#i'm really liking Dark Urge

[swindlefingrs]

the beginning of Act III: Durge is Bhaal's discarded chosen and Gale is Mystra's discarded chosen and they fuck nasty

[tervaneula]

two druids and a rogue walk into a bar by katterv

The next night, Duenn can't take it anymore. He has to know. First, he'll need to ask Astarion how he feels about sharing when he's right there and for some reason, the thought is bringing him more anxiety than that of facing Orin – and most likely Bhaal himself – in the near future. They've only just rekindled their physical relationship beyond kisses and nightly cuddles and Duenn feels so unworthy. What does it tell about him as a partner when he's already got everything, yet he has the gall to yearn for more? Nothing great, he laments, and the sigh he lets out doesn't go unnoticed. “Darling,” Astarion murmurs right next to his ear, “talk to me. You seem… pent up.”

I'm enjoying my Dark Urge run immensely...... so it resulted in this silly (and pretty horny, be warned. it's E rated for a reason) thing about the situationship between Astarion, my Durge and Halsin (￣▽￣)

[tiny-huts]

Waking up in a mindflayer pod as the Dark Urge like

[sequesteredbhaalspawn]

Thinking about how Sceleritas fears the true end of his own life very much. Like how he comes to The Dark Urge if they lose to Orin- angry, disappointed, and sad, due to Durge losing all of Bhaal's favor his own existence is coming to end because of it. Or how he acts around Durge if they become the Chosen of Bhaal- acting fearfully, desperately trying to show he's still useful- still needed, so that Durge don't dismiss him, don't end him.

Sceleritas very much loves his life. Love's being of service to The Dark Urge. Enjoys the work of it all. As evil as the little guy is, he very much loves everything he does. Works to live while also living to work at the same time.

It's such a shame there is no final scene with him if Durge chose to resist Bhaal in the temple. Just his small dead body on the ground, never to come back to life again.

[pinkgrapefloyd]

tory nichols x lady macbeth monologue

[icenineporcupine]

"The Art of the Bath"

a.k.a the one where Hale is a full-on merfolk rather than a half-sea-elf.

〰〰

Gale: It says here that traditionally, the goal is to keep the majority of the water contained within the tub…

Hale [splashing blithely]: Surely you're lying…

Gale: I assure you I'm not, my love. This tome is incredibly respected in the upper city spas—

Hale: Okay, so where’s the part about joining your partner in the bath for best results?

Gale: Now I believe you’re the one inventing maxims…

Hale: No, I don’t believe I am.

[cedarw00div]

Chat...I'm gonna be honest....I do not care about the fact we aren't getting canon durgetash....

[lelalyo]

Imagine if you're playing as Durge, Gortash had lived and you managed to convince him to destroy the brain (Something like "we lost control of it once and we can barely stop it now, the risk is too high." )

Then in the aftermath, your companions, especially Wyll and Karlach (Maybe Jaheira and Minsc too?) ,want you and Gortash to be held responsible for what you did for which you could either face up to your crimes, flee, fight or propose a compromise because you did help stop the plot in the end.

Assuming you killed Raphael, the House of Hope would be rather vacant - a perfect place for a couple of exiles (cause let's be honest here, how long do we actually think Hope is going to hold the house for? And she doesn't really serve much of a purpose story wise in my opinion...) Durge could propose that in exchange for letting them live that they'll go to the hells peacefully and fix Karlach's engine.

So in that type of ending you'd get,

Karlach lives and gets to stay in Baldur's Gate

Durge and Gortash do get punished for what they did (You could consider it a lesson on Gortash's part that he ended up exactly where he started because he chose to be evil)

Durge and Gortash could try to conquer the hells - who cares about what happens to a bunch of devils, after all? Perhaps they die in the attempt? Who knows.

Alternatively, maybe Hope offers to take Gortash and Durge in and makes them do good deeds in the hells as some kind of atonement for everything.

[outlying-hyppocrate]

well. did you fucking miss me.

