our-baby-recipes-blog

[socvinc]

I have been. BALDURING. what a strange little collection of characters in this game! I especially love the dynamic trio, shadowheart astarion and lae'zel! I sure hope nothing bad happens to th

[feyascorner]

hey! I know you write strictly x reader works, but I can’t help but wonder what your tav looked like in game. I can only assume they’re a bard, but I’m sooo curious! care to post a screen cap? love your writing!

truth be told I have like 9 separate playthroughs,,, but here are my main three girls <3 buckle in because I love them so much

The first one (and my current main) is Kio! She’s a seldarine drow durge and she’s a bard! She’s what I think of when I write TFBU even though there aren’t any descriptions haha :) she’s very goody two shoes now that she’s lost her memories of being a Bhaalspawn, and astarion hates her for it during act 1 but they’ll grow on each other eventually 🫶 she’s more afraid of defying bhaal than reveling in blood but I haven’t decided if she actually succeeds in resisting the urge or not lol

The second (pink) is Lilac!! She’s a tiefling cleric of bhaal (it’s a mod) durge and she’s probably the most “evil” out of the three despite how she looks,,, act 1/2 she doesn’t like automatic violence but she uses her words to manipulate basically everything 😧 so at first glance she’s very kind and then two seconds later she’s gaslighting everyone 💀 she actually wipes out last light inn and isobel in act 2 for the slayer form so 😭 she’s going to redeem herself in the second half of act 2-act 3, while romancing gale :)

Last one is Carnage (ik it’s an emo name) who’s a Lolth-sworn drow durge and a paladin of vengeance. She’s a completely redeemed durge (and she didn’t wipe out anyone on the good side 😍) but she’s very snarky and has a sharp tongue,,,she also likes to attack at any chance she gets rather than talking things out so,,,,she’s working on it. Still, she’s the most upfront of the three and says whatever she’s thinking haha

So in conclusion I have never played as Tav and I won’t unless I finish my 900 other playthroughs❤️ THANK YOU SM FOR ASKING I LOVE ANY OPPORTUNITY TO TALK ABOUT THEM

[mosses-gate-3]

Introduce me to your OCs because ice been scrolling too long to find them and i wanna know im nosy 😭

OKOK so all the posts i've made with them are under #bg3 tav and #moss says things and they also have individual tags you can search too-- #salix, #reneeginald, #andis, #monty, and #cesair.

but i can do a formal introduction as well if you'd like :D (also tagging @haterofastarion as per request)

Andis is my first proper tav oc and probably the one I put the most of myself into. He's a spore circle druid whose body, due to a series of medical mishaps, is now being slowly overtaken and replaced by this magical fungus. Basically he's turning into a myconid but retaining all the cognitive function. (can you tell I really like body horror...) He's around 27 ish and has been living in Baldur's Gate for the past several years after having escaped from the lab that had been running experiments on him post-fungal encounter. Currently he works as a waiter and plays drums in a small local band. Despite all the medical trauma he's probably the most well-adjusted of all of them. He's in a polycule with Wyll and Karlach.

Salix is my beloved psychic damage bard. She's a siren who was kidnapped from her birthplace and raised by an elven noble. She was married off to a man named Lord Helrien who had a ring made to suppress her magic, basically keeping her as a decoration for entertainment in his court. After about sixty years of marriage, she snapped and killed him. She's currently on the run from both the Fist and Helrien's more illicit associates. None of this is to say she's a particularly good person-- she's mean, manipulative, deliberately cruel at times and pushes people away on purpose. I call her my Vicious Mockery bard for a reason lol. Her relationship with Astarion is very interesting because of this since they both need something from each other (protection) and feed off each other's worst energy in the process but I won't get super into it because there's A LOT of lore.

Ren or Reneeginald is a half-drow artificer who's most definitely being haunted. Their ghost's name is Juniper Stormaven and she's a long-dead pirate captain who's trying to convince Ren to resurrect her. Juniper's death, or in this case lack of one, is tied very closely to the disappearance of Ren's twin sister Marcella a few years before the start of the game. There is incredibly complicated lore for this and I have a whole companion quest written out for how these things play out as well as multiple AUs including a TMA one so I won't get super into it but that's the gist. Ren can come off as pragmatic and stony-faced, but they're deeply creative and enjoy creating and building beautiful things. They're romancing Gale (and I have a lot of notes on their romance but again I won't get into it).

