#zevlor should be here too but I got tired

[snuffysbox]

t i e f l i n g s....

[wakacreations]

Zevlor's Bizarre Cocoa Adventure (Ch. 3)

Prologue Ch1 Ch2 Ch3 Ch4 Ch5

Word Count: 1360

Summary:

Zevlor thinking strange things and dreaming strange dreams.

A wetness trailed down his cheek, the smell of iron filled his nostrils but only moments ago drowned in the smells of decay. “Obey the Absolute and you shall be free!” a shrill voice echoed. Cold winds rushed through his bones, feet firmly held to the muddy ground. Waves of pulsing warm air brushed over his skull, then a sharp piercing sensation radiated from his temple as it burrowed its way deeper. The hilt of his sword once in his grasp dropped helplessly to the soft earth. Zevlor’s head pulsed and throbbed violently. His hands gripped his skull forcefully as if he could glue his splintering mind back together.

“Hellrider, you shall bring glory to your people. They will be safe under our oath,” the voice beckoned him. His body had gone rigid. “What is happening!?!” gruff Zevlor. “Commander Zevlor, you will save us won’t you? You can protect us! I know you can!” Whispers of voices long known, some forgotten, and some recent flood into his ear canals. There were whispers of children that cling desperately to his arms to avoid the falling flames. Their yelling and pleading of tieflings being dragged away by hungry orthons. The screams of agony deafening his ears.

“Please do something Commander Zevlor, sir! I can’t take much more,” one of his own injured men fell onto him. Their eyes wide with horror soon grew to a glassy emptiness. “LAY YOUR WEAPONS DOWN! We will be safe with them,” the words escaped his mouth foreign to his own ears. What little strength his knees held buckled under the weight of the pressure. The cool dirt met his metal leggings as a warm red pool bathed his knees. “YOU TRAITOR!” The whizzing of arrows fluttered past his skin. A much too cold clawed hand trailed across his brow.

He awoke to a hobgoblin peering down at him. Sweat bathing his clothes, his joints stiff in place, tail lay limply at his side. “The first illithid teleportation is the hardest,” as he handed him a bucket. “3… 2… 1…” A rush of bile made its way up Zevlor’s throat. He doubled over clutched the bucket feeling the last of putrid acid leave his body. “You'll be alright. It would be kind of me to say it gets easier but it never does,” as he patted his back. Zevlor looked up at the hobgoblin as he wiped his mouth. “Blurg. Pleasure to meet you,” he grinned.

The hobgoblin walked over and rummaged through a set of cabinets. “Now, where is it? Ah, there it is. Drink this, it should help with the nausea.” He tossed him a small flask. “Anything to get this taste out of his mouth,” Zevlor thought. In one swig the potion of vitality vanished. “Thank you. It's Zevlor, a pleasure.” Though his stomach had settled, his mind still held a dull ache. A whiff of herbs filled the air. “Hungry? I got some warm food I've prepared for you.” Blurg setting down a tray on the bedroll. He took a seat across from the tiefling. Zevlor slowly ate the stew placed in his hands. It was a rich warm dark broth, filled with celery, carrots and hardy potatoes. Some healthy portions of beef were in the mix as well.

“If you prefer something with proper meat you can help yourself to our cured supplies.” He pointed at a stack of crates nestled in the corner of the tent. Zevlor gave Blurg a sideways glance pausing his meal. “Don't worry the food is safe unless you are allergic to mushrooms,” Blurg chuckled. “Most dishes I prepare are mostly plant based. Less I have to worry of any dried goods molding down here. But I'll meet the dietary needs of whomever I serve.” He smiled at the tired tiefling who thankfully resumed eating. 

“So, he's the famed Hellrider. Well Rolan was not far from their description,” Blurg gave the old paladin the once over. Their sharp face no longer the sickly pale red moments before, hair and battered skin still dampened with sweat, their clothes cling to their lean form. “It was such a hassle removing that armour. Paladins,” his gaze moved towards the pile of metal that laid beside the bedroll. “For as toned and hardened their muscular body may be, their mind was still vulnerable. He won't cope well for another illithid fast travel,” Blurg thought. His eyes met with Zevlor’s shimmering orange eyes.

