#imoen is useful but annoying

[casekt]

I'm a poor person who's not going to shill out my money for modern video games, so you know what that means, everybody's playing Baldurs Gate 3 while I'm playing Baldurs Gate 1 (enhanced edition), this is the now equivalent to wearing last year's thrift store clothes in school

[y-rhywbeth2]

Hilariously, Bhaalspawn being outsiders means you can cast things like dismissal and banishment on them and exile them to their room (uh, ledge over a bottomless pit?) back in the Throne of Blood.

[sovonight]

just one bed, but xadri

[BG1, at an inn. Most of the party is waiting/resting in the common area; only Imoen has joined Radri in securing their rooms from the innkeeper, and Imoen lifts one of their obtained keys on a finger.]

Imoen: So, are we sharing again?

Radri: Actually, I was thinking…

Imoen, without skipping a beat: You wanna share with Xan?

Radri: Huh? How did—Wait, you—?

Imoen: You've been falling asleep holding hands together, sis, it's kinda hard not to notice. (Grins) You've had the hots for ol' grumpyrobes for a while now, right? Congrats!

Radri panics, clamping a hand over Imoen's mouth.

Radri: Shh, not so loud!

Imoen, muffled: But everyone already knows—

Radri, whisper-panicking: It's not what it looks like!

Imoen: …

Imoen, still muffled: Then what is it supposed to look like?

Radri, bringing her hands back close to her chest: …You know those… nightmares… I've been having? He's been helping me with them. That's what the handholding is for—it's just so that I can shelter in his mind.

Imoen, joking: Is that the excuse he came up with?

Radri, admonishing: Imoen! Please, not when—he could hear.

Imoen: …Okay. You only want to room with him to deal with your nightmares, and he's only helping you because he's just that upstanding and helpful of a fella. There's nothin' else going on here at all.

Radri: (sigh) Do you need to make fun of me?

Imoen: I'm not! I'm just making sure I have my facts straight.

Radri gives Imoen a skeptical look, and Imoen sobers, growing worried.

Imoen: …I didn't know the nightmares were this bad, Radri. You coulda told me…

Radri, managing to summon a quick smile: You don't need to worry about it, Imoen. It's no big deal.

Imoen: If you asked him for help, it is.

Radri blinks, then gives a tired smile.

Radri: Actually, he offered. I had never thought, to…

Radri: He's really kind, Imoen. And patient.

Imoen looks at her, then puts a hand on her shoulder with a small smile.

Imoen: Okay. If you're sayin' that, you have my blessing.

Radri: Bless—? (Realizing, annoyed) You've read too many love stories, I swear. Nothing's going to happen between us!

Imoen laughs as Radri shoos her and her blessing away.

—

Having said that, though, she still has to ask Xan if he wants to share a room. She gives keys to Jaheira & Khalid, Branwen, then stops before Xan. Xan holds his hand out for the last key out of habit, but Radri doesn't yet release it.

Radri: U-um, I…

Radri: I was hoping we could share a room, this time. (Branwen and the others shuffle away) To… continue to… share our reverie together.

Suddenly worried it might come across as her coercing him, since she's already handed out the other keys, she stammers—

Radri, bright red, staring down at the key clutched in her hand: Y-you can refuse. I know I've already imposed on you, so much! A-and—I don't know if your offer of help has expired, now that we're not camping outside—

Xan: It has not.

Radri peeks up at him—his expression is neutral, and slightly pink, but she doesn't have the presence of mind to process that—and Xan takes the key from her palm gently.

Xan: I will join you once I have memorized my spells.

Radri: Ah—well—I still have to write in my journal, too. Rather than force you to stay down here, we could go up… now… together?

A new wave of heat crosses her face, and Xan's gaze softens a little, but he shakes his head.

Xan: You can go ahead. You prefer to write alone, do you not? I will not distract you.

Radri: T-then… I'll see you.

She leaves, heading for the stairs, risking only one glance back to see Xan standing where she'd left him, gazing at the key.

—

Her journal entry is complete. Through writing, she's managed to bring her nerves down… and then comes the knock, which just spikes them back up again. Radri jumps up, rushing to the door, and cracks it open. Xan's gray eyes meet hers through the gap, and they stare at each other, until Xan nods towards the door.

Xan: Will you let me in?

Radri: Oh! Right. Yes.

She pulls the door open wide. Too wide. Xan comes in, with his bag over the shoulder, and she realizes she could've offered to bring it up for him, until she sees his spellbook peeking out of it, and remembers he would've needed it for his spells, so no she couldn't have brought it up for him, and—

Xan: Are you going to close the door?

Radri: Oh—yes.

She closes it. Too hard. It's loud, and she cringes, still facing the closed door, closing her eyes tight. There were no doors in the forest; no rooms, no confines with perceptions of intimacy. Her first night outside of Candlekeep, she thought she would never miss the outdoors, but here, she does; it is so much easier to find Xan by the dying fire, to lay her bedroll beside his, than to hand him a matching key that defines the space they will share and ask him to join her in it.

Xan: Are you alright?

His voice floats over her shoulder, from mere paces behind her.

Radri: Y-yes—why wouldn't I be?

She turns to face him, just to prove that she can still be normal, and her gaze is drawn to his—his eyes, in shadow, his figure edged in moonlight. His cloak is gone, and his traveling robes with it, leaving only the light layers he rests in.

She jerks her gaze away from him, feeling suddenly overwhelmed—and takes proper notice, at last, of the room. Outside, their bedrolls were placed side by side, so that they could take each other's hands with ease; but here, the beds are apart, and so set in the floor that they cannot be pushed together without making what would surely be a horrible, loud, drawn-out screech. They could use the beds as they are, and reach across the nightstand at the center to hold hands, but the distance is awkward and the edge of the wood would dig into their arms, and she would not be able to rest knowing she was at fault for his discomfort.

Her chest grows cold. She'd been so wound up about asking him, having him here, that she hadn't taken the time to survey the room beforehand. She's wasted his time; her request is not possible after all. But Xan takes one glance at her dilemma and says,

Xan: Choose a bed; I will set my bedroll on the floor beside it.

Radri: What? No! That's—I couldn't ask you to do that!

Xan: (shrugs) I am accustomed to cold, hard floors—they are an unfortunate reality for any traveller, and I have spent much more time on the road than you have.

(This has the opposite effect of reassuring Radri, and she just feels bad for him)

Radri: All the more reason for you to take the bed! I'll take the floor.

Xan: It would only make your reverie less restful, and you would regret it in the morning. If you will allow me…

He smooths a strength spell over his shoulders, and before she realizes it, he's picked her up in his arms.

Radri: Xa—Xan!

She can't help but clutch his shoulders, still so unused to the vulnerability of not standing on her own two feet, and he brings her towards the bed by the window.

Xan: I have a feeling…

He sets her down gently, her head perfectly aligned with the pillow. With a hand, he smooths her hair from her forehead, and gazes down at her with a small smile on his face.

Xan: …That you are so tired that you will not want to get back up.

Her nervousness had kept her amped up, but exhaustion is setting in now, and she can feel it in her leaden limbs, which have begun to find this inn's common, worn mattress to be the softest cloud they have ever rested upon. She doesn't want to stand again, but if she's tired, so is he—and though his amusement brightens his features, if she looks she can see the exhaustion behind them. She grips his sleeve.

Radri: …You should take the bed.

Xan, shaking his head, ready to refuse: I am resolved to—

Radri: We should share it. Shouldn't we?

Xan stills. Radri finds herself gazing up at him, her mind in that space between states of consciousness where her anxieties fail to sound. Her eyes are no longer on his features in order to gauge his reaction, but merely to observe: the blink; the slightly parted lips, mid-word; the light flush that touches his cheeks. She lets the weight of her arm pull his sleeve down, in turn pulling him to her— his hand meets the bed, his arm straight, braced against it.

Xan: Radri… I…

Radri: I liked laying beside you, in the forest… tracing the patterns in the treetops, trying in vain to spot the stars through the gaps in the leaves. The only part I didn't like was how hard the ground was under my bedroll.

Xan looks as if the treetops and the stars are the furthest thing from his mind right now, but somehow, her words contained the assurance he needed; that frozen expression on his face softens.

Xan: There are no stars here, save for the ones caged by the lone window… but perhaps I can show them to you, still. Shall we walk in my memories again, tonight?

Radri hears the word "walk" and her lips quirk to the side, dissatisfied.

Xan: What is it?

Radri: (sigh) Nothing. Just come over here.

Xan pushes himself off the bed, escaping her loosened grasp on his sleeve, and for a moment she thinks this was all a ploy for him to just sleep on the ground like he'd suggested, but Xan walks around the bed to join her on the other side—to avoid having to crawl over her, she realizes. It's polite, but she wouldn't have minded if he'd done so. Imoen had crawled over her legs to join her, to read stories by borrowed light deep into the night, many times in Candlekeep…

Xan's hand slips into hers.

Xan, prompting: Radri?

Radri: Hm?

Xan: Shall we center my mind, or yours?

Radri: Yours. I want to see your promised stars.

Xan: You seemed rather unimpressed by them, just seconds earlier.

Radri: No, I was only thinking I'd rather have you carry me.

Xan: Carry you?

Radri: Instead of walking. "Walk in your memories…"

She smiles at her little joke, and she can't see the look on his face when her eyes have already fallen closed, but Xan squeezes her hand lightly.

Xan: Then I will. The world will move around us… you need only watch.

—

When Radri wakes, she's curled up on her side, against a warmth that bears Xan's scent. She nestles in closer, until her waking mind realizes that if it is Xan, then she should be keeping herself a modest distance away—

Radri: Oh.

She opens her eyes in a panic. It's a pillow. Radri sighs in relief, then looks across the otherwise empty bed to realize two things: one, she is alone, and two, at some point during her reverie she had escaped her half of the bed, sprawling over to Xan's side. Now that she's well-rested, it occurs to her that intruding on Xan's personal space is a real threat now that she's not bound by the confines of her narrow blanket and bedroll. Had she sprawled across him, too? Is that why he left? She's ruined all of this in a single night, hasn't she?

Sighing, she rolls onto her back, letting her arm hang out over the edge of the bed—and in the corner of her eye, sees Xan, sitting quietly on the opposite bed. He looks up from a collection of items scattered across the blanket—spell components?—and meets her eye.

Xan: Just in time. The others are awake, and we are still set to leave as planned, if you eat in the next ten minutes or so. Shall I bring you something from the kitchen?

Radri stares at him. He doesn't seem to hold any extra disgust for her, which is a relief, but she can't completely read the look on his face, either.

Xan, at her lack of response: Or do you need to rest an hour longer?

Radri, embarrassed, mumbling: …No… I'm…

Xan: I doubt your nightmares will visit you in such a short span of time, but I can watch over you, regardless.

Right. It's just another task for him—an obligation. Perhaps protecting her is just another aspect of his duties as a moonblade wielder. Although, in the back of her mind, she must admit she can't imagine Xan allowing just anyone into his memories, nor offering to fetch any other waylaid elf breakfast in bed… but she pushes those thoughts out of her mind before they can sow hope in her chest.

Radri: I didn't… bother you too much… did I?

She can't help but ask, and Xan pauses before delivering his answer.

Xan: ...Not particularly.

"Then why did you leave me?" is right on her tongue, but she can't say it—it's too petulant, too needy, especially when he has hardly "left her," merely moved across the room. She sits up, letting her loose hair fall into a curtain between her face and Xan's gaze.

Radri: It's just gruel, isn't it? In the kitchen.

Xan: It is, but there are dried blueberries to be added to it, if you wish.

Radri, sighs: They're already gone. Imoen polished them off yesterday—I didn't even get more than a handful.

Xan: Are you certain?

He holds up a small pouch, and she looks over at it: peeking out from the drawstring opening are dried blueberries.

Radri: Huh? But—how?

