#torille etc

[amechyofsorts]

Ultrakill, Cruelty Squad and Fear & Hunger: all exemplary examples of of the “What the fuck is wrong with Finnish people” genre.

[lapdogmabari]

the most pedantic hill i will die on regarding dnd is "stop using demon to refer to all fiends, there's a difference." call asmodeus a demon and see where that gets you.

[y-rhywbeth2]

Lore: Dating, Marriage, Sex, etc

Part 1/2

Link: Disclaimer regarding D&D "canon" & Index [tldr: D&D lore is a giant conflicting mess. Larian's lore is also a conflicting mess. There's a lot of lore; I don't know everything. You learn to take what you want and leave the rest, etc etc etc]

DnD isn't exactly a dating sim, so most of this lore comes from mining Ed Greenwood's answers to questions, but since his answers are apparently canon unless and until contradicted in published realmslore, here you go.

It's mostly in regards to human culture (and the Heartlands, Waterdeep etc at that) but I'll throw in some demihuman stuff here and there.

So sexuality, and the norms and moral values Torilians build around it: More tolerant and kinkier than Earth, for the most part, and still not a perfect bed of roses. (You won’t face legal oppression; you can get called slurs.)

Attitudes in the Realms

Dating

Sex (and a bit about contraception and conception)

Sexual Orientation

Polyamory

Cut for space and expected in the follow up: marriage, sex work, religion, and the absolutely deranged shit going on in some noble families.

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Attitudes about relationships in the Realms

The long and short of it is that the root of Toril’s mainstream attitude towards sex and relationships draws from the sexual revolution of the ‘60s and ‘70s.

Cultural variations on and subversions of these norms occur, but the rule of thumb, especially as it applies to the video games is as follows:

Sex is not a terribly big deal nor innately taboo; pseudo-puritan attitudes are solely the province of some old high priests on a few religions in a minority of a minority. Virginity and the loss thereof is meaningless unless you're nobility.

Pretty much anything is legal so long as all parties involved are capable of giving and gave consent on most of the planet (though legal isn’t the same as ‘approved of’).

Of course TSR, and later WotC, fell very much on the side of ‘we can’t publish that!’ So it got massively obscured. It only really came through now and again, usually in sly little hints that could get past the radar/editors, becoming more obvious with 4e and 5e (Although Sune and Sharess were flat out stated even back in 2e to ignore gender when they’re in the mood to seduce mortals, and we'd already had Mystra saying that gender is basically just a costume for gods (which Mask illustrates.))

The Realms itself still has bigotry to go around, of course, but generally it's the clergy of a select few gods and the nobles who'll make a fuss about such things, and the latter only in regards to their own social circles and inheritance shenanigans. A traveling merchant who encounters a culture that practices forms of relationships he personally disproves of was probably raised to be polite and keep the slurs unsaid; diversity encourages trade, offending your neighbours does not.

What is and isn’t morally acceptable to an individual is determined by church doctrine and dogma (which determines many of life’s aspects, including love and sex and what's good or bad (chastity vs promiscuity, monogamy vs polygamy, whether procreation is mandated or not or even a sin, if loving people instead of despising them is a sin or not, and what acts are taboo))... and all that as interpreted by the local priests, who may not agree with their fellows’ interpretations. Some gods declare chastity a sin and want you to engage in as many romantic and/or sexual relationships with as many different people in as many different ways as humanly possible. Loviatar mandates BDSM and Ilmater doesn't frown on it either.

Most deities probably aren't going to discriminate. Gods see the universe in terms of their portfolio: what aids it is good what opposes it is bad. Most portfolios aren't terribly impacted by mortal love lives and hormones so I suspect the vast majority of gods could not care less, and, as per Faiths and Avatars, the gods 'generally try to be as liberal as possible to try and attract as much worship as they can.'

With Toril being polytheistic all of these gods are due respect and conflicting dogmas are just a fact of life. Several times a day a person is likely to be confronted with a choice – usually a minor one – where one action will serve some gods and be a sin in the eyes of others, and the rule of thumb is that everybody accepts you can’t please all of them all the time. You live according to the gods you favour above all others and respect the faiths of those you don’t: you expect that people will mind their own business and do them the same courtesy.

In the majority of the realms, including the cities and realms of the Heartlands, Silverymoon, Waterdeep and etc, at least, people are open minded and tolerant. A rule of thumb is that cities are more liberal and rural areas more conservative, but even then their norms and values don’t necessarily match the modern earth norms that might spring to mind; the nuclear family unit is not necessarily seen as default and polyamory is very common in some villages.

Largely, there’s not a whole lot of emphasis put on identifying your sexuality or making it a big part of who you are: most Torilians wouldn’t understand the point of drawing attention to sexuality outside of occasions where it’s actually relevant. If you were visiting Baldur's Gate and pointed out two men getting married at the temple of Tymora the people around you would be utterly confused about why you felt the need to single out the gender of the couple.

‘Individuals may find [queer relationships] too much for themselves to handle, but the laws and general attitudes of society don’t frown on it.’

You may have to ‘pick your neighbours and friends’ to live comfortably, but that’s significantly easier to do on Toril than Earth especially because you should have no reason to worry about persecution or discrimination under the law for deviating from whatever moral code a particular priest might be espousing.

Bastard children and wedlock don't cause a fuss so long as you're not a highborn (or found to have cheated on your partner, one assumes).

Contraception is widely available and family planning is emphasised; you are firmly encouraged to use it in a dangerous world where famines and disasters mundane and supernatural mean babies at the wrong times can lessen the chances of survival (for you and them).

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Dating

Somebody who catches your eye is 'glim,' as in 'oh no he's hot' or 'she's well fit' or whatever. A Torilian who's very attractive is 'right glim.' As in they're 'glimmering.'

A term for a pair of lovers is 'brightbirds.'

Your 'fancyman,' 'fancylad,' or 'fancylass' is what your disapproving relatives will call your lover that you insist on seeing for reasons that escape them.

Waterdhavians call the target of their affections their 'rose,' which may get confusing as in other dialects a 'rose' is the slang term for a submissive woman in a Dom/sub relationship.

Red and black are considered the erotic/'sexy' colours. Garments featuring black lace and leather in particular.

Many priests, curiously, seem to find potential partners more attractive if they get a tattoo of their deity's holy symbol.

You can advertise your interest by wearing an artificial rose pinned to one shoulder: red signals that you're looking for a long-term romantic partner and black shows you're looking for sex. If the rose is made of steel then it indicates you're looking for a partner of the same gender. Wearing multiple roses indicates you're looking for multiple partners, but you might expect some raised eyebrows or comments if people think you're being overconfident. It's very rare to see women doing this looking for men, since it's thought of as a 'man thing' (wlw doing this to seek each other out apparently don't count to said men).

Sunites, as devotees of the goddess of love and beauty, are available for matchmaking services, advice and make overs.

Dancing - especially erotic dancing - is a large part of courtship trends across the cultural board. Which might tie in to the fact that all the goddesses of lust and love - Sharess/Zandilar, Sharindlar, Sune, Sheela Peryroyl, and to a certain extent, Lliira - are dancers or have dancing as a thing within their faith. Lliiran clergy give dancing lessons, and Sharessans and Sunites probably don't mind teaching either.

The only description of what a one might wear if one is feminine and wants to dress up and look fancy in human culture - the equivalent of a 'little black dress' - is a simple black gown with a high collar and plunging neckline in the front (the latter of which is optional). It's matched with a sash and boots and some small jewellery. If you want to 'dress down' the gown is pinned open to expose either bare skin or the underlying chemise (if you're going for a 'classy' look it'll be lacy and white).

Dwarven courtship involves a slow exchange of crafts made by ones own hand (this can be tools or physical artwork or things like poems and songs, the point is to illustrate your skill and the care you put in). You send it to the dwarf you're interested in, and hopefully they respond in kind. You then spend years doing this and slowly getting to know each other, eventually moving in and seeing if you can settle into something that can last past the initial spark before tying the knot.