“Omeluum told me you're in need of chocolates?” The tiefling’s tail flicked. Zevlor passed his finished bowl to Blurg. “Another helping if you would kindly, please.” He made his way to the opened pot, “You still haven’t answered my question, friend,” as Blurg ladled another helping. “Yes, I am in need of such supplies,” Zevlor cleared his throat. “Would it be possible to spare a crate or so?” he said with a bated breath. Another rejection would be too unlikely but things have not turned out as smoothly as he initially hoped. His tail snaked to his midsection and gave a firm squeeze.

“Are you able to stand? We'll have to make our way to Omeluum's tent. It is a bit of a ways,” Blurg's brow furrowed. With tentative shaky legs Zevlor rose to his feet. A tremor still held his figure. His arms spread outwards as if made to walk a line. Each step was made with a conscious effort. Tail moving to-and-fro like a ship’s wheel to keep himself on course. A slight sway in his step as he made his way to Blurg. “You walked as if you’ve had more than a couple of pints at the Blushing Mermaid, Zevlor.” The hobgoblin braced his hands to catch the teetering tiefling if need be. “I will be fine. Just give me a couple of minutes to recollect myself and I shall be ready,” Zevlor rasped as he leaned on a table for stability. Blurg gave a questionable look and a raised brow but didn't push further. “I will go check in with Omeluum, do call for me if ya need anything. It is no bother.” Blurg flipped open the flap of the entrance. “Less I forget,�� the hobgoblin called over his shoulder. “Welcome to the Underdark, friend.” The flap fluttering shut.

“I am finally alone,” Zevlor took a long drawn breath. He slumped down into a stool. The sounds of dripping echoed on. For all the things that just transpired his mind was stuck in idle. He listened to the repetitive sound of water droplets for what felt like minutes but how long it truly was is indefinite. “Time moves differently in the Underdark,” he gathered. The tension still lingered on his form. He closed his tired eyes and began his assessment. Shoulders are tightly winded with tension that can't be helped. Neck is a bit stiff, could be due to his earlier resting position. He gave his body a good long arched stretch. Legs still have a weakness to them but some walking will help get the blood flow back into them. “The mind…. well that will take a long time to repair,” Zevlor opened his eyes. More rest called for him. The bedroll beckoned him but there won't be peace in his dreams.

He took a couple more bites of his stew. “For a dish that has little to no meat, it is quite delicious. Maybe I should see if Blurg would be willing to share in a culinary exchange. I'm sure Tav would..” his cheeks grew a more reddish hue. “Oh, I… What would they make of me?” as he peeled off his sweat-streaked clothes. “If I am almost always this frightened,” he slipped into a pressed shirt. “If my griefs are much too cumbersome of burdens to bare. Especially not for them to bare, not to them of all people, have they not suffered enough,” he fastened tightly on his chest plate. “If I am too feeble of a man, less I at least be capable of returning a favor owed. I can hope to provide them that courtesy guaranteed,” blade fixed to his hip. “I can't provide them much but this is all that I am,” he catches a glimpse of himself off a metal tray. “Too worn, too beaten, and too unworthy.”

[riddlerosehearts]

...well. i finished my first playthrough of baldur's gate 3. over the last several days i did the fight against gortash, the final battle against the netherbrain, the ending scenes at the docks, and the epilogue party. in this post i'll just write about everything up until the ending cutscenes start, and then make another post tomorrow because i have many thoughts and i don't want to make this be insanely long. not that it matters since i've basically just been making these posts for myself the entire time, but ANYWAY

love the fact that i was able to cast otto's irresistible dance on gortash during the very first turn and keep him boogeying for a bit before he managed to break out of it. using it on someone like him is just hilarious. this battle was surprisingly really easy, though? like with both otto's irresistible dance and hold person available, gortash barely got to do anything and there were only a couple other enemies who were incredibly easy to defeat. the grenade launchers were more annoying than anything else. kind of underwhelming but considering how difficult some of the other act 3 fights have been, and how close i now am to the end, i'm not complaining!