Imoen would've found them; Radri rarely bothers hiding anything with how nosy she is. Xan wears a slight, smug smile.

Xan: A wizard has his ways. Here.

Radri: You're… you're giving them to me?

Xan: You sound as though I am giving you water in the middle of a drought. Radri, it is only fruit.

Her face heats a little, but she quickly accepts the pouch before he has a chance to change his mind.

Radri: If it's "only fruit," I'm having all of it, then.

Xan, shrugs: Such was my intent.

Radri: ….

There's no winning against him, is there. Xan moves some of his organized spell components aside and stands, lifting the moonblade from its place beside the bed as he does so.

Xan: I will return with your breakfast.

And he's gone, before she can even form the words to stop him. He doesn't need to—she can get her own breakfast. But sometimes the cook is brash and impatient, and her request is drowned out by morning chatter and the clangs and clatters of the kitchen, and she forgoes even gruel in favor of whatever she has left in her pack…

Radri looks down at the small pouch of blueberries, and after a moment, lifts one to her lips. Perhaps this feeling in her chest is gratitude, too.

[baldursgatecommunitychallenge]

Fic-Focused Prompt list

Feel free to use the prompt dialogue directly, or just use it to inspire you. I used RNG to suggest 2 companion characters–feel free to use one, both, or neither (they aren’t necessary, but just there to get you thinking!). You can also absolutely use this for fanart as well!

You do not have to use the aforementioned characters! I just listed them if you wanted an additional challenge.

1 “Is this a joke?”

Minsc and Haer'dalis

2 “Some ice cream will make you feel better.”

Korgan Bloodaxe and Neera

3 “Would you just shut up please?”

Valygar and Garrick

4 “Why would you even care?”

Skie and Tiax

5 - “So, what’s the plan?”

Skie and Anomen

6 - “It will never be truly over.”

Coran and Dynaheir

7- “You seem to be mistaken.”

Valygar and Garrick

8- “Let the game begin!”

Garrick and Rasaad

9- “Truly, a flawless plan.”

Yeslick and Shar-Teel

10- “And I’m not a wizard.”

Minsc and Yoshimo

11- “There will be an extra fee included.”

Minsc and Keldorn

12- “Can’t believe you thought this was real.”

Safana and Tiax

13- “You live to annoy me, don’t you?”

Kagain and Xan

14- “Smells suspicious.”

Jaheira and Nalia

15- “Please, just hear me out.”

Nalia and Coran

16- “We’re safe here.”

Cernd and Jan Jansen

17- “Why did you go there?”

Xan and Shar-Teel

18- “It meant nothing.”

Dorn and Ajantis

19- “That was the wrong thing to say.”

Garrick and Eldoth

20- “What do you need me for?”

Safana and Valygar

21- “Your handwriting is atrocious.”

Haer'dalis and Eldoth

22- “You’re going to be my next project.”

Khalid and Jaheira

23- “I’m not who you think I am.”

Kagain and Nalia

24- “Good job, buddy.”

Coran and Branwen

25- “My life is amazing, it really is.”

Viconia and Mazzy

26- “You are a true party pooper.”

Haer'dalis and Kivan

27- “This is stupid. And kind of fun.”

Quayle and Safana

28- “I will definitely bullshit my way through this.”

Quayle and Coran

29- “This could do some damage.”

Imoen and Skie

30- “We were never prepared for this.”

Eldoth and Valygar

31- “Nothing can touch me.”

Kivan and Xan

[nooblord9001]

blud sleeping on Imoen shall remain anonymous.

To the annoying strawman in my head going "but she says ableist slur" I say: Fair, but so did Tifa in the original FF7, and I have no moral qualms taking one look at her and going "Would." Plus, other BG1&2 characters probably also use slur(s).

Anyways, stand proud OP; you cooked.

Re-creating my favourite Baldur's Gate 1 & 2 party in BG3 (x)

[nattosushi]

Baldur's Gate 1/2 Original character: Elena Kiraed

Basic background (Baldur's Gate 2 setting)

Name: Elena Kiraed (of Candlekeep)

Race: Human

Age: 21

Profession: sorceress

Religious affiliation: Helm

Initially, I feel she would probably worship Oghma or Mystra, since the former seems to be the dominate deity in Candlekeep, while she is a sorceress. But it would really be more of a lip service. That is why I feel she would most likely be influenced by Ajantis and ended up worshiping his God, as she would actually start to think of what the doctrines mean.

Alignment: lawful good

The three siblings' alignment is a rather interesting combo of extremes: lawful good, chaotic evil and true neutral.

Additional note

I am not fully sure why, but I started to dislike Imoen. I didn't really mind in the beginning, and I think a part of the reason I dislike her is due to how modders always try to show her as being super cheerful to the point of being stupid, as well as playing pranks that are not always funny. However, upon reading a few dialogue files, she actually does this in the original game (Such as the conversation with Keldorn). I just don't find her funny at all. So I decided that with my stories, Imoen would not really play a big part, and she would often be portrayed in a negative way.

In addition, this is still something up to the player. Just as there are dialogues of the player saying they are siblings, there are also options where the PC can say that they are actually not very close despite growing together, as she/he find Imoen annoying.

Biography

Elena and Sarevok are the twin children of Alianna with Bhaal. The two of them would grow up in the temple with various other children of Bhaal, as well as their half sister Dahlia. Elena would be sheltered and isolated from the others by both Sarevok and Dahlia, who both sought to protect and look after her.

When the temple was attacked, Elena would go with Gorion due to the belief that Sarevok would follow. However, what happened was rather traumatic for her, which resulted in her losing the majority of her memories. She remembered that she had two siblings, and were separated due to them fleeing that night. It would be something she wonder about quite often.

Elena would grow up in Candlekeep as Gorion's foster daughter. She discovered her skill as a sorceress at a very young age, and would be taught by Gorion. She is also very well read. Imoen would arrive a few years later and the two of them were friends, although Elena still preferred to spend a large amount of her time reading, while Imoen had chores to do.

At 20, Gorion would be killed during their trip and she would first find Jaheira and Khalid, as well as meeting Ajantis and various other companions. Jaheira will be the one to tell Elena about Dahlia. Elena and Ajantis would soon fall in love and even become engaged.

Upon finding out about her real heritage, Dahlia would finally tell her the truth, as well as how the three of them ended up being separated. Despite feeling betrayed by her sister, Elena still kept the other with her. Sarevok would actually offer to have Elena at his side as his consort and despite her belief that he could be redeemed; she was force to kill him.

Elena would part ways with both Ajantis and Dahlia, the former having to return to Athkatla, while the latter was severally injured from their confrontation with Sarevok. However, she does manage to reunite with both of them in the events of Baldur's Gate 2.

Post Baldur's Gate 2/Pre Baldur's Gate 3

I actually have a few ideas in regard to what happened to Elena in this period, and I am not fully sure which one I would use. One possibility is that when Sarevok decided to worship Bhaal once more and start a cult, she would go and confront him, only to fail. She would be in a catatonic state, neither dead or living. Eventually Isela (Tav) would kill Sarevok and allow Elena to have a proper death, where she would be reunited with Ajantis. The other alternative is that she stayed with Ajantis and the two of them lived the rest of their life together happily.

Elena is a rather naïve character, to reflect how I created this character when I was very young, and made her quite a Mary Sue. However, by working with this character again, I plan to show that her actions would have consequences and she would be called out for this. One of the biggest issues is naturally her belief that Sarevok could be a good person, because he was always good to her. She does not realise that she is the exception. Her insistence that she would be able to convince him to not do evil would actually be the cause of her possible 'bad ending'. Unlike Dahlia, Elena believes that just because someone is nice to her, this means that they would not be an evil person.

Out of the three siblings, she is the one who grew up the most privileged, because Gorion really did love her as a daughter. She also lived a very sheltered life in Candlekeep. Sarevok is obviously the one in the worst position due to an abusive foster father, while Dahlia is a bit of an in between. Dahlia grew up with someone who is often emotionally distant from her. Even though she was sheltered to an extent due to going to the academy and then returning to Beregost, I feel that both her life in the academy and her life in a small town, still prepared her a bit more.

The illustration

Elena has red hair and I used to describe how it was flame like or it was as red as blood (the writing skills of a teenager who wanted to dye her hair bright red). So the illustration actually shows a rather natural shade of red. I want to show her in her room reading to reflect her sheltered and content life in Candlekeep. The dressing table might have been a bit modern for the setting, but I really like the rest of the picture. There is a sense of serenity in regard to this picture.

The style is oil coloured. I like the idea of her dressing rather simply to as a way to show that she was very sheltered, who did not really focus on her appearance due to the way she was raised. Most of those she was closed with in Candlekeep regarded her as a child, and I feel that Gorion would also have been a bit over protective by keeping her away from any possible young men.

[warsofasoiaf]

Character Analysis: Jon Irenicus

Irenicus is a fun villain, and I think nailed one interesting element of writing down, that of bringing down the villain’s threat in an interesting and believable way. The hero typically grows in power in any story, not just in a game where your progression is literally your XP, but what the villain does, how they grow, is also interesting. If the villain is more powerful than the hero, and also does things to grow and learn, theoretically the villain should still be wrecking house. BG2 wove this into the story itself, where the more you learned about Irenicus, the less menacing he became, culminating into where he was arguably your lesser at the end: he was powerful but only aping what you were. 

Obviously, spoilers for BG2 abound.

Baldur’s Gate II introduces us to our villain almost as a cold open. Fresh off the high of defeating Sarevok, you leave Baldur’s Gate after being pressured to leave by “dark forces” and by those who suspected that you shared similar heritage to Sarevok. Seems a bit odd, honestly, to oust the Bhaalspawn with suspicion given that during the course of Baldur’s Gate I, you saved two of the Grand Dukes. It’s certainly understandable that folks would fear your heritage and you’d want to move on to greener pastures, but something more than a 3-minute cut scene would have probably set the scene better.

However, this opening, and the ‘cutscene’ that follows gives Irenicus a grand initial reveal to the player. This guy is an ultra-powerful wizard, and he speaks with a clinical detachment as he states: “It’s time for more experiments.” It’s a wonderful opening to illustrate exactly what you’re dealing with. He’s clearly interested in your godly soul, and exploiting it to some unknown purpose. What is unknown, as he gets called away by some unspecified intruders by a golem. In the next scene, magical traps are set off as an unspecified Shadow Thief gets disintegrated. Story-wise, this serves no purpose, it’s purely meant to be a way to show off the new spell effects and other cosmetic changes to the engine from Baldur’s Gate II, with the disintegration dust and the screen shaking. But it does help illustrate the power level that Irenicus is throwing around. Save-or-die spells were relatively rare in the lower level of Baldur’s Gate I, even Semaj, Sarevok’s mage companion, wasn’t firing off disintegration willy-nilly. Throwing around disintegration spells clearly shows that Irenicus is a new high-level baddy. Later we see that he killed characters from Baldur’s Gate I off-screen, Khalid and Dynahier, two of the three sets of paired companions from BG1. This gives their partners reason to join in with the player character, but it also serves to show his power; Irenicus is such a bad dude that he can wipe your party before the game starts, like he was getting coffee. It might be a cruel cut, but that’s its intent, to make the player character mad at the villain, to want to punch his smarmy face in.

Commensurate in the danger of Irenicus is the need to find out what’s going on. Irenicus clearly knows something about your godly soul and so you want to find out what he knows. Even for an upstanding lawful good character, growing in power means finding a way to effect good on a larger scale, and perhaps to overcome the evil in your tainted blood. After all, no matter how good you were in Baldur’s Gate I, you still were an incredibly powerful killer. Sure, most if not all of them were bad dudes, Mulahey the iron ore poisoner, the bandits of Cloakwood, the Iron Throne and their plans to take over the Sword Coast. But chaos and destruction follow in your wake, and that chaos undoubtedly would hurt innocent civilians; Saradush in Throne of Bhaal is clear of that enough. Even just knowing more about what is going on could better prepare you for the next Irenicus or the next Sarevok.