Elven courtship apparently involves poetry, songs, and yet more erotic dances.

Drow have courting games called 'spider hunts' usually played at festivals by young drow, which are basically hide-and-seek.

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Sex (and a bit on procreation)

You can't just fuck somebody right in the market square, but borderline public sex hidden on a rooftop, or ducking into an empty alleyway is pretty common and tolerated behaviour. You are, however, encouraged to keep your shenanigans off the streets lest you 'scare the horses,' take yourselves home or to the nearest festhall/brothel, and keep your 'public displays' limited to appropriate festivals (Greengrass, for example, which is a fertility festival and usually involves dropping all inhibitions for the day).

Lingerie comes in black and red and lace clouts (underwear) and dethmas (bras) which can be readily bought in most cities. Lace-up boneless corsets and shapewear are available as unisex garments.

Sex toys named as existing include whips, dildos, clamps and 'tingling creams.'

I've heard something about halfling orgies, but have found no details beyond 'exotic food.'

And in the Realms you're more likely to say 'rutting' rather than 'fucking' when being vulgar/casual about sex. Unlike 'fuck' it doesn't seem to double as a curse.

If you're considering bedding a priests be warned that as gods are said to derive power from having their name said aloud priests tend to call their gods name in bed. Fervently. The enthusiasm and emotion behind it is supposed to have a positive effect.

Elven foreplay involves sensory deprivation and ear nibbling.

Contraception, as mentioned, is stressed upon. People are concerned about plagues, famines, monsters and other concerns that lead Faerûnians to place a lot of importance on family planning. Contraception is generally delivered via divine magic - a cleric or druid can render you temporarily barren/sterile, guarantee conception or freeze a pregnancy at its earliest and least detrimental stages to be resumed at a safe date. People can ensure that their children will be born in times when it's best for them to be born. Elves have apparently mastered birth control, and it's basically impossible to get a child from an elf when they don't want one.

You can also ask the gods nicely and if you make sufficient offerings the deity can also rearrange your organs a bit to change the way you procreate (or possibly allow you both methods). Generally people will ask the deity they have the most positive relationship with, but Sune and Lliira are the favoured choices in the pantheon. Of the gods not recommended are Bane, Shar, Malar (whose idea of the perfect transformation is lycanthropy) and Selûne (who gladly supports you, but she's considered too mercurial and everchanging. She's not one transition she's eternal, ever shifting transition beyond the human physical endurance or mental comprehension.)

Arcane magic can manage physical modification via transmutation and glamours, which people often play with either as part of exploring their gender identity or just for fun, but transmutation via divine magic is vastly superior at allowing you to be fertile after the change if that's a goal. Arcane magic struggles with that. Arcane magic that allows for surrogacy and sort of IVF apparently exists, having been invented by a pair of liches that wanted a child for whatever reason, but I don't know how commonplace that is.

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Sexual Orientation

Most people freely experiment in their youth, working out their preferences. Heterosexuality is the default, with bisexuality making up a sizeable second place and other sexualities constituting a fairly sized but unremarkable minority.

Obviously, the Isle of Lesbos does not exist and so neither does the world ‘lesbian’; Toril doesn’t have Earth’s terminology, it has its own words. It should be noted that some can be used in a derogatory fashion, although, considering reality, they could very well be reclaimed or have been stolen terminology twisted into slurs. The given terms, in Common, are:

Thruss - Lesbian Liyan - Gay man (elvish slang loanword) Praed - Gay man (gnomish slang loanword) Tasmar - Bisexual (masc.) Shaeda - Bisexual (fem.) (elvish slang loanword) 'No-thorn' - Asexual

Butches (‘harnor’) and effeminate mlm (‘dathna’) are liable to get scorn for their gender presentation more or rather than their sexuality.

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Polyamory

In some lands (unspecified which ones) it's unremarkable and even expected for a relationship to be open by default.

While obviously it's not socially acceptable to jump into anybody's bed with no consideration of your partner's feelings on the matter, it's not a foreign idea to see love and lust as separate concepts.

In rural areas one can find villages that definitely don't follow the nuclear family model with mixed families living under one roof, and symbolic polygamous marriages may factor into the traditions of some seasonal festivals. For example in Turmishan a farmstead is traditionally inhabited by a family consisting of four married people, usually two men and two women.

[thelongestway]

hey no shade but you know dungeon meshi isn't actually based off dnd right? there are definitely some overlapping concepts and it can be fun to analyze it through a dnd lens but really it's its own homebrew fantasy setting. just checking bc i nearly got in an argument w someone over dungeon meshi lore the other day only to realize it was because they were trying to apply dnd lore to it ahahaa

Oh yeah, absolutely, it's its own thing. You don't even have to go far to show how it's its own thing: for one, the whole set-up with the dungeons being what they are isn't found anywhere else in D&D-inspired material that I know. You could maybe reflavor Halaster's Undermountain to something like the Dungeon Meshi dungeons, but that would be another layer of homebrew. That said, I do have the feeling that Ryoko Kui grew up on the same kind of D&D material that I did - stuff like Elminster's Ecologies, or old school Greyhawk materials. Her story genuinely feels like an AD&D game run by an old-school DM, maybe even earlier in the editions (hi, Chilchuck and "I'm a rogue, I'm not gonna fight"!). I don't mean that she follows D&D canon in any meaningful sense--her stuff isn't set in Greyhawk, nor on Abeir-Toril, nor on Krynn, etc. But I do think she's someone who's inspired by old school stuff, even as she makes her work thoroughly her own.

An acquaintance of mine once wrote that long tabletop games gain a quality that she called "being well-trod". This is when the players and DM are so familiar with the world they live in that it becomes, well, lived-in. They don't need to look up rules anymore to extrapolate: they understand the logic of the setting, and they get the same kind of intuitive feel for the world that we do when living in our own world, in real life. A feeling of where the boundaries lie, and how things work.

This is how I feel about Dungeon Meshi and D&D. It feels like a work written by someone who walked the same paths that I did, and whose work is therefore both new and startlingly familiar. That's it in a nutshell, but then I also wrote a bunch of examples, which got very long, so cut for length and spoilers!

I wrote somewhere in the tags on my Dungeon Meshi posts that it's incredibly surreal reading a story that seems to be informed by the exact materials that you base your own homebrew games on. Kui takes her work in a wholly different direction than I did - but the disparate elements of the story would fit in like a glove, because they're based on similar logic. I could quite literally take any of the ecologies elements of Dungeon Meshi and put them into a given module I'm running, and it would need less adaptation than 5e material. And most of the cultural/racial elements of Dungeon Meshi? That, too. Where it's not a one for one match, it would so easily be explainable by "different continent".

Let's take the example you're probably here from: the Canaries and elves in general, and let's take elves in general first. In D&D, there's been a switch in models of elven aging throughout the years: from "they are literal babies up until 60-ish, and then have 40 years of actual adolescence" to "yeah they grow to full adult size at about the same speed as the other races, and are then just culturally considered too young to make their own decisions". I am decidedly not a fan of the second model - I think it takes away from the cool biologies early D&D thrived on. BG3's treatment of Astarion's age of death, for instance, keeps throwing me. Yeah, I get it: it fits in with the edition they're working off, but I hate it. That's not how things work on our Faerun! But then we get to Marcille's backstory, and we see that she has the problems old school half-elves did, and you're like "oh, well of course someone invested in weird cool biology as an author would interpret elves like that." Her treatment of age makes sense to me. She makes the races as alien as possible, and hits that vibe of "D&D-style fantasy is its own thing, with its own set of rules" that I love. In contrast, and unlike any prototypes I know, Kui takes her half-foots in a different direction! They don't live longer than tall-men, they live shorter lives, closer to goblinoids. And I think it's for the same reason: because it's that much cooler to have different experiences of life in humanoid races. This is decidedly Not D&D, but it would absolutely fit into that vein.

