#i ADORE the potential for cleric-specific dynamics in the Astarion romance (especially a cleric who surprises him personality-wise)

[wufflesvetinari]

ok FINE, some things about my half-orc cleric tav whom i love so very much

Lash grew up with her trying-his-best dad in Baldur's Gate (mom stayed with her orc clan). she had no lucrative skills and no exceptional cunning--between this and the default perspective of her as barbaric, she internalized a bunch of stuff, joined up somewhere, Saw Some Action, got good at killing people. like, really good. "her services were instrumental in leveling several towns including civilians and she got a commendation for it" good.

this did not feel good, and mid-personal-crisis about murdering strangers on someone else's orders, she deserts and saves one goddamn monk and ilmater calls her to his service. she regards this as a baffling mistake on his part.

illmater is a god of compassion, gentleness, self-sacrifice. his clerics are basically non-combatants, known to only use violence as last resort. goblins etc. see a cleric of illmater on the battlefield and avoid hurting them, because they know they are willing to heal both sides if they can.

lash is not like this. lash starts as a blunt instrument who is only good at violence. but she wants to do good in the world, finally, and if ilmater wants to throw away his famed gentleness to compromise on someone like her, who is she to argue?

she spends her first years training in a temple, but she doesn't have the head for scripture. neither does she have the conviction or creativity for complete non-violence, instead developing a world-weary acceptance of it as a tool to reduce suffering.

she's sent on dangerous pilgrimages repeatedly instead of being assigned to minister to ilmater’s followers, confirming to herself that her calling is a compromise on ilmater’s part: he needs a blunt instrument so that others can carry on the work of being gentle.

what she doesn't realize in this time period is that she is slowly becoming gentle. moreover, becoming wise. clergy and laypersons approach her for advice on a world they are sheltered from. she has a way of speaking that cuts to the heart of things, and she's a comfort in quiet moments. she is rarely misled by self-serving justifications and moralizing. her kind of wisdom is drawn from her knowledge of the world and its flaws instead of from scripture.

she still kills. she's still blunt, and quietly sarcastic, and not entirely at ease with her god. but gods, she wants to be kind.

i think that astarion seriously considered seducing someone else for his plan in act 1 (wyll or something lmao) because, based on a "clerics with wooden stakes" comment he makes at camp at some point, he thought letting a good-aligned cleric guess his nature would be extremely dangerous for him. he especially has a bunch of anger towards the god of compassion, because he "prayed to every god" and nobody saved him.

but it's hard for him to see lash as a cleric? i mean, yes, she has a way of staring at you that makes you squirm and feel Too Known, and she's stupidly self-sacrificing, and she's hilariously incapable of trickery.

but she's funny, in her own reserved way. she's a world-weary soldier, good with a story, disgustingly rustic, a good cook, with the habit of cussing out her own god without getting in trouble for it somehow. and she mostly says the right type of kind thing, not the type of kind thing that make him want to curl up somewhere and grow spikes. and...maybe it's not terrible, feeling like someone Gets your deal instinctively? someone quiet but self-assured, who doesn't push for more?

(and, like, she's hot? she's strong and a little distant. devious plan aside, he finds that hot)

i am only in act one. i think, in her "worst" (but also kind of sexiest) moments, she thinks of herself as a mechanism, and even frames it as such out loud: if someone has committed unspeakable cruelty, she's here to end them for it. action and reaction. no hesitation, no mercy, because her being brutal allows everyone else to be kind. a necessary evil.

but she's in the midst of a years-long process of learning to see herself in a...kinder light. and as their relationship develops i think astarion will prod her a lot about how she makes more complicated ("and fun!") choices than that all the time, you idiot. why else would she be traveling with such a bunch of assholes?? why else would she be good to him?