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#astarion watches and wants to approve because fuck this guy
clownsecret · 2 months
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okay but tenderly, gently, oh so sweetly, breaking cazador. he's crying, trying to pretend he's not crying, torn between trying to pretend that this isn't happening and pretending that it is but he's still in control here. licking the tears off his face as he weeps, despite the bucking of his hips. your hands on his body, your tongue on his flesh, the vampire lord stretched thin between the hooks of arousal and revulsion, and that's how he comes, with your teeth in his flesh and your name on his lips, begging you- to stop? for more? harder? faster? all of the above?
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malicedafirenze · 9 months
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I unintentionally skipped a lot of the romance content in Baldur's Gate 3 and I want others to learn from my mistakes:
So: I managed to lock myself out of romance entirely and ended up alone, which was a huge bummer and a serious crack in my motivation to play the game. I finished my playthrough (because I was already close to the end of Act 3 when I realized it), and plan to do another one eventually. I'm making this post in hopes of a) keeping others from making the same mistakes and b) to possibly get some additional insight re. what to watch out for in my next playthrough.
PSA: Pick a Partner before Act 3
The key learning here for me was this explanation from the poly mod
In BG3, romance is divided into 2 steps: dating and relationship(also called partner). Dating is basically where you are at after the 1st romance scene. Relationship is where you are at after the 2nd romance scene (relationship also unlocks the kissing menu). BTW, If you enter A3, all dates will break up with you (partners won't, ofc).
I hadn't realized this until well into Act 3, at a point where going back to a save to properly fix it would have meant replaying large parts of Act 2 as well - I decided to finish my run instead and then start a completely new one later.
Note: lots of spoilers below. (click here to read this post on reddit instead)
My Romance Woes
I read in advance that you couldn't romance multiple people (except for the specific Halsin combos with Shadowheart and Astarion) and therefore turned down Gale and Lae'Zel early in the game (not realizing you could just date/bonk them without fully committing or getting anyone upset)
I didn't take approval all that seriously, thought I'd have more opportunity to fix things later. I was playing pretty good guy, and ended up with high approval for Karlach and Shadowheart, but low for Astarion. Weirdly, I don't recall an option to romance Shadowheart (no clue what I missed?) and the only option I had for Karlach was at the Tiefling party, where I went with Astarion instead. I had a scene or two with him, but then didn't progress further in the relationship, without really realizing what I was missing.
I wanted to romance everyone, sat on the fence for too long, and ended up not romancing anyone at all, by missing a thing or two in act 1 and 2 and being too late to fix it in act 3. Don't be like me, it feels bad man.
Early Act 3, I got Astarion's breakup dialogue ("we haven't spent a night together in some time" --> him explaining it was just transactional and he doesn't see the value in it anymore) and got super worried, but when trying to look up if I'd messed up, I didn't find a clear answer for without more spoilers, so I just continued playing Act 3, including all of the companion quests.
I later learned that I missed out on at least one important Astarion romance interaction by not going to Moonrise Towers until after freeing Nightsong. (when the Towers are already on high alert, i.e. I could only fight and not have a lot of conversations)
After realizing I had messed up companions romance, I instead fucked everyone it was unwise to fuck (Emperor, Mizora, Harleep...) for fun and to see what would happen... but chickened out and reloaded after Emperor and Mizora. Still, got to enjoy some fun content that way!
The ending I got (going to Avernus with Karlach) was really cool and made me cry a lot. I then did try to reload my last save though, to see if I'd get any other epilogue content if I didn't go to the Hells, but... apparently that scene on the docks (Astarion goofily running off, everyone kinda agreeing to go party after this, no other conversations with anyone again.... is just... it?
Idk how much of this is the lack of romance, but I really felt like something was missing there. I at least wanted to talk to everyone again one last time.
This is a post about my romance failures and regrets so I'm not gonna talk about everything else that I loved about the game, but just in case this is getting a bit too negative: I had an absolute blast with the whole game regardless, I'm stoked to give it another go the "proper" way (i.e. with romance). I also generally think it's really fucking cool that this game's romance options depend on how you behave, and that you can't just e.g. give someone the right kind of gift 20 times in a row to make them love you, like it works in games like Stardew Valley.