With smaller details, I keep joking around here that the Canaries are grey elves, and of course they're not. But then Kui keeps putting in these tiny little details - which can be either nods to existing material, or the same extrapolations that other authors drawing upon high fantasy tropes have made. The white ships that have travelled all the way from Tolkien's Valinor to Evermeet and now to Shima. The fact that the Canaries have basically the right color scheme for grey elves threw me completely: I was not expecting that! Elves being that specific brand of destructive that they are - jeez, the Canaries would be right at home in Myth Drannor, or during the Crown Wars. So I joke around about these specific dolts a lot, and I am having an inordinate amount of fun seeing if my predictions that come from running a Myth Drannor game for a good long while now come true. And it goes on. Marcille doesn't prepare spells, and the magic here is obviously not Vancian. But Mithrun's teleport shenanigans are literally stuff I've done in games. The differences between races in D&D aren't because of wishes made by mortals; they're built in by gods for their own purposes. But the towns that spring up around anomalous spots and that have to deal with the weirdness have the same vibe. Kui draws on a more extensive tradition than just D&D, of course, but she transforms the tradition in a very similar way to old D&D. Of course the elves' magic in Kui's work does weird and creepy stuff with soulbinding and immortality; that's been their dark side since Tolkien and Celebrimbor's work with Annatar, and then it turned into stuff like elves regularly sacrificing their lives in high magic rituals in Faerun. Of course Senshi's backstory is about the dwarves that have dug too deep - but they are, of course, distinct from gnomes, and the gnomes are a peculiar and interesting breed of arcana specialists. Of course Chilchuck is a Burglar - but he works on dungeon delving unions, of all things! It's a familiar transformation, so the world makes sense to me, and I love it. So yeah. Tl;dr: not D&D ofc, but the vibe is there, and I am having fun with it.

Also - can you tell me about the argument? I am super curious, and I wonder if the person you were arguing with was working from 5e material.

[themadlu]

Astarion's Star Elf Background Headcanons

In collaboration with the lovely @spacebarbarianweird!

A bit of a less popular take on Astarion’s background headcanons—I know it is generally accepted that he is originally a moon elf from the Faerunian upper class, but, between in-game trivia and developing my own stories, a different idea came up. 

I’ll outline why I think the Star Elf headcanon fits the sassy elf, and how it plays into his storyline.

Obviously, this is all done for the shits and giggles, so every headcanon is valid, and I’d love to hear about different takes on Astarion’s origins!

Race: Star Elves

Star Elves, or Ruar-tel-quessir, have only recently returned to Faerun due to repeated attacks by an extra-planar entity on their home-realm of Sildëyuir. 

Because of their prolonged absence and reclusive communities, Star Elves are not familiar with most of Toril’s customs and history. In Sildëyuir, they had no contact with most other species (such as humans, dwarves, halflings, gnomes, etc.), and they prefer to keep to themselves once in Faerun too. 

They are particularly wary of humans, as their misuse of magic and warmongering tendencies were what caused Star Elves to flee Toril in the first place. 

They consider themselves better than most other races, only getting along with other elves. They fear for Moon Elves and half-elves who mix with other species, and they consider them overly-generous and too naive. 

As such, Star Elves tend to come across as aloof and cautious. (I know this may not sound like Astarion at all, but bear with me).

Their moral alignment is purely chaotic, with a majority of them being in the chaotic good or neutral categories. 

Physically, Star Elves share some traits with their fellow Moon Elves: light skin (check) and gold, red or silver (check) hair. 

However, Star Elves have grey or violet-coloured eyes with gold flecks in them (imagine an Astarion with violet eyes!).

Star Elves are also taller than other elves, standing between 5½ to 6 ft tall, with a slender build.

They are also considered extremely beautiful by human standards, much more so than any other type of elf. 

Astarion’s Background as a Star Elf:

Right, let’s talk about objective things first: physicality. 

Astarion fits the Star Elf type quite well: 

He has silver hair, light skin (given he is still the palest of the bunch even after he is well fed).

He fits the height range at 5 ft 9.

He has a slender body (a bit too built for an elf, but that is likely Larian knowing what sells),

Most importantly, he is strikingly handsome. Exceedingly so, more than most other elves in the game. 

As there is no confirmation about pre-vampirism eye colour, in my head he used to have violet eyes. I think that would have made him stand out in Baldurian society even more. 

Which gets me to the more subjective part of personality and backstory. 

Aloof and cautious may not be the first qualities that come to mind thinking of Mr Sass, but work with me. 

Someone aloof is not overly friendly, being cool and distant instead. Is Astarion friendly? I mean, genuinely friendly to people, and not forcing himself to look eager because he is forced to do so by Cazador or by circumstances? 

He threatens Tav as soon as they meet, is snarky with everyone else for a good portion of Act 1 (and with some even during Act 2 and 3), and at the end of game party he keeps mostly to himself.

Ultimately, Tav is the only one he seems comfortable enough to be open and friendly with, and that requires a lot of trust, care and work (especially for good-aligned Tavs). 

As for the cautious side, he is a bloodthirsty little shit who loves a good fight, but he doesn’t strike me as someone who would throw himself into desperate situations (without proper compensation at least). 

He disapproves of Tav doing things for free or forcing him into situations where the risks are too great, often stating that ignoring those needing help is the easiest thing, they just need to ‘look away and keep walking’. 

His inherent racism towards other races (ehem, gnomes) can be a result of spending his early years in a very secluded environment.

He presents himself as someone loving life luxuries, but I think that's his Baldur's Gate, more constructed persona. He seems just as happy to fondle about in the dirt TWICE, despite claiming he is not used to it. Maybe he's not as upper class as he wants to appear.

Granted, these traits may be a result of him being a glorified sex slave subject to unimaginable torture for 200 years, but I think his need to be have the upper hand in power dynamics existed before his undeath too.

The chaotic nature is evident, and I headcanon he starts off as chaotic neutral, starts leaning into the evil side as he gets corrupted by power first and by abuse after, then he can either get back to chaotic neutral with a good-aligned companion or become fully chaotic evil as the Ascendant. 

And this leads me to the actual backstory.

Astarion’s Backstory:

Larian originally set Astarion out to be a noble, then changed his background to charlatan and, in some lost character sheet, courtesan (fancy type of prostitute). I’ll stick with the final charlatan/courtesan version. 

Astarion was born somewhere in Faerun in a community of Star Elves. 

His family was of poor background, having fallen out with the leaders of the enclave.

That, paired with the isolation of the community, prompted Astarion to leave his home in his early 20s, slightly earlier than usual for elves. 

He wanted more from life than being stuck in a reclusive society and being looked down upon from others. He wanted to live a comfortable existence, be wealthy, be admired, and to achieve that he needed one thing: power. 

He headed to Baldur’s Gate (convincing fellow travellers to let him on their carts, horses, etc.) with nothing more than the clothes on his person, attracted by its reputation as a multicultural hub brimming with opportunities. He did forge some documents proving he already had some basic qualification to enter law school (not sure reclusive elves issue any), completed his studies and started a career as magistrate. 

During this time, he quickly realised how his looks were one of his biggest strengths in forging alliances. He had been complimented before, but most Star Elves are beautiful, so he was not as universally admired as he was in Baldur’s Gate. He used and abused this knowledge, flirting with individuals from many other races (gnomes aside, he has standards) and genders, enjoying the perks his smooth persona got him (money, status, promotions) and revelling in the adulation of his admirers.

He became even more power hungry, signing laws because they would benefit him or his upper class acquaintances rather than the general population. He was ready to do anything to achieve his goals. 