i'm so sad about karlach oh my god. she hasn't even been a favorite of mine, i mean, i like her a lot, she's always a delight to talk to, but she's not the type of character i get as easily attached to and i haven't used her on my team that much overall. and yet her voice acting was so full of emotion and her dialogue so heartwrenching that she made me wanna cry. gortash is dead and it should feel like this big victory but for her it isn't, because it doesn't change anything about what's happened or what's going to happen to her... elenion tried to joke around and call gortash ugly and karlach said she was too tired to laugh. they told her they think she should keep living as long as she can and she said "you do it, i'm tired". she's tried so hard to seem positive and hide her loneliness but now she's so caught up in her grief and anger that she's just tired of it all. "i want to live" plays in the background of the scene. she ends things by saying "love you" even if you're not romancing her. god i want to hug her so bad :( going to use the hugs mod i have installed to do that after talking to her back at camp.

talking to everyone around the camp, lae'zel is so encouraging in her own way and even astarion says there's no justice in the world because of what's happening to karlach... for some reason, it was this bit of dialogue with jaheira that made me actually tear up a little:

like i guess it's just the fact that jaheira is this legendary hero that karlach looks up to and was so excited to meet, and here she is saying she doesn't know what else she can do to help karlach. it's so unfair what the fuck!!

had to screenshot this dialogue from wyll in the astral plane because i love him:

the emperor is an interesting character, and i can honestly understand why some people, and some tavs, might trust him and want to ally with him. but elenion is very untrusting by nature, and sure, he's grown a lot and learned to put more trust in his allies--but the emperor as the dream guardian just constantly made him feel confused and uncertain and then once he was finally willing to fully trust them, he found out that he was being lied to after all. and then the emperor kept withholding information from him, and trying to convince him that he should become an illithid. so no, he is not allying with the emperor!! although orpheus's attitude is not exactly winning me over lmao, for one thing we did not STEAL the githyanki egg!!

WOAH the baby owlbear grew up?! big armored owlbear?! was not expecting that! also, huh, zevlor is here too... i don't think the gather your allies quest ever mentions him in the quest journal so i didn't realize he'd show back up. maybe it's just me, but i kind of wish there was more resolution to his story. i looked up whether he ever reappears after you rescue him in act 2 and found that he doesn't, and he doesn't even have a voiced line of dialogue at high hall, which really sticks out and seems weird because everyone else does except for him and volo?? the gondians also aren't here even though the quest journal does mention them... i think i got pretty much every not-evil ally, though! except for mol, i guess.

i callled pretty much every ally during the big battles in the courtyard because i wanted to see what they could do! and then i only called a few during the actual final battle because i was afraid that certain characters like zevlor or the owlbear might permadie. but it's so cool being able to call on everyone who you've helped throughout the game, as it really helps these last battles feel more epic and exciting. though it also makes me wonder what the rest of my party who isn't here in high hall is doing... like, okay, so jaheira and halsin were not in my party and they still showed up to give their aid. but what about minsc and boo? what about shadowheart, astarion, and karlach?? are they all just chilling out at camp while the rest of us fight?? it just feels odd that they don't show up here at all.

i accidentally got party wiped while trying to reach the netherbrain because i couldn't figure out where i was actually supposed to be going and messed up... please, if i ever have to be part of a band of heroes rising up to stop a world-ending threat, do not make me the leader. my nonexistent sense of direction will literally doom us all. the second attempt was really easy once i figured out what i was doing LMAO but i did also have to restart the final battle because... i had no idea how the thing with the netherbrain destroying the platforms worked and my party all died at once the first time. it's my first playthrough and i knew nothing about this whole part of the game, so of course there was going to be some trial and error. i had a lot of fun with all of that, though!!

and now we get to the ending cutscenes... which i will be posting about separately later. for now i'll just say i love this game and i can't believe i've hit the end of it. i started playing in march what the fuck.