[thelikesoffinn]

been thinking about it lately and Ascended Astarion = Dead Dove content and I'm not sure that's really understood, even by the writers. when I finally got around to the character I decided to ascend him with, I was SUPREMELY disappointed by the conversations options following it. it seemed like the dialogue choices were trying to push the narrative on my character that they made this choice w/o considering the consequences and they are bound to regret it. the closest I could get to answering his question of "why did u let me go thru w it?" was "I wanted u to be powerful".

but with that character? my accept Bhaal durge? that isn't the reasoning. at all. (related: "what do u want as a reward?" "ur body" was the closest answer my character could give. otherwise I'd've answered "murder :))")

for context, this run was born of a conversation w my friend discussing supposed content no one had seen bc "no one's that evil". we thought, what's more evil than killing literally every npc? I failed the conceit of the challenge immediately bc I can't handle senseless animal cruelty in my games. killing children? fine (u need a mod to do this in BG3, but I am thankfully plenty delighted to use mods), killing a neutral animal npc? no can do.

so I started this durge (they are the only character that can come close to "killing" Gale with that first interaction) run with the intention of killing everyone except Shadowheart (only a cleric of Shar can truly kill Aylin) and Astarion (bc I need to smooch him). (and there is a mod for playing an origin character as durge, which would have meant playing as Shadowheart, but I MUST smooch Astarion and I don't tend to do het or female romances, unless I'm forced to (*sighs dreamily* oh, Garrus Vakarian). I'm just not interested in that set of equipment in that way, so may as well just make a durge dude.) somehow something went wonky and Halsin ended up joining us and I was so perplexed I just allowed him to stay. (he's meant to attack if u destroy the grove but free him anyway, but instead he just showed up that night and went straight into his Moonrise spiel. is it bc the wolf Silver never aggro'd me and thus survived???) so I fixed the Shadow Curse all while killing every single humanoid and hostile animal in acts 1 & 2. including Thaniel, which makes Halsin's talks later in act 3 of getting news from Thaniel and the Grove hysterical. idk what I did but I sure as hell broke this poor man.

(on a related note, Halsin will give out to u when u accept Bhaal, but will still give u the "u have exceeding my expectations, also we should bang" in the same conversation. I DON'T KNOW WHAT I DID BUT IT'S DARKLY FUNNY.)

in the conversation when Astarion is expressing surprise that u let him go thru w it, my durge is just like, yes my motivation is that I like to kill ppl :))). it's not a sex thing for him (that is separate from the murder!), but he's still fine w the outcome. yes, Astarion looks down on him, but that's fine! he's allowed to be wrong about that, durge doesn't care. so long as Astarion lets him kill ppl he genuinely just does not give a shit.

(I actually had the idea that if Halsin were to ever rediscover his morals and tried to leave he'd ask Astarion to turn him so Halsin would not have a choice. as I said, this durge *does not fucking care*.)

this is probably the only character I will play that would let Astarion ascend bc I enjoy dead dove SOMETIMES, but not always or in large doses, but I get so few dialogue options that convey that in an rp sense! I don't think the writers/devs REALLY took that into consideration, sometimes. like, yeah, there are going to be ppl making fucked up choices but surely no one would go THIS far! for THIS reason! honey, u need to look up the Dead Dove tag on AO3, there are absolutely ppl making choices for those fucked up reasons.

(and I understand the whole "this confirms to Astarion about sex yadda yadda". even if that's not Tav/Durge motivation, that's how ASTARION would *interpret* it.)

(oh yes, and also, don't let Orin abduct Yenna. it doesn't matter whether u find out in camp or the sewers, Grub will not survive. I was devastated. if I'd known, I would have made sure Halsin was available for her, but she won't abduct a party member or someone ur romancing.)

long story short, I want to play a durge that even ascended Astarion finds unsettling. that's the dream.

Hello there, duck!

Your run sounds delightfully evil! I wish I could play one of those, haha, but I'm too soft hearted. My one evil run with my durge Salira was ended before even entering the grove because I felt horrible after getting rid of Gales hand! Seriously, I can barely take killing the squirrel as durge, and I always save Alfira because I feel horrendous otherwise!

(Fun fact, on all five runs I've done Yenna just vanished at some point and grubs was left standing in my camp, which was like...eh?)