It was in one of the many soirees he attended that he came across Cazador (or rather, Cazador noticed him). The Vampire Lord saw an astonishingly handsome, young and inexperienced elf who could work most people around his manicured slim fingers and immediately singled him out. Studied him. I don’t think he introduced himself before turning him; rather, he gathered information about him via his connections and learned he was an up and coming magistrate, an outsider, conveniently with no family or stable relationships who would miss him or go look for him should he disappear. 

We know Cazador is a machiavellian villain, so he probably found a way to convince Astarion (through a bribe and pulling at his dislike of lower class vagrants) into signing a law forcibly evicting the Gur from the land they settled on, on the basis of it belonging to some patriar or noble and therefore their permanence being illegal. Cazador knew retaliation would be swift, and I bet he probably even had someone tell the Gur which magistrate had them kicked out. 

Cazador waited nearby while Astarion was being brutally assaulted, chasing off the Gur thugs to claim his prized future spawn. He didn’t need permission to bite Astarion and turn him, but he asked likely because he knew he would never turn down a chance at eternal life and because it would be another way to torment him later (‘Remember boy, I gave you the grace of my gift, you begged for it!’). Probably, Astarion’s last words as a living elf were, ‘Do…any…thing…please’. 

After becoming a spawn and suffering centuries of abuse, Astarion forgot about his past, himself and his family. He doesn’t even remember what type of elf he is (Moon or Star). His parents may still be alive, but with their life being secluded from the outside world, it is unlikely he will come across them in their lifetime.

[didalexiabreakupwitholgaisback]

hola amiga!

Do you think that in some way the Netflix series will impact, in a negative or positive way, the relationship between the players and the rfef?

holiii, anon! i honestly don't think it will change anything and will remain status quo. the reason i say that is because there will be nothing new that comes out in this 1.5 hr documentary that hasn't already been said behind closed doors and before a judge earlier this year. remember that jenni's trial starts next year and there will be a lot more damning testimony for multiple days in that setting. and half the participants in this documentary will be testifying as part of the rubiales/vilda case.

also, laia codina made comments in mundo deportivo that there will be different opinions as a part of the documentary, which makes me think it will not be as big an rfef pile on as we think it will. plus, the players that are most likely to say the most negative things about rfef (lola gallardo, mapi, etc.) are already being left out of the selection or are not participating in the documentary. 🤷‍♀️

i don't think mapi comes back while montse remains manager. so a staffing overhaul. and as long as players return to barça injured and broken, that's a huge no-go for mapi! ���‍♀️

yeah, i have no confidence in rfef managing anything with respect to goalkeeper rotation and we all know how important mental health is to the continued success of players, especially when they encounter difficulties like with their performances during the world cup and olympics.

as for toril, well a broken clock is right twice a day, so there you go. 🙃

[weaselandfriends]

caught up with When I Win. s’good!

Was curious about the etymology for the region names? E.g., I’m guessing from Jinjiao’s name he’s meant to be Chinese, so the Bohai region is roughly China? And Nyugen is a Vietnamese surname, so that region’s name (idr atm) is based on the same?

I’m a big fan of etymology so I was just wondering

Hope you’re well

Bohai is the name of the sea near Beijing, which is about where I imagine the region would be. Lachlan Nguyen's region, Giday, was named a bit differently, but refers to Australia. You legally can't get mad at me for that name because the canon name for Hawaii is Alola.

Aracely's region, Visia, is modeled on Los Angeles/Southern California, with Visia being a play on "visual" (a reference to Hollywood). Toril's region, Kylind, is Scandinavian. Toril herself, and all her Pokemon, specifically have Norwegian names.

Though most of these characters never appeared in the story, I did make a chart showing all 16 seeds in the tournament and their region:

My background is in geography, so I've always been fascinated by Pokemon's pseudo-mapping to the real world. I like Pokemon when it maps more strongly, and dislike it whenever the games make up something completely ridiculous that doesn't fit the real-world area at all. (In recent games, the very boring "need" to have one of every generic JRPG environment - volcano, desert, ice mountain, etc. - has led to a lot of this. Kanto has my favorite region design because of how clearly it maps to Tokyo's urban nature, with the mountainous areas being kept to the fringes of the map.) Probably the most annoying aspect of newer Pokemon games is how it seems like all the research the devs did on the country they're adapting was done in a two-week tourist visit. Unova has it the worst, though, with almost no attempt to make it seem like NYC or even America beyond having a big city. So lame!

[sailorgundam308]

how is karlach coded as a person of color? genuine question

In terms of character design and representation: she has southeast Asian, even pacific islander (depending on the area ofc) features. Does that mean there are “asians” or “Europeans” in Toril? No. But visual representation of real groups is huge for people’s self validation. That said, southeast Asian peoples are a wide and varied group but they stand in contrast to the “white Asia” of Korea and Japan (and China to some extent), for example. The “white” Asia is rich, desirable, stylish, culturally relevant in the global stage - and their skin is whiter, to top it off. On the other hand, SEA is seen (not only in the west but ESPECIALLY in these rich Asian countries) as poor, underdeveloped, inconsequential - and darker skinned. No surprised there.

In Asia you might not have the concept of White as in White US Americans, because whiteness is a social construct that will change depending on the location and cultural/historical context. What US people understand as white and poc might differ from what other people in other countries understand it as. Still, in East Asia being literally lighter skinned is the desired beauty ideal and brings with it all the highly privileged misconceptions of “if you’re light skinned, you’re richer, more educated, more well behaved, more beautiful” and so on. SEA peoples have, in general, darker skin tones - therefore, they miss (to say the least) on these “advantageous pre-conceptions”. Also, even within certain SEA countries, being lighter than another is a desirable thing. There is an entire beauty industry here based on “whitening”. Literally making your skin look whiter, because that is more “beautiful and cleaner”. (In Japan, the amount of things you can get to cover your skin from the sun is not due to any cancer concerns, I guarantee you.)

Karlach, having features reminiscent to some SEA people, puts her in this dynamic. Not because this dynamic exists inside the BG3 world, but because the people with whom her character design (her face design at least) resonates are those same people who are seen as less than due to their geographic location and tone of their skin.

I also am under the impression that in some countries, Asian people are also commonly included in the “poc” umbrella, though I cannot be sure where this is true and even if that depends on “what Asia” you are from.

If you get into Forgotten Realms, and Toril lore, things get even more layered, because Karlach is a tiefling. And tieflings are discriminated against for their appearance - something that comes from their heritage and they have no control over. Tieflings are plane touched people, meaning their ascendancy is made of humans mixed with devils/cambions. Is basically because their blood has some devil blood in it that the “devil like” features like horns, tails, claws etc appear. Unlike the aasimar (who are the same but mixed with divine blood) who are accepted and seen as beautiful, the tieflings are discriminated against by most if not all populations in Toril. They are outcasts, often having to settle in marginalized/unfit areas and form their own communities due to the unwillingness of others to interact with them. There is something to be said about how the comments of “devil” towards a tiefling and some religions’ interpretation of indigenous peoples (or even black people) as being cursed or in cohorts with the devil. Aka, this shit is problematic.

You can have an insight on how bad this was in Baldur’s Gate city by a story Karlach tells. She says her mother died of an illness that would have been easily cured if treated early. But mom cliffgate was refused medical care because no physician in the city wanted to visit and help a tiefling family in the outer city. By the time one accepted to go and help, it was too late. The disease had advanced and could not be cured, and so Karlach’s mom died prematurely. I guess that illustrates very obviously the degree to which tieflings are marginalized and discriminated against in Toril. If that is not an analogy to the struggle of peoples of color in a generalized manner, I don’t know what is.