[rottenbrainstuff]

BG3 playthrough - THE END

I finished my run a few days ago actually - I’ve been letting it simmer in my noggin for a bit. I made myself a fancy dinner with a nice dessert and a bottle of wine, and I sat down and officially finished my run. Spoilers:

So I left off right after I gathered my allies. Heading in to the big courtyard fight, there is an insight check to be able to convince the fleeing city watch that they should fight with you. Nothing I could do could make me pass that check. I realize that I RP my tav as being pretty wise, but his wisdom is actually quite low. I checked my party to see who would be the best to attempt to roll this and was shocked to see that ASTARION was in fact the wisest in my group. Party of dumbasses. His wisdom was 14 but even that wasn’t high enough to get the check, I couldn’t pass it and got tired of reloading. OH WELL.

For that big courtyard fight - I was quickly feeling overwhelmed by the size of the area and the amount of enemies. The allies are nice, but you can only summon one every turn. I wasn’t feeling very good. Then I got the idea to send Astarion through by himself, with his amazing dark urge invisibility cape that he’s had since the beginning of act one, and had him run around picking off one-shotable enemies to make things a bit more manageable. It all reminded me a bit of the way back at the grove siege, when I also had him invisible and by himself in the middle of the fray. It was so hilarious watching him run around and pick things off one dude at a time, watch everyone else come rushing in all concerned, but no one able to do a thing about it. He got a really good chunk whittled down before he somehow got spotted, and then the real fight began.

I think this is the one big area where you’re supposed to bring out all the allies… there actually really aren’t too many other opportunities after this. I didn’t summon anyone for the run up the stairs because I assumed the NPC AI wouldn’t be smart enough to stay out of the nautiloid targeting, and the enemies weren’t challenging anyway. I might reload the courtyard fight and play a bit more with it and see what happens when you call more allies. The only ones I ended up calling were the hellriders - I tried the harpers cause someone said they were good here, but damn they have such low HP and they spawn in such a terrible area? The hellriders were a bit more durable. Plus yay - fighting with Zevlor again! And he’s got his paladin spells back!

While Astarion was doing his sneaky murder job, I had the rest of my party hidden in a corner. Once he was spotted, I had everyone run out and join the fight. I realized once the fight was completely over that I had forgot all about Gale, and he stayed hidden in the corner the whole time. Coward!

Big ol’ brain fight - this was so hard and yet somehow easier than I thought it would be as well? Somehow my summoned deva who almost never fucking lands his hit EVER actually landed a smite on the dragon and managed to make it afraid and wow that made a HUGE DIFFERENCE.

SO the dream guardians appear here, if you didn’t ally with the Emperor - so - this was a neat IDEA - I am actually absolutely fascinated with the act 1 dream guardian setup, just the whole concept of this character and how it’s introduced, helpful but also threatening, seductive and also dangerous. I like the idea that each other companion is also being visited by a version tailored specifically to their own desires. And… I feel like the ball as kind of dropped after that. I think after the second encounter, the companions no longer comment at all on the Guardian? Is it still appearing to them? Is it now focusing in only on Tav? Similarly I wish they had stronger reactions when the guardians appear - I feel like it should be compromising to have to face this comfort character in battle. And, why doesn’t the Emperor include your own dream guardian? Like, there are four of them, and none of them were mine, so there’s one here who is an odd man out. It would have been absolutely fucking devastating for me to have to attack my own guardian that I personalized myself and was really attracted to, why did the game miss the opportunity to include that? Myeh. Oh well.

Hm - I just did a google - it seems that the three female guardians are always the same no matter which companions are in your party (unfortunate), and then it sounds as though, for the fourth one, some players are indeed seeing their actual guardian? They are claiming to, anyway. I definitely didn’t - my guardian IS a male tiefling, but mine was a different male tiefling from the one that showed up in the fight. A wiki also says the guardians at the end are not personalized. Interesting? What did you guys see in that fight?

Hey, how do you even get the crown, in the end? I played normally, killed the gross brain, and the crown automatically splashed down into the sea, which suits me fine, but I’m wondering how Gale even gets it to become his silver surfer variant. Do you have to send him up by himself to blow up, then change your mind and take the crown instead? Or something?