When you go through the starter dungeon (another piece of game design, you are being tutorialized but the pastoral instruction of Candlekeep makes no sense for someone who already had an adventure), pieces of the man start to fall into place. He holds a bunch of captive dryads as concubines to remind him of someone he lost. He keeps an immaculate bedroom for a companion that is never there, with an alarm ready to dispatch the golems to kill any who cross the threshold. There’s a woman that was in his life that is no longer there, and the loss pains him, or at least, it seems that it should. Chatter with Imoen and the dryads show that this mystery man is trying to elicit feelings that he had lost, and that’s an entirely different case of worms than pining over a lost love. There’s some element of almost-unwilling psychopathy to these actions. Other hints in this dungeon illustrate this as well. His servants, discarded in vats and forgotten about entirely, would at first evoke classical evil overlords casually disregarding their own subjects. He’s almost all of the way there, but there’s enough there that the player is suggested that there has to be something more to it than that. He does seem to have some sort of sociopathy to him, where people are objects that he can find fascinating but he has no empathy. We see this later with Wanev, who Irenicus spares solely because he was hit by a spell that left him a lunatic, which Irenicus found funny, the administrator of a jail for the insane now rendered an insane patient himself.

He is powerful though, that much is clear when you break out of the starter dungeon. His display of magic collapsed part of Waukeen’s Promenade, and when the regulatory magical body of the Cowled Wizards comes to shut it down, Irenicus is capable of swatting mages like they were mosquitos. Just like the Shadow Thieves that he had been fighting, Irenicus seems more annoyed at the interruptions than any physical threat posed by his myriad foes. He’s definitely a powerful wizard, and when he finally submits to the Cowled Wizards, he does so clearly as their superior, dragging Imoen along with him. It’s fairly plain from a game design perspective what Irenicus is doing; he’s going to Spellhold so you have to get there. Good characters want to rescue Imoen, evil characters want to interrogate him to unlock the power in your blood. Either way, the player character is given a goal, and Irenicus disappears physically from the story for the moment.

He isn’t absent though. In your dreams, Jon Irenicus waxes philosophical at the player character, evoking thought-provoking questions. He explains the paradox of your existence of being born of murder, given life from the act of taking life. He speaks about accepting the gifts that will be given to you, regardless of whether or not you want them. These dream sequences are clear upgrades in quality and presentation from the spoken-dialogue text boxes from the first game after you beat major milestones. David Warner does a great job here in delivering Irenicus’s lines, he feels like a evil mentor speaking about philosophical topics with the same detachment that he tortured the player character with in the opening. While we find out later that these dreams aren’t sendings from Irenicus but rather parts of your character’s godly subconscious, they suggest to the player going through Chapter 3 that Irenicus does indeed know a hell of a lot more about you and your godly blood, keeping the player interesting in finding out exactly what it is you need to find out. The other quests in Chapter Three don’t have much to do with Irenicus, aside from some random events with the guild war in Athkatla at night, where the player will find out pretty quick that one side is powered by vampires, the level drain and click-dialogue of “your blood is rather inviting” isn’t exactly hiding that there be vampires engaged in a secret war with the Shadow Thieves. Even then, it’s tangential. You knew the Shadow Thieves were attacking Irenicus, which suggests at least some level of camaraderie with the vampires, but as we saw with the deep dwarves in Irenicus’s lair, he doesn’t care about followers, and they might simply be disposable assets if anything at all. If you want to know about Irenicus, you’re going to have to get it from the man himself. 

Of course, as befits a high-level mage, Irenicus breaks out of the prison in a cutscene, kills the Cowled Wizards and goes back to whatever unsavory plans he thought up for Imoen, teleporting into the lobby and chewing the scenery with his “I CANNOT BE CAGED!” speech, reinforcing his position as the central big bad and confirming the Cowled Wizards as mere obstacles. This part of his plan has been made clear. Far from the meddling Shadow Thieves and Cowled Wizards, Irenicus can continue his experiments on Imoen in Spellhold, and it falls on the player character to go there and end it. Irenicus, of course, knows this too, and he makes sure he has contingency plans to deliver you to him. I’m of three minds on this. On one, he’s so powerful it seems that he is so powerful, and Amn so large, that plenty of these isolated areas within the continent would service just as well for Irenicus’s lair. Why waste time with all of this blah-blah-blah and just take what he wants? It’s not like teleport spells are beyond his ken. On the other hand, it’s a good way to break up into the freeform quest design that Chapter Three gives, offers the chance for your characters to level up and get cool gear, lets you rock the stronghold quests which definitely let you feel your class and increase replay value, and the idea of the forbidding wizard in the island lair is an excellent backdrop. On the third, it’s in-character for an immortal mage to have plans within plans, even to the point of complexity addiction, although his conduct afterward sort of torpedoes this idea. 

That is, after he recaptures you, he immediately goes back to work to his experiments, and after another trippy dream sequence with Imoen, you find his plan. His goal is to absorb your divine soul, taking it for his own. He doesn’t explain anything more, but now that he has you, he discards you just as he has so many others. Telling his sister Bodhi to dispose of you is what keeps him from being someone like the Riddler, since he’s actually going for a proper smart villain play and killing the soulless husk he leaves behind just in case he pulls a protagonist move and comes clawing back for his stolen soul. It’s Bodhi’s instability, her desire to hunt you brought on by her vampirism, that keeps you alive. After the player character becomes the Slayer, Bodhi tells Irenicus, but true to his condescending nature, he simply...ignores the PC, writing them off as someone who is going to keel over any second due to their lack of soul, completely oblivious to the fact that Bhaal’s avatar was the Slayer, and it’s clear that something is replacing the void that he left within you. The PC must effectively turn that dismissiveness against him, by releasing the imprisoned mages within Spellhold, from the powerful but mostly harmless Dili to the megalomaniacal Tiax. Yet this hard-fought battle does not end with Irenicus’s death and your victory, instead Irenicus goes to pursue his other, as-yet unknown goals while he sends another band of cutthroats to die at your hand. 

Yoshimo is sort of my feelings on this Irenicus’s Spellhold plot writ small. As powerful as Irenicus is, he really doesn’t need Yoshimo, not if he has Sarmon Havarian and so many others. Yoshimo shows up in the starter dungeon, and is useful if a bit obsequious in a “who me?” sort of fashion. He doesn’t have a really good reason to stay with the party from a story reason that he gives you. He could have said: “Hey, thanks for getting me out. Deuces!” Yoshimo’s geas gets him to want to stay with the party, otherwise he’s dead. In that sense, it makes sense for him to want to be with the group. And as the only thief who gains levels aside from the absolutely annoying Jan Jansen, he’s useful for dealing with annoying traps, because reloading a game because your main PC tripped a trap and got petrified is certainly frustrating. Game mechanics though, interfere with this. You as the player character have control over the six-person party and if you want Yoshimo to be there, he’ll be there, and if you don’t, he’ll sit in the Copper Coronet, geas be damned. He’ll stand right there until you go back in after the Underdark chapter, in which case he flops over dead and hardly anyone cares. That’s a system engine limitation certainly, but it’s remarkably clumsy. What is good though, is Yoshimo’s regret during this. He knows he has to betray you and is forced to do so, and he genuinely likes you. The writing that happens is crisp, Yoshimo truly does apologize and Irenicus backs up his dismissive assholery by telling him to shut up. When Yoshimo confronts you in Spellhold, his writing is crisp. “No redemption, and no second chances. My heart to Ilmater.” He fights you and goes down swinging (which was annoying the first time I played because he had the Celestial Fury +3). And you can actually take that heart to Ilmater, occupying a valuable inventory space through the next chapters until you can reach Waukeen’s Promenade again, where you can choose to forgive him or not, but give the heart to Ilmater either way. It would have been saccharine to restore Yoshimo, but this way, I feel, is more powerful in a world with such powerful enchantments to see the effects on the people whose lives it ruins. So the game can be clunky at parts, and Irenicus can be as well, but there’s true craft and joy in it.

Back to Irenicus though, we get the sense of more to him when we see the intro splash screen for the next Chapter. Making a dark bargain with the drow, we see that they have captured surface elves, one of whom immediately refers to Irenicus as Joneleth, suggesting a backstory far deeper as Irenicus immediately resorts to killing the prisoner after being the one to suggest interrogation instead of immediate execution, a lashing out that seems out of character for the clinically-detached evil villain we’ve been coming to know. The backstory is clear in the Forgotten Realms, the dark elves and surface elves are mortal foes and anyone who is known to the surface elves to ally with the dark elves is a great betrayal. As the PC goes through the Underdark and comes out, they are captured by the surface elves. Through a conversation with Eldoth, it can become evident that the surface elves know more than they are letting on, such as when they are the ones who suggest holy water and stakes to fight Bodhi, despite not knowing anything about either one of them. After you slay Bodhi and restore Imoen’s soul to its rightful place, you can call Eldoth out on it. Irenicus is “the Shattered One,” an exile of the elves, and it’s here that Irenicus’s story becomes apparent.

Irenicus was a powerful wizard and lover of Queen Ellesime named Joneleth. Yet in his heart, Joneleth yearned for more power and sought to take the essence of the Tree of Life, the lifeblood of the city of Suldanesselar, for himself and Bodhi. This dark ritual nearly killed many that existed within Suldanesselar, and so Joneleth and Bodhi were punished, stripping their elven nature and immortality away from them, leaving them with a mortal lifespan, thus Joneleth became Jon Irenicus, the Shattered One. Bodhi sought to become a vampire to transgress the mortal years she had, but Jon had felt that it degraded her to that of a high-functioning beast. Irenicus’s scheme was far more grandiose if also possessing an elegant simplicity: he lost an immortal soul and so he needed to take one for himself. The Bhaalspawn was the perfect choice, powerful enough to defeat Sarevok and awaken the power within, weak enough to be captured and have the divine soul snatched away. With his stolen soul freshly acquired, Irenicus now looked to the second part of himself, to revenge himself on the elves. The dark elf invasion ultimately failed, helped out by the PC butchering the leadership of Ust Natha, but Irenicus is still going with golems and summoned demons to destroy the city, usurp the power of the Tree of Life, and complete his long ago schemes. 

I... I do not remember your love, Ellesime. I have tried. I have tried to recreate it, to spark it anew in my memory, but it is gone... a hollow, dead thing. For years, I clung to the memory of it. Then the memory of the memory. And then nothing. The Seldarine took that from me, too. I look upon you and feel nothing. I remember nothing but you turning your back on me, along with all the others. Once my thirst for power was everything. And now I hunger only for revenge. And I... WILL... HAVE IT!!

When confronted by Queen Ellesime, she even asks if there was any part of him that remembered the love he had for her, and the PC sees that it’s her that was in his mind for the beautiful bedroom way back in chapter one. It was almost certainly her that Irenicus thought of when he was with his dryad concubines. And when she poses that question, he answers with the above quote, that he feels nothing. While it seems like this is a loss of depth, that he’s just a flat character, I don’t think this is the case. Irenicus had the chance to change, for self-reflection. Instead, he remembers it as all the others turning their back on him, without any recognition that his schemes nearly killed them. It’s the classic abuser mentality, how dare you make me do these things to you. When his victims tried to defend themselves, he lashed out and remembers only their ‘cruelty’ to him. It’s this that makes Irenicus, for all his great arcane might, so small. Where before he was this intimidating figure, now he’s a petty man, and fittingly, it’s here that you can kill him. Temporarily, at least, because there’s still one more dungeon. Irenicus and you are still battling for your divine soul, and after a few self-reflective quests of your own, you duel Irenicus, who dies pitiably, torn to shreds by demons as his power fails him. It fits the heroic and thematic heft of the arc. As you grow in power, Irenicus diminishes in threat. He was your torturer, an inhuman menace, then he became just a man, torn apart by tiny demons that you probably could take down by the truckload. 