[dr1f7w00d]

the part that gets me about durgetash is the came back wrong/lost lenore combo

like. the dark urge and gortash, whether you see it as platonic or romantic, were undeniably important to each other (see prayer for forgiveness and scrapbook of letters). gortash doesn't care if you say your urges and connection to bhaal are gone. he still offers you a place beside him, as equals.

and then there's all the implications! you, the literal embodiment of murder, the vessel of bhaal, the bloody knife that he created to end all living things, wrote a whole ass prayer apologizing for not killing this one guy. saying sorry father i promise i'll kill him someday. but he's useful now. please don't be mad at me :(

the dark urge didn't want to kill gortash. that's what the prayer for forgiveness is about! that's why the dark urge is begging to be forgiven. because, for this one man, durge stayed their hand. if i recall correctly, there's a line from gortash about you always having control over your urges? which we know isn't really true. maybe it was true before the dark urge got their brain scrambled? or maybe the dark urge just never let gortash see how bad it was.

orin will call you a liar if you say you'd kill the one you love most if you had to. maybe because she knows you couldn't do it before?

and gortash, the chosen of bane, is supposed to rule over and subjugate everything. he doesn't have equals. but he saw one in the dark urge.

which brings me to the part that makes me so crazy. because you're his lost lenore! you're haunting his narrative! he thinks you're dead, and every day, he has to work with your killer. he has to see orin with your netherstone, that you and he stole from the hells together. he has to follow through on the plans you crafted together, without you. you, his closest confidant, probably the closest thing he has to a real friend, just disappeared off the face of toril. orin says she humiliated you. he has no reason to think you're still alive.

and then you crawl back to baldur's gate, an entire life forgotten, and, if you're playing resist!durge, trying to be a hero. depending on your choices, you can completely go against gortash. you can destroy everything he's created, everything he's worked for. (the iron throne, the foundry, etc.) you are not the person he once knew, you have no memory of your friendship, and you are going to kill him.

or! or! you side with him, and confront the nether brain together, and he fucking dies anyway! you can't save him. you definitely can't redeem him. the consequences of both of your actions will catch up with you eventually. and he always dies. by your own hand or by your actions.

either way, you're not the dark urge that gortash knew. you're not even an echo of your former self. you woke up on that beach a blank slate and created a new life for yourself out of nothing. (assuming you're a mostly good resist! durge) you found new people that you trust, that you care about, when before all you might've had was gortash. and how that must eat him up inside, seeing you again, seeing you surrounded by people that you care about. knowing that he's not part of your new life, and, if you fight him, never will be.

you're his lost lenore, and you came back wrong.

[dice-n-antlers]

Thinking about Astarion (because of course I am) and the spell True Resurrection.

There’s been some debate over the dates on his headstone and how long he’s been dead and how old he was when he died. The dates are listed kinda weird, but the general consensus is that he’s exactly at or just under 200 years (un)dead.

It is true that, as written, the creature must be dead “no longer than 200 years” for the spell to work.

However.

I think you can argue that in Astarion’s case (and for vampires in general) that it doesn’t matter.

Of course, to work within the confines of the game, the spell has to be written with specific rules and limits. However, rules can be bent and in a tabletop setting, this would be up to DM discretion. As you can see in the spell description, the soul of the creature must also be free and willing to return to life and their body must not have died of old age. So, why the 200-year restriction? To answer that question, let’s talk about souls in the Forgotten Realms.

In general, when an ensouled creature dies, the soul moseys on over to the fugue plane over the course of a few days or even up to a month. This is why there are different resurrection spells that have to be used within a minute or ten days; because the soul is still sorta hanging around.

Once on the fugue plane, the soul just kinda hangs out. Waiting. After about a tenday-ish, a divine postal worker from the soul’s chosen deity comes to pick up the soul and deliver it to its final resting place on the home plane of their deity. The soul can’t be forced or tricked into following the wrong mailman. And there are exceptions to this rule as well. For instance, a soul who wasn’t particularly faithful might end up waiting centuries before someone shows up. If they wait too long, the soul may fade out of existence or Kelemvor may judge them before then.

Once the soul has been prime-delivered to their deity’s planar doorstep, they become a petitioner and their form and the nature of the afterlife can vary wildly depending on who they follow. Some exist in bliss or anguish. Memories of their life on Toril may fade. In the case of elves, they tend to retain their individuality and identity and may eventually be reincarnated in a cycle seeking perfection.

(Note: non-elven petitioners of the Seldarine pantheon of Arvandor could appear as elven or with elven features in death even if they were not elves in their mortal life. Same goes for drow, dwarves, gnomes, and halflings and their respective gods and planes. So you could even make the argument that a non-elf could then enter the elven reincarnation cycle and be elven in their future life if they worship Sehanine Moonbow or Corellon Larethian, etc. Consider also that the Reincarnation spell has the potential to change a dead creature into almost any race without effecting their soul; therefore reincarnating an elf into a tiefling but not removing them from their normal elven reincarnation cycle.)

(But I digress)

The point is, when you are raising a creature from the dead, you are pulling them from somewhere in that natural process. Depending on how long they have been dead, they may no longer exist, or may have little to no memory of their mortal life, they may not want to come back, they may have already been reincarnated into another life, or you might be pissing off some deity. In fact, once a soul is a petitioner, their deity has to approve of their return to life as well. Not to mention, for most souls there may not be much worth coming back to after 200 years; there is likely nothing remaining of their former life and loved ones.

Again, the soul must be both free and willing.

So what about Astarion? To bastardize his own quote: his soul is RIGHT THERE.

He died, sure, but his soul didn’t go anywhere. If you didn’t ascend him, you know his soul exists intact. It’s not on the fugue plane or any final resting plane and hasn’t been reincarnated. His body is dead(ish), but didn’t die of old age. Not to mention, the Monster Manual specifically lists (re)killing them and bringing them back to life as a potential way to cure a vampire.

Assuming that Astarion is willing to return to a full, mortal life, I see no barrier to True Resurrecting him… except that you might need to kill him first… and you need a fuckton of diamonds.

In short: think of the 200-year thing as more of a guideline than a rule. Alternatively, consider that Astarion may have been un-dead for a good long time, but he has not been dead-dead for 200 years.

Now, go forth Tavs! Go kill and resurrect your vampire boyfriend!

[sequesteredbhaalspawn]

Thinking about how Bhaal wasn't resurrected until 1482 and therefore couldn't not have been a part of Durge life until that point, and all of Durge's action before then would have been their own (The events of Blood in Baldur's Gate, and the murder of their foster family, if they're a paladin then the slaying of their order, etc).

Like yes a person could go to the Astral Sea and go talk to Bhaal's corpse there (BG3 falsely states that dead gods end up in the Grey Wastes with Milil. When deities die there corpses are sent to the Astral Sea, and since the gods existsed as Avatars in the Time of Troubles it would apply then as well). Dead Powers can not personally interfere with stuff. I guess some shenanigans could happen with the Winding Waters under Boareskyr Bridge (or whatever is left in the Moonshae Isles), but it's not likely.

LIKE I know it's because Larian literally just doesn't care, like at all, but I really need to know how Bhaal created Durge while he was dead. LIKE if Durge was just a normal Bhaalspawn when it wouldn't be such an issue. Bhaal could just program their birth to happen at a certain time if certain circumstances where met (but then default Durge couldn't be a Dragonborn since they didn't live/exist on Toril yet, not until 1385- Bhaal was killed in 1358).

I'm just stuck, again, thinking about how Durge's timeline makes zero sense. Ignore me.

[amechyofsorts]

*Sings Ylikersantti Kuivalainen at work but makes the lyrics about inspector Cabanela*

[quillswriting]

🕯 OC Most Likely Tag 🕯

I got tagged back to back by two cool people on here, so I'm gonna do the two posts together!

Rules

Answer with which of your OCs would be the most likely to do the following statement, then give new statements for the next person.

My Statements

Part One

Most likely to arrive ridiculously early.

Most likely to be in a relationship less than a week.

Most likely to secretly be really good at music, but just not tell anyone.

Part Two

Most likely to burn something while cooking.

Most likely to stop a robbery if they see it taking place.

