#durge: century

[asstariontrash]

murder... cousins...? 🔪🔪

Work's been very stressful lately and I got hooked on @jellymellydraws 's "I've Got You" fic to unwind — it's a treat. Astarion is a bard, Alfira's joined camp and nothing bad has happened (...yet...?), the ensemble cast is really well-handled, I am having a fantastic time.

Anyway it got me thinking about whether or not our Durges could be friends. I think the answer is yes. :>

[rrredgi]

Call him LORD Gortash.

Idk I think he's slaying the look of a late 17th century corrupt politician (also the gloves of that time just fit my idea of a cool artifact)

(totally not connected to my current reading of another Dumas)

Guys I can't do anything about it..... I hate his in game design 😭 the way it kinda looks like the concept art but also has a totally different vibe?.. All the metal twirls of his gauntlet and sleeves look like cosplay plastic. I'm so sorry for speaking the truth

Anyway I've had this idea for the longest time and it turned out ok

[y-rhywbeth2]

I am in some ways sad that the doctrinal disputes between Orin and Durge were limited to one letter exchange ('do you remember that our doctrine demands finesse you fucking blockhead??' and Orin's hatred of guns and artillery, which take away from the art that is Bhaalist tradition and demeans his faith, -V.S.- 'I assure you that a death is death and Bhaal does not give a shit' and Durge's apparent sole interest in sating the Urge, burying themselves in the pleasure, and killing everybody in as high quantities and as fast as possible so that they can be free of all this. Or so I'm reading it.)

Because it's clearly an ongoing argument, so did they normally argue and debate to each others' faces or is there just a whole mountain of eloquent yet aggressive letters debating the finer points of family, murder-cult faith, thanatology, and 'duel to the death-synods and why we should have one' somewhere?

On the other hand it's good there is some space to interpret Durge's stance on the faith and how their ongoing rift developed.

I kind of picture it as both the previous description and also; 'doctrine and prayer is for mortals, Bhaal made me for different things (indiscriminate murder)' and 'I am our god; those rules don't apply to me.' With a touch of severe depression and trauma, and getting high off of murder as the coping mechanism.

[sclappin]

Caught up now on drawing requests for Dr. Al-Deeb's fundraiser.

Furiosa from Mad Max for @dendrogaster

My coworker Marty in his work costume, (requested through text message).

A Durge, Rylzyne, for @lewvithur

And @yourtauntaunwillfreeze 's lovely partner!

Going to continue doing this until Friday! We've raised at least €230, though there have been a lot more donations than drawing requests according to the notes, which is honestly fantastic. Thank you so much to everyone donating!

[minty-bunni]

AU where Halsin immediately figures out durge is a Bhaalspawn with a brain injury.

[nekrosmos]

Gortash's favorite attack dog <3

Spine, my durge, goes by He/They/It !

[zenatness]

Half-drow durge, Minthara, Halsin, and Astarion walk into a bar the Elfsong tavern and check out the Laff riot. A friendly comedy competition. Fun!

Harvard invites us to join and to show how it's done he get up on stage and looks straight at the half-drow and...

"We used to have a drow comedian. I had to ask her to stop casting Tasha's Hideous Laughter on the audience. Then I asked her how many drow it takes to light a torch, and she said 'None, we have darkvision.' So we killed her."

My dude. My dude.

New quest unlocked: Harvard Willoughby must die.

[slverblood]

Have we considered . . . Ketheric but with themes of the wild hunt, hunting any would-be Justiciars or do-gooding Selûnites who attempt to enter Reithwin?

[drakonovisny]

oh the divorce drama potential between ascended gale and ascended tav/durge is DELICIOUS

[zoneofsmites]

Narrator: the blood in your head thrums and pounds. That pounding obscures who you are. An overwhelming loss of memory. How you ended up amidst these hellish flames is just as hidden. You have nothing in your skull, besides your name and a headache. But you are in danger. Sylas: *Say your name aloud. You have that part of yourself.* Narrator: The Dark Urge. Whatever that is. That is you. You will claw back the truth, but first you have to claw your way out of here.

3rd run of my boy here we go!

