#edit: it's confirmed you can only say this as tav-

[yoakesan]

i beg your FUCKING pardon???????

[merrinla]

Halsin and Minthara weren't always mutually exclusive

Even though you can recruit both of them, in the game it looks like a funny bug. I guess this is what's left of the original idea. It was previously planned not only letting you have them at the same time, but also that they would interact in the party like other companions.

In the audio files, you can find lines of their reactions to each other's deaths. I don't know if these are triggered or not. They are both so bugged that sometimes I can hardly tell which is the cut content and which is the bug.

It's kind of funny that Halsin would be so sad.

I recently completed Halsin's quest with Mintara in my party. In the scene by the lake, when Halsin entered the portal, Minthara said "He made it. Now let's just hope he survives what's on the other side"

Actually this is exactly the same line as Tav's.

Halsin also share many lines with Tav and other origins. Most of them are unused. But in this case the line is not only voiced by Emma Gregory (Minthara's VA), it's triggered.

There is another interesting line. In Moonrise Towers, when Ketheric punishes Mintara for a failure in the grove and sends her to the dungeon, the player can choose not to interfere and leave the location without helping her. In this case one of the characters in your party will remind you that she can be saved as a potential companion. I was wondering if Halsin would say anything. And he did. "Minthara may prove useful to us, should we wish to save her…"

This isn't cut content. This isn't new content added with patches. It's in the game since the release. And this line works. Moreover, this is his personal line.

If they implement the dialogue with an ultimatum it will be nonsense. I mean, first he suggests to save her from the Absolute as a useful ally, and then in the camp he will say that it's the right choice to kick her back under the Absolute control. It's even hard to blame the character for such contradiction. Rather, it's just a stupid limit set by the script.

Next. In Act 3 if you make one of them to go up on the clown stage, the other one will approve.

There is also an unused flag for Act 3 in the game files with the description "Orin pretended to kill Halsin during the Minthara abduction campnight." Which means in Act 3 they were both in the party.

You can see what the abduction of Mintara looks like in this video. Only instead of Halsin, Jaheira is mentioned here.

Maybe there are other confirmations that I do not know about, that they were not mutually exclusive before. But that's enough for me.

They were both not originally planned as companions. Their roles were expanded much later. Most likely, Larian didn't have time to polish their content, so scissors were used. This is why their content seems so unfinished compared to others. Except for Wyll, probably. That's why they are so buggy.

I suppose the reason they are both mutually exclusive is because it is the easiest solution when you have a deadline on the horizon. Just easiest as "it's fine for a companion to just hang out at the camp". Otherwise, you need dialogs, animations, scripts, etc. And you also need to make sure that it will work with everything else. This is time and resources. But this doesn't mean that it's impossible to fix anything later.

I faintly hope that the defenetive edition will have the option to recruit them both.

And I really hope that in the future Larian will look at the games of their colleagues from BioWare (who made the original BG). I mean games from better times than now. The companions below will show you how much they "loved" each other. Not all of them became friends in the end. But nevertheless, we saved the world. Together.

[bardic-inspo]

I would love to ask you a million of these but I’ll settle for three (if you feel like answering them, of course)! 🥤 🧃🎨

Thanks for participating!!! 💛

Ahh you are so sweet, thank you so much!! 😘💜💜

[Writer's Truth or Dare Ask Game] 🥤 ⇢ recommend an author or fanfic you love

There are SO many massively talented writers out there, many of which are still on my ever-growing to-read list. I wanna send some love to @littlejuicebox's multichapter fic, Midwinter Carol, which I'm about halfway through and absolutely loving so far!

It has: Ascended Astarion! Pining for someone who's right in front of you! Divorced yearning! Beautiful, poetic prose! Just absolutely *chef's kiss* Astarion characterization! Such a compelling protagonist in Eirianwen. Girl has got backbone and I'm excited to get to know her more and see how she complements and challenges our boy. And just a the perfect balance of angst and flirty hopefulness.