Next Playthrough Plans
I'll probably wait for another patch or two - considering how much got fixed and tweaked with the first three patches, I suppose it's worth to wait a bit and see what's coming
I'll play with the Poly mod next time and try to romance all of the Origin characters.
I plan to play with the camp notifications mod, as well as the approval ratings in dialogue mod. Both in hopes of being able to game the romance a bit better and get much of the romance in one playthrough
I'll play Dark Urge (haven't seen any of that so far!), but probably still go for a "good" playthrough mostly
I plan on equipping & levelling all Origin companions and switch them out more freely, in order to get approval from everyone and edit my party as makes sense depending on story events (e.g. take Lae'Zel to the Creche, take Gale to the Ketheric fight...)
I want to romance everyone. I already saw some tips for early game Astarion approval and assume the aforementioned mods will help in optimizing this
Am probably not gonna do anything all that differently otherwise because my heart can't take an actually evil playthrough
Aand that's about it. As mentioned, I'm mostly posting in case this helps anyone else.
I was really damn sad when I realized I had locked myself out of all romance, because the romance was a significant part of my motivation to start playing this in the first place. At the same time, I loved so much about the game that I still got a lot out of it in 110+ hours even with minimal romance content.
If you see any red flags about my plans for the next playthrough (or if you have experience with the mentioned mods!), I'd appreciate comments and insights. Other than that, here's hoping others can learn from my mistakes. Thank you for reading <3
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lucius-the-sinful · 11 months
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galethor and astarion have the same energy reflected in this AITA comment
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some fun things thats happened in my early access playthrough with them below the cut
>Galethor not intervening when Aradin and Zevlor yell at each other and watching with great amusement as Zevlor gets knocked on his ass. I think that was the moment Astarion became intrigued by Gale (yes his nickname is gale, no i did not know of gale the companion before i made this character because galethor was created for an upcoming d&d campaign asdhfdlk)
>Gale thinking he tricked the teifling child by stealing the ring but failing every perception check to notice his bag was lighter. Very in character no notes.
>Playing heavily into exaggerating the story of the fight for Volo.
>Not taking the wyvern poison so Nettie was killed. Galethor ransacking her entire laboratory and walking out of the grove like nothing happened. And since the teifling child was spared no one questioned "why do you have the healer's circlet???" like i find that particularly silly. This man getting away with blatant murder will never not be funny.
>Making Vorru bow to Lae'zel for his own (and Astarion's) entertainment.
>I will definitely break some hearts with this one but to be fair, I didn't think this would be the outcome but it Just Makes Sense. Rescuing Halsin went sideways because Galethor decided pelting the bear with rocks was funny. Then the bear got angry. He also took that chance to kill some goblins since they won't become hostile from friendly fire. Anyways, after Halsin was dead at Galethor's feet he went "well fuck guys what do we do now :(" then cast speak with dead to get his information anyways. I hope that Astarion approval was worth it, Gale (it was).
>On a related note, in the Underdark he told Baelen "you're on your own", snatched his backpack, then blew up the mushrooms.
>Finally, strutting confidently in on the bugbear and ogre in the Blighted Village, thinking he could weasel his way out of it by saying he wanted to join the fun. He could not.
im sure theres more that happened im forgetting. he's awful and materialistic and loves fucking with people. hope this helps.
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rottenbrainstuff · 8 months
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BG3 playthrough: The Siege
(Mild spoilers? Not really?)
The big ol’ grove siege: Holy smokes was that ever fun.
But first of all, something super important: so I compared notes with a friend of mine. Can I just… double check… is everyone aware that the siege defense route of the grove is an option, to complete the “save the refugees” task?
My friend did the “kill the three goblin leaders” route. He wasn’t aware of the siege defense route. I was quite surprised and this made me think. I realized most of the discussion I see online is about the three goblin leaders route. I realized that I think the only reason I knew about the siege defence at all is that I previously read an article which was talking about attacking the grove vs defending the grove. I realized that the game doesn’t make the siege defense option very obvious: Zevlor and Halsin both push you to kill the leaders. There is, now that I think about it, only one single small clue that a siege defense is even a possibility.