I've had a whole post about Sylas and his alienation from his own name sitting in my drafts for days. The abridged version is that his adoptive family named him Sylas Maeve - and he has tried to shed his first name to become a tool but it has haunted him for more than a century of life.

When he wakes up on the nautiloid the first name he remembers is exactly that - Sylas Maeve.

[puddlesock]

gave them the same face and outfit but idc theyre literally both so hot

high elf is named myrdin (he/they) tempest domain cleric, storm sorcerer. theyre gonna romance halsin bc everyone else feels tooo young + he wants to climb the bear man

drow is named nym (NAWT after the drow twins i lit rally didnt know her name before i named him) (he/him) assassin rogue, swords bard. hes romancing gale bc he has good hair and thinks hes cute

[asstariontrash]

Tav Tag!

Inspired by @inaconstantstateofchange's entry -- big thanks to them for gently motivating me and also to @triumphingmybest for the very cool template!

I want to draw my Tav & talk about them more on this blog, but I wanted to introduce them properly first. Meet Hemlock, my godless Oathbreaker paladin who's nevertheless trying his best all the time:

I've been using #tav/astarion and #tav: hemlock on this blog to tag things that especially remind me of them, so if you're interested in more Hemlock vibes, give that a peek.

You can find a blank Tav Tag template here!

I am very shy but very eager to perceive other people's characters. Tagging @beaubambabey & @jellymellydraws in the softest, lowest-pressure way imaginable, and YOU, if you're reading this and would like to talk about your Tav too!

(also please behold my redemption Durge under the cut, because this was getting long:)

I drew Century already over here! Their tag is #durge: century. It was important to me that they be Very Pathetic At All Times; never more than 30 seconds away from dissolving into tears.

Hemlock is also a mess and also about two steps away from a nervous breakdown for most of the game, but at least he hides it better. He's just starting to crack, whereas Century has already been smashed to smithereens, you feel? (Astarion gets his teeth into both of them, for better or worse...)

I just really like characters who're in the midst of a faith/personal identity crisis, it fuels me.

[ligmabhaals]

absolutely flawless headcanon from prev reblog lmao. any depiction of ketheric being fed up with these two is a delicious treat.

ketheric is wondering if the immortality is actually worth dealing with these two freaks

[y-rhywbeth2]

This all started as a fucked up joke, but consuming the (possibly toxic) blood and flesh of the child of your god and experiencing a premonition of death genuinely sounds like a great religious ceremony for a religion that worships death and murder. Especially if it kills said divine child, and they have to be resurrected. I think I might actually adapt it into my own canon from now on.

[ravenyenn19]

Astarion in act 1 after he gets his lil snacky snack from Tav/Durge, he can walk in the sun AND all of these strangers are putting up with his attitude that he’s held on a leash out of necessity for TWO (2) centuries:

(but like he’s scheming behind those sunglasses bc he is NOT helpless: he’s just not a details person.)

[lassieposting]

Been thinking a lot lately about romanced Astarion post-spawn ending.

Because like. The Funnest™ thing about cptsd is how much of it gets delayed. When you're trapped in a lengthy, ongoing traumatic situation, you do not have the ability to process and start healing your mental wounds. Your brain and body go into survival mode, and all that matters in the moment is that you somehow cope with the horrors. He wouldn't have been able to even begin dealing with the physical, mental and emotional toll of two hundred years of torture, brutalization and dehumanization while he was under Cazador's control; he is in constant danger, surrounded by sharks in the water, and survival means not letting them smell blood. He can't afford to fall apart, to show weakness. He is shockingly functional and competent in-game, partly because he has to be to work as a game character, but also partly because...it do be like that, to some degree. When death, for whatever reason, is not an option, you just have to shut down and keep going. People adapt in order to survive, and when we learn that showing an "injury" (physical or psychological) only gets us punished, we learn to hide it.

Early-game Astarion is terrified - of Cazador, of Godey, of being hunted down by his siblings, of being staked or sold off at the first opportunity by Tav and the other companions, of turning into a mindflayer, of another painful transformation, of losing himself when he's only just regained his autonomy after two centuries, of what Cazador will do to him if he ever finds him - the man is overwhelmed by fear. He's on thin ice as a vampire, and he's not going to give them any more reason to want him gone. Survival instinct is still in control, and in this new situation, crafting some fragile safety for himself means not only selling his body for protection, but also being useful. Clear-headed. Good in a fight.