There’s good things to learn here. Irenicus isn’t a super-unique villain, although some of the villain tropes are personalized for the sake of the Baldur’s Gate story specifics. But he does his job admirably. David Warner’s voice work, and the special effects (pretty good for when the game came out in 2000) really was able to sell Irenicus as an enjoyable villain. 

Thanks for the suggestions, Anons who were looking forward to this.

SomethingLikeALawyer, Hand of the King

[thebleakcabal]

Tagged by: @burninglianyu

All answers according to just under four months ago when I was actually tagged, but I was waiting to be on Tumblr again before posting it.

Relationship status: Single. Currently feeling vaguely accepting of not being emotionally equipped for a proper relationship after some ... misadventures, so working on other life things instead.

Favourite Colour: Purple. Just a bit more complex than a primary colour, Calming, and a hint of power. And *kind of* like my old school house colour so I could claim Bickley loyalty without having to change anything. (Go on, you Blues!)

Lipstick or Chapstick: Neither, for the most part. I'm extremely lazy about these sort of routines, and also miserly, and also the old saying about lipstick on a pig?

Last Song I Listened To: I guess I'm listening at the moment, so this would change if you asked me in a couple of minutes. But Pink Floyd's "The Dogs of War": the live version from Delicate Sound of Thunder.

Top Three Shows: I ... don't really do TV? Like, there are shows I could put on here, but, ehhhhh, favourite would tend to be stretching it. Instead, I shall choose to interpret this instead as radio shows. Because that’s the sort of relic that I am. Hitch-Hikers' Guide To The Galaxy I'm Sorry I'll Read That Again The Navy Lark

Top Three Characters: Imoen - for someone whose lines were cobbled together out of a totally different character in the first game, there's a reason tester reaction just saved her life in the second game in time, and why despite her cut-down state in SoA, she survived as a favourite into Throne. "We fall or we win."

Aias - given he's so straightforward in personality, Homer nevertheless made a complex character out of him in the Iliad, and used him in very clever ways; his appearances in later legend similarly fascinate me.

Saber - a lot of this, I'm sure, is extrapolation and projection: the hints we get in the game at her time as king, rather than what she does in /stay night. But I *really* like the ideas that are shown there, and the way they're used. The vaguely Galfridian, pseudo-Dark Age setting, ideal set against reality, defiance of the inevitable, inhumanity created by an excess of humanity, &c.

Books I'm Currently Reading: Taking the time to go through Velleius Paterculus' History properly for the first time. Caliban's War because my uncle's very into The Expanse. Bad Science by Ben Goldacre

Five Things In My Bag: Cookies Multiple pairs of goggles because my backpack's also my swimming bag My laptop charger The packaging for a lead I bought for one of the dogs Loose change

Five Things In My Room: Too many swords, not a few in varying states of disrepair (i.e. some are straight-up snapped and others I ought to rewire at some point). An encroaching tide of books, soon to cover the whole floor. A desktop that I haven't switched on in about six years (it being only semi-fuctional then). A surprising number of teeth. An excessively large, inherited, brass lamp.

Six Things I'm Into: Confusing woodpigeons by imitating their own calls back at them. Entirely failing to stick to my own swimming schedule. This bloke I can see right now in the car park who's cleaning his car. You know the place is infested with doves, mate? Conceptualising things I won't ever make or do. The fun I'm getting from playing League with friends, just working our way up the levels with some of the new guys and girls. Even if minimal runes/masteries is weird and annoying. Trying to explain to people why you can't understand Harry Potter if you can't imagine *really bad* toad-in-the-hole. Tagging other people: No, but if one of my few followers (who isn’t a bot) sees this come across their dash, please feel free.

[shaydh]

Valdir’s Profile Thing

Updated infodump about Valdir because @mrs-cheese asked for it and the previous one was from two years ago and I revised/added stuff. This is mostly me scrambling to reconcile my story with all the canon I broke by deciding to play a special snowflake drow Bhaalspawn  ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ

Valdir Telsaerryn Neutral evil drow sorcerer 

Stats:

Str: 10

Dex: 18

Con: 16

Int: 14

Wis: 10

Cha: 18

(Useless information because BG stats are just a ton of rerolling, except I suppose it means he’s pretty sturdy for a caster. His top three stats are cha, con, and dex)

Relations:

BG1 party members: Imoen, Montaron, Xzar, Dorn, Viconia

BG2 party members: Imoen, Dorn, Viconia, Korgan, Sarevok, Edwin, Hexxat

Generally refuses to associate with surface elves and doesn’t like having them in his party.

Romances Dorn. Will only romance male characters of a non-good alignment that are not elves, halflings, or gnomes.

Tends to be very slightly more respectful/less shitty towards female characters due to drow culture.

Some more random info:

Age: ~135 at the beginning of BG1

Height: 171 cm (5′7″)

Voiceclaim: Yaevinn in Witcher 1

His eyes and teeth aren’t naturally like that, he had it done with some kind of polymorph spell or eyeball tattoos or whatever don’t question it too much I just wanted to draw him like that

Mostly only knows offensive spells, especially if they set people on fire. It takes him a lot of effort to learn non-evocation spells so he only focused on a few defensive spells.

His weapons of choice are daggers and crossbows.

Background:

His mother was a low-ranked commoner, formerly an assassin who had lost the favor of Lolth. She willingly bore Bhaal’s child, wanting to do anything she could to spite Lolth’s clerics. She managed to arrange for Valdir to become a ward of the noble House Auvryani, but she gave her life for that opportunity.  Valdir was sent to one of Ched Nasad’s wizard guilds for training.

After he graduated, Valdir stayed with House Auvryani until it was defeated in a war with House Telsaerryn. Upon finding him and killing off the last noble Auvryani, Matron Mother Iraedra offered to recruit Valdir, intrigued by his determination and perhaps sensing something of his divine heritage. He accepted.

Valdir became the house wizard and eventually the patron of House Telsaerryn, and so he attained a noble title. He had a long-standing rivalry with former patron and weapons master Kelaszar, which the Matron Mother encouraged, as she considered it a way to keep both of them from becoming complacent in their rank (and also it was pretty funny to watch).

Eventually, one of Valdir and Kelas’ disagreements nearly led to the downfall of their house, and Iraedra decided it was too much of a liability to keep both around. She sent both of them to join an allied house’s Surface raiding party as punishment, fully expecting that one would kill the other sometime during the journey.

Their target was an elven village/shrine. Unfortunately, they were spotted by a few Harpers (Gorion among them) who happened to be in the area. The elves were given enough warning to drive the raiding party back without too much bloodshed. (Just for fun: If Valdir were a joinable NPC instead of the PC, his personal quest would involve going back and wiping out the whole village. Because he’s petty like that.)

Kelas saw his chance and stabbed Valdir in the back while he was finishing off some guards, but Valdir managed to avoid a fatal strike. Their fight was interrupted by the arrival of several Harpers, and Kelas fled, assuming that Valdir would either bleed out or be finished off by the reinforcements.

The Harpers kept Valdir alive to interrogate him about the location of the Underdark tunnel the raiding party had used so that it could be sealed off. It was a very short interrogation. Valdir told them willingly, not feeling any particular loyalty to this particular party (because they weren’t his soldiers) and hoping that Kelas would be killed by the pursuing elves.

Once Gorion (somehow) realized he was a child of Bhaal, he took Valdir back to Candlekeep as a captive. For reasons. (Incidentally, Abdel Adrian existed in this timeline! He was the one Gorion found as a baby and brought back to Candlekeep but he died of a fever as a child. Because fuck that guy.)

Valdir was held in a magically warded room in a relatively remote part of the Keep, and had several geas placed on him. One prevented him from harming anyone in Candlekeep and one prevented him from casting any magic. He resented the second one the most. Initially, he refused to speak to Gorion, aside from demanding to be released or asking Gorion to explain why he had been captured rather than killed, but after a few months of solitude he was bored and antsy enough that he told Gorion about his past, albeit very rudely, thus confirming Gorion’s suspicions about his Bhaalspawn heritage.

Valdir was allowed to borrow books from the library, and he spent a great deal of time reading since he had nothing better to do. His speech in Common is quite formal since he mostly learned from books and speaking with Gorion. His speech is more casual in Drow, and he swears more.

Imoen was forbidden from visiting him, so of course she went and pestered him endlessly. Valdir found her very irritating at first, but since she was one of the few people who would talk to him, he grew accustomed to her. He ended up developing a certain fondness for her (he started off seeing her as a small annoying pet, but by BG2 he actually started caring about her, not that he would admit it). At Candlekeep, he would sometimes indirectly aid her in pulling pranks because he was bored and it would cause trouble for Gorion (though he would deny any involvement because drow do not engage in such childish antics).

After a year or so of reasonably good behavior, Valdir was allowed out of his room and was free to wander the grounds, though Gorion warned him he’d be locked up again if he caused any trouble. Valdir mostly kept to himself. The other residents treated him with suspicion at first, and he was unpleasant enough that he never made any real friends (though he ended up becoming acquainted with most of the named characters anyway).

He stayed at Candlekeep for nearly three years. At the start of BG1, Gorion gave him a pendant enchanted with a Disguise spell so that he wouldn’t be persecuted for being a drow. Valdir was extremely offended that he had to disguise himself as a surface elf, but Gorion threatened to leave him behind until he agreed. He uses the pendant only when absolutely necessary, usually when passing through small villages when he decides it’d be too much trouble to reveal his race. (Basically me handwaving why he doesn’t get as much shit for being a drow as Viconia… Just don’t think too hard about it.)

After Gorion died, he didn’t intend to follow his instructions at first. The geas sealing his magic faded, though his power returned gradually (meaning time to level up!) Imoen insisted that they go to the Friendly Arm Inn anyway, pointing out that he had no allies on the surface, little understanding of surface customs, and he’d probably get killed by the first group of Flaming Fist mercenaries he saw. Reluctantly, he agreed to travel with her, and though he complained about everything on the surface (the sun, the iblith, the lack of decent baths!) he started to enjoy not having to answer to any priestesses. He had a vague goal of finding and killing Sarevok, mostly because he was annoyed at Sarevok killstealing Gorion from him. He became much more invested in the quest once he found out he was a Bhaalspawn and he decided to become a god.

[moczothe1st]

Brothers and Sisters, Chapter Nineteen

(*) It was accepted, socially speaking, that arrows being fired into the tent you were in, even if it was less a tent and more half a sewer pipe with a tarp over it, was a bad thing.  Sephiria acted based on this belief.  

She dove to one side, tacking Imoen to the ground as another arrow, fired with the same deadly precision as the one that had killed Angelo, tore through the thin canvas of the tent to pass through the space her heart had been in less than a second earlier. “Everyone move!” the young paladin shouted, trying her best to cover her sister despite the fact she hadn’t had time to find any damn armor… “I’m trying!” Imoen grumbled, wiggling free to grab her own bow and disappearing from the tent to scout out the enemy.  “Heads down and find somethin’ solid to hide behind, ya dope!  You don’t even have pants!”

“I wasn’t going to say anything,” Xan muttered. Khalid and Jaheira, being the closest things to sane one could find around here (and anyone who knew them well would have called that very sad) were already in motion; Khalid down low, moving forward in a hunched motion, huddled as well as he could behind the shield he’d managed to scrounge in their time down here to replace the one Sarevok had destroyed.  Luckily, weapons were something brigands always needed, and so entrances to the Undercellars often came up near shops selling them cheaply and discretely.  

An arrow struck the shield and went through it, stopping mere inches from his shoulder.  

Unluckily, he supposed, cheap weapons were also often worthless trash.