And yes, Halsin is always somewhat of an issue, isn't he? He's just running around, causing mayhem in peoples games because he seems slightly bugged out, haha. I had one run, where he wouldn't go to the spot where we save Thaniel because he joined the fight against Marcus at Last Light and somehow got stuck, for some reason. Same run, none of his vocals would play, which was also very interesting. Everybody would make noise when they climbed or got hurt but Halsin was always silent and just there! And in another run the dude really straight up hated me - he was so mean and snappy, I swear to god he wanted my Durge dead - and then he suddenly went: "Hey you're super cool and strong and I just want to gently fuck you beneath the moonlight if you'll let me" and I was like: Say what.

Regarding the dead Dove: I've talked to people of Discord before, and some of them mentioned something similar a couple of times, but personally, I do think the writers actually knew what they were doing here!

Of course, I do agree that it relies heavily on the regret notion and that it somewhat shoehorns you into a certain narrative corner, I noticed that too when I was ascending him for research - I hated doing that, but all for the asks, haha - but I thought it was really fitting for what it is!

The bad ending, that is. I know we all somewhat forget that because of how people view him as a character, but ascension is the bad ending. Even on an evil run, where your character may have considered all options, it is very likely that Tav hasn't accounted for one very important part of being a true vampire.

The obsession.

It's still somewhat mild in the game, though definitely there, but it will only get stronger as time goes on, and it will probably get to the point that the only escape is death. Either his or Tav's. So, in the end, ascension will come with an armload of regret and the writers were making sure we know that.

And, on top of that, even if we let him ascend in a pursuit for power - or in in your durge's special case: murder :) - we still cast spawn Astarion aside because he doesn't fit our needs, thus making it very clear to him that who he is isn't enough and his behaviour is the price we now pay.

It's pretty much the same with all the other companions as well - justiciar Shadowheart and ascended Lae'zel, for example. However, it doesn't bother us as much, because we have different expectations towards ascended Astarion than, for example, dark justiciar Shadowheart. We don't expect a positive narrative here, a narrative where becoming shady-shar's loyal subject isn't an objectively dumb decision to make, so we don't mind the dead dove as much. It's exactly what we've been expecting - and Aylin even warned us how Shadowheart would change upon becoming a dark justiciar - so yepp. This went exactly how we thought it would and this is what we wanted.

Astarion, however, is a somewhat special case, because his bad ending is, by far, the one that gets the most romanticised. He's so heavily romanticised by so many, that the bad parts nearly start to fade, even with those who don't like the ascended ending. It becomes just 'the other ending', if you will.

And yet, it's still the bad ending.

Ascension is the bad ending for a character that we've somewhat given up on. That we misunderstood so deeply, mayhaps, that we traded his entire being for power and, quite frankly, beauty. We showed him that he isn't enough, we let the boy run and hide the only way he knew how and now we're faced with the consequences and yes, it's really dead dove but...what did we expect?

[blackjackkent]

Followup to the headcanon-intensive drama from this post:

-----

"Sister," Rakha mutters, crouching next to Z'rell's fallen body. Her head lifts; her eyes bore into Wyll, watching her. "What did she mean, sister?"

Wyll shifts uncomfortably. "I don't know," he mutters. There's a long, strained silence. Then he adds awkwardly, "I wasn't-- I mean, I thought I must be... wrong..."

She looks down at the dead woman again. "You knew this. And you didn't tell me."

"I knew you looked similar," he says, somewhat defensively. "That's all. What good to tell you a guess with no weight, and hurt you for no cause?"

She flicks her glare towards Lae'zel. "And you? You knew this?"

"I noticed nothing," Lae'zel growls. "She was an enemy. Why should I see anything of you in her?"

Rakhya ignores this sentiment just as she ignored Wyll's. "And you?" This to Minthara now, who is standing some distance from the others, watching silently.

For a long time, Minthara doesn't answer, just looks back at her steadily. Then she grunts with a slight shrug. "That you are related? Obvious in retrospect, though I did not look for it. But did I know it? No. She never spoke of a sister." She takes a step forward, kicking aside the body of one of the cultists that stands in her way. "Z'rell and I spoke only a handful of times. She considered herself superior to all she spoke to, save Ketheric himself. I am sure she would have thought it far beneath her notice to be bound by blood to anyone."