Monty is my favorite (and only) Durge! He's a dragonborn and very much cowboy-themed, he's one of my favorite character archetypes of "hot roguish traveling fighter with an alcoholism problem and a deeply rooted anger and pain just past the happy-go-lucky mask." Prior to the events of the game, he wandered around, fighting in cages and tournaments to try and sate the Bhaalspawn bloodlust. This earned him the title of the Man Mal Fet, or the Ill-Made Man- Arthurian legend reference!! Monty's theory is that it's better to give in to the urges while he's conscious and can choose who to kill than to try to resist and end up killing indiscriminately. I have a companion quest written out in which he's not a Bhaalspawn but a normal guy who's been cursed and/or has entered a pact that forces him to kill a certain amount of people in order to retain his free will because I like making original backstories for my characters.

Cesair is the bard I made for my multiplayer runthrough with my beloved ex wife @doomedpuppetyuri . He's a lying, conniving little bitch, or at least he used to be. He grew up an orphan on the streets of Baldur's Gate and learned to play music to feed himself and his siblings. He was hired to become a jester in the court of an evil king. For years he was in love with his new boss, but something horrible happened and he was exiled forever. Now he's attempting to be a good person out of spite for his ex. This is also why he doesn't listen to the Emperor; in any other circumstances he'd love to consume the tadpoles but his dream guardian looks too much like the evil king so he refuses to listen to them.

[mmmm-bitch]

When Baldur's Gate 3 came out I knew nothing about it. My roommate bought it for me the second week it was out so he had someone to play with. I quickly fell in love with the game, the only knowledge I had going in was what the character creator looked like. My roommate stopped playing while we were in act 1 and we never finished our campaign. So I started many campaigns on my own, learning the mechanics of the game and just exploring. I have completed act 1 and 2 so many times. I’m sure 500hrs are easily sunk into many save files that never made it to act 3. I started to mod it, not really changing game play but to add character customization. Finally I finished my first run with a tiefling bard, it was durge resist and i loved it. I decided I needed to make one tav for every romance-able option, each of those making it to act2.

I played consistently until about mid January where I started to deal with game burn out. I had a non-durge tav that finally made it to act 3 but act 3 burn out got me hard. I’m the type of person that has to explore every inch of a map and complete every quest possible so you can imagine how much time i’ve sunk into just exploring in act 3. All I had left was rescuing the gondians and the final boss fight, but I ran out of steam and put the game down. I thought maybe playing an origin character would help me find love in the game again. So I started with Gale because he’s one of my favorites. But trudging through act 1 was even too much.

Through the entire time I played this game I was struggling hard with depression and cptsd. I wasn’t sure if it was my mental health causing the lack of interest from something I had loved so much. But I decided to just take a break, find something else for a bit.

Until this last week. I had the urge to play again, which shocked me. I tried to return to my last game in act 3 but the file was corrupted. So I decided to start a new Tav. This time around I decided I didn’t want to play the game with the “explore everything” mindset. I’ve decided i’m going to try and give my Tav a personality and stick to it, going places and doing things I think she would do. She’s a (former) Lolth Sworn Drow. I classed her as Rogue Wild magic sorcerer. And I began like I had so many times before.

This has caused me to enjoy the game like I had so many times before. I’m excited once again to play again. It’s given me the ability to make choices I wouldn’t have before, which has refreshed the game so much. I’ve contemplated making another page just to follow the story i’m slowly creating with this tav, but i’m unsure if i actually will. I don’t want to cause any pressure to the game and potentially make me avoid it again lol.

[holydivers]

talking about my tavs (and durge) because i can...2!

also game spoilers abound

riose. he/him, half-drow, necromancer warlock, acolyte backstory. one level in cleric of eilistraee for roleplaying

riose is a follower of eilistraee and a bleeding heart pacifist, which ties into his necromancy - he sees utilizing the dead, whose souls have since moved on, as a way to preserve the lives of the living by allowing them to replace living fighters in events where combat can't be avoided. he believes strongly in protecting life, no matter how questionable the person is, unless killing is absolutely necessary. which is how he immediately got killed by a mindflayer. and then again by a vampire a few nights later. honestly he's more of an accidental menace to the party than my actual selfish chaotic characters. oops!