And this is really, really odd to me… because the siege defense is amazing, and fun, and has some really good cutscenes, and extra content! The goblin camp fight, as far as my friend described it, is just… fighting your way out of a big and tedious fight. With no cinematics, no extra NPC flavour, no fun stuff at all. I have absolutely no idea why Larian hid this really nice event, and tries to direct the players towards something so uninteresting instead. My friend thinks maybe it’s supposed to be a reward for exploring all options, but like, that’s a helluva lot of work to put into a little easter egg, if that’s the case?
Maybe the defense is just common knowledge and EVERYONE knows about it and they just CHOOSE to kill the goblin leaders. The three leaders route is definitely faster and easier. But it’s so much less fun. So, just in case it’s NOT common knowledge… and that would be STARTLING: man guys, this is a very important protip, definitely make yourself aware of the siege defence route.
This is how to trigger it:
First of all you have to have to be in the goblin base and on friendly terms with the goblins somehow. (in my game, it’s as simple as being a drow) When you talk to Minthara, you’ll get a sense of her eagerness to destroy the grove. Clarify that your intentions are to fight with the tieflings and warn them. (this is, as far as I can see, the only clue the game gives AT ALL that this fight is an option) You’ll get some dialogue options next where you can attempt to throw her off: offer to get info from the prisoner then lie about it, try to show her the wrong spot on the map, etc etc etc. Don’t be too worried if you fail your saves because sometimes it makes fun alternate dialogue: I failed an intelligence check to try and keep her out of my memories, and I ended up claiming I was drunk and mixing things up, which was funny.
Anyways after a while you’ll notice the dialogue keeps looping back to the same options. Eventually you will have no other option but to just show her on the map where the grove actually is. (you can demand payment to get approval from Astarion if you want!) Minthara will declare that they can finally do the raid, she will leave to rally troops (you can follow her and watch her if you like), and in your journal it says Minthara is waiting for you to infiltrate the grove, and you should get some rest. Oh no, you fucked up!
Don’t worry. Do a long rest and in the morning you should see your journal update again: you now have a quest to warn the tieflings she is coming. Go to the grove and you’ll see they’re all preparing for an attack. (Zevlor will have slightly different dialogue if you camped outside the grove vs if you camped inside it) And have fun! You can talk to the tieflings: they all have new dialogue and positions, you can get set up for the siege, there’s a couple people with small tasks to do, and when you’re ready to go, blow the horn. (PROTIP: Once you are inside the grove, the tieflings will no longer open and close the gate for you automatically! You have to do it yourself! What this means is, if you are inside the grove, and decide to fast travel somewhere else (via the map), if you don’t leave the gate open for yourself, when you come back, you are locked out and have no way to raise the gate! I had to misty-step Wyll up to the top to let us back in. Don’t be like me)
Zevlor has two really nice and moving speeches, you get a Minthara cutscene which is the only time you’ll really see her if you’re playing a good route, you get all the extra NPC dialogue, you get a wicked fun siege defense fight with a lot of different parts to it, you get to fight alongside the tieflings and defend them directly, like. Man why would you NOT do the siege? Why would someone program this great sequence then hide it like that? I have no idea why the game tries to guide you so much to the three leaders route.
So the siege prep: as I mentioned before, fuck the goddamned druids and leaving Doni outside the door. If the goblins break in (which they won’t) I’m going to lead them straight to that goddamned door. The tieflings buried 2 little oil barrels outside to help in the fight. Two. That’s cute! I have a stash of about 20 barrels I’ve been saving at my camp, including a whole pile I stole from the goblin store room. Just for funsies I once set half of them up and set them on fire to see how big they would boom. The answer: BIG. Two barrels? Oh sweeties that’s so cute, but with my firepower we are going to vaporize Minthara. Time to see how high these goblins can fly!
I just love how emotionally involved I’ve got though, I loved that I immediately wanted to go check on the kids in the cave, and noticed right away that one was missing (that’s not counting Doni I mean, who I already knew was missing), which made me worried, so I spent time looking all around and finally found him up by the damned gate and refusing to leave. (you kids! I’m going to pick him up like a barrel and throw him into that cave myself. That, or stick him in my backpack so I can keep an eye on him) I loved hearing them mention that some tielfings had left overnight, and again getting worried and running around to figure out who wasn’t there. I loved running around the camp getting my positions set up, my inventory straight, my barrels arranged, and playing bard music for everyone to help calm down the ones that are scared. Had a blast. Some of the tieflings were so scared, poor things. Don’t they know they’ve got a big daddy dark urge on their side who’ll rip anything into little red pieces if it even thinks about crossing that gate?