Endgame Astarion finds himself in a completely different situation. The time-sensitive overarching threats - Cazador and impending ceremorphosis - have been dealt with. He has a loving, supportive partner he's really starting to feel safe with - Tav/Durge has proved that they're on his side, that their affection is genuine, that they don't just want him for the one thing he's been told he's good for. They've told him they're going to help him find a workaround for his sun allergy. He's getting fed regularly. He has time to stop, and breathe, and just. Recuperate.

For the first time in 200 years, he is safe.

And it will probably take a while to catch up, during which time he will seem to be coping really well, but at some point, his brain is going to realise that he's safe, and it's going to finally start processing the sheer fucking horror he's been through. Since I haven't seen anyone talking about this particular fun aspect of cptsd, allow me to offer u some thoughts on issues Astarion and Tav might end up dealing with in the months/years postgame, during the

✨ Delayed Trauma Response ✨

Memory Gaps: Astarion realising, as he opens up to Tav, that there are entire years or decades of his life from which he has only a handful of memories. Great big blank stretches where he has no idea where he was, who he was with, what was happening to him. Some of the gaps cover years at a time where he was so dissociated and shut down that he just didn't retain any memories of what was going on around him. Some are shorter periods of particularly horrific torture that his brain has deliberately blocked out to protect him.

Recovered Memories: At some point, years into the future when he's done A Lot of healing, he might find that every now and then, a fragment of those lost memories will unexpectedly come back to him. He'll catch a particular scent on the breeze, or overhear a specific phrase in the street, or cross paths with someone whose face is oddly familiar, and he'll get a glimpse of an acute horror he'd filed neatly away where it couldn't hurt him anymore. He very rarely remembers all the context to those flashes of his past. He might recall that he was punished, but not what he was punished for, or he might remember words spoken by a greedy conquest, but be unable to recall the man's face.

Dissociation: Tav knows going into this relationship that Astarion has basically made an art out of dissociating during sex. They also know, from their shared encounter with the drow twins, that he's not great at enforcing his own boundaries - he'll always say he'll speak up and back out if he stops having fun, but in practice he rarely does; he's not used to having the option of saying no to his partner, and being punished if he tries. So they know there's going to be some practice and experimentation and negotiation necessary there, to figure out the rough limits of his comfort zone. But once he starts really processing, there may be days where he just checks out completely. Tav will touch his shoulder, and he'll startle and apologise - "Terribly sorry, darling, I was miles away for a moment there." And Tav will gently point out that he's been sat in the same spot vacantly staring into the middle distance for hours. They've been checking in on him occasionally and this is the first time he's responded. It's unsettling, to say the least.

Lost Time: Astarion was very young when he was turned, physically mature but emotionally juvenile. He was basically an overgrown teenager, in the phase of life where elves are just starting to learn who they are and what they want, and figure out their place in the world. But he never got to do that, because he spent his formative young adult years in a world where everyone became an abuser, where his only means of surviving was to smile and charm and obey while even his basic human dignity was stripped away. He learned that communication is based on manipulation. He learned that the powerful can do whatever they like to the weak. He learned an incredibly toxic, abusive way of life, and that was his family dynamic, his everyday life, for as long as he can remember. Now that he's free and safe, he's realising that the world doesn't actually work that way and that he's now far behind even shorter-lived races in social/emotional development. He's grieving for the person he could've been. He's grieving for the life he could've lived. He's grieving for all the years he already lost, and the ones he'll lose in the future as he flounders to catch up. A decent chunk of his life was stolen from him, and that's time he will never get back.

Flashbacks & Night Terrors: Specifically the kind where your brain convinces you that an injury you had a long time ago is actually an injury you have (or are receiving) right now. There are nights where he'll wake Tav in a panic, because his back feels like it's on fire, he can feel every freshly-carved wound dripping blood and he's in so much pain he doesn't know what else to do. If Tav looks, they see nothing out of the ordinary - old, long-healed scars, same as always. But the pain and the fear and the distress are all very real to him, and all they can do is try to comfort him, cover his back with cool damp cloths or healing salves, remind him he's safe now and they're not leaving him.

