#bg3: Ciaran

[fungi-dilf]

Ciaran, a drow and a Oath of Vengeance Paladin

[ex-textura]

B O O P ☝️

[deimcs]

tavs/durges + classes and subclasses

[breadedspider]

ciaran belongs to @ex-textura

[filthymagicuser]

Worked way too long on this piece of art with some lore about my Bardlock half-Drow Ciaran.

[frek]

I promised that I would upload a photoset from Ciaran hugging Astarion.

This was such a monumental moment for Ciaran, after all the time they'd spent together, the one thing he wanted to be able to do for Astarion is to just show him genuine affection. And after seeing Astarion truly showing himself without his mask, hearing him open up to his truth, he realized that maybe they finally have a chance of something more. Something real.

[invinciblerodent]

the problem i have is that i can't make just one character

no, it has to be five at once, or none at all

[tvrningout]

i'm back and my brain is being pulled in multiple directions lemme tell ya

[thegempage]

uh so. context. two of my bg3 characters are kyria, a drow monk who was raised on the surface, and melody in the spores, a half-drow bard raised in the underdark. melody in the spores is a durge (i'm still in act 1, no spoilers) and. idk. i mentioned to a friend a while back that these two would have interesting conversation over drinks so this is that. also, kyria's added one (1) extra worm to her brain but doesn't want to do any more, and melody in the spores thinks the dream guardian can get fucked so she hasn't added any, and kyria has a hag eye while eventually melody in the spores is gonna get the volo one

The silence is... tangible, but not rough.

Melody In The Spores sits across from you, staring at her teacup as if she's unsure what to do with it. Your teacups look small in her hands, not quite comically so but in the way it feels to put on a shirt and know that you'll only get another use or two from it before you have to pass it on. You cradle your own to feel the heat crawl through your fingers, warming up joints that did their best to survive mountain air. It's not cool enough to drink, yet. Something behind Melody In The Spores's eyes makes you consider that her confusion is, in fact, genuinely about the tea. Perhaps no one has been kind enough to make her tea like this; many bards, you've heard, tend to spend far more of their time among inebriation than contemplation.

"To put aside circumstances," you say, breaking the silence because she did not seem able to, "it is nice to meet you, Melody In The Spores."

She coughs, the polite way to cover up spiderwebs of thought in the throat. Her voice rumbles deep in her chest, a sturdy foundation for the way she turns her head, fiddles with her fingers, scratches her beard, "Pleasure's all mine, Kyria. Putting aside," and she gestures to her head.

You decline to comment the twin your hitchhiker ate, but you nod in agreement with the general sentiment.

"I've heard you're quite famous, in your home world," you muse, pretending not to notice how she flinches when your foggy eye meets her blue one. You've both had to make choices to survive.

Her chuckle is scrawled across damp parchment. "So have I. Can't imagine fame holds up particularly well when you disappear for..." Her eyebrows knit together. "Time be damned. Fame is fickle."

The tea is cool enough to drink. You partake, and she waits for you to finish your first sip. "Time has certainly lost much meaning. Not that it meant much in the first place, really."

"To you more than me, I'd imagine."

It takes a moment before you remember -- half-drow. The human parts of her face hide in what you have to believe is the supernatural, and the supernatural clings to elven blood in the most benign of times.

"Maybe I ask you a question, Melody In The Spores?"

"Besides that one, I imagine."

You snort in a manner than you'd consider undignified, if you still cared about such things. "Yes, besides that one. You grew up in the Underdark, didn't you?"

Her "I did," is far away.

You pause, take a breath. "What... what was it like?"

You were expecting the confusion in her eyes. What you did not expect was the pain, the missing pieces, the way she looks down at her drink in shame. "I-I..." She takes a long sip of her drink, draining most of the teacup, and you refill it without a word. "I don't... remember."

You know you look crestfallen. You try, desperately, not to show it, but it is too late. You take a long drink of your own. "That makes two of us," is what you try to say, but some of it doesn't quite make it out of your mouth. You think she understands.

Melody In The Spores taps her foot on the ground, a rhythm to a dance song you don't think she can tell you the name of. "But there's... I've heard, from rumors... I want to go down there. I have to know."