Most likely to not tell people they're sick until they really need the help.

Your Statements

Most likely to bury a crush and ignore their feelings, but in a super obvious way.

Most likely to enable someone's bad habits and who they would enable if possible.

Most likely to bring home strays - whether it's stray humans, cats, dogs, etc.

🕯 Part One, from @paeliae-occasionally

Ft. My project.ties characters

1) Most likely to arrive ridiculously early.

Dr. Hilda Dahl hates tardiness with a burning passion and is compulsively early to everything regardless of the circumstances. She takes the phrase "if you're not early, you're late" and kicks it up to the next level.

2) Most likely to be in a relationship less than a week.

Fey-Lin Morgenstern is a mix of commitment issues and being a straight up ass to everyone he meets. Very few have actually even been in a relationship with him by his standards and even fewer he actually liked as more than a play thing. His favorite (in the future) is his relationship with Aiden Dahl, before children are in the mix.

3) Most likely to secretly be really good at music, but just not tell anyone.

Heather Kaiser is a brilliant woman and very academically oriented, also horrible with most music and art expect for pianos though she keeps it to herself. The only ones that know how well she can play the piano are Hilda, who taught her, and the twins Ingrid and Toril, who always listen to her play on the occasion she does.

🕯 Part Two, from @the-golden-comet

Ft. My project.survival characters

1) Most likely to burn something while cooking.

Folke Odjura can't cook to save his life since he was raised with servants doing all of the cooking and cleaning throughout the palace. He would certainly still try to, especially if it's for his younger sister Frida.

2) Most likely to stop a robbery if they see it taking place.

Demos Kattat has a very strong moral compass and is very confident in his skill set, even if he realistically can't accomplish what he wants to. He usually gets himself in over his head and has to be bailed out by various family members.

3) Most likely to not tell people they're sick until they really need the help.

Ikiri Linjal is fiercely independent and will refuse any kind of assistance even if she's bleeding out. She doesn't want to be thought of as weak, especially as an 'exiled' royal.

Gentle tags: @illarian-rambling, @finickyfelix, @jev-urisk, @wyked-ao3, @xenascribbles, @darkangel319 + an open tag!

[y-rhywbeth2]

Lore Compilations (+ this blog's tagging/filter list at the end)

A WIP of a pinned post table of contents to tidy up the blog while I empty my fixations onto it plus a lore accuracy disclaimer (so I don't have to keep typing one), because why not. I like tables of content.

-

Disclaimer regarding lore accuracy: If you combine 50 years, 5 editions, 10+ settings, god knows how many novels, and then all the writers who all retcon and contradict each other's work then what you get is a clusterfuck. The lore I show here is compiled from all five editions of the game. You will likely see stuff out there that contradicts some things I say, or stuff I didn't mention/know. That's the lore for you. If you were the Dungeon Master making your own story, your job would be to pick and chose and build your own take on the setting out of it. I, personally, heavily favour older lore. Larian absolutely did this with Baldurs Gate 3 - frankly, I don't think they even know half this lore even exists, and Bioware took some liberties in the original games too. Wizards of the Coast themselves trample D&D into the ground all the time! All D&D is near enough fanfiction built on fanfiction. Therefore, if you find any information useful you may take it, leave it or tweak it to your desire for your own story, because it's D&D lore, and that's how it works.

Disclaimer regarding Larian's canon (and Bioware, and Obsidian): The setting shown in BG3 does not really match up to the setting as presented in sourcebooks (and sometimes novels, previous games, and 'word of god). I'm always talking about the latter and reframing the story and characters within the latter.

Disclaimer regarding asking me for my opinions on how [x] works in canon: I can make an educated guess based on the sourcebooks, but there are many gaps in many places and however educated the guess, unless it comes from a sourcebook, novel, or writer, it's just my own headcanon.

---

TABLE OF CONTENTS [WIP] (I make no promises as to the speed or order at which any of this is produced - and some of these need updating)

Abeir-Toril Why it's called the "Forgotten" Realms

[Some of this is getting revamped at some point] History | Time & Festivals | Lexicon [1] [2] | Languages | Living in Faerûn [1] [?] | Notable Organisations | Magic | | Waterdeep | The Underdark | Geography and Human Cultures

Baldurs Gate: The City #1 | Demographics | Law & Legal System | Aministration & Government | ???

Human Names | Clothes and Fashion | Music | Dating, Sex, Marriage etc [part 1] [part 2] |

Religion How religion works in the Realms, the different pantheons in the world and then individual posts dedicated to the gods as individuals, how and why to worship them and how their churches function

Religion | Priesthoods and Temples | Deities

Death and the Afterlife Dying | Judgement | Afterlives

Deities in BG3 Shar | Selûne | Bhaal | Mystra | Jergal | Bane | Bane #2 | Bane #3 | Myrkul | Lathander | Kelemvor | Tyr | Helm | Ilmater | Mielikki | Oghma | Tempus | Silvanus | Talos | Corellon | Moradin | Yondalla | Garl Glittergold | Eilistraee | Lolth | Laduguer | Gruumsh | Bahamut | Tiamat | Amodeus |

The rest of the Faerûnian Pantheon Gods of Magic & Knowledge | Nature Deities | Cyric | The Elemental Lords | Good Deities | Evil Deities | Neutral Deities |

Arcane Magic

Public Perception | Types of Mages | The Weave | Specialisations | Obscure types of magic | Elven High Magic | ???

Vampires Feeding | "Biology" | Hierarchy & Powers | Weaknesses & Cures | Psychology

Elves The Complete Book of Elves once said ‘The elves of Toril do not follow the standards of most other worlds,’ which yeah, pretty much. The Player’s Handbook is not necessarily going to be accurate when talking about the Tel’Quessir.

Physiology and quirks | Names & Clans and Houses || Pan-Cultural things: Social life | Time and Age Categories | Homes | Language | Art | Entertainment | Technology || Elven 'Subraces' still a wip || Philosophy and Religion & Pantheons || Half-elves | [WIP]

Drow Culture | Other Drow Cultures

Planars & Planetouched Tieflings | Githyanki | Bhaalspawn | Devils

Dwarves Overview | Culture | Specific Cultures | Magic | Religion | History

Orcs

Hin - That's "halfling", if you're over 3'4" Overview | Names | Culture | Homelands | Religion

Gnomes Culture | Names | Homelands | History | Religion

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Tagging system:

Various lore things that don't go in the larger compilations are tagged lore stuff. Things that aren't lore will get tagged babbling.

For sensitive material, such as if I feel like poking at the various delightful topics presented in the game:

I'll use edgelord hours as the generic "reader discretion advised"

The tag villainous nonsense means Dead Dove Do Not Eat.

the family circle is an extra warning for discussing the themes and subtexts such as those present with Bhaal's cult and the Bhaalspawn: including reproductive horror and sexual abuse, including the incest.

When babbling about my ideas for a World of Darkness AU specifically Vampire the tag is wod shenanigans.

If I feel like posting anything I scribbled ("art"), the tag will be the scribbles

When I'm making posts and being negative or complaining about video games and trivial stuff, it will be filed as: griping.

Whenever I find or consider something new about the Dead Three and/or want to rant and scream insults at Bane again, my tag is the idiot three

When I babble about my characters, I tag it OCs, and the ocs are also tagged by name. So far I've only mentioned Vel

If I don't want to put my babbling about certain characters into the tags, I'll just put the / in front. /astarion, /orin, /gortash, /durge, etc

When I want to babble about stuff happening in my game as I play it, they're tagged playthrough shenanigans. The original games are bg2 playthrough shenanigans.

When I start talking about my oc's romance with Astarion I'll tag it petty murder boyfriends

[archduchessgortash]

Let's talk about the Clasped Book...

The Astral Plane/Astral Sea, where Vlaakith kept the Mysterious Artifact (Astral Prism), and the Experiment on Cruor (not pictured). Here's a link, though...