We have our big goodbye scene on the docks - I mean I’ve seen this all before, but somehow it hits different when it’s playing on my big computer screen. Huh. I DO agree with you all this time, the game IS pretty cavalier about Astarion’s fate. I know that I’ll see him later on because I’m romancing him, but damn, if I’m not, that’s the last anyone sees of him until the epilogue party, and it makes me sad to think about. I do like his explanation later at the party that he ran because he felt ashamed, this was supposed to be everyone’s big victory moment and here he was suddenly on fire. I find that on brand for him. I just wish everyone had expressed a little concern…

The Epilogue Party: aw, what a nice addition Larian made. I can’t imagine the game just ending at the docks - it would feel so unsatisfying! It was really really nice to have this little denouement moment just to chat with each of them and hear what they’ve been up to, and each one has something so nice to say, it all made me tear up, second time in the game. Each one seems like they’re doing so well now. Shadowheart is enjoying a nice quiet life with her parents as they all deserve, Gale is a teacher, Karlach and Wyll sound like they’re having such a wild adventure, Lae’zel is brokering a historic partnership and said she learned the value of diplomacy from me, Halsin has settled down and is running an orphanage, Jaheira is fussing over her kids. And then Minsc. LMAO so I was wondering who the heck the random dude was by the banquet table, perhaps the caterer? But he seems…… frightened??? And it turns out it’s some random thief that Minsc has been trying to scare straight, who he has, for some reason, brought along with him to the party, lol.

The letters were so nice. It made me so happy to read them. I was… just a little disappointed that Mayrina didn’t mention anything about Kled… maybe she still needs a little time to get over the loss of her husband. I still stubbornly think they will end up together in the future. It was nice to have a letter explaining what Zevlor has been up to, an actual explanation for how he ended up at the battle in act 3.

You know though, I feel like I wish there were more letters. I wish there was one from Thrombo, I wish there was one from Omeluum and Blerg, I know we had the newspaper clipping about Rolan but a letter would have been nice - maybe a funny little story of something weird he found in the tower… would have been nice to hear from Isobel and Aylin, would have been nice to hear more about the city rebuilding from Ulder, I know Barcus talked a little but it would have been nice to have a letter directly from the Gondians, but… most of all, I wish I had more letters from the Tiefling refugees. And just a bigger wrap up with them in general.

I know apparently some players just don’t like them that much, but sorry, I can’t relate - I got very emotionally invested in their story, instantly, and to me, Baldur’s Gate 3 has been specifically about following them on their travels and helping them reach the city. I’m glad to see Rolan settled, I’m glad to read articles about Bex and Danis getting the cafe they wanted, Dammon’s note to Karlach is ABSOLUTELY FREAKING ADORABLE, but man I NEED an update from Cerys, I want to know that everyone is safe and settled. (maybe even that she’s got in contact with Zevlor and they’re trying to patch things up??) I want a letter from Mattis that is just an advertising brochure for an actual shop that he’s set up. I want a letter from Mol saying that she forgives me for killing for patron or something. Doni wrote a letter that you can find in act 1 - I don’t know if this was an oversight - if it’s not, I desperately wish I could have had a letter from him as well. I want a letter from Umi and Ide because they were making me worried in act 3, I want to know how they’re all doing, and if Umi ended up liking his pottery class. Etc Etc Etc.

That’s maybe just me. I was always 100% about the tieflings.

Anyways, I got all the letters it’s possible to get in a good run, but I noticed I was missing a letter from Sebastian, which made me wonder what I did wrong. As far as I know, I did everything I was supposed to? It should have triggered??? And then I realized… Sebastian’s letter talks about how all the freed spawn went into the underdark, how many of them died, some of them just disappeared, and the rest were gathered by Astarion’s spawn siblings and they now live in some ruins.