Know where she came from. Know if her mother is alright. Know why she's lost so much.

You understand.

"We'll have to share experiences."

The silence is rough, this time.

"Have you --" She stops, reconsiders. "What do you think of Shadowheart?"

"I think she's in over her head."

"In?"

"All of it. What do you think of Karlach?"

"Quite the treasure, really. She loves twice as hot as she burns."

"She does. It's not so bad."

You pour yourself another cup.

"We could be sisters, I think," you say. "In another life."

"...I think I'd like that. Another life without worms and world endings and..."

"And blood on our hands."

"And blood on our hands."

[ineed-to-sleep]

Commission for @ambribee of their BG3 oc, Ciaran ! 💕✌🏻

✨️ Commission info | Art tag ✨️

[stillness138]

As a companion post, i also redid my least favourite Gwent card art into a top 20, though i daresay a lot of the technical complaints are universal. I'll try not to be too mean.

Also under the cut.

My (but i am objectively correct) top 20 least favourite Gwent card arts:

They can't all be precious...

There's a certain amount of "why is she naked" or "why is she dead" or "why is she dead and naked" kinda art, but then Karol Bem rolled up and somehow made the card pool so much worse. At least Whoreson Jr. is technically impressive.

20: Ciaran aep Easnillen by Bryan Sola ...however i'm still allowed to not like it when my blorbos suffer on their card arts. Bryan is a great artist and i'm sure he didn't mean malice, unfortunately this is Ciaran's most memorable (read: literally only) scene. This is mostly personal bias.

19: Milva by Bartłomiej Gaweł To be nice! I like the tiled floor, that's a nice level of detail. I like her practical outfit in the spirit of the old minigame art, too. Heck, even the tragic irony of the scene wouldn't be so bad - she clearly shot before getting shot... If only this wasn't Milva's only card art for years and if she wasn't a well-explored book character with plenty of scenes to choose from. It could've been way worse too i guess.

18: Chapter of Wizards by Maciej Łaszkiewicz Listen. Maciej is a cool artist with a very distinct, also quite "classical painting" style. I like a lot of his pieces from the last card sets. But. Whose idea was to solve the question of representing a historically changing organization with a statue of its founders? Furthermore, who thought people are gonna be blown away by the in-game avatar this inevitably spawned? :D It's just funny more than anything. I guess I can appreciate the Lord of the Rings reference.

17: Mammuna, also by Maciej Łaszkiewicz This one is unfortunately not that funny. I'm not sure i can explain it; it's a Monsters card, offputting things are the name of the game. This is one of the artworks that definitely, or probably, fall under completely personal reactions, or at least i never heard loud complaints about it the same way say Coup de Grâce is widely considered one of the best Nilfgaard card arts. Maybe i don't like how the character design seems a bit random, maybe i'm tired of the tired witch=hooked nose trope, maybe it's the color scheme and weirdly unpleasant looking textures. I guess it's just very much not for me.

16: Selfeater by Alicja Użarowska Similar case as previously. I don't even mind a lot of gross art - the infamous Parasite (the parallels now that bg3 is out lol) isn't on this list - and the Monsters faction is there to go crazy with this type of stuff. And yet, i can't stand this little abomination, and neither can most of the Gwent playerbase. It's not even the toe-in-mouth that really makes it bad, at least for me it's the texture and stretching of its skin. It simultaneously looks like it's melting and about to tear apart. Just an overall no thanks.

15: Miner by Christof Grobelski Christof is my new, excuse the zoomer language, pogchamp, because i think he is severely underrated given the crazy impressive lengths he went into with card art like Vivaldi Bank and even Phooca, and Miner isn't really bad. Unfortunately, fear of depths.

14: Doppler by Bartłomiej Gaweł Bartłomiej loves himself some dirt and mud and wet beast wednesday, and i can appreciate that. But this one isn't it. The palette, the scene. This, beside Dudu's card art, is the only way dopplers are represented in the game, and that's a shame. Leave the poor soul alone :(.