Another long silence. Then she steps forward again, to Rakha's side, and rests a hand on her shoulder. "I see it troubles you. But you are not the first to kill kin, if kin she is," she says gravely.

Is that what I am? Troubled? Rakha looks down again at the dead woman with the face so like her own, and tries to parse some comprehensible thought out of the mess of emotions swirling in her head. "I do not remember her," she mutters. "I do not think she remembered me, until just at the last. But she knew me. Had I let her live... perhaps she might have finally given me answers."

"Had she lived," Minthara says bluntly, "it would be her knife in your throat instead. Do not fool yourself with impossibilities." She looks down at Rakha keenly. "You are stronger than that."

Rakha shrugs. She feels empty, drained to the dregs, a shell for the beast to live in. "Who am I?" she asks the unmoving corpse before her in a low mutter. Then, louder, "Who am I?"

A sudden shout, bursting from her like an explosion. "WHO AM I, DAMN YOU!? WHO AM I?!"

The corpse does not answer.

She remembers the spell He Who Was cast out in the darkness, the spell that dragged the soul back into the body to answer questions.(*) She starts to her feet abruptly, her hands lifting, dragging at the Weave, forcing it into the shape she remembers.

Her eyes glow pale green and the energy surges out of her into Z'rell's body. The corpse lurches into the air, its back arching as if suspended at the waist by a rope. Its eyes open, blank and staring in its slack face.

"Who am I?" Rakha demands.

"Interloper. Returned exile..." rasps Z'rell's corpse.

Not good enough. "Who am I?" Rakha demands again.

"Tables turned..." whispers Z'rell. "Under my boot at last..."

"Who am I?" Rakha growls between her teeth.

"The chosen... the worthy..." The corpse's death-whine is mocking. "Always the first in line..."

Rakha's breath is quickening with agitation and rage. "Who am I?!" she demands, and it's half a shout now.

"My sister!" wails Z'rell; her head spasms to one side. "Twin but not equal--"

"WHO AM I?!" Rakha bellows, and the green fire in her eyes glows brighter still.

"Child of... murder..." wheezes the corpse.

The light fades. The body sags down out of the magical grip and hits the floor with a heavy thump.

Silence. Rakha stares down at the dead woman's body, her shoulders heaving, her fists clenched white-knuckled at her sides. No one moves - not Rakha, not her companions, not the two or three frightened-looking Harpers who have been watching this scene unfold.

"RrrrrraaaaaaRRRGHHHHHH!" Rakha lashes out abruptly with a kick at Z'rell's head. The corpse's head snaps to the side with a visceral crack. "Damn you. Damn you. Damn you!"

She hisses out a heavy breath through a clenched jaw and turns away. "We press on."

"Rakha..." Wyll takes a cautious step towards her, reaching out a hand towards her arm, but she jerks away.

"We press on," she repeats sharply. "Ketheric must die too before I'm satisfied."

-----

(*) Rakha actually has Speak With Dead as a slotless ritual spell as a result of having turned some pages in the Necromancy of Thay, months ago. But the business with He Who Was is much fresher in her mind. Tragically, Z'rell is not actually available for Speak With Dead in-game for me to get screenshots of her corpse in it; I tried, all the way to the point of sending Rakha back to camp for a respec so she could disguise herself while doing it. But it's my story and I do what I want.

[justanotherignot]

"You still don't remember, do you, blood kin?"

[penguinsblues]

What's it's gonna be this time?

[sun-marie]

as a community, how attached is the dnd fanbase to traits of characters that have been around for *checks notes* 35 years

[revvethasmythh]

halsin's response to durge saying slaughtering the goblin camp was a pleasure being "well, I suppose even a feral wolf can have the heart of a hound" is tbh something I have been thinking about nonstop since it happened

[flashhwing]

no i haven't finished Story's playthrough. yes i started a new one anyway

already met the future boyfriend

clearly they're in love