Also realistic timeframes for completion of Act 1 and Act 2 up to reaching Moonrise Towers to even find the book. (This part turned into a semi-walkthrough for Act 1).

Incoming timeline theories and possible clarification to fix this weird inconsistency...

The Clasped Book implies that roughly a tenday has passed since a tadpoled Durge left Moonrise Towers on the Nautiloid. I don't think that this timeline for Durge's departure is feasible. In order for it to work, we have to speedrun the first two acts, and assume that the time required to complete the mission to steal the Astral Prism was negligible.

Let's start with the Astral Sea, where Vlaakith's stronghold was located. You can NOT spend weeks or months on the astral plane and have no time pass on the prime material plane. It will feel as though little time has passed to you, as essentially your own internal clock is going in slow-motion while you are there. However, on your home plane, time is chugging along as usual. If you spent 30 years in the Astral, then pop back into the Prime, you won't have aged at all, but your friends at home will have spent all those years without you, aging accordingly.

Time spent in the Astral cannot account for this short time frame. It, in fact, makes it even less likely to be correct, as the lack of time's impact on those in the Astral might cause them to take longer to complete tasks. At the very least, we need to appreciate that any time spent in the Astral, has also passed on Toril.

Knowing the location of Vlaakith's stronghold doesn't mean it will only take five minutes for the strike team to steal the Astral Prism. Realistically, there would be recon and planning prior to the assault, especially with the Emperor running the mission. Even controlled by an elder brain, illithid are cunning. We could assume all recon was done before Durge was moved there, which is possible. We would still need at least a day for the mission itself. The day of our escape, which starts on the Nautiloid, we land on the riverbank, and it's still daylight out. Thus the heist did not happen on that day.

In order for the Clasped Book to be accurate, we have exactly nine days to get through Act 1 and arrive at Moonrise Towers to search Balthazar's quarters.

How long does it take to get to Moonrise Towers in a non-speedrun game?

Day 1: [Post-Nautiloid] When we wake up, we've probably already blown our spell slots or other long-rest rechargeable class-specific limitations. What makes the most sense is to collect our nearby followers (Shart, Astarion & Gale), fight the brains, then long rest before continuing. We could push on, relying on our newfound companions to carry us, but most players I know don't do that. We long rest, listen to our new friends worry and complain, and now have eight days to make the timeline work.

Day 2: We clear those nearby ruins and meet everyone's favorite death god turned camp comic relief, Withers 'No' Boneman. We may or may not notice Lae'zel tucked away, cozy in her cage, but if we do, we snatch up our adorable grinch and rest again, because once more, we are out of spell slots or bardic inspiration, etc. More complaining and concerns, Lae'zel is glowering at our back constantly now, but we have seven days to make that book not a liar.

Day 3: We approach the grove and a fight breaks out. Cue Wyll's campy superhero entrance and our biggest fight so far. A little strategy ensures we win with no casualties. We save a slightly ungrateful tiefling from a bugbear, possibly kick an innocent if cranky squirrel, stop a fight or punch one or more of the humanoids involved, then head further in. Finally, we can sell all this junk... We meet Rolan [I Just Died in Your Arms Tonight playing in our heads], convince him to stay or buzz off (how could you?), then recruit Wyll. We chat up anyone who will talk to us, deal with Sazza, meet a blacksmith and a hilarious old lady who is totally NOT a hag, let Lae'zel domme a tiefling, get robbed by some kids, then watch a guy turn into a bear. We meet Volo, steal an amulet from a different bear, stop Khaga from becoming a child murderer (hopefully), learn some stuff about Shart and talk to a healer who promptly tries to kill us... unless we promise to drink poison before we turn. After five-finger discounting some sus documents, we realize we should rest again, but we'll just look around the grove a bit more. Should be safe enough, right? We take the path to the left and poof! A devil pops up. As if the day can't get weirder, we wander around, find a dead boar and Astarion acts even more sus than usual. We take our rest after that, then let a hangry, fanged twunk bite us or we stake him. Luckily for us that amulet we stole from the bear can clear our Bloodless debuff. Six days left.

Day 4: We meet Alfira (be nice to her or else!), follow the singing and save a kid from harpies. Then we loot and get Mol to give us back our stuff, but she wants us to steal the idol. It's worth doing, but not right away, so we leave the grove and head toward the Blighted Village. We meet a True Soul and get his tadpole, or not. Then we deal with an owlbear in a cave. Get more Shart lore. For Durges, the bridge is your trigger for a certain event related to your plot. We talk our way into the village, save the best deep gnome in the known universe from his plight, slap around or intimidate goblins, maybe con a few ogres, interrupt some coitus, and explore a secret door or two. Also, Gale needs to nom a necklace or something to stave off sploding. We are probably out of spells again after fighting the undead in the Alchemist's basement. We're definitely out if we failed to talk our way in and had to fight. Also Shart probably wants to talk after finding stuff. Durges might want to KO a certain bard if they want her to appear in Act 2, but then we rest again. Five days left.

Day 5: Everyone is giving our Durges the side eye, but... Spiders in the well! Spiders in the well! Toast the Matriarch and her kids, then loot thoroughly. Give a vampire a book to beat Cazador to death with. Now we either pop into the Sunlit Wetlands (Swamp) to find dirt on Khaga, or head to the goblin camp. I usually save the swamp for later, to keep buying potions from Ethel at the grove. We can also detour and grab Karlach, take out the phony paladins and talk to Scratch at this point, and I'd recommend it. Lot of looting, too. Don't forget to feed your wizard. I usually avoid the gnolls for a little bit. We talk our way into the goblin camp, then have the Astral Prism related cutscene (hello, handsome, younger man 🤔), which we know means we should rest, or we will miss story points. So that's what we do. Because we play RPGs for story. When devs link story progression to resting, their timelines are at the mercy of their players. Rest, meet Mizora, then our dream visitor, realize we are not going to be mind flayers in like 2 days, phew! Four days left to validate Balthazar's concept of time...

Day 6: We deal with the owlbear cub if he's still around (he better be, you monsters), distract an incompetent bard, find out that the goblins kidnapped a Duke, maybe bite off a goblin's toe if we want to fight the whole camp now, or steal his ring instead, chat up more gobbos, looting carefully as we go. We enter the temple, take or don't take the brand, then follow Priestess Gut and we either submit and get saved by Korilla or we beat down an old goblin lady who has a crush on Gortash (no, not me). We can work our magic to save the guy from being thrown in the spider pit if we are quick and clever enough. Then we save Volo, meet everyone's favorite BDSM boytoy Abdirak, free the overzealous lad on the rack and get his info. We con Dror Ragzlin, but don't talk to Minty yet unless you're taking her down permanently here. We can free Halsin and ask him to wait. Since a lot of this isn't combat, we can finish a bunch in one day. Once we go check out Waukeen's Rest, we have to save everyone from the fire without leaving the area or they die, and we will have gnolls to fight and Zhents to save if we approach from the fast-travel point near the paladins. Once that's all done, we will need to rest again. This leaves us with three days.

Day 7: We pop over to the swamp and grab the dirt on Khaga, then confront her and the Shadow Druids. I like keeping her alive so I can listen to Halsin yell at her when he's back. Next, we go back into the goblin camp and either begin the slow process of purging the place to fully free Halsin, or we tell Minthara about the grove. I like telling Minthara, then betraying her when she arrives so all the tieflings get to participate in defending the grove (you can KO her here to allow for Act 2 recruitment). An Elixir of Vigilance, Haste potions and Dimension Door scrolls will help focus down the spiders before they can hop the gates. I managed the battle with no casualties on Balanced difficulty. Telling Minthara means we have to rest again for progression. 2 days remain.

