#but gortash would be entirely fine without bane

[maegalkarven]

Wait a minute, but does Bane actually do anything himself?

Myrkul brings Isobel back, that's why he has Ketheric's loyalty.

Bhaal creates children he uses as tools, even after his own death (i.e. Durge being sculpted of the slice of Bhaal's dead flesh).

But what does Bane do? How is he enforcing his success? Gortash only became Chosen AFTER the heist with the crown, though he was a banite before that. But what did Bane actually OFFER Gortash? Durge and Orin are compelled to do their father's biddings, and Myrkul gave Ketheric his daughter back.

But Gortash was mildly successful smuggler and weapons-trader 10 years prior the game. He was connected enough to contact Zariel and deal with her. The weapons banites use are made out of infernal steel, those are the weapons Gortash very likely commissioned from Franc.

He approached a bhaalspawn and created a completely insane plan to STEAL FROM ARCHDEVIL. Steal the thing of unimaginable power. And the plan was successful.

And only then Bane came to him in his dreams and made him Chosen.

So either Gortash lies in his memoir to make himself took cooler, or auntie Ethel is right and Bane IS the laziest tyrant who just rides on other people's success. Like his entire cult with Enver on top work their asses off for this plan, create the Steel Watch, manage the Iron Throne, firework refugees, and Bane just sits on his throne and does nothing.

Bane is literally an embodiment of capitalism. Fucking CEO of Worldwide company. Making others do all the work while chilling on the bg.

And its not like they needed gods to back netherstones up, a godless durge/tav themselves is more than capable of wielding the stones. Why the fuck Bane is literally "go girl give us nothing"? Why did Gortash NEED Bane, he could've pulled the plan without him. He had Elder Brain under the Moonrise Towers, the crown, his connections and money, he didn't need Bane to create Steelwatch or control people, the entire Absolute idea is about becoming gods themselves through control of the Elder Brain.

Was Bane just THAT convincing? And I'm really curious about how Gortash became banite in the first place. Like I see how the rhetoric would be appealing to him, but he really doesn't strike me as a faithful servant of a god type of a guy.

[baldursgrave69]

reminders

There were reminders of her everywhere. 

A spare cloak, a hidden dagger, the drawing of him. 

Enver never expected to grieve her. He had prepared for their relationship to end poorly, is there any other way to love a bhaalspawn? He, however, never expected to live in a world without her. Surely she would outlive him, whether she killed him or not was irrelevant. As long as he had her until the end. 

Now there was nothing. Her scent was fading from his pillow, the image of her face becoming blurrier with each passing day. Why hadn’t he gotten a portrait done of her? Not that she ever would have agreed to that. He smiled to himself as he imagined what she would say at this suggestion. 

“Absolutely not. If you want to look at me, you know where to find me”

Enver sat at his desk, looking through his collection of her. Letters between the two of them from the very first time they wrote each other to the last. As he read through he watched her language change. She was a woman of few words, unlike him she didn’t need to turn towards verbosity to get her point across. 

Agnes, It seems we are on the same page, I feel it would be best for us to schedule a meeting to discuss further plans for our return to the Hells. If you would join me the day after tomorrow for dinner, you and I could solidify our plans.  The very best, Enver Gortash  Chosen of Bane, Fine -Agnes 

But the more they got to know one another the more she wrote, Enver could see the change in her through her words. 

Agnes, It has been entirely too long since you’ve been in my arms. I’m writing you once again to ask that you join me tomorrow evening for that banquet we discussed. It’s a great opportunity for networking and I would like you by my side. Figaro has a dress put aside for you, I cannot wait to see you in it.  Yours until the end, Enver Gortash Chosen of Bane, You know how I feel about these kind of things. But I suppose I could make an exception. We will see about the dress.  -Agnes

He recalled how she looked in that dressed. He remembered being surprised she wore it to begin with. It was a deep red, tight in all the right places. He chose it for the color, she loved red. Of course she loved red. 

Enver rifled through the pages before him, landing on a small, square bag. He ran his fingers along the top of it, the item inside threatening to break through the fabric. He carefully opened the bag, allowing a ring to fall onto his palm. A gold band with a simple ruby affixed to the top. 

Enver never got the chance to give it to her, though he knew she wouldn’t wear it anyway. He loved that about her. She was combative and stand offish and terrifying. But she could also be so soft and gentle. A walking contradiction disguised as the world’s deadliest weapon. 

“My lord, we have word of some rogue true souls,” a voice distracted Enver from his focus. He looked up to find an Absolute soldier standing in the doorway of his office. 