his charisma is dogshit, so despite trying so desperately for pacifism he's accidentally caused way more conflict than most of my other tavs. he's really struggling out here. also only being half-drow means he doesn't get the inherent differential treatment characters like xun'e get, which bypasses goblin aggression, but people still give him shit for being half drow

his life fucking sucks

anyway i'm still working on his background - i want to give him a human parent and a drow parent in a way that's potentially actually interesting and not just some stupid or shitty bullshit, and thinking about how he eventually came to the church of eilistraee. i'm having trouble settling on anything, though, especially incorporating the necromancy thing - where does a good character generally even learn necromancy? i don't imagine there are necromantic books just sitting around, so i think a reformed villain parent would be fun...(make it the human parent contrasting to the actually pretty normal drow parent? could be funny)

but anyway everyone except for wyll and karlach hates him. he's off-putting and is trying really hard not to be That Guy but is having a difficult time not bringing up his religion constantly and wanting to pray for people. though it's almost circled around to being sort of endearing and at least he's useful as a ridiculously tall meat shield. with low strength bc he's a wizard

he's romancing wyll. also the church of eilistraee apparently do interpretative dance to their goddess every night so that's gonna be a cute little tie-in. like yes wyll he would LOVE to dance but maybe he's not used to your kind of dancing (he's got some dancing naked in the moonlight hippie shit bc that's how eilistraee is apparently)

on the other end of the spectrum is joy. they/them. some sort of tiefling idr, battle master fighter, haunted one background

so like as a durge they don't have much backstory aside from, y'know, the canon. i have another durge who resists the urge (but he's also pretty boring and has no personality <3 idk i'm not super inspired by durge since the amnesia and canon backstory feels rather restricting. i'll figure it out) but was like ok well i'll make one who indulges the urge and play for as long as i can stand it before being mean in a video game becomes too much for me

the out of universe reason for joy only resisting the urge is that even when doing my best to be mean i don't want to kill any of my companions. the in-universe reason is that they initially just really wanted to see someone turn into a mindflayer bc they thought it sounded cool as hell

though obviously they don't have much of a history of being friends or allies to people, they become rather enamored with having a posse and become very indulgent toward their allies. well, the allies who remained after they slaughtered the grove that is

while they do indulge the urge most times the dialogue options allow me to, they're not necessarily that evil outside of that - if the urge isn't particularly calling for blood they're weirdly capable of being relatively chill, though still an asshole. (they gave the prisoner in the goblin camp and healing potion and let him go. after torturing him a lot first for no reason, of course, but still)

hilariously shadowheart initially HATED them and told them they were only good as a meatshield. eventually she warmed up to them. somehow. lae'zel thinks they're too indulgent and chaotic but minthara thinks they're alright at least

though joy did become besties with astarion, joy was drawn towards gale, who talked a lot of shit when joy killed alfira but then sure was weirdly ok with it when joy thought about kissing him during their moment in the weave (honestly the kissing thought was mostly to avoid projecting the immediately obvious thoughts about dismemberment, and joy is trying not to threaten their friends! honest!)

and he didn't react to torturing that guy. and really didn't seem to mind joy biting another guy's toe straight off. and joy sees that dark streak of ambition and is delighted. and even after the slaughter at the grove, gale stays, and in the shadow-cursed lands he's even made comments about how attractive they look after a battle....they didn't even have to try to manipulate him or anything he's out here happily going down a corruption arc all by himself.

tbh i chickened out and initially decided that they'd resent sceleritas telling them what to do and have them not kill isobel but. well. i think i'm gonna go through and commit and get that slayer form. esp since jaheira kept fucking dying at moonrise no matter how hard i tried to keep her alive. we'll see if i have the willpower to have astarion and shart go down their bad character routes.

(i hate ascension but the dynamic of "exes but still friends" in the supervillain context is really funny. esp considering how dogshit astarion definitely would be at being a vampire lord. sorry no i'm not helping you take over baldur's gate we're not even an item anymore i'm too busy helping my boyfriend defy the gods or w/e he's doing <3 taking over baldur's gate is small potatoes. i'll still come over and we can disembowel ppl together if you want. make an afternoon out of it.)

in the end they'll probably reject bhaal? probably? again i feel like i maybe should just commit to going fully evil route but i kinda like the idea that they do save the city and everyone has to put up with this wretched piece of shit who no one likes being the hero and trying to install their flop boyfriend as the new god of magic or whatever.

joy sucks but i kinda love them it's just hilarious how terrible they are.