The reason I didn’t get his letter is because I chose the underdark option when Astarion was asking what we should do next. So, we’re probably in direct contact with Sebastian all the time! We’re the ones who gathered up the spawn, and we don’t need updates, because we’ve been right there for the past six months. I’m glad I figured it out, I liked Sebastian and I was sad not to have the letter I thought was coming.

Tara reminds me of my cat. She was so funny at the party, grumbling about being more comfortable in Gale’s mom’s sitting room. Loved watching her pounce around in camp. If my cat could talk, I think she’d talk like Tara.

And then they all mentioned how they should keep in touch and do this again soon. That hurt my heart. So bittersweet. Being in my 40s, having gone through several different friend groups now… I know……..

They will not keep in touch. They will want to, and they will even try for a while, but in the end they will go their separate ways. It just is not possible to sustain friendships over a large amount of time and space when everyone is doing something so different, when the only thing you have in common now are the things you did in the past. If there’s nothing going forward that brings you together besides that old nostalgia… like… inevitably that’s what happens, sooner or later, that’s just how it works.

And I mean that maybe sounds sad as hell but… somehow it’s also just… one of those bittersweet things that’s also ok. Like death and change. It’s inevitable and it’s sad but it’s also how things go. To me, thinking about that wasn’t like, upsetting and horrible, it was just kind of… wistful. Like aaaah… these “we should get together more often!” conversations, yes, I remember those, so many of those conversations, and then at some point that “we should get together more often!” line becomes the last thing you ever say to that person, because you never see them again. Yep, I know what that’s like.

At least that’s how I interpret it, like I said, being in my 40s and having had this happen over and over and over to me multiple times. Maybe that’s me bringing doom and gloom into something that was supposed to be positive, like my interpretation of the ending of Whisper of the Heart that made my kids sad… just ignore me I guess.

After that is a HALF HOUR OF CREDITS. I know because I sat there and let the whole thing play. I’m going to assume that normal, not-insane people did not do that, so I’ll let you know, first of all it was amazing to see just how many people worked on this game, and then second, a good portion of the credits were thank you messages from various staff to their loved ones, and that was very sweet to read. A large number staff thanked their cats, so I think we all know where the BG3 love of cats comes from.

And after that… I felt legit sad, guys. I’ve been playing this playthrough for about seven months. I really got emotionally invested with my tav, and all their relationships, and all the NPCs and their little stories. I know the game is still here any time I want to start it up again. In fact I have a second tav already ready to go, one that I made months ago but decided to put on hold so I could focus on my main tav. It’s not going to be the same, though. I’ll play my backup tav, and I’d like to play an Astarion origin and see what happens if I make realistic choices, but… is it weird that I would totally, 100% replay this exact tav sometime? Like, just, the exact same stuff all over again?

I’m bummed to be done. Legit bummed. Happy, entertained, amazed, grateful, satisfied, and because I was so thoroughly emotionally invested, I am also bummed. What a great game, how lucky I am to have the chance to play it.

I’m actually going to make one last (?) post a little bit later, ruminating on some more thoughts and my favourite little moments from the game. And this weekend I am attending my city’s comic expo, where I’m hopefully going to get Neil Newbon’s autograph so that’s exciting! To the one or two people who actually read these things I write, lol, thanks for following along.

[rottenbrainstuff]

BG3 playthrough - still trying to find Minsc

Spoilers below the cut!

Been a bit busy lately and I’m STILL trying to get Minsc but goddamn it this is turning into a big huge fucking thing, I had no idea, and I am tired.

One of the funniest things I have seen in this game so far are the high-security family vaults in the great big vault room in the bank, where you have the fight with the cultists. The game wants you to go out on a scavenger hunt and grab all the keys but myeh. You can just pick the locks. You can pick the locks while the bank manager is STANDING RIGHT THERE. If he’s behind you when you do it, he will run up behind you like HEY! WHAT ARE YOU… oh whatever, go on. Not like it matters now anyways.

I am crying!

