#i will sacrifice her on the altar of hedonism to Gortash

[thisaccountisagainstmywill]

I've finished the design for my main Tav, Luce Locke, the Luckless Liar. This is Luce, my Half-Elf 'bard' who is probably more technically a rogue with weaponized insults. [Mechanically, I realized after my run that I barely did any actual Bard stuff and just said mean things, lied, and stabbed people poorly.]

Officially, Luce romances Shadowheart with the bonus Halsin and banged no one else. I play unhorny bards. Unofficially, Luce would absolutely mouth off to Gortash and end up in a...situation. ------ I am bad at coming up with character names in general. So to make it easier for me to get through character creators, I have a mental repertoire of characters with names and personalities that I pull from before I start an RPG run. Luce originated as a Wildstar Spellslinger I had of the same name, for a story I was working on called Locke and Load -- the game died before I could get the story to a shareable point. In it, I was exploring themes of magic addiction as Luce became more and more addicted to being within the 'in-between' world that magic users have access to in Wildstar lore. She was losing her grip on reality and finding more work as a mercenary only to fund her ability to detach and embrace the other realm.

Wildstar Luce is distantly related to a WoW Mage I had by the name Aluciia, who was made to spite a teacher who called me the literal devil in class. From Lucifer to Luci to A(luci)ia to Luce. I used to pronounce Luce with a hard C, but after realizing it could be pronounced like Luce Locke = 'loose lock' I haven't gone back. It's too funny a coincidence. ---- From these origins, Luce isn't meant to be good at what she does. Her time in Baldur's Gate pre-tadpole was spent largely scrounging, sleeping on tavern floors, and distracting you long enough to swipe food off your plate while she smiled. She 'officially' became a Bard in an attempt to have a more consistent place to stay and fewer questions about why she was always in the pub. In actuality, she just desperately loved Pub Quizzes and proving her worth with little factoids. (We're a College of Lore Bard in this house.) This iteration of Luce is also avoiding real life. In this version, however, she's running from the more uncomfortable parts of being a halfbreed... The tadpole adventure changes her for the better. Everyone else may have been pulled down to level 1 from their higher places, but she had only ever made it that far. Thrust into adventure, she embraces the lie of a life she made for herself. As it keeps working, she fails forward more and more, falling in love with her Bear and Maiden Fair.

[asharaks]

the glory of the myth you inherit

1.6k words, gortash's pov. pre-nautiloid dark urge. depictions of gore & torture.

“this can't happen again.”

the light is thick and red. the air tastes of offal. all around him, shadows move.

he wonders which of them is her.

at the head of the temple stands an altar: at the altar stands a figure. a cascade of glory-red, bathed in holy light, the Chosen of Bhaal leans against the stone, knife held loose and relaxed in one glistening hand. gortash breathes in viscera, and steps closer. the congregation doesn't move: the shadows do.

he holds out his hands (black gloves black hands black of Bane against the red of Bhaal) and smiles to soften the blow of his words. he's here to leave bruises, not cuts. 

the whip, not the lash.

the figure at the altar moves, teeth and meat and rabidholy grace, scars filled with blood and a mouth filled with blades.

“it won't.”

“you'll forgive me if I don't believe you.”

“will I?”

a tilt of the head, a soft hiss to the words. he mirrors the movement (two can play at this game, and he is not to be outperformed) and steps forwards, another step into the redred light of hell (and he thinks Bane and he thinks god of tyranny and he thinks lord of the Three ) and he says—

��“you will.”—

—and he says:

“she needs to be brought to heel. if you can't do it”—

—and the lash of Bhaal laughs low and rich and plants bloody hands on the altar (head of the sacrifice framed between them light falling on the opened ribcage) and gortash feels anger hazy on his tongue and he says—

“I am not a forgiving man”

and the Chosen looks at him (eyes bright eyes hungry updown updown lips curled) and silence eddies around them both.

“no”

(voice like consideration)

“you're not”

(like amusement)

“but here you are.”

—it's a mockery, he's sure of it: all too amused, all too soft. again he smiles (show teeth show strength nothing but spine and fangs and blackblack hands) and pitches his voice dangersoft and he says—

—“can you manage this, or do I have to?”—

and the slayer’s eyes swallow him whole, and the slayer's voice settles over him:

“she followed her nature: perhaps you should follow yours, Banite”

“her nature is a rabid animal” he spitsnaps and that Chosen smile widens and those Chosen teeth gleam whiter-red and he says, “keep her under control or I will”

and the (priest) (missionary) (revered killer) contemplates the body draped across Bhaal's altar — legs spread, arms spread, ribs spread, a feast for an insatiable appetite — and leans down with the blade, with the god, with an artist's unbroken focus.

“you may not be a forgiving man, enver”

—and his name is a silken murmur, a hand on his throat in the dark—

“but you aren't a loved one either, are you?”