Boundary Shifting: Sometimes, Tav can come up and hug him from behind, and he'll melt into them a little bit and go all soft and happy. Other times, he might flinch away or go rigid at the same gesture. A lot of the time, it really depends on how he's feeling on the day, but at least a little bit of it is deliberate - he's pushing to find the limit of just how much autonomy Tav is willing to give him. He wants to know at what point they'll stop respecting his "no". Will they accept it if he doesn't want a hug? If he wants to sleep in his own room tonight? At what point will understanding turn to anger at being rejected? From the drow twins four/fivesome, we also know he's got a tendency to push his own boundaries, and jump into things he's actually not ready for, and Tav would be the one holding his hand through the fallout as he tries to figure out what his own boundaries even are.

Frustration! So, so much frustration. He wants to be Over It already. He wants to move past everything that ever happened to him and never think about it again. He hates that Cazador still has a grip on him, even in death - he doesn't want to give the bastard the satisfaction of dwelling on all his punishments, his cruelties. Sometimes, that frustration is going to explode outwards at Tav - he'll get angry at them for coddling him, or find something small to start a fight over, or he'll set an unreasonable boundary and try to defend it because he's still learning what healthy boundaries look like. Sometimes, it will implode inwards, and that won't be about Tav at all, but they'll get the brunt of it all the same - it might come out as self-loathing or self-punishment, and he'll react by doing something stupid, like trying to drive them away, because having a secure, relatively healthy relationship is terrifying and the instinct is to destroy it before Tav can. There will be yelling and angry tears and deeply unhealthy coping mechanisms, and they'd have to work through that. Trauma is ugly, and Astarion is right at the beginning of a very long journey towards healing.

Abandonment Issues: Astarion wants the relationship to be one between equals, but he's kind of got Tav on a pedestal all the same. They saved him. They helped him get rid of Cazador for good. They chose him and love him despite a wealth of better (in his eyes) options, and all his baggage. They stayed with him even when he has very little to offer them. We know his vanity and obnoxious self-absorption is a fragile attempt to obscure the fact that his self-esteem is in the dirt and he has virtually no self-worth, and there are a couple of occasions in-game where it becomes clear that he's afraid of losing the one person who somehow considers him lovable. After seeing Sebastian and all the other conquests, he begs Tav not to hate him, saying that he did what he had to. If he has a rival for Tav's affections, and Tav informs him that they broke up with the rival to be with Astarion, he's shocked and the first thing out of his mouth is, "You ended things with them for me? Why?" And if Durge tries to break up with him for his own safety, his facade drops and he immediately asks if he did something wrong. So while he's not afraid to argue with Tav, if something happens - like an angry outburst - that upsets or angers them, and he thinks he's at risk of losing that one steady, stable person in his life, he might well cling and overcompensate to try and repair what he thinks is a fracture in their relationship. He'll fawn or beg or crawl into Tav's bed to "apologise" and "make it up to them" because, well, very occasionally it worked on Cazador. With patience and good communication and lots of repeatedly driving the lesson home to overcome 200 years of education to the contrary, he will eventually start to believe that "I'm really pissed off at you right now," does not equate to, "You are the worst mistake I've ever made and I am leaving you."

Panic Attacks: I feel like honestly he'd get some symptoms of these on a fairly regular basis, but he's never been given any option other than just trying to power through them. He's used to realising he's shaking, he's used to feeling like he's watching himself from outside his body, or like he can't breathe even though he doesn't need to. He's very familiar with the sickening fear in his gut, so intense it makes his head spin. He's not used to being comforted or reassured about them - he thinks they're normal. Tav disagrees.

Anyway, cptsd is messy and complicated and often looks very different from person to person so these will not represent everyone's but these are just some ideas for what the ongoing recovery process might make them work through, based on the aspects I'm most familiar with.

Projecting? Who's projecting? I'm not projecting. Shut up.