#enver gortash

[hellothisisangle]

Squaring off

[goopsnoot]

Sleepy durgetash sketch I've done, because evil has to sleep too 😚

[awesomechocolatesauce]

@cody-hammond

Many have written about how Karlach throws Astarion, well… Don't worry, no Astarions were harmed! But I can't say the same about Gortash…

[kawareo]

Durge gives Gortash homework before they roleplay

Scel-free version on Bluesky!

[shinnamon-roll]

My biggest red flag is i love Enver Gortash and i think i can fix him.

[smallnico]

gort sketch from the other day i drew while trying to figure out how to draw his face. that is all

[strawberrypinky]

SIR 👀

hullo tumblr! haven't been here in a while, first time doing bg3 posting, so have a gort! nice to meet y'all! sorry in advance for dumping all my stuff here the next couple of days...

[dearest-and-nearest]

SIMP ID villains edition

[chronurgy]

Gortash wakes up.

He shouldn't, of course, but he's heard that enough times that it's gotten rather meaningless. He's always possesed some scuttling instinct that points him always to survival the same way a compass always finds north. Has it made him paranoid? Some would certainly claim so. But by now they're all mouldering in various basements, decorative urns, and the bottom at the Chionthar. But not him. He's still breathing, still alive, still here.

Wherever here is.

He tries and fails to sit up, to take in more of his utterly fantastical surroundings. He feels like death warmed over. He is death warmed over. But it's the warmed over part that matters.

He reaches a shaky hand, unsurprised to see it relieved of its gauntlet and Netherstone both, to rub at his chest. They never were particularly sentimental. There's a deep, throbbing ache behind his ribcage that he suspects will not dissapate easily, not after what he's done.

The device was a marvel, truly. Absolutely one of its kind, something never before dreamed of. He'd poured more gold into it than most would have considered wise, but small men will always quail before the ideas of a true genius.

And only a visionary such as himself could ever hope to do as he had done. No lesser being could have conceptualized it, dragged it forth from dreamscape to cold metal reality, had the guts to endure the pain for the beautiful truth of it. An electro-psionic charge set neatly at the bottom tip of his breastbone, embedded below skin and above sinew, trailing whip-thin wires around his ribs, between artery and vein to end, tips ruthlessly embedded, in what might be called in other men a heart. And with every beat of the thing it jostled the wires just a touch in the most perfect of frequencies, sending soothing chimes through the metal and crystal prison of that elegantly suspended charge - until it didn't, of course. Until his heart had stopped and the pressure had started to build and build in its chamber, perfectly designed to contain that charge as long as possible, all the better to give the impression of his death, while not holding it so long as to leave him permanently damaged after the amplified, unstable charge burst free from its prison and shot its way into the reanimation centers of his heart.

He was surprised by how much it hurt. He'd seen the reanimation process before, of course, when he'd had the prototypes implanted in various subjects to put them through their paces. He'd seen them lay there after, weakened and gasping, and had known to expect that. He knew it would take him roughly fifteen minutes to see the return of his fine motor functions, and nigh in half an hour to regain enough strength to sit upright on his own. But he had not expected how hard and fast his heart was now beating, as though it were making up for lost time and the deep, unshiftable ache in his chest.

It's a duller pain than the insertion, at least. He'd been awake through the whole thing, half untrusting, half desirous of seeing the dexterous hands of a master play so sweetly in the cavity of his chest. He had borne each slice of the scalpel with gritted teeth, recited formulas to ignore the wind and tug of wires through his ribs, and gasped, finally, in ecstatic pain as their hands had held him down firmly on the table and thrust the sharpened wires into his heart. He was glad to have fought them to remain awake, for all their comments on human frailty, for all the searing pain of it, for all their insistence on restraints and a local paralytic. There had been an uncanny beauty in watching them work, watching them help him slip the bonds of dull and uninspired mortality. He had known it would have to be them from the start, known there was no other he could bear to have rummage around his chest, and become only more convinced of it after he had shown them his designs, demonstrated the effects of the prototypes for them, and seen the delight flash through their gaze as they had turned to him and begun interrogating him in that charmingly intense way of theirs. Question after question, suggestion after suggestion, stinging comment after stinging comment about how he could have possibly failed to consider such obvious improvements. It had been intoxicating, as their presence ever was.