The vaults were kind of neat, little pieces of lore for some of the characters we’ve already met. The Ravengard diary made me sad, I didn’t have Wyll with me when I read it, oops, does he have a reaction to that? I also liked the memo that notes that a “representative” from the Szarr family was by at night depositing something and acted “shocked and horrified” when they were asked the standard security screening questions. A supervisor noted that this was standard behavior for their representatives and no more questions should be asked. I assume this is a spawn on an errand and panicking because they were asked questions that they didn’t know how to answer. Neat tidbits.

Speaking of that vault fight btw, wtf is up with the bad guys’ invisibility shroud, why is it always perfect? That fight took way longer than it should have cause those assholes kept disappearing and my character that can see invisible things couldn’t see them. In the end I had to throw around alchemist fires until I finally hit them. And once I was all done, I was going around reading books in the desks and whatnot, and suddenly got attacked by one last cultist who was just apparently hiding in a shadow I guess, was that a bug or was he supposed to be hiding there?...??

Now I’m going through the sewer trying to track Minsc, which I thought was going to be a quick jaunt but noooo, apparently everyone is hiding out down here. I ran into Arabella, and Gandrel with two Gur children (tell me again how it’s a better decision to just kill all the spawn?), Voss is down here patiently waiting for me and he is going to keep on waiting for now, I found some random sleeping tiefling who is just there apparently and has no actual dialogue or associated quests, and I ran into the craziest fucking dude just hanging out being crazy with some nasty grease monsters. My oldest kid says she made friends with him, but I don’t know how that’s possible. Every single dialogue option I have leads him to allow me to pass through exactly once and if I come back, they attack. She also speeds through this game at a blinding speed so I’m thinking she is possibly simply mistaken.

Apparently Orin is down here too somewhere? Man I don’t know if I’m ready to do all of that yet either… I’m still enjoying this game so much, more than I can remember enjoying any game in a long long time, but act 3 is definitely rough around the edges. At least I haven’t been running into any of the game-breaking bugs some people have described. I wonder if those have largely been fixed? I’ve found no bugs, just a ton of random, messy, loosely-integrated content.

Hey for some reason I had in my head Zevlor was hanging out at a pub somewhere in act 3 and you could chat with him to recruit him for the last battle, but apparently that’s not a thing, you can’t talk to him anywhere, and he will just show up when it’s big fight time like “yay I’m a Hellrider again”. Boo! Come on, I would be really really willing to sacrifice things like a weird random grease sorcerer and a pointless sleeping character for, you know, even one tiny little proper act 3 chat with an actual recurring character I’ve been friends with since act one…

Random thought: I was thinking about pre-game durge recently, and Sceleritas. I mean obviously pre-game, durge was not a good person. You have flashbacks of leading a Bhaal cult. You have flashbacks of graverobbing and murder and vivisection. Durge sounds like a literal monster.

But, now I find myself wondering just how much they went along with things, and if they ever tried to resist, pre-game.

Because I’ve just been thinking about how Sceleritas talks to you. If you are playing a resisting durge, Sceleritas never sounds *surprised* that you don’t want to commit horrible murders, he only sounds disappointed. You’d think that a resistant durge is acting so out of character that Sceleritas would be somewhat surprised, but it’s never ever “oh no master, what has happened to you, you used to LOVE the cold-blooded slaughter of innocents?” Sure in act 1 there’s an element of, “oh poor master, your brain is all scrambled, don’t worry we’ll get you fixed”…. but in act 2, it feels more like “oh you naughty disobedient master, you better listen to what daddy says”, like he’s heard durge try to argue out of murder before and he needs to yet again convince naughty durge to eat their murder-vegetables. I dunno. I was wondering if even pre-game, durge resisted sometimes. It’s interesting to think about a durge that was always having little problems all along the way, a rebellious teenager talking back to daddy every once in a while, Sceleritas trying his best to keep durge on the “right” track. Maybe it’s not what the writers intended at all, but I was just thinking about it.

And lastly, Kled - still thinking about Kled - I will never shut up about Kled. Kled would still love you if you were a worm. Kled assumes it’s impossible the lady he likes could ever like him back and he doesn’t care, he’s there anyways as a friend with no expectations. Even Nere has fics on AO3 and Kled has none and that’s not fair! Kled forever.