 “Jaheira!” His wife was already deep in her first casting, relying on him to guard her, but her slight nod told him she was aware of the issue; he could not protect her as well as he’d have liked. Couldn’t even truly protect himself.  

“Over yonder, behind the blue tent, takin’ aim through it!  And there’s more coming at us from all sides!” Imoen screamed, shouting to be heard over a din that Khalid uncomfortably recognized as growing panic. More than one unlucky lady of the night or patron screamed in dismay, tents beginning to collapse as patrons and proprietors alike tried to run from something roughly barreling through them.  To their left, a fire had begun among several of the tightly-packed makeshift tents. To their right, the crowd parted before a man easily six feet tall in full plate, drawing back his own bowstring to catch them in a crossfire.  And most worrisome of all, from the path directly in front of them, a pair of full-grown ogres appeared from thin air, one of them stopping to lift a john who hadn’t run fast enough and sink its tusks into his throat.      

The scent of fear began to overpower even the cheap perfumes and burning narcotics of the Undercellars.  And Khalid thought he detected more than a little bit of blood underneath it.  

(*)

Thankfully, despite owning a very good, expensive crossbow (that she had somehow bought without her mother knowing, which spoke to more sneakiness than you’d expect in a pampered rich girl stupid enough to believe her one true love was Eldoth Kron), Skie Silvershield was an atrocious shot.  

Less thankfully, you didn’t need to be a great shot to hit something five feet away.  

The shot was not a kill, but it did slam into Acherai’s bicep.  He was wearing the dark robes they had taken from Davaeorn, and the magic in them was better than any garment he’d ever seen.  The cloth resisted the crossbow bolt better than any chainmail he’d ever seen, and it did not pierce his flesh.  

Which is not to say it didn’t hurt. A lot.      

He fell to one knee, hissing at the shock of pain running up his arm as the limb went numb. He had put away his dagger and left his staff with the group where it would not be in the way as he snuck through a darkened house. He dearly wished he had some kind of weapon in his hand, because Skie immediately ran forward, screaming like a lunatic and slammed her empty crossbow into his jaw.  It was not a polished combat move, and one of the arms of the weapon cracked off.  

Still hurt.

And as the lights flashed behind his eyes and he fell backwards, he couldn’t help but feel this was the most humiliating pain he had ever felt.  And he had once slipped during a burglary and fallen off a roof into a horse’s water trough.

“My Eldoth!” she screamed, raising the half-broken weapon over her head to once again use a piece of precision equipment as a club. Acherai was about to have his head smashed with wood, and yet all he could think was, Gods she has an annoying voice.  “You took my Eldoth!”

Coran stepped across and punched her in the face.  “Um… sorry.”  

“Skie!” Lady Silvershield shouted, watching her daughter join the elf she’d just clubbed on the floor.  “You… you…”

“I’m sorry, milady, dreadfully so, but there are a lot of people trying to kill you right now and your daughter did shoot her rescuer,” Coran said, putting as much smooth calm into the words as he could. He was not, traditionally speaking, a master of social manipulation (in point of fact, most men he met hated him), but he did have a certain talent for getting a comely lass to lower her guard (which was why the men hated him).  Even Skie, who he had just punched, looked a little flustered at his tone.  

“You… struck me,” Skie said.  Her tone suggested she wasn’t totally sure what to make of this.  

“And I will gleefully spend the rest of my life making it up to you, fair lady.  Know that I would never, ever, lay a finger on a woman save in the direst of circumstances, when her very life was at stake,” he said, lowering a hand to help the young noblewoman to her feet.  He did not add, Or if my life was at stake, because she turned out to be a mage and also turned out to be the jealous type.  And she landed in a pig trough, so it wasn’t like I seriously harmed her. Certainly not as much as she was going to seriously harm me.

All of that was true, but he it would have seriously hurt the mood.

“I don’t think you should have struck me,” Skie said. “But, um, you do seem nice. Like, in a good way, but… you shouldn’t have.  But I’m sure you had a good reason. But it was mean.  I like your hair.”

“It is always inappropriate of any gentleman to strike a lady, for any reason,” her mother confirmed, her voice suggesting she was rolling her eyes on the inside.  “But on the other hand, my dear, you did shoot one our rescuers and then smash him about the face with a piece of wood, whilst assassins are still in the manor.  You were quite hysterical.”

“They took my Eldoth!  The love of my life!” Skie snapped, remembering why she had been angry and why this handsome elf with the smooth voice wasn’t going to make her happy at all, even when he kissed her hand after pulling her gently to her feet, which made her blush slightly. But in an angry way.

“You met him once,” Acherai grumbled, shakily rising to his feet.  “And let me be very blunt with you, milady, he didn’t even like you.”  

“How dare-“

“Acherai, perhaps now isn’t the time to antagonize the girl? She’s had a traumatic day,” Coran interjected.        

“So have I. I’ve experienced literal trauma, of the physical variety,” he snapped.  “Like the fact I cannot see out of my left eye and I’m fairly sure my cheekbone is cracked, from a crazed brat smashing my face.”

“Think of the assassins, my friend.  They’re still out there.”

Acherai lowered his tone to a level that wouldn’t carry outside the room, and said, “They’re not out there, they’re in here.  Two doors down the hallway. That door was closed when we passed, now it’s open a crack.  One of the shadows inside is too dark to be natural. There’s someone wearing black standing in it.”

Coran winced, and wished he had brought a dagger instead of a longsword.  This was going to be messy in the hallways. “At least it won’t be an ambush. Good eye.”    

“I can help!” Skie said, her tone excited, and yet, oddly enough, modulated to the same low volume.  It was a surprising level of competence considering, both elves noticed wryly, she seemed to forget ‘her Eldoth’ the moment something else caught her attention.  “I know how to fight. Um. Sort of. I can shoot a crossbow!”

“You broke your crossbow, milady,” Coran said mildly.  

“… Yes. But... um, I also have a knife!  It’s in my drawers,” she said.  “I kept it with my makeup where nobody would look. I’m not very good with it, but I can probably ‘shank’ someone if they ‘give me lip.’”

“Excuse me?” Her mother asked.  Her tone was not modulated to an acceptably soft volume, but it was extremely cold. That was almost as good, in her world.  

“I needed to run off with Eldoth and you wouldn’t let me!  So I snuck out a few times to practice. For when he came for me on a white horse.”  

“He didn’t own a horse,” Acherai said.

“He smelled a bit musky. Might have been horse,” Coran countered.

“Donkey.  Trust me, I can tell the difference. He rode a donkey until he had to actually meet someone he wanted to be impresse, then stole a horse to use. Or bought a beat-up old screw of a mare for a song, and gussied it up to look like a real horse for awhile.  Sell it after he didn’t need to be impressive anymore,” Acherai said.  “It’s how you stay unnoticed. Don’t look like someone people will notice until you have no other choice.”  

“Speaking from experience?” Coran asked wryly.

Acherai sniffed, and shifted his dagger to his good hand, sliding a wand out of his sleeve into the weakened one. “Please. I’m always impressive. It’s the curse of being me.  I have the one on the left.”

“Right.”

“Middle!” Skie offered.

“Only two of them, dear,” Coran said.  

“You’re smart,” Skie squealed. Against all odds, she had still kept her voice modulated low enough to not be heard.  Acherai would have been impressed if he wasn’t so deeply filled with wrath.  He decided to take it out on someone else. The shadow down the hall moved slightly.  He didn’t hear the sound of a weapon being unsheathed, but he felt it. The moment where a shadow becomes a threat, that feeling anyone who’s ever walked down a dark alley has gotten when they realize they’re being hunted.

Of course, if you grew up in dark alleys, walked down them every day, learned how to look deep into every shadow to see which ones were just a little too dark, you also learned quickly enough: just because you were being hunted, didn’t necessarily mean you were prey.  Sometimes the garter snake turns out to be a viper, and sometimes the bulge in the mark’s clothes is not a pouch of coins but a very sharp knife.

Acherai pointed the wand into the shadows that were slightly too dark, and spoke the command word. And then, well, it was hard to hide in the darkness when you were sharing the room with a bolt of lightning.  

(*)

The people who dwelt in this place were, as a whole, sick and weak.  Tamoko had no respect for anyone who would willingly abandon the world for a haze of drugs and rutting, but there was little point to massacring them.  This could have been done quickly and quietly as soon as the scrying found the girl and her group.  A dozen arrows.  A single spell to burn the tent with them inside.  Instead, the Acolytes of Sarevok had given in to their base instincts, indulging their desperate need to kill every single thing that crossed their path no matter how little a threat it was.

They had approached it with practiced skill and fanatical enthusiasm.  Aasim and Diyab, the clerics of Cyric, had started fires at two of the entrances, forcing the entire crowd to stampede to those that remained unblocked.  Gardush, the fighter, was poised in one of these, and between the storm of arrows he fired at the target, he took the time to loose a random shot into the terrified mob, making the ones at the lead turn, run other directions, turn the crowds against themselves. Naaman and Alai, slipping through the mad crowd, steadily moving to flank as their allies used spell and arrow to pin the enemy into one defensive position.  And as they passed, more than one harmless addict or whore found themselves hamstrung by an unseen blade, falling screaming to the floor in the middle of a stampede, tripping up others and leading more than one to be trampled to death. And Cythandria’s ‘pets,’ a pair of ogres she had magically enslaved, drove the survivors into a wild frenzy as they stormed through the crowd, hurling survivors and corpses alike aside as if they weighed nothing.

It was an effective distraction, she supposed, and would certainly disguise any evidence of their presence, but it was all so pointless when they could have finished the task quickly and efficiently in minutes, and already been on their way home with news of success.  Sarevok would have enjoyed it, she knew, and that made things worse rather than better as she once again found herself wondering how very little humanity he even had left to lose, if he could find pleasure in such mindless chaos.  

And her company wasn’t making it any better.

“Having a bad day?” Cythandria asked, her tone sweetly venomous as she watched the terrified crowd of degenerates fleeing into the sewers, the acolytes tearing through them like scythes through wheat.  She was not like them, the murder addicts, those who had joined Sarevok to stand in the shadow of a killer greater than themselves and bathe in the blood he shed, and she was certainly not anyone who would follow him out of faith or personal loyalty. Cythandria was a parasite, seeking to tap into the power to be found here for her own use.  She believed Sarevok would ascend to godhood, and when the new Lord of Murder blackened the heavens, she would be among his favored subjects.

She was also a filthy, conniving whore who used good looks and a general lack of dignity to ensnare men with promises of pleasure, making herself appealing in the bedchamber to offset her utter lack of use in any other capacity.  

Not that Tamoko was jealous of her in any way.  

“I do as milord commands, as do you,” Tamoko said, trying to keep the wrath out of her tone.  Sarevok did not take kindly to feuds among his lieutenants.  He expected, and demanded, all personal issues be set aside in favor of acting only in his interests.  If you were to act in a way that brought profit to yourself, it must also bring profit to Sarevok. If you were going to destroy a foe, it must not be a foe that Sarevok found useful in any way.  Cythandria was keenly aware that if she and Tamoko came to do battle, the one who struck the first blow would also be the one Sarevok tore limb from limb.  

This was good for Cythandria, because Tamoko’s first blow would also be Cythandria’s last.  But the mage apparently had little comprehension of how very, very quickly the priestess could wipe her from the face of the planet, and so provoking her rival into striking first had become a hobby of hers.

“True,” the mage said cheerfully. “But I do it with a smile on my face, while you seem oddly reluctant to obey milord’s will.  Are you losing faith, Tamoko?  Questioning his path when he nears the end? I should hate to see him think you a traitor, but the evidence is mounting.”