And perhaps more importantly, useful. After all, here he is, having spat in the face of what had once claimed to be the fate of all mortal men. He grins up at the strange stars above him, giddy with the thrill of it. He pushes himself up to a sitting position, panting with the effort of it, and feels something stab at his upper belly. Tucked just below the vee of his shirt he finds a hastily folded strip of paper. Gone to clean up your mess, it reads in familiar, spidery handwriting. Perhaps one day you'll learn. Though unlike you, I'm disinclined to hold my breath waiting for such an event.

Bastard, he thinks, as he tucks the note in his pocket before staggering upright, clutching on to a nearby spire of rock to keep himself upright. It will take him time to struggle his way down to the swirling glow of lights he assumes must be a portal out of what is almost certainly an interdimentional space, given its spacial oddities. But struggle he will. He has a challenge to answer, after all. And a world that will complacently believe him dead, left ripe for the picking.

[serendipizzy79]

As I was saying earlier... 😫😭

I just started to think about something now that I've officially finished the game...

Who else dies from your allies? I mean, unless you summon them during the last boss fight and they fall, then of course, they can, but... no other ally dies in a way you can't prevent it.

Except Gortash.

You can persuade others not to do something stupid and foolish. You can manipulate the circumstances NOT to allow them to be near the threat with you. Halsin asks you to get rid of the goblin leaders? You can recruit him - or you can tell him to stay behind to keep him out of trouble. Jaheira is a bit weak at the time you're about to descend at Moonrise Towers? Gently persuade her to stay back.

But then there's this stubborn motherfucker who sticks with you from the moment you defeat Orin, and he doesn't give you one single fucking chance to tell him to stay in Wyrm's Rock Fortress, uncork a wine, read a book and wait out the shit that's about to go down. Because "we rule as one", and he truly believes in that.

And I do understand. He goes with us because he wants to handle this with us. Together. But he could've lived. He could've been given a chance. Perhaps a 25 Persuasion check to convince him to give you his stone, then perhaps join you in the battle where his chances of survival is in the player's hands.

But, I remind myself... he was never given a chance about his future. He never had a choice concerning his fate. He never had anyone who'd tell him, "No, let me handle this, you stay behind and stay safe."

In the entire game, Gortash is the one and only ally you can not save.

Honestly. After all the shit we've been through for him, after all the shit HE'D been through in his entire fucking life, this is really not fair.

[hellothisisangle]

A Gortash a day keeps the apple away, so I am here to consume my daily vitamin shot of Gortash, else I get withdrawal symptoms.

Here’s your man

[da-zzi]

[lyrouxx]

portait signed and scented by enver gortash as a gift to a (alleged) close friend 💜

[serendipizzy79]

To follow on from this: I've been reading a lot of posts from y-rhywbeth2 who really knows the lore behind The Dead Three Idiots - and they didn't expect to win anyway. Even though Bhaal is using their "purest" spawn. Myrkul just leaves them to it when you defeat Ketheric. Bhaal doesn't pursue you if you kill Orin then reject him. Bane does offer a deal through Gortash's corpse but doesn't interfere in the outcome, whatever you pick, and is seemingly content with torturing Gortash's soul.

Gortash has such potential - like Durge, who in this world would probably be a pathologist - he could design Karlach a new heart for starters. If Durge helps Astarion with the spawn, Gortash would be excellent for that, organising the horde, designing housing, discovering ways to keep them all fed...

So if I want to imagine an AU where we can resurrect Gortash - maybe Withers sighs hollowly but agrees to do it as Durge deserves a "reward", under the proviso that Durge is responsible for his rehabilitation into a less cruel person - I will do. There's more than enough evil endings. Let me imagine a nice one, eh? The world is evil enough.

