#i'm getting so much more astarion content this time because lisa frank doesn't constantly fuck with him the way miette did

[stealthnoodle]

More dispatches from my Dark Urge, who is trying her best not to disappoint her girlfriend (I have just kicked off Act 3)

My Dark Urge run almost went a different direction because I thought Karlach's romance was bugged ("can't wait to bang you like a gong tonight," she insinuates, and five long rests later my gong remains unbanged), but I finally ran through everything else going on in my camp and was at long last rewarded.

Lisa Frank got that life-changing piping hot Karlussy and she is being SO GOOD now. She was already trending that way, but now there are no more secret midnight murder nibbles. She's gone cold turkey and wow is her butler sore about it

The sheer number of times he tried to talk me into murdering Isobel was kind of hilarious. "You really want to kill her! ...Now she's all alone, so she would be super easy to murder! ...It's not too late to murder Isobel! ...She's right there, PLEASE, just one little murder? For me?" Sorry, bud, Lisa Frank likes Karlach more than viscera.

And I was STRESSED during the segment when the butler shows up and is like, you didn't kill Isobel? Fine. You're gonna sleep-kill Karlach. I burned some inspiration to make sure I woke her up instead of strangling her and the subsequent scene was absolutely wild. If Lisa Frank couldn't scare Karlach off with the murder-madness and the snarling and the biting, I guess these girls really are endgame! Peace and love on Planet Camp.

(I continue to worry constantly about Scratch and the owlbear cub.)

I'm also very sure now that I was right about the Bhaal connection. Act 2 has a lot of good Dark Urge content and tasty, tasty hints, and I am absolutely going to have a big damn confrontation with Orin in Act 3, yeah? I am HYPE. Lisa Frank will rock that jutilated jarapace.

Unrelated to Dark Urging, I didn't fuck up recruiting Jaheira this time, but having her in my party was buggy as shit. First I somehow aggroed the Harpers during the tower fight and had to run deep into the wilds to get away from them. She never got the Flee option, but I guess they gave up chasing her after everyone else fled? I then had to give the Harpers gifts to talk to them again, because they were all at -40. I am 99% certain I didn't friendly-fire them during the fight. (Miette absolutely friendly-fired their asses and no one got mad at her, but who can stay mad at a perpetually affronted kitty?)

But this was merely the baffling beginning. Everything got turbo-weird at the top of the tower.

Jaheira took up a party member slot but was still attached to Lisa Frank like a summon after I invited her to join permanently, and idk if that's normal but it didn't seem normal. If I tried to go to camp before jumping down the big hole, she yelled at me and then vanished forever, and if I got in a fight with the Death Shepard, there was no way to end the combat without the game crashing. I thought I was being so clever using Invisibility to grab shit and scamper away without triggering the fight, but then I discovered killing Ketheric Thorm ALSO reliably crashed the game. I had to roll back to a save at the top of the tower, tell her to join me, and then send her ass to camp alone.

What a journey we went through together, and then didn't go through together after all.

Speaking of buggy shit: I recruited Minthara by seeing what would happen if I knocked her out in Act 1 instead of killing her, and the answer is that it counted for goblin leader removal purposes and that she turned up in Moonrise Tower in her underwear because I fully looted her unconscious body. I think the game doesn't really want you to do this, because she's sharing a tent with Halsin in a way that doesn't look comfortable or intentional. Or maybe they've got a thing going on, I sure won't judge. Anyway, I have been delighted by her takes on the other party members, especially her casual dismissal of Gale, hahaha.

I expect Act 3 to be a roller coaster, but my first order of business is getting into the city proper so I can blow all my money on fancy clothes and dyes. For two acts I have done my best with what I've been handed, but it's about to get FASHIONABLE up in here. Let us bid a fond farewell to Lisa Frank's Disney Princess era: