#i'm sure my lore is spotty but i don't need corrections! thank you

[omgkalyppso]

I've been thinking of eventual post-canon vampire Étoile.

The Pale Elf spoilers. End Game BG3 spoilers. If you open this and it's too long for you, you can press J on desktop to skip it.

Étoile did not ascend Astarion but I am brainstorming / working on a fic where he rips Cazador's throat out with his teeth while he's stabbing him to death so we get Astarion (and his six siblings) as vampires.

Either two, or twelve, or a few hundred years in the future depending on what I settle on, Étoile would eventually be made a vampire. I have a lot to consider with a fucking town of undead to manage (I'm sure Étoile grew up on the outskirts of a village of 400 and like. wtf. the numbers) (I've been reading about the populations of Waterdeep and Baldur's Gate and calculated Cazador's diet*).

The more immediate problem for Étoile is Raphael, who has the Crown of Karsus.

I need to decide whether Everything Happens At Once as it does at the end of the game. Does Karlach really start burning up right after Astarion? Does Étoile really have to choose between mourning, drinking with Shadowheart or facing Florrick and official business? Or can we spread this out over a few days? Does Raphael's message come to them that very first night? Or is it a week later? A year? Raphael says he's going to be coming to knock on their door "soon" - does that mean next? Does that mean within the week? Does that mean after a decade? How many planes or how much of the material plane should I imagine at risk or destroyed before Étoile has an effective solution.

What-if's are fun = like what if there's no solution? What if saving the world from this is someone else's journey and my short-lived hero dies or finds themself alone and abandoned? But that's not fun for a fic concept / full exploration to me.

Possible solutions for Raphael include:

Following in Gale's footsteps and making a plea to the divine. Becoming Auril's champion, if not her chosen. Either so that she will award Étoile with armor fit to fight a demi-god in the hells, or so she will be able to send them directly to Raphael so they don't have to go traipsing through the hells to get to him - regardless of whether she could summon them back. Either to provide her the Crown so she could freeze it in her frozen collections where she keeps natural phenomena, artworks and artists in ice for her to admire, with the risk that she would freeze Étoile as well in the end. Or to provide her the Crown to wear or to absorb, to return to her a piece of her that she's lost — reclaiming her previously stolen power over snow storms, even though she's abused this before.

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Dishonoring Karlach's memory and making a pact with Mephistopheles or Asmodeus. Mephistopheles has had the Crown before and kept it hidden away, and Asmodeus has long been the Archdevil Supreme over the divided Nine Hells, either would likely be cunning enough to take advantage of the situation. And otherwise compelled enough to insult Raphael so specifically as to make (even) a (temporary) ally of his ... not rival. Pet project. Infatuation. This is especially fun if Mephistopheles feels slighted by not inheriting 7000 souls due to the way The Pale Elf resolved. If Étoile thought they were about to be betrayed after Raphael's defeat, they could put on the Crown, go to another plane, and die under the weight of it, only to be resurrected and mocked by "Withers" for stumbling so much on their path, "although being only mortal, it was always going to be so." Multiplying their survivor's guilt.

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Asking Gale who already hates them to do the impossible and the ultimate blaspheme against his Goddess: If the Crown of Karsus - and the Karsian Weave - was constructed, could he create an equivalent to destroy the original? And why would he do this when they could have given the Crown to Mystra to begin with? And if he did do this, why would he involve Étoile in any capacity? In private, Étoile offers to hold him, as they should've held Karlach, in her last moments. They will allow him whatever revenge he chooses, if only he applies his mind to this for as long as he's able. Gale finds a way to detonate the Crown in the same way he managed to accidentally do the same with the Orb during his first encounter with the thing. They have a magical barrier / ward / shield that they don't expect to survive the blast, and when the Crown detonates, Étoile uses Warding Bond on Gale in solidarity / for good measure, but the like-magic instead starts siphoning / tearing the Orb from Gale's person, until his soul and the Orb are both outside of himself for a brief moment until the Orb tears away as if magnetically drawn to the Crown, and in the instant it happens, a portal to another plane opens beneath them, dropping them into another world, safe from the destruction they've left in the Hells. Gale's alright. I think Rolan would come on this adventure too.

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We don't deal with Raphael. The Blood War is neverending and Asmodeus is going to swat him like a gnat.

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We don't deal with Raphael. He was being coy. He comes by for tea and sex twice a season.

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In any scenario where Étoile and Raphael face off, I will delight in writing / imagining battle dialogue. Étoile would absolutely throw in Raphael's face that he had needed them to get the Crown because Daddy put it up on a high shelf.

Once Raphael messages Étoile his warning, I think Étoile would lose it. They may have even included in Raphael's pact that he couldn't bring the Crown back to the material plane, but that doesn't stop his armies or hellfire. It just sets the stage for where they'd have to fight, if I decide that Raphael couldn't come back to the material plane for some reason -- because he won't be parted from the Crown, if it won't come back then neither will he.

But Étoile would worry about the fires and sun-situation in the Hells, they will worry about their responsibilities to facing this. They will want to be continuing with Astarion into the Underdark to organize the vampire spawn. They will want to be able to hope for that life after they've dealt with the latest insanity. They would try to convince Astarion that they need to part ... but they wouldn't be half as convincing as he is.

Astarion would propose that there could be a person among the seven thousand who has dealt with devils before, and may have advice. He will accuse them, after all their promises and all his honesty of feeling safe with them that they'd leave. He would argue in favor of his abilities and his perspective, his knowledge of the situation and Étoile's dwindling number of available allies, that he is capable of being an effective resource against Raphael's threats.

Étoile would presume to argue that Astarion's siblings and the vampire spawn won't tolerate them coming and going, and Astarion will declare that they will have to. Unless they want to be overrun with infernal portals and an even more inhospitable landscape — any source of blood, human or animal, would be at risk if Raphael starts throwing his weight around.

When Raphael is dealt with in some way, and after at least a year, but probably more like 6 at minimum of settling into whatever routine looks like for the vampire spawn (alliances with Wyll as Duke Ravengard, with the Sword Coast at large, perhaps with another plane or two, maybe even with some peoples of the Underdark), Étoile would be overdue for a journey home to see their mother.

Either this would be the first of centennial visits (at the very least) over the next few centuries (Aranea only has so many years left in her), or it would be the last significant visit before something irreparable was broken between them. Whether this is the first and last visit where Étoile visits as a living creature, or whether the last visit is far in the future, during that visit, their mother, Aranea, can see this will be A Last Time just by looking at her child. And she will throw a fit.

She's so angry. Heartbroken. Trying to convince Étoile to see it as a manipulation (while not truly believing this) and asking Astarion not to kill her child.

Aranea is concerned for two specific things: The first is death, whether as transformation or otherwise. She's not concerned that her child could "live" for centuries, but that Étoile would die before her. This is death. It's death and no one would be able to talk her out of that or around it. Astarion has a grave. It's death. She doesn't want her child to die. Her second concern is vampires' various weaknesses. The thought of someone exposing her child to sunlight in a day or in a millennia and to die a second time, in such a potentially horrible way, or to be driven to madness by years — and to seek an end because of it— She wouldn't want this for Étoile, nor Astarion but that ship's sailed; she can only console against what has yet to pass.

But Étoile only wanted to see her once more, the decision's already made, no matter the dread Aranea's outburst puts in Astarion. And when Étoile is briefly dead, whether in Aranea's house or in Auril's temple, they are laid out as if for a wake by the hands of whichever two servants or companions followed them and Astarion to this cold mountain. Aranea has locked herself in her room, stoic but inconsolable. Astarion stays with Étoile — right up to the moment where they wake, and he has to face what he's done.

He cannot hear their heartbeat, he never will again. Their natural scent lingers on their packed clothing, their pillowcase in another room; but their body too will forever have that 'whiff of undeath' as Shadowheart put it. The warmth of their body is muted and lost. Étoile's coloration has changed so that any who looks upon them will wonder if they don't know, that there is something unliving about them. They will have no reflection, no sunlight, and the unending, inescapable thirst. They may not even sound the same with fangs in their mouth.

They did not suffer as the vampire spawn in Cazador's care, but for all their suffering, Astarion could at least convince himself sometimes and often that Cazador was the monster, and— And now he's done this. He's taken something that can never be given back, and in a way he's even taken it from himself. Every vampire he's ever known has tried to hurt him, has been duplicitous and selfish and— Will Étoile inherit these traits too? Is their emotional heart as dead as their true one? Will he be as instinctually repulsed by them as he has been by nearly all other vampires?