Day 8: We save the grove, Halsin shows up, we can talk to everyone, and tonight we have a party to attend. We can carefully steal the idol now under the cover of a darkness scroll, arrow or spell. We can run around and do a few more things, like mop up the rest of the goblin camp, and we do, but we want our party! So we rest, give Mol the idol, get lots of conversations, time with our LI, and now we have 1 day left...

Day 9: Auntie Ethel and the Underdark. If she doesn't take all your limited, rest-dependent resources, the minotaurs or the spectator will. Not to mention the hook horrors, the bulette, and the hostile Duergar if you side with the Myconids. And don't forget the Arcane Tower... We also get to meet the only illithid that is better alive than dead. [Sorry, Empy, I hate your face] So we need to rest again before we go to the Grymforge, leaving us out of days...

Finishing the Grymforge and entering the Shadow-Cursed Lands (if we want to get yelled at and wait to do the Crèche until right before the Gauntlet of Shar) could be done in one day if we beelined to Moonrise Towers, but we would miss so much story doing that... and possibly get more npcs we like killed in the process. It wouldn't make sense to me at all to do that.

To finish everything, I think we would need at least 5 more days before even entering Act 2. I know we need a few rests in the Shadow-Cursed Lands to progress follower storylines, too. For my characters, we are usually in Moonrise Towers by late Eleint, meaning 20-30 long rests have been done since day 1 of the game. I did a few extras to 'clear the queue' to ensure I didn't miss story scenes, but still... more than a tenday.

The answer? Longer than 9 days.

So, how do we explain the dates?

It is my thinking that Durge was gone on the Nautiloid for much longer than one day, and that completing the game up to Moonrise Towers takes any reasonable, non-speedrunning player more than nine long rests.

I suspect the intention of the dates is to indicate that Durge was shipped out on the nautiloid a tenday before the first in-game day: the 20th of Eleasis, 1492, meaning they left on the 10th. Since we can technically get to the book on the first day if we speedrun, this seems the most likely explanation.

So when did Durge get attacked?

Yet another debatable timeline point...

Experiment on Cruor begins with a journal entry dated the 3rd of Nightal (irl December). There's no year in the entries. Context tells us this is Orin's log regarding the arrival of her butler and leads us to believe it is written after she attacked Durge. Baldur's Gate 3 starts on the 20th of Eleasis (irl August) in the Year of Three Ships Sailing 1492 DR. Ergo, Orin's log must have been written in 1491 or possibly earlier. This source is the reason most of us place Durge's disappearance no later than the first couple of days in Nightal 1491.

Our supposition is that Orin received her butler after she became Bhaal's Chosen. Dialogue with Sceleritas in-game seems to imply this as well (can't find a clip, sorry).

However, it seems that Durge had Sceleritas with them prior to becoming Bhaal's Chosen, given that the obsequious imp was present during the events of Blood in Baldur's Gate, which took place in 1477.

Torlin Silvershield became Bhaal's Chosen around 1482, following the Murder Lord's resurrection (when the last two of the original Bhaalspawn conceived while Bhaal was trapped in a mortal form were slain). Thayans snatched Silvershield and turned him into a wight sometime after that.

While many other gods have multiple chosen at the same time, Bhaal doesn't seem to do that. Orin had to challenge or in some other way defeat Durge in order to become the new Chosen. Thus, Durge probably wasn't the Chosen at the time of Blood in Baldur's Gate. They likely assumed the mantle in 1482 or later. And yet, Sceleritas was with them.

It is possible that Durge is just special, being Bhaal's favored offspring, and was given their butler before becoming the Chosen.

I went down this particular rabbit hole for devil's advocating the option of invalidating before Nightal 1491 as the time of disappearance. Not to fit any particular headcanon. It just occurred to me. It's possible that Orin might have received her butler when she became a contender for Chosen, not immediately following nonconsensually lobotomizing her bloodkin. This could mean that Durge may have been gone for a much longer or a much shorter period of time.

But what about the line: mind-mangled bloodkin?

Doesn't that prove the journal came after?

Only if you want it to. Orin greatly disapproves of Durge. She could easily have considered them mentally unsound prior to the attack. Because of the way the rest of the journal is worded, it's easy to assume she's already the Chosen at this point, but she doesn't necessarily have to be. She could be postulating on the future. For that reason, if someone wants to think Durge hasn't been gone as long as most of the fandom agrees they were, there's no definitive in-game proof that they're wrong.

Anyhoo... there's wiggle room even in-canon if y'all want your Durges to have only been missing for a few months, instead of nearly the full gestational period of a fetus.

[ryttu3k]

Posting a list of Astarion-related plotbunnies I'll probably never get to so I'm setting them loose upon the internet.

If you decide to write any of these please let me know, I'd love to read them <3

1) Cazador gets sick of waiting for Astarion, and also what fun is being the Vampire Ascendant if you don't have anyone to subjugate? As Dufay feared, he gets scarred and used in Astarion's place for the ritual, and Ascended Cazador shows up in the middle of a bright sunny day at the Elfsong to try and reclaim his errant spawn, easily overpowering basically everyone. Gale, who's in the midst of a sweet slowburn romance with Astarion, basically goes, okay, look, we're currently the only ones who have a hope to defeat the Netherbrain, and you won't be Vampire Ascendant for much longer if mind flayers take over Toril. Side with us against it, and we'll give you Astarion after.

He's lying through his teeth and is very quick to tell Astarion that as soon as Cazador leaves, because once he has the Crown of Karsus :) he'll be able to take Cazador out :) no problem :)

The real struggle isn't just fighting a desire for power, it's fighting against something that will permanently change him but also give him the best possible chance to save his lover, versus giving up that power and staying Gale Dekarios, not losing his identity, but also now having to fight the Vampire Ascendant without all that power...

2) Astarion stays in the Underdark to assist with the spawn, and ends up striking up a friendship with Gandrel, who wants Astarion's advice on how to raise his spawn daughters. Fluffy slow-burn romance with his former enemy ensues. Could tie in with this delightful epilogue detail.

3) Short version: Astarion tries to do A Scheme only it backfires due to the fact that he's starting to experience Emotions like 'self-worth'.

Longer version: Astarion sets out to deal with (read: seduce) Gortash - gives him Ketheric's stone, says the others have gone off to fight Orin and get [x] back, and it'll be easy enough to get Orin's stone from them once they've done the hard work, telling Gortash that the others lack ambition or have other plans. Lae'zel wants to give the Crown to Raphael to free Orpheus, Gale wants it for himself, etc. Only Astarion can see Gortash's point - that they can run the Absolute cult, they can use the stones. Gortash, Astarion, and a certain Bhaalspawn who Astarion is fairly certain would be amenable…

His actual plan is to seduce Gortash, kill him when he's not expecting it, and take the stone and return to the others, because he's good at seducing people for a purpose, so why not just do what he's best at? Except he's suddenly realising that, huh, he actually doesn't want to just… be used any more, he likes the person he's becoming with resist!Durge, and it all feels a bit… icky, now…

4) Astarion + trust issues + being touch-starved for non-intimate touch. Astarion gets some kind of back injury (thorns or little shards of glass or splinters or something, not something terribly lethal but just painful to deal with) and has to confide in someone (Halsin would be good here) and let them see and touch his scars to help get himself fixed up. Bit of whump, bit of hurt/comfort.

5) "Oh, I tried them all. None of them answered." Astarion has Issues with the gods. Gale catches him vandalising the Open Hand Temple / Stormshore Tabernacle, and they talk about gods and their fickle attentions.

6) Astarion can't swim. Karlach offers him and Shadowheart swimming lessons (and promptly goes heart-eyes a bit over her white-haired elven boyfriend and girlfriend).

7) AU where Ulder isn't a Complete Garbage Person who disowns his teenage son, and instead accepts and helps Wyll as much as he can. The Blade of Baldur's Gate instead focuses on helping his city, and it's time to do something about that creepy gothic monstrosity known as the Szarr Palace…