—and gortash feels green twist in his guts verdant emerald bile-tasting as Bhaal's Chosen (Bhaal's darling Bhaal's perfect monster) grins and Bhaal's congregation hum at his back. he (doesn't blink) he (doesn't react) he (smiles in kind) and he says:

“what’s love next to domination?”

and he says:

“I don't need to be loved to serve”

and he says:

“unlike you. daddy's little monster ”

and he-she-they laugh–laugh–laughs , leaning low over the body teethbright smile flashing mouth wide scars split eyes blackblackblack—

—so he throws his hands widewider takes in the temple around them, all skulls and stone and stains—

and the lash of Bhaal spins the blade in bloody hands and looks him up and down hungry eyes and whitewhite fangs and metal crimsonbright, and says,

“would you like to be?”

voice full of invitation, thick and rich as velvet as wine as blood as all the fine little things he craves so dearly, all those little statements those protections charms against an old life long since shed.

what's on offer here is nothing so decadent, so indulgent: he sees the hedonism on offer sprawled shiny across the altar, hands bound, spine a beckoning curve.

he sees tendons pulled songbirdtight harpstringtaut skin flayed to make an instrument of the body thick heavy thigh muscles peeled away from the bone arms naked violin bows scraped clean and singing (the hands are left intact fingertips soft and fleshy the nails immaculate painted shiny red) and

she

breathes

and he watches the flutter of her lungs trying to inflate without muscle to carry the movement, the swell of the sob in her exposed oesophagus and Bhaal's (monster) Chosen clicks a sharpened tongue and lays a bloodied hand on her cheek and says to her (to him):

“we're almost there”

and holy light floods her body, her heart convulsing under glistening ribs and she cries out with lungs newly dying, newly alive and already collapsing

“just a little further”

and he scowls, lips thin skin hot fists clenchedclenchedclenched but he breathes out slow— don't let the blood too close to the surface you're in a den of sharks and they’re ready to feed—

and the chosenchampionslayerlash smiles wider has his scent sharkteeth white head tilted eyes black and empty and he — uneasy, in this temple of lesser gods and greater fiends — says—

—“she went too far”—

puts force behind it puts authority behind it puts Bane behind it

—“we can't afford another incident like that. not yet. not again, now that we're”—

so close but the slayerchosenbeast spreads hands wide like sanguine wings over the raw pulsing ribs and gestures, beckons, and with a sigh barely repressed—

—it doesn't do to show impatience when speaking for Bane (lord of the Three, and Bhaal the least of them)—

—when speaking to this Chosen, when addressing these blackblack eyes and that sharkwhite smile—

—he ascends the steps to the altar, breathes in the blood and incense.

“is there a purpose to this?”

as it turns out, there is. the blade spins, sunlight dyed red in the glass. a knife, offered freely, a mocking smile that says would you?

will you?

could you?

he takes it, feels it weighty with malice, with meaning. can't resist the jibe, lips curling to show his own teeth—

—“isnt this your job?”—

—broken-glass grin obsidian eyes like you could see right through them if the light hit right—

“in this case?”

—expression loving, intimate, soft and fond as stained hands stroke through her hair, and he looks down at the panting body at the moonwhite face already corpse-pallid.

he hadn't recognised her. not from the inside: hadn't known the colours of her lungs, the slow-crawling pulse of her guts, the delicate flutter of her heart. but her face—

—a bloodless diamond in the sanguine light—

—her face, he knows. remembers her tears under the fall of the whip.

he remembers the grey of her eyes, now fixed on him, now glassy with pain, now distant and empty.

“you bought her?”

both hands on her cheeks, now, and her eyes turned upwards to the blade. Bhaal's daughtersonchild looks at him a long moment.

“she came to us” comes the atlonglast reply, the didyouhearme answer. “she escaped— your clients aren't all so rigorous as you, enver.”

at the sound of his name, she squirms. makes a low keening sound. he can see the tremor of it in her lungs. her eyes— pale, glassy, enraptured— focus on him, and he wonders—

silhouetted against the sanguine light, black and gold and redresplendent with Bane's mark, Bhaal's congregation at his back—

in his hand, the knife.

“why come to you?”

hands, spread wide once more (he'd like to think in supplication). the robe, a red shroud, falls open to reveal metal beneath.

“freedom” says Bhaal's lash, blackblack eyes and lips like a wound, “vengeance”, and those hands land on her bowedtaut body, run like a lover’s down the gracestained cathedral of her ribs. up, over her bareflayed shoulders, tendons unravelling in their wake. “perhaps she just wanted to be loved.”

and gortash looks down at the knife in his hands and back at the (saint) (priest) (holy fiend) and says—

—“is she?”

that smile carves wider, beatific, sanctified, everblessed.

“how could she not be?”

there's a blade in his hand and a cult at his back, but it's the smile that feels like a threat. he watches the slow (beautiful) bloody throb in her veins, and tips the blade until it pierces the light.

“vengeance, is it?”

a slow drag of hands. gortash feels it as if it were his own nerves flayed, his own bones held (such intimacy, touching parts of the body never before known), worshipped, laid bare. the knife weighs heavy in his hands.

the mouth of Bhaal, a gaping wound.

“when is it not?”

he considers the knife. a starkly functional thing, sharpened to a delicate edge.

the hand of Bane, evergrasping.

“that almost sounds like a threat.”

—he flips the knife, the blade a glittering silver bloom in the still air, and holds it out. hilt-first. meets those (blackblack) eyes and smiles his own (whitewhite) smile—

“be careful what you say, assassin.”

somewhere in the congregation, somebody laughs. high and thin, a songbird loose in the eaves, and the child of Bhaal (looks at him) and looks at him (and looks at him)—

—and Bane might be the most of them but he is not the blood of his god and ketheric for all his undying devotion is a mortal father grasping after time long lost to him—

—and Bhaal's daughtersonchosen closes her heart in a crimson hand and says—

—“remember what happens to tyrants, little would-be”—

—and her heartstrings strain-snap-twang and her breath flies gracefully gratefully free. when she looks up her eyes are light and rapturous. angel-touched.

—she smiles as she dies. the slayer of Bhaal smooths her hair back from her forehead, hands so gentle it aches, and those blackblack eyes burn rapturebright, faithrewarded lovereturned.

behind him, the congregation sighs.

ecstasy, released.