“Is that so? What do we know about them?” He asked. 

“Not much, sir. All we know is that they’ve been snooping around the goblin camp where we have True Soul Minthara stationed. Evidently, they’ve got a woman leading them, a half elf. She’s been causing trouble,” the man replied. 

She’s been causing trouble. 

Surely it wasn’t her. It couldn’t be. Orin made it clear that she was gone. 

But gone didn’t necessarily mean dead, right? 

[randomfanner]

How Would it Feel?

TW: Violence, lots and lot of violence because it is Durge.

Plot: The Dark Urge begins to fantasize about killing the tyrant whom has created their glorious plan.

Calax does not appreciate it.

The tyrant and his grand plan of tyranny, orchasted with the help of a Bhaalspawn. An utterly ridiculous prospect made into truth. 

Bane and his collection of Banites was never looked favorably upon by any of the Bhaalists. Despite the fact the dead three had been a trio that took on the powers of Jergal, there was never any sense of comradery between the gods it seemed. At least never something stable enough to function long term.

Why would they continue working together? The three had gotten what they all wished for, godhood. Their partnership was as good as finished once their mutual goal had been reached.  

Calax’s back was pressed against the wall near his desk, watching as Gortash fiddled with documents that Calax didn’t nor did he have any interest in understanding. Gortash’s job was to be the iron fist, the one who would run the ins and outs of daily life in the new emperor he planned on forging. The one to pass laws that would benefit the both of them and keep the frontline of power.

Calax had his role of course, and it was not in some fancy office, decorated with fine and soft silks of glorious royal purple hue. It was not in the realm of gold and silver and copper that would decorate the tyrant as he paraded himself to the adoring public. It was not in strategy halls or law meetings, swaying those who fell for sweet words.

Calax’s role was to be steeped in the blood of their enemies, of those who would pose a threat to their empire. Sowing the seeds of chaos that would blossom into the flowers of prosperity, much like how Ketheric would do the same for the fear. All of the pieces to be arranged by Gortash to follow his grand design.

Calax watched him, the mastermind of their plan. He had played his part in every way. Coming up with how and having the resources to execute the plan. Soon their Illithid empire would span across all of Faerūn and it was thanks to him that it was at all possible.

It was going so perfectly smoothly in fact, Gortash may not even be needed anymore.

How would it feel, Calax wondered? That wonderful brain crushed under his fingers, the gray matter crushing from his hand. Ripping that silvered tongue from his throat, shredding the thing that had charmed many including the child of Bhaal. To hold the beating heart in his fingers, crushing it as his warm blood gushed out from his fingers.

“Is there something you needed, Calax?” Gortash didn’t even look up from his work as he asked the question.

Calax’s hand stopped in the air. It took the tiefling a moment to process what he had been doing. Calax took a step back as he pulled his hand back towards his body.  “... It is nothing,” Calax muttered.

Shit. 

Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit.

“If you are certain,” Gortash said as he picked up a pen, beginning a reply to one of the letters without a care in the world. 

Calax sucked in a breath as he walked around the desk. “I am going out.”

“Shall I see you later?” Gortash asked. 

“Mmmm,” maybe, maybe not. Calax wasn’t sure what the answer was as his bare feet moved from the hard and cold wood to the soft carpet in the center of the office. Calax pushed open the wooden door and shut it behind him before he rested his entire body against the door. 

Calax put a hand over his face and moved it back, running over his curved horns and into his dark hair, forever stained red. His urges had been quiet towards the tyrant this far. Of course the thought of spilling his blood had come to mind from time to time, but only flickers in bigger thoughts. Ripping through a conference of Banites that Gortash was leading, devouring the corpses of nobles at a ball Gortash attended, removing the heads of citizens when he walked behind Gortash in public.

The two of them as they lay on the altar of Bhaal, their lives fading in union as they both went to the murder lord.

It had yet to be simply the wish to rip Lord Enver Gortash to shreds.

Calax shook his head as he moved off the door and began to march through the halls, letting his mind focus on that. Other people, the screams of horror and the color of their blood. The constant red that would flow from them.

That would flow from Enver Gortash once he ripped him apart limb by limb.

No.

Calax couldn’t kill him. He was the key to their empire. To the way they would rule the world together. 

Gortash was the key in the bloody mess of the world Calax would bring once he had control of the Elder Brain. The last thing Gortash sees being the way the earth burned all due to his wonderful planning, all for Lord Bhaal. The anguish as his perfectly crafted empire became nothing more than dust due to the assassin he had brought along to fulfill the plan. 

Calax looked down in front of him as he snapped out of his fantasy.