The actual fic summary (below) is much better than mine. You can read the fic on AO3 or Tumblr:

Fifteen years after the Ascendant and his lover went their separate ways, they run into one another at Wyll Ravengard’s Midwinter Gala. One dance is all they share. A week later, a cataclysm of events, spurned by Eirianwen’s return, uproots the life Astarion had been building for himself. One thing is made certain: the elven sorceress is the key to any ounce of salvation he may have left, if only she stops slipping through his fingers like sand from an hourglass. But old habits die hard, and old feelings are pulled to the surface for both the elves. Astarion is forced to confront the wounds of his past and deal with the damage he's done while trying to run from himself. The Ascendant is forced to decide whether he will continue on his current path or forge a new one... perhaps one that leads him back to the love of his life.

🧃 ⇢ share some personal lore you never posted about before

Hmm, I think I maybe talked about this on Twitter once, but not here. Well, I'm now pretty firmly in the agnostic (if not atheist) camp, but my parents pushed me to get confirmed as a kid (we were Lutheran). And I went to a church where, part of the youth group program was performing a traveling mime show of the passion story. Like, full on face-paint, black turtlenecks, miming Jesus getting crucified. There was a super eerie soundtrack and narration that went with it. Lots of drama over whether any of the girls could try-out for the Jesus role. Whipping sound effects. Absolutely no disrespect to anyone finding religious insight through art and whatnot. It just feels a little weird and uncomfy to me personally in retrospect. But then, religion really isn't for me. Most of the other confirmation programs I heard about my classmates doing had like, community service projects instead.

🎨 ⇢ link your favourite piece of fanart and explain why you like it

My first commissioned piece of Astarion and my main Tav (Naomi) was just finished tonight and I'm riding a cloud about it. They're so soft with each other and the artist did such a lovely job 🥹

There is SO much incredible BG3 and Astarion art out there. This piece really stands out to me, too. I just love how they captured Astarion's tender expression here, and how lovely he looks in this lighting:

[staefire]

Small thought (not to be taken seriously) about Astarion after reading some people on yt etc. So, somebody and other people agreed on that, specifically said that if you look at both of the character's story endings, the right thing to do would be technically kill Astarion after the bite scene for how miserable his life is gonna be no matter what.

I think this ain't what the writers meant. When a person is hurt beyond repair, the only thing that person can do is find the will to live the rest of their remaining life in the peace they might finally find. Astarion literally confirms that ascending would've killed him(mentally) and by dnd standards, that's what happens to vampires as they become stronger (spawn > high vampire > in this case ascended vampire). If you leave Astarion after he decides not to ascend, he'll say to you he didn't ascend because of you(Tav). Tav is the reason he's still willing to live as a spawn and it's horrible side effects until they're alive. He points out life can be beautiful when shared with Tav, even without the beauty of the sun above him. Tav becomes his sun.

Now, to say that he should've been killed when the whole reason of his story is to Give Him a chance, it's literally being unable to read a story properly, I think. And it also reflects what the writers knew would happen: too many people would never give a second chance to such a suffering soul (if we take out the murders and race attached to the story. The context of those actions don't matter, since Astarion isn't real and his story is a classic vampire one, but you can use a soldier with ptsd as a general example), which made me think for a sec.

Tbh that's it. I'm just getting it out lol

Edit(cw dark themes): adding, considering how emotional and in need Astarion really is, while ascended Astarion is clearly slipping away but is able to "live" on his own, I think it would be possible that when Tav is gonna die of old age or smth, normal Astarion can finally choose how to end things up and step under the sun.

[chaos-is-neutral]

Baldur's Gate 3 Tav/Karlach/Halsin Modern AU

Fire Heart has taken the wrestling world by storm. No one expected Karlach to become famous overnight. Though when you put a big, buff, tall tiefling into black wrestling leather the crowd grows wild. She is an overnight success. Everyone in Baldur's Gate is obsessed with her. It is rumored that the famous Southern Gothic singer Lyria (my Tav) is down bad.

Rumors start speculating that they two are dating when Karlach begins flirting back to some of Lyria's flirtatious comments. They just say it is playful fun and that they have been close friends ever since they met at a movie premiere a while back. These rumors don't stop though as Karlach is seen in the VIP section of Lyria's concerts a few times. The rumors really get going though when Lyria is seen at a wrestling match for the first time ever! Their fans are going crazy. They even have a ship name for them called SouthernHeart.