Unpopular Opinion

An 'evil power couple ruling Toril together' ending for Durge and Gortash is a horrible idea, and I'm glad that it doesn't happen in Baldur's Gate 3. If it ever did, it would not be a happy ending for either of them.

If that's your kink... cool. It's such a popular ask in the fandom that I'm sure someone already wrote it months and months ago.

My kink is redemption, but hardly anyone seems to want that for Gortash, and it makes me sad. I really think it should have been an option.

Here's why I don't want Durge and Gortash ruling Toril:

Durge and Gortash have both been abused, manipulated, and treated like complete shit by their families, their caregivers, and their gods. Bane's treatment of Gortash isn't exactly clear except that he tortures his soul for failure even though Gortash did everything he possibly could to succeed in the Absolute plot. By the time we meet him in-game, Gortash has become as bad, if not worse, than his abusers. Pre-tadpole Durge was a piece of work, too, although Sceleritas does mention that they struggled to stay the course that Bhaal had set them upon even before their lobotomy.

We know that one of the themes in Baldur's Gate 3 revolves around cycles of abuse. Even when the victim-turned-abuser isn't arguably 'as bad' as the one who hurt them, if they choose the same sort of path, they lose everything they were ever really fighting for: themselves.

I know Ascended Astarion stans will stomp their feet and say he hasn't become Cazador 2.0. To them, I say: 'You're right. He hasn't... yet.' However, he has eternity now and a delusional slave of his very own to bring out the worst in him. There's a reason that spawn Astarion mentions how he felt everything he'd learned since meeting his new friend/partner slipping away when he thanks them for stopping his ascension. Because that is what ascension does to him. Astarion loses. Cazador wins. Even dead, he has won. That the fandom doesn't get that boggles my mind.

Some fans like the idea of evil Durge and Gortash taking out Bhaal and Bane, becoming gods themselves. In my opinion, this is so much worse. Killing or torturing their abusers as revenge isn't 'finally showing them' or proving their strength. It is, in fact, a mirror of their abuser's own weakness manifested in their victim. Gortash has already crossed this line. Dravo Flymm is effectively dead, animated only by his tadpole. This is another reason I wish Karlach had the option to forgive Gortash--not for him--but for her.

Gortash intellectualized his own abuse so hard that he actually thinks he was helping Karlach by giving her to Zariel. He has not truly dealt with anything that was done to him. He projects it onto the people around him and makes his own problems into everyone else's. I believe this is why there's no ending in which he survives. That, and running out of time and money to do him and Wyll justice with their storylines.

I don't like Durge and Gortash becoming worse together. A history of abuse does not excuse its continuation. I don't want to watch them be overtaken by their own weakness, to weep as I gaze upon the manifestation of their inescapable cowardice.

I want to see them win, but my definition of winning is not ruling. My definition of winning is choosing to no longer emulate their abusers, to become what tiny glimpses into their back stories show us they once had the potential to be.

The idea of Durge and Gortash enslaving the world and ruling it brings to mind a line from one of my all-time favorite songs: Veteran of the Psychic Wars by Blue Öyster Cult.

'Did I hear you say that THIS is victory?!'

Well... it is. Just not theirs.

Repeating the cycle of abuse is nothing short of ensuring the legacy of the abuser.

Like I said... I want Durge and Gortash to win.

[kawareo]

4, 11, 13 for the artist ask game! :]

4. piece you wish got more love?

Anything with Companion Strike tbh. I get that he's an OC and that that always means less engagement but I really enjoy making those ^-^

That or the Gort animatic. It really feels like animating doesn't pay off that much because it takes so much time and in the end a doodle has a bigger chance of having a greater reach, which does truly suck

11. do you listen to anything while drawing?

Oh everything. Youtube, music, way too much of American dad... I'm way too familiar with online drama always because youtubers i listen to talk about it a lot

13. talk about a wip you like!

Animatics my beloveds.... I wish I had the energy to finish them more often, I have like 15 unfinished wips

[memaidraws]

Anyone ready for the BG3 stamp rally at Comic Fiesta? 👀✨