And then MY GOD the actual fight was so much fun: the cutscenes, the dramatic speeches, all the different enemy pieces. I had Karlach to the very left where the spider jumps up, to keep Arka safe and to throw alchemist fires at the various barrel stations. I had Wyll to the very right to soak the sniper damage, fire off eldritch blasts, and make sure those sappers didn’t get near the gate. My tav is a bard so he was in the middle, making sure everyone was all healed up cause those tieflings are pretty squishy, and taking care of the goblins that get thrown over the gate in barrels.
And Astarion - the mean little murder bitch that he is - he was running around out on the ground with that amazing invisibility cape, taking care of loose ends. He put Minthara out of her misery when one barrel bomb cluster wasn’t quite enough to one-shot her, then picked off the goblins one by one. The ogre throwing the barrels got distracted and kept trying to look for him, so that worked quite nicely.
This is so much more fun than just a one-by-one assassination then an escape through an aggrod camp fighting a million of the same kind of goblin. Definitely try the siege route. Barrels are a must. Steal them from the store room.
Then there’s the party and that was so damned fun. Noticed a few weird things though. Will talk about that later. The outside of the grove is now an absolute horror show of destroyed barrels and goblin bodies, and those shitty druids can have fun cleaning that mess up themselves.
Phew!!!
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mrshamster · 9 months
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i need to ramble about the early act 3 part of the astarion romance with a good character in bg3 (contains spoilers for much of act 3)
so at this point in the game, the ascension is basically all astarion talks about, and he wants it bad. my character has no way of knowing if she can stop him, or if he will forgive her if she does. she tries to talk him out of it and he just doubles down. "i'm doing this for you, too, you know. so we're safe."
my good/neutral wood elf ranger/druid Willow's around 200, so she's seen some shit. She knew perfectly well Astarion was manipulating her into bed, and figured this would be fun for awhile. Of course they both caught feelings.
But when she asks him what she means to him, he can't answer yet beyond
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so she's with this guy who's already pushing the evil line who says he wishes to be more evil, and he won't even say she means anything to him. Not a great time for a breakup given the whole elder brain nonsense, but she's got to be questioning why she's still involved with him. She's into the vampire bites but still.
and this is after she just helped/watched Lae'zel and Shadowheart through some major morality shifts. so maybe she's still hopeful Astarion will do the same. well Willow is a lot more hopeful than I am irl (I would personally curl up and die the second they put a bitey tadpole in my eyeball)
meanwhile Halsin is right there. he'd be a better life choice. they're both druids, he's neutral/good enough to not disapprove of all her life choices (as Astarion does, which really does not bode well for their long-term compatibility).
I thought it was quite interesting that none of the options in the "hey how do you feel about me fucking Halsin" conversation with Astarion had Astarion's approval or disapproval. Larian was really like "nope y'all are on your own with interpreting this whole thing". and having been the Astarion in a similar arrangement I'm like - oh fuck yes, go fuck the bear man and take the pressure off of me, just come back and snuggle when you're done.
like is everyone in this situation mentally healthy? fuck no. is this going to explode into some drama a few months/years down the line? quite possibly. would that happen if they stayed monogamous too? absofuckinlutely.
anyway so i'm probably gonna go kill Cazador today instead of rescuing Gale from Orin. I never have him in the party anyway because I don't know how to use a wizard properly so we always die.
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hey-doobnnoob · 4 months
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i just saw your post about your tiefling and i love him, for starters. he's pretty. but since no one else has said it: i wanna hear about him and gale.