It stays this way for a few months when Lyria drops a bomb on their Instagram. A new song was coming called Fire Burning Heart that night. Everyone in Baldur's Gate was listening and it was clear to anyone with two ears that this was about Karlach. It is driving people wild, but the two won't say anything. The only thing that Lyria announces is that there will be a special guest in their music video coming in the next few months.

The flirting though continues in the comments of their insta posts. Karlach one day posts this:

And Lyria comments: "Gods if she used that position on me I'd be seeing Kelemvor 🔥🥴" Karlach then responded with "Don't want to kill you yet. I quite enjoy you 💋" This drives the fans wild for weeks. Everyone is looking at their accounts just waiting for them to confirm it. The edits made about them are clear. Lyria watching Karlach wrestle with this heat in their eyes, wanting her on every level. Then Karlach watching them perform with love and longing.

Everyone is waiting for the anticipated music video. There would be a special guest on it and everyone who had been watching knew it would be Karlach. Finally, the video for Fire Burning Heart drops. Everyone in Baldur's Gate is watching. And in the first scene, there is Karlach. The music video follows their love story from the awkward hello at the movie premier to a private date where Lyria proposes. Fans are going fucking insane over this. Both Karlach and Lyria's team has to put out a post saying that they have been in a relationship for over a year now and that they got married last month in a secret wedding off the coast.

SouthernHeart is trending for DAYS. Now they are seen everywhere with each other. Paparazzi taking pictures of the couple and you can see them wearing small gold bands. They post each other on their socials, bragging about their love. Karlach even posts a picture of Lyria after their top surgery saying, "I've never been more in love with them ❤️‍🔥"

Karlach wears an orange bandana around her wrist to remind her of her flaming redhead. Lyria wears Karlach's denim jacket at all their shows. Life is crazy and busy for them, but they never fall out of love. It is clear to everyone they will be one of the few celebrities to last.

A big announcement comes when Lyria will be cast in a rom-com with Baldur's Gate heartthrob and animal lover Halsin. Halsin was the it man. Every woman and man wanted him. No one could resist him, especially in these romance movies. Karlach is so excited for their husband and is posting all about it. It is an amazing time and a big growth for the singer. It doesn't take long though for cheating rumors to surface. Many stories are coming out saying the chemistry between the two actors goes off-set. They are pictured leaving together a lot. Some stories say Karlach is in shambles over this and has flown out to see Lyria to confront them.

Both teams again post that this is not the case and that they are both still madly in love. The rumors become worse when Lyria drops a new song right after the filming finished up called Hazel Sunrise. It is clearly about someone else who has stolen the young singer's heart. Many put it together quick that it is about their co-actor Halsin. Everyone is up in arms in honor of Karlach. Lyria has to turn off comments on their post and Karlach has to beg people to stop being mean to their husband.

Lyria is radio silent. The only thing they post is that there will be a new music video releasing and this song was for the movie they were in. The cheating rumors only amped up when the music video dropped. The chemistry between Halsin and Lyria was undeniable. These two were madly in love and getting hot and heavy. The fans were demanding why Lyria would throw Karlach away like this. They also began turning on Halsin. It was a blood bath for weeks and thankfully none of them ran their social medias anymore.

Karlach kept wrestling, but now there was also a green bandana she wore. Lyria also wore one around their neck when performing. Then Halsin was wearing a necklace with a small gold band on it along with red and orange ribbons in his braids. Fans did not notice these changes though. They were too angry!

Then the bombshell of all bombshells dropped. The week before the movie premiered paparazzi posted photos they had taken during filming of the three on a private beach. In the first one Halsin, Lyria, and Karlach were sitting and laughing. The next one Halsin and Lyria were kissing, looking a little heated. In the next, Lyria had grabbed Karlach by the base of her hair and was kissing her with a fever. Then finally the last one was of Karlach and Halsin kissing while Lyria had a big shit eating "fuck-yeah-these-two-are-mine" grin.