“Because I do not enjoy random massacres, I am a traitor?  The acolytes are doing their duty, killing for their lord. I have done my duty, leading them here.  You are doing your duty, whatever that might be,” Tamoko said flatly.  Something ugly flashed behind the lovely mage’s eyes at the implication she was a worthless hanger-on to the rest of the group, and Tamoko tried not to smile at it.  “If you wish to paint me as a traitor, I suggest you do better than that. Sarevok dislikes having his time wasted by idiocy.”

“Maybe you don’t need to be a traitor, Tamoko,” Cythandria said softly, and yet Tamoko could somehow hear her over the screams and the crackling of fire. “Maybe you just need to be weak.  Maybe Sarevok just needs to see how pathetic you are, how you don’t have the stomach for his vision.  Maybe he’ll see the same softness in your eyes that I do right now, and he’ll just reach out and snuff your life out like a candle.  Because he is a god, and something like you is less than nothing.”  

“Maybe,” Tamoko said, her eyes leaving the petty mage to seek movement at the westernmost entrance, behind Gardush. The warrior was drawing back the string on his longbow and did not see the covering to the tunnel beyond move, “something is about to go off-prompt before we have an opportunity to worry about that.”

“Wh…”

“GO FOR THE EYES, BOO!” screamed a voice that Tamoko suspected would have sounded like a shout even if it was whispering.  “GO FOR THE EYEEEEEEEEES!”                    

(*)

Slythe heard the crack of thunder and giggled.  “Witnesses, witnesses.  Someone’s fighting baaaaack.”

“You seem… happy, sir,” one of the dopplegangers said softly, his voice muffled by the Shadow Thief mask he wore.  

“Deliriously, good man!  Two roasted Shadow Thief corpses at the scene of the crime will do our job just as well as anyone getting out alive, so we get to kill everyone after all,” Slythe said gleefully.  “No need to leave Entar’s women alive to talk of things when a body tells a thousand words and all of them are ‘Amn.’  So after we do our job here, we can go back up the hall, you see, find two scared little rabbits and after we get them away from their protectors we just have to wrap our hands around their little throats and squeeze, and squeeze, and squeeze.  Just like breaking their necks for a stew, hm?  You boys must be starving.”

The doppleganger was named Kransizess, the eldest of the group that had joined the two assassins on this raid. He had, the day before, waylaid a member of the local thieves’ guild in an alley and eaten him alive while he begged for mercy (well, gurgled; like any good hunter, Kransizess went for the throat first), just to acquire some proper clothing and equipment for this mission.  Sentient beings were his literal food source, and he hunted and killed them with gusto.  He still found Slythe’s enthusiasm a bit much.  Particularly since, against all odds, he was actually worse without Kristin to distract him.  The man was practically vibrating with the need to rush the room down the hallway where Entar hid and kill everyone inside, at which point he clearly would go hunting for Entar’s wife and daughter just to murder them for fun.  It was like his only joys in life were his lover and bloody murder, and without one he focused every iota of his being on the other.

                “Sir, the, uh… target?” Kransizess asked.  

“Of course, of course. Krissy has probably already started her little fire, and we have to put business before pleasure,” Slythe said.  “Of course, my business is my pleasure.  You and the short one back there, he looks disposable.  I want you to play a part for me.  Tell me, when you were all researching the family, how closely were you paying attention?”

(*)

“Entar?  Entar, darling?” a voice called from outside the room, and Viconia took a step back behind the dwarf and leveled her holy symbol at the door.  

“Acherai?” she asked.  

“Elle!” Entar snapped, nearly lunging for the door, despite the fact Viconia had quite intentionally left him slightly too wounded to be moving around quickly.  It wouldn’t do to have him running off before he had fulfilled his part of the bargain.  Besides, he was wealthy and powerful, after all, and if they needed a hostage for some reason he would do nicely.  

One didn’t survive terribly long in Menzoberranzen without considering how to plan for any possible scenario and set up a plan to profit in each and every one. And with three sisters (well, just one by the time she was finished), Viconia had more incentive to practice than many other drow females.  She stepped between the old lord and the door, and slammed an elbow into where she knew his wound was still on the verge of opening. He fell hard, and did not rise again despite his tense muscles indicating he dearly wanted to.

“HA!” Shar-teel said, displaying her usual complex and subtle wit in regards to witnessing a man in pain.  Viconia could understand the amusement factor, certainly, but still found she couldn’t like the woman. She reminded Viconia far too much of home, more specifically of her most stupid and subsequently dead sister.  “If we decided to kill him, I call next shot.  I don’t like his face.”  

“I was not killing him, I was shutting him up,” Viconia said flatly.  “You, outside.  You are this one’s mistress?”

“His wife,” a chilly, imperious tone said.  “And daughter.”

“Papa? Papa, are you okay? I heard you cry out…” said a younger, frankly rather pitiful voice that put Viconia in the instinctive mood to kick something.

“Skie!” Entar shouted back in an agonized voice, and Viconia had to fight off a very strong inclination to make him the target of said kick. Shar was not so gracious as to give her the power to raise the dead as of yet, and they did still need him alive for one way or the other. Making him bleed out was bad business.  “That is my wife and daughter, you have to…”

“Please!  Those men saved us, but we got separated and there’s more behind us!” the pitiful voice continued. “Papa, let us in!”

“Silence, human,” she snapped. “Mage.  Can you divine the truth of their words?”

“Oh, I’m sorry, do I resemble a crystal ball to you?” Edwin sneered.  “As if I carry spells to determine the identity of every maiden I run across. (And just stop there, letting them think I have run across a great many, of course.  Shhhhh, they don’t know.)”

“I do not know who you are or why you have my husband, but if you mean us well, you will open this door.  Our lives are in danger,” the older of the two women said, her tone icy and yet with just the right tinge of worry.  Viconia considered this, and pondered her own personal beliefs on gender politics.   Most people on the surface, she knew, thought drow females hated all males.  This was not true.  They didn’t respect males enough to hate them. All males were nothing to her but a potential source of amusement, whether it be in the form of a toe-curling orgasm, growth to her own power and wealth, or just the pretty patterns their blood made when it hit the floor.  It was possible, if one was sufficiently amusing in one or more of these manners, to even feel a sort of mild attachment to them, as one might grow attached to a favorite pair of shoes.  Pleasant to have around, but you wouldn’t really care when they wore out and it was time to have the slaves burn them (by these standards, Acherai had turned out to be a pair of slippers that appeared awful on the outside but turned out to be surprisingly comfortable when worn; you wouldn’t take them out in front of someone you respected, but they were fine for the bedroom).  

What drow females really hated was other females, and that was because they, unlike males, were intelligent and dangerous enough to be a threat.  Nothing could set Viconia’s nerves on edge like a woman acting helpless and endangered, because she knew from experience: when they looked helpless was when they were about to bring the dagger down. She looked at the door with increased intensity, as if willing her eyes to look through it and see what trap awaited on the other side.

It was her ears, however, that gave her the answer, the crackling of flame just barely audible to her elven senses.  From outside.  

“This is a distraction!  Dwarf, kill them!” Viconia snarled, planting her foot firmly on Entar’s back to stop the old man from interfering.  

“Don’t take orders from drow, ya…”

“They are keeping our attention on the door while another of their band burns our escape route, wael dwen’del!” she hissed, shifting into drow to let the words ‘idiot dwarf’ have the venom to them she felt deep in her soul. “We’ve no options but to fight our way out, so someone kill them!”

A gray-skinned hand, its fingers tipped in wicked claws, slammed through the wooden door, reptilian eyes peering through the hole with wicked glee dancing in them.  “That issss the idea, meat,” the creature hissed, its voice still that of a young girl, but its tone nothing but taunting reptilian hunger.

The doppleganger pulled back from the newly formed hole in the door, and Viconia had just enough time to see the smiling, dreadlocked man down the hallway before he released the crossbow bolt.  

(*)

Naaman had never been a great assassin, because he did it for the joy more than the money.  As a result, he took few high-paying jobs, for they were difficult.  Complicated.  He wanted the kill, not a struggle for it.  Challenge did not interest him, blood did.  He would much rather kill a beggar in the streets every day for a copper apiece than be paid a thousand gold to spend a year meticulously plotting the death of a king.  The immediacy was what he needed.  Death had been about quantity to him, not quality.

He had been a fool, and Sarevok had taught him much.  Particularly the fact that if a man was willing to fight through that urge, be patient against all instincts, than the quantity could be made to grow more than Naaman had ever dreamed.  Patience and resources, a man who had these things could do anything. Such a man could kill countries.

This burning pit had been like heaven to him. He slipped through the crowd like a wraith, reveling in the screams, each step moving him slightly closer to his god’s greatest enemy, and she would never see him in this chaos. The flame and smoke were thick, the chaos of the mob that his group had taken care to cultivate ensuring she would not see him approach. They had killed dozens here, but far more had been left alive, herded by flame and arrow, wounded to stop others from fleeing.  They rode the madness, and soon Naaman and Alai would be on the target, blades drawn…

And then, when Naaman was nearly in striking distance, someone screamed like a rampaging dragon, something about eyes, and when his gaze was torn to the entrance where Gardush had taken up aim with his longbow… just in time to see a bald giant with a hamster on his head run the man over like a minotaur stomping on a rat.  

“What in Bhaal’s na-” he began, because there were some things even a hardened killer has to stop and notice.  

He didn’t get to finish the oath, however, because something cold and bleak that buzzed like a wasp in his ear ran over him, and he could not so much as twitch an eyelid, much less speak.  

This was for the best, he soon found, because it meant he felt almost no pain from the sword that slashed open the side of his neck.

“I would apologize for using such an unfair tactic as exploiting Xan’s spell in a sneak attack, but you are a mass-murderer of helpless folk who had little enough life to give in the first place,” Sephiria said, and the sheer wrath in her voice convinced her that yes, this was Sarevok’s brethren.  “And if it consoles you, the rest of your vile band will follow you soon.”

He could not close his eyes, but his vision went dark regardless.  All he could see in the shadows was a pair of glowing golden eyes that could not possibly be real.  

With his last thoughts, he decided that at the hands of such a predator was not so bad a way for one like him to meet his end.

[dragonageblog1]

I find Imoen really a annoying so I didn’t use her in BG1 even though I should have plus my character was a thief/fighter so I used her for lockpicking.

And then the character of aerie I can’t take seriously she looks so much like someone I know irl (minus the elf ears)

Baldur’s Gate 2 Meme

1. The first character I first fell in love with Well, not counting those from BG1: Yoshimo!

2. The character I never expected to love as much as I do now  Viconia and Yoshimo. Really.

3. The character everyone else loves that I don’t.  Aerie. She won Imoen on that aspect. Even I had to agreed with Jaheira: Aerie walks though life like a fragile flower waiting for her petals to be gathered. I don’t like super naive characters with an excess of innocence; they feel like children. 

4. The character I love that everyone else hates  It could be Edwin, though love is a strong word. It’s more like a permanent state of dislike-admiration. I like to pest him XD and he is useful as fuck with his tricks and intelligence. He has no match related to strategical things. 

5. The character I used to love but don’t any longer  Yoshimo. Hahaha, But I understand him to the core. I made his final quest too. He deserved peace, poor guy.

6. The character I would totally smooch  Viconia. But she probably would hate it. In that case, I would return to BG1 and choose Glint <3.

7. The character I’d want to be like  Same as BG1: Edwin. He is super smart, I admire that despite his insufferable ego. Though… he had his slips… with Nether Scrolls…lol.

8. The character I’d slap  Edwin. He became even more annoying than Dorn! For fuck’s sake…imagine that.

9. A pairing that I love  Viconia and Edwin. And Edwin and Jaheira. Both give so much shit to Edwin and his mistakes that it’s delightful.

10. A pairing that I despise  Jaheira became darker in BG2, so I liked her a little bit, as far as she did not started again with her crap of “Gorion will be disappointed”. But she has no more pair anymore. I would say that Aerie and Jaheira, as a pair, make me roll eyes a lot anbd I prefer them both far away from my main char xD. 