13: Brehen by Oleksandr Kozachenko I'm sorry to say, this is the weakest Way of the Witcher art. I appreciate it's the one scene everyone knows Brehen for, but why must he look like the village lowlife parents tell you not to talk to? I mean, not that Brehen could be trusted with kids. He's despicable, but that doesn't need to be communicated by making him look unappealing. On the other hand, wouldn't his personality have more impact if he was comparatively good looking? Or maybe i'm a shallow bitch who'd rather some eye candy... To give some credit to the character design though, the fact the lady is wearing the opposite of revealing clothes is a welcome refreshment. And i quite like the shading on her clothes too.

12: War Chariot by Grafit Studio There are a couple of more fairytale-like, bright and whimsical card arts, and there are arts with smoother, almost glossy textures, neither is really my issue with this. What rubs me the wrong way is the scene itself. It comes off as showing the elves as something grotesque, the butt of a joke, and, sure, this is a Northern Realms card, but it still feels... unserious in the wrong way. Admittedly i am biased.

11: Toad Prince by Marek Madej It's again a matter of personal taste in the Monsters faction, because in essence, everything i don't like about it can really be justified by having the red faction sticker. But he still looks like a formless mass of vaguely green snot to me. And his comparably thin little arms look like he's wearing long sleeves that also got covered in green snot. Which, admittedly, was the case for the whole sewer in Hearts of Stone, so who am i to complain. It's far from the worst, maybe it shouldn't be this high on the list, at least this piece mostly fades into obscurity and Marek is an actually skilled artist. I'm saying this because Bem's time draws near.

10: Vilgefortz by Nemanja Stankovic Full personal bias. Technically very much fine between the different textures, little drama in the lighting and fire particles borrowed from Bryan Sola. Look at the crazed look in Vilgefortz's face, lore accurate. Then look at the gloves of the guy he's melting into paste. And then suffer with me.

9: King Radovid V by Nemanja Stankovic and Radovid: Judgment by Valeriy Vegera Ok, this is a special case. I'm lumping them together because my issue with them is the same; their metatext. CDPR has a very obvious boner for Radko and despite writing him to be a complete cringefail idiot, they keep pretending like he's the coolest mf this side of Yaruga. If they actually allowed him to be the 17yo grooming victim he is with some nuance and without the thinly veiled nationalism projected onto the worst possible candidate with no self-reflection, i'd hate his ass (at leas the Gwent one) a lot less. Also the second art is the stupidest decision in the last card drop. Calanthe died for this. Literally.

8: Saov Ainmhi'dh by Ivan Vilmant Price of Power's infamous outsourcing of card art led to this unfortunate letdown. The artist tried! You can tell. But, in a spark of bitter irony, the spectral deer ended up looking as plastic as the Hobbit movies it references.

7: Temple of Melitele by Karol Bem This should be higher and would be if i didn't have to go through some more "please don't do this, good artist". But trust, this is one of Karol's worst crimes against good card art. From afar it looks alright! Cute piece with maybe even a bit of an old postcard vibe. Then you look closer and it falls apart completely. From the top; some roofs have texture, some don't. Some windows and arches don't line up or have ever so slightly off perspective. In places that are unexplainably sharper or blurrier than others, it's apparent Karol used extra assets. And on the very left, the foliage just sort of blends in until it disappears, because Karol doesn't understand depth. As a cherry on top, check out the little wooden bridge making no sense. The more and closer one looks, the more of a mess it is. Karol, you bloody hack.

6: Savvy Huckster by Siarhei Hlushakou This one, surprisingly enough, is more bearable upon closer inspection, but something about it used to absolutely grate my nerves when i still played or watched the game somewhat regularly. I don't know if it's the odd use of its color palette, the kind of obsolete idea of a card to begin with or the weird rocks on the tray unpleasantly standing out, or all of the above, but i can't stand looking at it for too long. But again. At least the artist actually painted something. Right, Karol?

5: Kerack Cutthroat by Valeriy Vegera Technically alright, if only too dark and washed up. Then again, the scene itself is tired too. The "why is she naked and dying?" And actually, taking the premium into account, why must she be getting stabbed over and over infinitely? Y'all didn't think this one through, did you. I'm sorry Valeriy, i still love your art, but this one really wasn't it on pretty much any front. But, even for this one, like every other legitimate artist on this list, you get the honorary "not a hack" badge.