The two hottest people in Baldur's gate had added the third hottest to their relationship. The internet EXPLODED. SouthernHeartThrob was trending. People demanded answers, but again the three were radio silent. That was until the movie premier when they all three showed up together. Halsin in a sage green suit, Lyria in a matching one, and Karlach in a slick black dress with a slit up to her hip and the heart shape made little horns. It was stunning how beautiful they all were.

Halsin was pulled toward an interview where he finally answered everyone's burning questions.

He had met the couple back during his last movie premier where Lyria had a song in it. It was love at first sight for them. They were all constantly talking. There was no denying what was there, especially after Lyria got casted in the movie with him. The three had set down and had a long conversation where they all agreed they wanted each other and loved each other so deeply it hurt.

During all of this he is looking at his partners with so much love. Karlach has her tail wrapped around Lyria's thigh as people snapped their photo. Only to him and Lyria would they understand that meant she was nervous. Lyria though was looking at Karlach like she was the goddess only they could worship. Halsin quickly looks at the interviewers dropping one last bombshell, "Now if you excuse me, I'd like to steal my husband and wife and keep them to myself."

[chronurgy]

Oh I absolutely agree, and that would totally be my preference - but I also really love morally complex characters with edges where many people don't. What I can't understand is why both Larian and fandom seem so allergic to exploring any sort of moral complexity for Karlach. Like seriously, I've seen people get hate for pointing out that she didn't have any problems with the fact that she was knocking heads in the past, just with the fact that it was for Gortash. People also really seem to like ignoring or downplaying the soul coins thing. There seems to be an intense desire to portray her as the absolutely happy go lucky nothing else going on here companion and I don't know why that is.

I think either option (deliberate ignorance or full knowledge) could have really rounded out her character and brought interesting depth into her storyline. She also needs a completed storyline - if they wanted to tie her to gortash then they needed to add stuff about it to act 3 that just isn't there.

I also think her story could have really been an interesting way to humanize Gortash's crimes but they needed to be plugging that angle from the beginning and they just weren't. It really is almost like they didn't quite know what they wanted to do with her character - they even have contradictory details about her parent's deaths. Karlach really needed more thought, more time on the drawing board, and more attention.

I also wonder if they added her connection to Gortash later, because Larian confirmed that the infernal engine was added well after she was conceived of as a character (she didn't have it when she first appeared in early access, they also said in that same interview that her personal quest wasn't cut from act 3, it was just never there because she was a late edition so 😬). I do wonder if that connection got added along with the infernal engine. If that was also around the time they switched from having only durge as an option to Durge and Tav, then they may have been looking for a way to tie a party without durge to gortash and the main storyline at the same time they were doing her infernal engine storyline. It makes sense - ties karlach into the main story, humanizes Gortash's crimes, and gives a Tav an emotional connection to one of the Chosen in act 3. Because Orin doesn't have that companion with a connection and lots of people who played Tav first or only say that Orin feels massively disconnected from everything on a Tav run, so that is a legit worry! (also this just ties into my belief that act 3 is when having a non-Durge main character tends to make things fall apart a bit)

The problem, of course, is that if you're playing durge you've got your own connection to Gortash. That can make her connection come off as almost superfluous becuase you are already very emotionally invested in both of the Chosen in act 3 by dint of being durge. And he has this whole big scene where he tells durge how happy he is to see them, possibly right in front of karlach, the person whose life he ruined, even ignoring and dismissing her in favor of durge, and the emotional payoff is.........nada. We get nothing. She's mad, but not that mad, and not any madder than any of the other companions. She never has a moment where she talks about feeling weird around durge because she knows that they were close to gortash and they must have been horrible and even if they don't remember it, she still sees them differently now. She never wonders if they knew and approved of what Gortash did to her. There's just nothing (admittedly this is a criticism I have for most of the companions post-reveal, but for her it feels especially egregious). She needed to be able to have a proper confrontation with a Durge who allied with Gortash and possibly even be willing to leave over it.

In the end I think I like her having this connection to Gortash because I think it could add a fascinating layer to her interactions with Durge (I say could because you have to do all the work to imagine it yourself). I also think that if she did know or purposefully choose not to know about Gortash's business practices then that is also another place that could get really interesting for her as a character. I also think humanizing Gortash's crimes does add something to the story. If done well, it could have been fantastic - the problem being that I'm not sure it was done well. And I think that's the biggest issue. It was so rushed that I don't know they had the time to do it well even though there's a lot of petential there.