[lettucecocreative-blog]

Baldur’s Gate: Taking the Pacifist’s path to becoming the Lord of Murder (SoD) pt35

Oh Mods, Why Hast Thou Forsaken Me

So obviously I decided to venture forth with my gathered party into SoD and first off the bat discovered all my gear gone! Plus Imoen, leaving me 1 short. Gavin doesn’t carry over so he was a ? and being called invalid and Kivan’s portrait didn’t carry over either. After adjusting to the loss of all my loot pretty much (well all the really good stuff, like no one has a weapon now), I saved a copy of the game, gave Kivan his original portrait and Gavin a default male portrait so I could at very least see how their health was going.

I had some darts of stunning, so Jaheira rocked them until they were gone, but now she’s bear shapeshifting. Kivan got the cloak that allows him to shapeshift into a wolf. Gavin got a bunch of magical shilleaghs. Branwen went back to her spiritual hammer. And I’m slinging spells and using my monster summoning wand like it’s no one’s business. But it’s not exactly working out super well.....

We tried potions of strength, master thievery, everything, and couldn’t open those two damn chests in the purple flame secret section. So annoying. This is why Imoen was supposed to be with us.

We make it through (after more deaths) with countless injuries and defeat Korlasz.

I take all the gear off everyone to ensure I don’t lose anything when the inevitable desertion happens shortly.

Turns out Gavin is retained, but as he isn’t fully functional, at least banter wise, I reform the party and solo on.

[sovonight]

sketched in pen for the first time in who-knows-how-long & drafted a few visuals for dialogue that's been in my notes for a while :)

(Radri, holding an amulet of protection)

Radri: I'm sorry, my friend. I must sell you off.

Radri: You'll go on to protect so many. Merchants, thieves, heroes of any alignment…

Radri: But you won't care about a single one of them, not really. You protect them only out of the sense of duty in your heart, performing your assigned task without caring whether your bearer lives or dies.

Radri: Then one day that will change. One fateful day, you'll—

(Radri freezes, realizing that Xan is looking over her shoulder)

Xan, amused: Go on.

Radri: Ah—I—I'm just sorting out what to sell! Ha ha.

(She hides the amulet behind her back and gives an embarrassed grin)

Radri: Did, um, you need something?

Xan, smiling slightly: Not anymore.

=======

[The lengthy premise to Xan's "it's okay that you're a bhaalspawn" apology from halfway through this]

(You know when you return to Candlekeep there's that old couple there that talks about how charname was as a child. Radri is so polite that she stays for the entire convo, so everyone in the party gets plenty of chances to tease her for her childhood antics, and in the end—)

Radri, having finally had enough: Okay! Well! You all can stay here, but I have to move on. I'll be upstairs.

Couple 1: Oh, dear, don't hide yourself on the upper floors for too long—we won't be able to fetch you for dinner!

Couple 2: It used to be that Gorion was the only one who could find her. Of course, now…

(Radri leaves before she hears any more, her face already red with embarrassment)

—

(Radri finds the letter and reads it there in Gorion's old quarters. She's left numb after the reveal, but Jaheira expresses her support, and Radri starts to think things might not be so bad—until Xan opens his mouth. Radri's too hurt to say anything to his response, only giving him a wide-eyed, wounded look before running out of the room. Immediately regretting his words, Xan tries to follow, but when he passes through the doorway, she's already disappeared from sight… the rest of the party filters out into the hall as well, and Jaheira is notably annoyed.)

Jaheira: Xan! What is wrong with you?! If I weren't certain I'd be tasked with healing you afterwards, I would smack you upside the head. Perhaps it would return the senses you have clearly lost.

Imoen: Eep. Guys…

(Watchers storm up the stairs)

Watcher: You! You're all under arrest for the murder of the Iron Throne!

Watcher: Wait—where is Gorion's ward?!

—

(Radri sits at the top floor of Candlekeep, looking out the window)

Tutor: Child, have you visited your foster father's quarters yet? I understand that he left something for you. You should see it before you go.

Radri, with a tired, forced smile: I… I know. I will, in a moment.

Tutor: Oh, child… It seems that you already have.

Radri, dead inside: So I am the last to know.

Tutor: Not the last. But indeed, many of us knew. Radri… those of us who have watched over you know there is no evil in your heart. Your destiny is a terrible one, but remember that it comes at no fault of your own.

Radri: …Doesn't it?

Radri: If I had not hidden that night….

Watcher, storming in: Radri, child of Candlekeep! You are under arrest!

—

(Later in the jail cell, Jaheira handles the talking as Radri sits silently in the corner, staring listlessly at the wall as Imoen hugs her arm, trying to provide some comfort. Xan, relegated to the opposite side of the cell from Radri, can't take his gaze off her, clearly wanting to comfort her and make up for earlier. Khalid is seated beside him.)

Khalid: N-not yet, Xan.

Xan, not even sparing him a glance: I do not recall speaking to you.

Khalid: You w-want to comfort her, but I would g-give her space.

Xan: What would you know? She and I are bonded—

Khalid: And yet we have all seen th-that that doesn't soften the b-blow of your words. I would think on your next move c-c-carefully… for her sake.

Xan: …

—

(They're fighting their way out of Candlekeep via the catacombs. Another skeleton falls before Radri's blade, but she looks deader inside than the undead, going through the motions rather than exercising any conscious thought. Jaheira calls for a halt.)

Jaheira: Hold! We will rest for a moment before we go any further. Half of you look like you're on your last legs.

Viconia: Ugh, at last. Better here than in the accursed sunlight outside.

(Though the majority of the party prepares to rest, Radri goes silently off into the shadows. Xan follows, having been held back from speaking to her long enough; the rest of the party watches him leave.)

Jaheira: If he comes back without her, I really will whack him on the head.

Viconia: I hope she kills him. It would spare us all the whining.

.

[akilah12902]

#Something to threaten Sarevok and Imoen with next time I play ToB#Or something Jaheira threatens us all with when we annoy her...

I am sitting here imagining Jaheira threatening to send you to your room and it is aMAZING.

Hilariously, Bhaalspawn being outsiders means you can cast things like dismissal and banishment on them and exile them to their room (uh, ledge over a bottomless pit?) back in the Throne of Blood.

[sovonight]

fits in a week after the stew burns in this

radri: he hates me. imoen: what, the merchant? maybe. ya did dump 5 bloody swords on the table, and half of 'em were about to break-- radri: no, xan! every time he talks to me i feel like i'm ruining everything. (buries her face in her hands) i can't say anything right… imoen: and that's why he keeps coming back, huh? 'cause you're ruining everything? (looks at her flatly) radri. you're his favorite person in the group. radri: wh. wha? imoen: look around! d'ya see him bothering to talk to anyone else? it's all, "leave me alone," and "can't you see i'm trying to march towards my death in peace"--unless it's you, and then he's spilling his guts left and right. radri: … imoen: honestly, i feel sorry for ya. i don't know how you stand listenin' to him, and with his stuffy speech, too. radri, kind of annoyed: you mean, it's simple, because he's thoughtful and eloquent and introspective. imoen, with a sly smile: oh, okay. i see how it is. i won't worry about it, then. radri: worry about what? imoen: aw, i'll tell you when you're older. radri, understanding dawning on her: wait, you think--no! imoen, amused: no? radri: e--even if what you said is true it doesn't mean you can just pair us together like that. that's--that's ridiculous. (pink) i mean, he's clearly… he… he'd never… (her embarrassment fades as her thoughts shift course, and radri goes quiet) radri: …if anything, i just look the part. he misses his home. it has nothing to do with me. imoen: … imoen: radri-- radri: let's just get some rest, okay? there's a long road ahead of us.

[warsofasoiaf]

Please do a small essay for Planescape Torment! Love to read your blog!

A game as transcendentally excellent as Planescape: Torment cannot be satisfied with a small essay. This is heavy spoilers so readers beware, so I’ll write something on the Nameless One and the journey he undertakes.

Planescape: Torment is widely considered one of the best written RPG’s in the history of computer games. At a first glance, it’s hard to get into. The setting is incredibly dense and strange, which can be incredibly discouraging to new players who find it difficult to connect to a game that’s so far removed from a traditional fantasy. Similarly, combat in the game can be frightfully tedious, even a slog at times to get to the next part of the game. You can’t die permanently save in a few specific circumstances which helps remove the threat, but you usually end up either back in the Mortuary or in some tucked away corner of a map, so you have to march your way back, which takes up time just like reloading a saved game would. The mandatory combat exists partially as a limitation of the setting and of the engine, partially of game design because otherwise it would be a long chain of text boxes and exploring down decision trees to get to your objective. But for those who are willing to put up with it, the journey is deep and thoughtful. For all the weirdness that Planescape offers, the adventure that you go through is actually quite familiar. It’s a moody, introspective journey about regret, about the impact you have on others, about belief, about atonement, and about meaning.

The Nameless One waking up on a mortuary slab is an iconic opening, because it changes the blank slate of character creation on its head. Unlike traditional Infinity Engine D&D games, you do not pick a class, race, even a portrait. You’re always some zombie-looking dude with sick dreadlocks and a bunch of tattoos, which end up being a written record of helpful hints. Certainly, this is a bizarre way of delivering exposition and quest direction, but let’s be honest RPG’s often have NPC’s whose job it is to further your game progress and enrich its world. Making them tattoos is unusual but it still performs the same function. Similarly, your first companion is a friendly, floating, wisecracking skull. That seems weird of course, but often the first companion you get in an RPG is a friendly sort to help you get your feet wet during the game, as well as provide exposition. Imoen from Baldur’s Gate was perky and bubbly, but both Morte and Imoen provide comic relief to help keep things light in the initial stages even though you as the character have gone through some rough stuff, and Morte says that he’s a mimir, which is a literal repository of knowledge and thus a natural source for an exposition dump according to the rules of the setting. The first couple of puzzles in this dungeon are mostly finding items, fulfilling requests from NPC’s, and exploring the map, which are standard fare for the Infinity Engine games. The window dressing is strange, but the functions carried out are still familiar, helping to ease the player into the strangeness to come. But even at character creation, there’s hints to come that you aren’t the traditional blank slate character. The Wisdom stat suggests that remembering things will be important, and the tattoos clearly had to come from somewhere before the game starts, so it’s in the back of the mind while the players start to acclimate themselves to the mechanics of the game

As the journey continues though, and the exposition of who you are starts becoming more apparent. A ghost on the first floor of the Mortuary calls you “my love” and you can feel the strength of that, and that what you might say could be very dangerous so you must pick your next words with care, so very soon, the game gives you two critical pieces of information. What your character did before the game is going to be important, and you’re going to need to read and think about what you do in the text boxes just as much as you will in combat. This ghost is one of the most important characters in the game, but here you’re as confused as the Nameless One is, replicating the character’s confusion in the player. There’s a lot of information in Planescape: Torment, and the use of dialogue-heavy boxes encourages taking your time, slowly exploring and discovering things, remembering them, and piecing them together, and presenting them means replicating the Nameless One piecing everything together by forcing the player to do likewise. This was the right decision to make because exposition and discovery are the primary ways that the themes are explored, and so establishing a slow pace is a way for the game to let the player mull the things over in their mind (along with the ubiquitous ‘updated my journal’ line that the Nameless One says to make sure the player reads the darn thing). So, in a rare dramatic move, an amnesia plot is actually given the respect it deserves using the unique advantage of video games by allowing the player to be the one to make the discoveries rather than attempting to carefully script reveals in more passive media that often end up fumbling. Who is the Nameless One, why did he wake up in a Mortuary, and what the heck is going on in this game?