oh no you've opened floodgates you're gonna regret opening
I'm just as bad about these two as I am about Michael and Astarion, but that's for another day if anyone opens the floodgates on my Mike playthrough of BG3 (or if anyone wants to look at his admittedly still incomplete page on his TH profile for my BG3 stuff on him)
also yes, thank you. Verrik IS very pretty, he needs to be told that more often
more about Verrik and Gale under the cut tho. this isn't all of my ramblings.. but I'll stop myself here before I have a novel's worth of it
fun fact: Tiefling tails are described as being cat-like. so more just for balance and not prehensile or anything
why is that relevant? well just like cats, when Verrik feels as if he's not getting enough attention, he will absolutely "accidentally" start to knock Gale's cup of tea over with his tail
unlike a cat, Verrik's tail wags furiously at the smallest amount of praise Gale gives him. he never knew his tail could do that before
Verrik is actually super mild-mannered and level headed. he's normally extremely quiet and more likely to try and talk things out before he resorts to any sort of violence. that being said, Lorroakan was the first person to ever make Verrik unleash the fury of the Hells all in one Tiefling after how he spoke about Gale to his face
Verrik and Gale have this mutual feeling of gods I don't deserve you. Gale because of his history of having to constantly prove himself to everyone around him in order to earn their love and because of how patient Verrik is with him working through all of his trauma, and Verrik because he genuinely doesn't know why a guy like Gale would give some regular dime-a-dozen Tiefling like him the time of day. they deserve each other
Verrik is constantly impressed with everything magic related Gale does, no matter how small. he's always in awe over how well he can just control the Weave so effortlessly, as if he can't just turn into a massive fucking Owlbear on command as a Druid and also can perform spells on a whim
everyone who loves Gale (which should just be everyone but for whatever reason there's a lot of people out there who just insist on being wrong) always complains about his asking for a kiss animation when romancing him. which fair. but also I play into the headcanon that both Gale and Verrik are just the exact opposite of Michael and Astarion (bc I bounce back and forth between combining their playthroughs) and are just so flustered at the idea of PDA. alone, they'd happily be all over each other. if there's even one other living thing nearby, it's small touches bc public affection just ain't their thing. like hand holding or leaning on each other or whatever
upon first meeting Tara, Verrik panicked to Gale after she flew off because he wanted to know if Gale thought she liked him. did she approve? does she hate me?? GALE PLEASE I DON'T WANT HER TO HATE ME WHAT DO I DO?!?! Gale had to spend the next several minutes patting his back and reassuring him Tara doesn't hate him
Gale's favorite thing to do after they move into his tower together and get married is to conjure up a little red dot and watch Verrik and Tara chase it around the room. Verrik is essentially a cat in a Tiefling's body, it's no wonder Gale fell in love with him
Verrik has a hard time reading after he allowed Volo to pluck out his eye and give him a false one. so instead he just cuddles up to Gale and has him read to him. neither of them mind, Gale likes talking and Verrik could listen to him all day
Gale teaches Verrik how to cook so after he becomes a professor, he doesn't have to worry about his husband starving at home without him. Verrik uses this as an excuse to bring Gale a freshly made, home cooked lunch every day and join his classes for a bit
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rottenbrainstuff · 5 months
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BG3 playthrough: picking up where I left off in the shadowlands
I survived my overseas trip and a busy holiday so now I’m getting back into the swing of my Baldur’s Gate 3 playthrough, and as usual, taking a fucking long-ass time to get anything done. Let’s see, let’s see here. Here’s just a few random notes. I’m currently still farting around in the shadow-cursed land, experimenting with what order is best to do things in so as to trigger everything you want. Did you guys all check out the advent calendar that Larian had running in December? That was cute!
While I was overseas I was watching my daughter play her own game a bit… I told her the orthon fight was the most difficult fight I did yet, when I was scouting ahead and looking around at things coming up. I managed to kill Yurgir, but the minions almost TPKd my ass. I had to run away. Probably every time I play, I will always do one of the non-fight options to deal with him. She said, “hm” and gave it a try. Instead of talking to Yurgir at all, she made Astarion invisible, snuck him in, and got a critical on a sneak attack which got him in one single fucking round, and made short work of everyone else. Well. I guess that works, too.
Araj Oblodra note: if you are a drow, you can realize that her house was notorious for experimention with mind flayers, and that’s likely what has polluted her blood: gross.
One more time: YOU DO NOT NEED TO WORRY ABOUT ASTARION’S APPROVAL LEVELS (or anyone’s, for that matter) The game is full of more than enough approval opportunities. Don’t whine about Astarion being hard to romance, don’t make bad choices just to make him like you, just play the way you want and whatever companion you like, you’ll get there in the end, I promise. The approvals and disapprovals are interesting and add really cool flavour to think about, don’t meta game it, just play your game and take note of who likes/dislikes what and have fun thinking about why that is.