I think a character who knew Gortash during his time in the house of hope would be fascinating. Maybe they ad been there together for awhile, then she was traded away to zariel and he escaped later. So now we've got someone with really positive memories of young gortash having to confront who he's become. A great breaking point for that relationship could be learning that he'd sold someone to Raphael just as the two of them had been sold and condemned them to the same horrors that they suffered. Erg now I just want to play a character with that backstory, and they and Karlach never realize they're talking about the same person until they meet him because she calls him gortash and they know him as enver Flymm.

I'm thinking about Karlach and in particular her relationship with Gortash, and the more I think about it the more I really wish that she'd known he was a Banite from the start, or at least for a good chunk of her time working for him. I mean, the canon story of "I didn't know what he was, he lied to me and I didn't realize the truth until he stabbed me in the back" doesn't not work? It just feels like a very... safe option. Now, I love Karlach, I really do, she's a joy to be around. But I don't know, the whole "I didn't know what they were doing" method of letting a wonderful person work for the bad guys has been done. It's been done a lot. And it also makes Karlach feel less morally complex than the other origin companions to me! I mean, it's entirely possible she didn't even know Gortash was a criminal; his public persona would require bodyguards too. So if we assume that she didn't even know he was a criminal then her moral complexity is limited to having some friends who are devils and wanting Gortash dead, which... even just by general fantasy standards and especially when compared to characters like Astarion, Shadowheart and Lae'zel (as the most obvious examples, but personally I also find Wyll's pact with Mizora and Gale getting the orb at least as complex if not more and they didn't work for the villain, so that feels like a bit of a problem) is very straightforward. She's good. Maybe she used to be a bit naive and then learned not to be so blindly trusting through betrayal. Sure. Fine. Personally I do not find that particularly compelling, if I just saw her backstory written out without the super hard work of her writer and VA in the rest of the game my reaction to her would basically just be "Eh". And if we assume she did know he was a criminal then it feels kind of weak that the only time that even vaguely comes up is Gortash potentially making one comment about how Karlach knew what he was and shouldn't really have been surprised.

Also, an additional point, the fact that supposedly Gortash was putting enough work into keeping her ignorant that there was a noticeable drop in his ethics after he sold her is... kind of weird, because the only reason we're given for it is "He liked her"? To be clear the fact that he liked her isn't the problem, we know Gortash is perfectly capable of liking people. But... he went out of his way to deceive this one employee? To the point that people noticed a change when he was gone? Or alternately selling her specifically actively made him significantly worse, which... would also be kind of weird. There isn't even any particular reason for him to see himself in her, other than the Lower City upbringing they had very little in common before Gortash sold her (unless baby Enver was way better of a person than his current self would suggest). I feel like if Larian was going to justify Karlach apparently not realizing she was working for an arms dealer and slave trader as his personal bodyguard (so someone who'd logically be around for a lot of shady shit or frankly what is the point of her being on the payroll) with "he lied to her" more needed to be done with it.

But if she knew he was a Banite and knew what he was doing for a good chunk of the time she spent working with him that adds a tasty "I didn't think the leopards would eat my face!" energy to the whole situation! I love the idea of Karlach liking and trusting Gortash despite knowing what he was because he treated her with respect and that was all that mattered! Obviously this is subjective, I will freely admit I like my characters with a bit more moral greyness than Karlach shows, but to me at least her reassessing and improving her morals from a standpoint of "Him liking me and respecting me wasn't enough to save me because other people's lives do not matter to him" would be much more interesting than her being a perfectly lovely person from the start and not knowing what her boss was doing and getting betrayed and then continuing to be a perfectly lovely person. (I'm not going to claim that a person's morals improving when the thing they did to others is done to them is particularly ground-breaking, but I would argue it's no less ground-breaking than "they didn't know and were good all along and their boss was lying to them" and to me at least it's significantly more engaging.) And it would also neatly remove the question of why Gortash cared enough to lie about what he was doing to this one specific employee from day one (so before he could bond with her at all), which. y'know, would be nice.