Underneath him was a maid. He hadn’t even noticed how he ripped her head off when he was lost in thought. Calax sucked in a breath through his nose as he stood up. Someone else would clean it up when they found it. 

He needed out of these finely decorated halls. 

He needed to dye the streets red.

If he stated the craving for flesh, perhaps he would be spared the thoughts of ruining Gortash’s plan. Of ruining Gortash. 

Father would spare him, after all the tyrant was still useful.

At least for now. And surely Calax could find more ways the tyrant could be useful for spilling blood. Bane still lived despite the existence of Bhaal, the dead three always found use for the others eventually. 

Calax would just have to do the same for Gortash.

Surely.  

[thornfield13713]

Durge/Rosie: 2,5,10

Did they keep anything from their old family and home? A memento or a skill perhaps?

Nothing physical, but Rosie's taste for halfling food can be attributed pretty solidly to having grown up with a halfling foster-family before her Urge manifested and she slaughtered the entire family. Similarly, she's got some pretty halflingish sensibilities about some things - modesty standards, the importance of politesse and similar things - that it takes her a good long while to figure out the source of after her amnesia.

She was too guilty and sick and miserable to ask to take anything from the house to the Ilmatari cloister where she spent the rest of her adolescence before leaving to join a paladin order. Even if she had, Orin would probably have destroyed it after Rosie got tadpoled.

What was their relationship with Sceleritas like? Did they like their ever-adoring butler or did they try to run from the most wretched mother hen?

Despite having been terrified of Sceleritas when he first appeared to her after her first kills, Rosie later came to find him a comfort. He was the only person who treated her as someone who might require a bit of softness from time to time. For the rest of the Cult of Bhaal, she was a cross between godhead and the monster you keep in the basement, depending on how lucid she was at any given time. Not something or someone one could touch, or who needed comfort. Sceleritas, though, doted on her, and that was simultaneously painful and something she desperately needed, particularly the first few years, when she was so often pinballing between the 'high' of being completely mindless and given over to the urge and the awful hangover of being lucid, and still at that point with enough morals to be miserable about it. (There were a few suicide attempts in the early days, which were either prevented by Sceleritas or reversed by Bhaal, so that she could not even escape that way. And one notable suicide-by-Flaming-Fist effort, otherwise known as the events of Blood in Baldur's Gate). Sceleritas was somewhere between nursemaid and jailer during those early years, when Rosie would murder him in fits and then be overcome with grief and fear to find the only person who was ever gentle with her dead. He also contributed quite a lot to her corruption over time, mostly by reminding her of her inherent evil, and that she could never have really hoped to be anything but what she was - a thing meant for slaughter, a rabid animal or a priest of murder, but not something that could ever have been good.

It's a pretty fucked-up relationship.

Gortash seemed to have admired Durge, what did they do to deserve this admiration? Did they have any notable personality traits or did they impress him in some other way?

This is actually interesting, because Gortash doesn't actually realise how big a role he played in Bhaal's mad dog becoming the brilliant schemer he admired. Even before they actually met, the Cult of Bane making inroads in Baldur's Gate meant that Bhaal couldn't give Rosie the 'reward' of mindlessness as often as he had - he needed her capable of thought, capable of putting the fine strategic and tactical mind that her tutors at the paladin order had once admired to use. She was rusty at first, and miserable, and wanted nothing more than to sink back into the peace of being entirely without thought. But as she was allowed it less and less, she began to grow and evolve, to think and plan, to remember the uses of self-control. By the time she and Gortash actually met, she'd been entirely lucid for more than a year, and was rediscovering that she was brilliant.

And she really was - pre-amnesia Durge had a very good INT score indeed, which got knocked right down to 'average, or slightly above' by brain damage when Orin attacked her. Gortash appreciated having found an intellectual equal, even if in a very different area. If Gortash was the political and scientific mind behind the Cult of the Absolute, grand strategy was the Dark Urge's business - the plan was fully developed before Ketheric was even brought on board, and the two of them had collaborated on a number of previous plans before they came up with the Absolute plot. Unfortunately, the Absolute plot was about when Bhaal decided that a brilliant, strategic Chosen was more dangerous to him than he had thought, and Rosie's attacks resumed. There were a lot of times when she was able to keep control through a meeting with Gortash and Ketheric only to devolve entirely into animalistic, murderous fury behind closed doors. Gortash was unaware of this, and very impressed with her self-control in comparison to what he had heard of other Bhaalspawn, but I don't know that he ever saw how hard a fight it was to keep that control, towards the end, once Bhaal decided to start having his fun again.