-sketches-of-mine]

Lord Enver Gortash vs. Your Enver 'uwu' Gortyboi.

Edit: Original picture used for reference is now posted below!!

I wish I can post credit the post, I can't find the post again after saw that once, but it's about someone find the concept illustration. When player meet gortash, he would sit on the throne greeting them?

Edit: Finally I found the original picture post. Hooray!

[precious-little-bhaalbabe]

Owlbear Cub: “You smell very delicious, but I will not bite you, because you are my friend :>”

My good Durge, crying: “He’s just like me fr. He’s everything I strive to be.”