4: Saint Gregory and Rosa and Edna var Attre by Karol Bem These two don't necessarily have all the same issues, but i guess there isn't enough slots in the universe to describe Karol's astonishingly low levels of competence. St. Gregory suffers from Karol's lack of depth understanding, but moreso it's a good example of that thing he does where he applies atrocious amounts of noise or grain onto everything. Enlarge and look at the area of and around the center left guy in the forefront. I'm also really not a fan of the magic fire glow this thing has. Rosa and Edna deserved so much better. To get the carelessness out of the way, check out Rosa's thumb in the foreground. What. Both their faces are inhumanly smooth, someone said they might be 3D models painted over and i wouldn't be surprised. Even in such a detail as the texture of the wooden sword you can kind of tell Karol relies on outsourced assets and thelike a lot; he doesn't have that much of a personal style (other than the awful grain) so when a unique texture shows up, it's probably safe to assume he pasted it in. To top it all off, the lighting of this piece is atrocious.

3: Yaga by Bogdan Rezunenko and Lesser Witch by Karol Bem Fatphobia. Just don't. That's to Bogdan. You, Karol, quit trying to fit in with the cooler kids, and by that i mean you should've long since quit making Gwent art by the time this unfortunately saw the light of day. I did promise i'll try not to be too mean, but there really isn't much to say about these two. Bogdan is a capable artist who should maybe check his biases or maybe just think about whether the way too estabilished visual shorthands for evil are faulty (they are). Karol Bem wouldn't know believable illusion of perspective and good texturing if they smacked him across the face.

2: Artaud Terranova by Katarzyna Bekus Molegion actually tried to explain this one to me. And, sure, having terrible characters with terrible traits represented by doing terrible things is fine on paper. For once we got a book scene, too (god why are most of the book scenes in Gwent all the painful stuff), that's cool. Making the canon pedo fat, i think less so. It's otherwise technically a good artwork with merits, i like Ciri's hair, the textures in the columns and the color palette. The pose, as much as i hate it, makes anatomical sense (this will become relevant in a short bit). But i can't get over how in the premium Ciri has to wriggle around waiting for Geralt who just won't show up. In the end, did Terranova have to exist in Gwent at all? Since this was in the Thanedd drop, why not a Nilfgaard Isengrim card? That would've been cool. He actually has a few usable book scenes.

"Honorable" mention: Little Bird by Karol Bem Karol's worst tendencies: the card. A pile of assets, none of which are fitted, or in the case of the stuff hanging from the ceiling, even cropped well. Misunderstanding of depth, the hanging herbs are blurry but the guys under them are sharp, the items in the foreground are blurry again but way too much. Strands of the girl's hair straight up cut off in the middle and then resume again. And, of course, a noise effect to try to cover it all up. I swear to god Karol.

1: Vereena by, of course, Karol Bem I hate to hate it. Because it could've been another book-adjacent scene and the color scheme is actually a rare moment of brightness for Karol, because usually, Vereena is put in colder tones. But unfortunately, he bungled this one in a whole new kind of spectacular fashion. The leg. The leg is very obviously, undeniably, comically, anatomically...incorrect. The rest of her isn't very good either, the front hand looks awkward, her neck and shoulders aren't properly built. The foot is too small. Even the hair is made in a way that makes it look like a weirdly solid mass. The drapery doesn't make sense in the waist area. On a vibe or depicted scene level, there are probably pieces i loathe more than this one, but as an artist and a person with legs, the painfully obvious anatomy issue of this one earns it the title of worst Gwent art in my book. Karol Bem is a hack, which is why this happened at all. I'm willing to believe he's not a malicious person either, but he should probably stop seeking work in a field he clearly has to fake his way through. Perhaps he'd make a better graphic designer?

To add something more positive at the end of this list as a whole, Gwent has a card pool of, i believe, a little over a thousand and a couple hundred, and the strong majority of it are incredibly stunning works of art. The overall quality is of its own kind, and it's much easier to choose 20 amazing and impactful pieces than find 20 that are bad enough to be ripped apart online. The existence of premiums is cool, but the static art on its own is some of the best modern fantasy art to be found. That's really heckin cool for an obscure game set in a relatively obscure universe.