When Étoile sits up, Astarion runs to a closed door, it hardly matters where, he cannot face Étoile though they call to him from the other side.

I just need a good contrast to how ascended Astarion is awed by his own power the beauty of the player character as a vampire spawn.

I was telling a friend that I was gaining new perspective for how Dr Frankenstein must have felt in the horror of the birth of his creation. What horrible misery, what glorious life, what inerrable pain - woe, success! No longer was his creature his ambition, now they were the same.

Astarion doesn't use some of his deepest terms of endearment for a while, and of course Étoile is understanding — but also afraid, offended, hesitant. There's an adjustment period, even though Astarion doesn't choose to control them once he can, doesn't delay longer than it takes for the subject to come up (1 day) to allow them to drink from him for full vampirism.

Meanwhile none of Astarion's siblings have the hang ups he has with regards to Étoile as a vampire and they tease and delight in how Étoile not only represents them in public, they've been folded into the clan.

I've assigned the vampire siblings ages and past careers for those who weren't explored in canon. I have headcanons for vampire spawn oc's who are part of their little society. My favorite is Anastasia. Only a week turned by Leon, she has a son and does not wish to go to the Underdark arguing that she is not starved as the others are, that she is still in full control of her mind and her ambitions. She helps develop their Council of Twenty. Wait, let me back up: many of the vampire spawn and all of the vampire siblings agree early on that they don't want to refer to themselves or for outsiders to call them the Szarr Clan or Cazador's Spawn; but there are seven vampires now, and to choose a name between them for all to agree to go by could easily come to insults and battle and abandonment; but they all know Étoile for what they've done for them and what they've done for Baldur's Gate. They call themselves House Ienith; which was once the name of a House in Menzoberranzan, and Étoile worries it will upset the drow because that House was disbanded when their mother was a child, but besides risking insults and a lack of allyship, it was discovered that so long as they were not trying to occupy the compound that used to belong to House Ienith, were not claiming authority in drow politics, and recognized that they would never be accepted as their House revived, that they at least weren't enemies. Drow envoys occasionally scout or visit.

Several drow book-keepers are calculating what several thousand vampire spawn could be leveraged for or against.

Anyway! The Council of Twenty of House Ienith consists for some years of the seven vampires (Astarion and his siblings), seven vampire spawn — one from each vampire's subclan as voted upon by their members, four vampire spawn from any vampire subclan as voted upon by all members, a vampire spawn who is a child to ensure that particular group's unique needs are met, and Étoile for whenever they are present. Some are more comfortable that Étoile would be a vampire, and I do think a not-inconsequential number of them would experience some kind of jealousy, either that they couldn't turn a person or twelve that they chose, or that they were not eligible to become a full vampire themself.

I think that the vampires feel some kind of way using their new powers over the vampire spawn, but I do think they have at least 4 Rules that the vampire spawn are magically obliged to follow, and then otherwise a series of laws that they're as beholden to as the population of any mortal city.

I have even more thoughts about their governing structure and Baldur's Gate, etc. But I think I've said everything I wanted to say in this very long post.

I think we should introduce Doctor Dalyria and Araj Oblodra. Dalyria would probably like her as much as Astarion does At First, but then they'd be experimenting in blood magic and possible vampirism treatments like nobody's business.

*So presuming Cazador either also did some of his own hunting or that his spawn brought him victims that were unsuitable for the ritual, I'll say he consumed 8500 victims over 200 years which is 4 people per month. If a vampire (spawn) needs 4 people / boars / creatures of similar size per month to survive then 7,000 vampires need 28,000 animals per month. Sheep in the player's handbook have a cost of 2 gold. That's 56,000 gold per month to feed these fuckers if we're conducting trade; but that's only 8 gold per person, which makes it sound more reasonable. But a person eating the meat - a single sheep should be able to last 6 months, rather than 1 week. There is the possibility that the vampires could sell the meat / partner with butchers in various cities as some number of livestock has got to be dying anyway to feed the mortal populace, but which butchers will work with them, which people will eat meat so close to undead, who will buy dinner from vampires? And could the farmers of livestock ultimately put up with demand? Might have to resort to starting up "vampire quarters" in cities all across Faerûn.