Of course, the answer to the second question is an easy answer but it evokes questions all its own. The Nameless One woke up there because he was dead and that’s where bodies go. This case of death though doesn’t seem to be very fatal. Indeed, when you die you get back up again. In D&D, where death is not as permanent as it is in real life, there are plenty of jokes and memes about the revolving door afterlife, but in Torment, this becomes another great mystery. What the heck is happening here? Clearly, this is powerful magic, but who is casting it, and how are they constantly able to get to you no matter where you seem to be? There’s another goal here, to get the player to think of death in combat not as a means to immediately reload the save game like you would in Baldur’s Gate (even if it’s an NPC that dies instead of the plot-critical main character, it’s usually better just to reload then cart yourself over to the temple than deal with picking up their inventory - at least until higher levels when you have a party member cleric or druid to cast the spell), but rather it’s a nuisance to have to get back to where you were, just as annoying than the cranium rats or other minor monsters you fight, so that you no longer fear it, which is an excellent way to channel players to not worry about it so that the punch can land later. Later, when a Sensate asks to kill you so she can experience the sensation of murdering someone with her bare hands while not actually killing anyone, it’s treating as a bizarre commercial transaction, not the seriousness that such an act would normally be. 

Upon leaving the Mortuary, the Nameless One is prodded to find Pharod, but there’s no sense of urgency by placing a time limit on it, leaving you open to explore Sigil and find out about this world. It’s here where the setting can really start to be reinforced by letting the player explore it. Almost every character can provide an interesting piece of setting and worldbuilding that helps immerse players in the experience, and the themes start to get reinforced here. The importance of belief is a central theme in the setting, but the hints of it are seeded when Mourns-For-Trees asks you to believe in them and for you to get your companions to believe in them too, and it pays off when you get enough of your party members to believe in it by dispensing XP as a quest reward. Far before finding out that learning your name is a central part of the game, the Crier of Es-Annon worries about the loss of the name, and the Nameless One can help by getting the name recorded on a tombstone, freeing the Crier to pursue a new life. By being mindful of the central themes, the writers could seed the themes through the game early, to get the player to think about them before revealing how important they were all along.

The factions are one of the best ways that the worldbuilding of the setting reinforces the central aspects of the character and the quest and how that enriches it. The factions are great on their own, because they explicitly deal with the meaning of life and existence which are important philosophical concepts, and are difficult to reach in a setting of infinite possibility like Planescape. One of the central themes in the setting is called the “Center of All.” Since the planes are infinite, nothing can be proven to be the center, so the center is where you are right now. In a game with that as a setting, it’s no wonder that the quest is a deeply moody and introspective one. It would seem counter-intuitive, Planescape is literally infinite which means you can do whatever you want, but that makes the most sense when evaluated under the “Center of All,” the journey of the self is the journey of the planes and vice versa, and the factional understanding of existence is mirrored within as the player and the character have to rationalize existence as best they can. The arc words of “what can change the nature of a man” take on weight when evaluated under the Center of All. Since changing a man’s nature means changing the center of the planes, the question asks what is so powerful that it changes reality, and it’s these beliefs, underlining its importance.

The factions that you can join represents an element of the Nameless One’s past and/or his journey. The Sensates are the clearest example, since The Nameless One has been a Sensate before, and the unique circumstances of him constantly being reborn but forgetting means that he probably has one of the most experiences in the multiverse, combining an immortal lifespan with a mortal’s curiosity and subjective perspective. The Sensates are true empiricists, they believe that once someone experiences everything that they will achieve enlightenment, but despite all that the Nameless One experiences, the amnesia he has on death means he loses them, and so he never reaches it. The Believers of the Source believe that life is a trial and that it must be overcome to ascend, and indeed, the Nameless One is caught in a trial that he must constantly struggle toward completing, in a meta sense that’s the game itself. The Dustmen believe that death is false and purging yourself of passions is necessary to reach a nirvana-like state of True Death, and for the Nameless One death is indeed false and he seeks a way to end that state. The Independent League states that the factions are delusional and need to be overcome, and indeed, to complete the game you need to use at least two factions to get the tools you need to reach the endgoal. The Chaosmen are the hardest one to pin down, because alignment is determined by your actions and you can be lawful instead of chaotic, but the state of the Nameless One is a transgression against the natural laws that the Chaosmen struggle against. 

As you adventure though, you start learning about how the Nameless One’s past incarnations effected the world, and often for ill. You learn that your past selves have been some of the worst people that the multiverse had the misfortune of experiencing. The Practical Incarnation is the most infamous of these, and he is a man utterly driven by self-serving utilitarianism. Other people are nothing to the Practical Incarnation except as tools, and he uses and discards them as if they were mere objects without thoughts or feelings, friends and enemies alike. When he found that Dak’kon possessed a zerth blade, he resolved to bring it under his control. The Practical Incarnation found Dak’kon broken and adrift, where a crisis of faith weakened the walls of the githzerai capital and sanctity Shra'kt'lor, as the walls were forged of belief and in Dak’kon moment of doubt the real walls crumbled. The Practical Incarnation took this broken man and devised an elaborate ruse to get Dak’kon to come to the conclusion that he wanted to so that he would be useful. A deeply personal moment of faith was taken and manipulated as if it were nothing more than puzzle pieces that needed to be put together. Another incarnation, the Paranoid Incarnation, awoke confused as angry ghost and shadows leaped out at him, leaving him incapable of trusting anyone. He learned the most obscure language in the world and then murdered its only other practitioner just so he would be the only one to know his thoughts. Another incarnation found a sick enlightenment in torture and suffering and taught a wizard this path to power, torturing him so that he might learn power, and after that incarnation was gone, that wizard became that same conception of power, revisiting the crimes of the Nameless One on other potential seekers of knowledge. In an excellent scene, you can see when you lured Deionarra, the ghost from the Mortuary, to her death, and in a brilliant moment of writing, you experience both sides of it. You experience Deionarra’s love for you, and you feel your hatred of her. Not only do you experience your own act of cruelty but you explicitly feel the pain of what you were betraying. In Planescape under the Center of All, this deeply personal act of betrayal has much meaning because of how much it meant to Deionarra as she is the Center of All. The infinite planes may experience an infinite such betrayals, but this one had meaning to her, and through her experiences, to you.

The symbol of Torment on the Nameless One’s arm acts as a metaphorical beacon for the broken to drift to him, and plenty of the broken are the way they are because the Nameless One broke them. The more crimes you learn, the more the discomfort grows. You did not do those things, the Nameless One awoke as a blank slate and you the player never did them, but they were done in the past and the hurts are still there. Will the player address them in this new incarnation? Will he feel bound by them and try to rectify them? Do you try to rectify them because it’s the right thing to do? Do you give up knowing that the next incarnation might do them again? Or do you take the lesson from them that this is what you have to do to escape, and thus continue betrayal after betrayal? As is common in an RPG, the chioce is yours. Unlike most RPG paths, the evil path is not considered the opposite of a binary choice, and the most evil you do is not stock Evil Overlord type stuff but rather deeply personal betrayals. You can betray Morte and shove in back into the Pillar of Skulls, you can sacrifice Annah and/or Fall-From-Grace to them for knowledge, you can sell your companions into slavery, you can give the Modron Cube to Coaxmetal for a powerful weapon of entropy while letting him roam free to destroy everything, you can lie to Deionarra one more time, leading her love to you along one final time to squeeze out just a little more usefulness out of her.

It’s also reinforced in the mechanics of the game. As mentioned before, the game treats death as an inconvenience, but not something to be undone. The Nameless One simply gets back up again. It’s an easy thing to do, and then you discover later through the game after you’ve already died the true and terrifying cost. Every time you die, someone in a Prime Material plane somewhere dies and you pay for your new life with theirs. The reveal of it hits hard if you’ve gone through the game dying without thinking. That Sensate who didn’t want to murder someone but wanted the experience, so they offered to kill you because they thought there were no consequences. There was for you and her both, she paid you to kill someone and you took those coins without thought, but there were true and dramatic consequences. There always are, just as you learn through the game that your past incarnations’ efforts to learn had consequences from Ignus’s mania to the Practical Incarnation’s betrayals, the player ignoring the deaths mattered, and will continue to matter. You had been killing people, snuffing out lives and leaving heartache for countless souls on the Prime Material. Those who died ended up becoming horrible shadows, condemned to a terrible fate, just so you could have a bit easier of a time at it all. You had infinite time to fix everything, someone else just paid the price.

Much later, you find out that even all of that paled in comparison to what you had done previously. You committed great crimes, and to avoid punishment you sought out Ravel Puzzlewell. Using her powerful magic, she separated you from your mortality, and thus the Nameless One’s First Incarnation was supposed to be freed of the cosmic consequences, but it didn’t turn out that way. Since you forget what you did, the goal of making up for the crimes ended up being impossible since the Nameless One could not even know what it was that he did. His pursuit of freedom left him instead chained, chained to an amnesiac body that slowly becomes more and more scarred as his travels literally turns him into a walking mass of scar tissue. Scars are often used in literature to signify a remnant of a past pain, and that the Nameless One is nothing but scars from head to toe shows that he is inexorably trapped by the past even if he can’t remember it. What he has gone through show him to be not a person so much as a collection of past regrets. This is reinforced through the ending, where the finale takes place in a fortress literally forged by the regrets of your past, and since you have had so many lives and so much regret, they become a literal manifestation of your final journey. The monster at the center is the Transcendent One, the monster of your own mortality attempting to stop you from reaching this place and ending its own existence.

Yet, the Nameless One isn’t doomed. Ravel’s magics are weakening to the point where he doesn’t forget anything, either in the momentary flashes of insight that come up or in that the player remembers everything that happens when the Nameless One dies instead of starting over again. Similarly, the Transcendent One is weakening to the point where he can’t leave the Fortress of Regrets and has been for a while, making the journey possible instead of having him snuff you out like a candle. And during this journey, the Nameless One can make up for the things he did. He can go through the Practical Incarnation’s fake Unbroken Circle of Zerthimon and reveal its deception to Dak’kon, allowing him to come to his own resolution. He can apologize to Deionarra for what he did and allow her grieving father access to her room at the Sensate’s to give him some peace. He can apologize to the linguist that the Paranoid Incarnation murdered and learn the same language, not out of paranoia, but compassion. You can visit that compassion to the Paranoid Incarnation, showing that you are not an enemy, giving empathy to his plight of living in a confusing world where everyone wanted to kill him, and let him absorb into you so he no longer has that terrible burden. And at the very end of the game, you can learn about the First Incarnation, and you can complete yourself by learning your name, an act that gives you a whopping 2 million experience points, far more than anything else in the game, if you kept the Bronze Sphere MacGuffin and allow the memories of it to become with you again.

When that happens, the Nameless One is truly complete and nothing more can stop him. The finale has great ways to resolve itself. The arc words “what can change the nature of a man” can be posed to your lost mortality. A static thing since it was ripped from you, it retorts that nothing can change the nature of a man, but the Nameless One’s journey can already show that such a thing cannot be true, because the planes were shaped by belief, the Center of All shows that the centrality of belief is paramount, and so belief is the thing that changes the nature of a world and of a man, and that both are the same thing. Even stronger, by knowing your own name you show that you are completely dominant over this monster of your own mortality. You can force it to merge with you, force you and it to stop existing, and even its neverending hatred of you cannot stop your will. The Nameless One can end the blight of their existence that continually saps the lives of others, and fix one of the greatest cosmic wrongs to ever stain the multiverse and a man both, the Center of All demonstrates that both are equally as important. And so even an eternal punishment in the Blood War is not as bad as what was, and the Nameless One moves forward, free of what came behind and capable of making his own path.

Why is the game considered one of the best written games of all time? Because I wrote that much about it and barely touched any of it. I didn’t even discuss the companions or the major characters like Ravel or Trias. There’s so much to say about Planescape: Torment because there is so much there. 

If anyone is interested in essays on other parts or components of the game, let me know.

Thanks for the question, Messanger.

SomethingLikeALawyer, Hand of the King