[fungi-dilf]

THE TALL DARK ELF: CIARAN, ACT 2

[ex-textura]

the filename for this clip is guh.mp4 just to give you insight into my mind rn

goddamn gale. god. damn.

[choccy-zefirka]

So @lazyadmiral has Ciaran Hinds as one of their faceclaims for Alexius, which I am very on board with. After rewatching the 1995 Persuasion with that in mind, I decided to conceptualize yet another Alexiusmancer, with a face somewhat based on Amanda Root (who plays Anne in the film), and a backstory reflecting some beats from Persuasion, but obviously not with 100% accuracy because of the different genres and (Ciaran Hinds aside) Alexius and Wentworth being incredibly different characters.

So, meet Ellana Trevelyan! Created in the BG3 character creator (and edited a little) because I have long since run out of DA saves.

She is the half-elven middle child of the vain and air-headed bann Trevelyan — hiiii @mocha-writes 's Solomon!

...I guess I could name this Trevelyan Walter for more Easter Egg points? The Wikipedia sources say the name was first recorded in the 6th century, so it would fit into the fantasy setting.

Conceived while the late Lady Trevelyan was pregnant with her older half-sister, and the bann was not allowed in her bedchambers and therefore quite bored and pouty, Ellana was kept in the household as a companion for the human girl (and later on, two human girls, when her younger half-sister was born), despite her mother being sent away. She is now the confidante, problem-solver, and de facto manager of the failing Trevelyan estate, because the Lady has passed away and the Lord cannot be bothered.

When she was quite young, she almost eloped with a ship captain named Phoebe, but her family arranged for her to be brought back, because they simply cannot do without her services. They tricked Ellana into believing that Phoebe never loved her; and later on, the poor captain perished, leaving Ellana doubly heartbroken. (Do not worry, in this worldstate, Phoebe's death will be offset by the presence of various wlw couples who are alive and well and happy together).

It was not until Hawke and her lover Isabela (who knew Phoebe) come to Skyhold, that Ellana will learn the truth, which will anger her enough to stand up to her family more and more. And yeah obviously Alexius is also there, and he and Ellana have the same height difference as Hinds and Root in the film, and it's adorable.

[eclipsecrowned]

anyway for the muses closest to my heart (they have overlapping identity with me) here is a plotting call for the lesbins n nonbineys, and sometimes the nonbiney lesbins.

amalthea (the last unicorn)

aspasia (the little mermaid)

aria mahariel (da pc/companion)

artemis (greek mythology)

aurelia rosegrove (bg3 pc/companion)

cath rice (tma oc)

ciaran (dark souls)

clare poe (tma oc)

crowe altius (ffxv)

dolores gordon (tma oc)

einmyria lavellan (da oc/advisor)

elsa (fr*zen)

eugenie danglars (the count of monte cristo)

gabrielle de lioncourt (the vampire chronicles)

hel lokadotter (norse mythology)

the host (tma oc)

huntress (dbd)

invi (kh)

isa/saix (kh)

jeannie napier (dc)

kascheyevna (russian folklore)

kayden connors (616 oc)

kokoro kyriakou (kh oc)

kris lindholm (tvc oc)

lestat de lioncourt (the vampire chronicles)

lucy bierce (tma oc)

marika corvinus (werewolf oc)

mary deschain / the rose (dbd oc)

melanie king (tma)

melinoe (greek mythology)

miss lukas (tma oc)

modeste lachapelle (d*scendants oc)

mystery whitethorn (dnd pc)

odessa harkonnen (dune)

roxas (kh)

seraphina p*tchiner / mother nature (guardians of childhood)

seth plate (city of angels, canon-divergent)

sigyn (norse mythology)

valas devir (bg3 pc/companion)

uma (d*scendants)

[tentacuddles]

I'm gonna have a print of this on my WALL.

Worked way too long on this piece of art with some lore about my Bardlock half-Drow Ciaran.