Tumeril is a harper at the entrance to the Last Light Inn, and he used to wear a dog collar, like, the exact same dog collar that I found in the underdark. In the latest updates, the dog collar is gone! That makes me sad, because I thought the collar was funny. :( The game is ok to have a dude in a bondage harness beat you up then tell you it was DIVINE, but too shy to have a harper wearing a dog collar.
A note about Astarion’s second romance scene: there are two versions of the scene, and one is easy to trigger and one is much more convoluted. You can trigger one version of his second romance just by talking to Araj Oblodra in Moonrise. If you tell her to leave Astarion alone, after you rest, he’ll have a second romance scene where he thanks you for letting him decide, and the scene is about him revealing how little bodily autonomy he had in the past, and much more about how he doesn’t want people to only relate to him sexually, in fact he maybe doesn’t want that at all. It’s an ok scene. It’s some good character development.
But I just don’t prefer it over the second version of his romance. The second version is the one that starts with “we need to talk”, and it is much more about Astarion admitting that he initially came on to you with ulterior motives, but now he’s caught genuine feelings and doesn’t know how to proceed. I prefer it because it’s more vulnerable, it’s less about just him and more about your relationship, and kind of just fits in better with the sort of narrative I’m doing with my tav. It’s also more unclear as to exactly how to trigger it. I looked and looked and looked everywhere trying to find some solid, reliable information, but in true bullshit modern internet fashion, it’s very difficult to find. Instead there’s a lot of supremely unhelpful unverified speculation. (Ie it’s based on approval, just keep camping and eventually it will trigger, it will trigger if you camp at Moonrise, it will trigger after you kill the orthon, NO NO NO, these are all incorrect or incomplete) If anyone else has TESTED AND CONFIRMED a different way they were able to trigger it, I would love to hear it. But on my end, the only way I was able to trigger it was by: 1) killing the orthon 2) talking to Raphael afterwards and getting the information about Astarion’s scars, and then lastly: 3) camping at moonrise towers. These three things in this order. That was the only way I could get it. There might be an easier way but at the very least I can confirm this will trigger it every time. It’s very important to get SOME version of this while you’re still in act 2. Unfortunate players who never got around to it will find a sudden and upsetting breakup scene if they accidentally progress to act 3.
The tiefling prison break seems to have two different outcomes as well - sometimes during the breakout, the warden will leave her office and rush towards the prisoners and fight them at the boat, and sometimes the warden stays where she is and remains unaggroed, and you can go back and talk to her later and she will say that because the prisoners escaped under her watch, she is dead. (literally) I haven’t figured out what causes one or the other to happen (I have literally reloaded the exact same save and had different outcomes, almost like it’s random, or perhaps a bug?) and honestly… I’m kind of too tired to try and figure it out - but two outcomes exist, so watch your back as the prisoners are escaping and be prepared for a fight just in case the warden is following you.
My party all leveled up, and instead of doing something actually useful, I made the executive decision to give Astarion one level of bard. I did this 100% only because I want someone for my tav to be able to duet with cause then the music sounds better, and because it’s funny listening to Astarion do vicious mockery (which he can never actually hit with, because his charisma is way too low). I don’t really care that it wasn’t the most useful choice. I am playing the game according to what I find fun, and the fights are only one single part of it for me. I have decided Astarion used to play the violin back when he was still alive, and Cazador forbade him from playing. After traveling around with my bard he’s cautiously decided to pick the violin back up.
So the prisoners are free! So sweet to see them reunite. The kids are still sad cause Mol is still nowhere to be found. Barcus and Wulbren made me pretty sad though. They really animated Barcus well in their reunion scene. His sad little smiles and arm swings as he tries not to show his crushing disappointment hurt my heart. Aw my buddy. You can do so much better than this guy. Sigh.
Z’rell is uh. Wow. She is parting the folds of my mind and touching and tasting is she??? Uh. I. 😳🥵
With the prisoners free I’m exploring around now…. Not sure if I should explore the rest of Moonrise, or explore the rest of the Shadowlands, maybe do Halsin’s weird little side curse thing... I love this game so much!
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