If you play as Shadowheart and turn to Selune and then go confront Viconia with Jaheira, Minsc, and Minthara, I feel like that should do enough psychic damage to instantly kill her
Like imagine you kidnapped a kid and raised her in a cult and took all her memories and sent her off on a mission and she somehow managed to not just turn against your religion, not just turn to the religion in direct rivalry with yours, not just defy you and turn to her own goals, not just come back and confront you over it, but she came back with two idiots you used to hang out with over 100 years ago who definitely just came here to shit talk and annoy you, and the most unimportant loser ass Baenre she can find who still has a massive superiority complex
That’s like a targeted hate campaign at this point and should kill her right there. Boo will handle the rest of them.
Confession: Larian really said "let's make all of the must fuckable characters white-haired elves." Shadowheart, Minthara, Jaheira, Isobel, Viconia, Kar'niss
There's a lack of morally grey/evil male romantic options for BG3.
Let me preface this by saying that the direction Larian Studios took for the romances are groundbreaking. I can definitely feel the effect they wanted us to feel with the romances- it feels like an actual relationship instead of a game where the end goal is just sex. The players are given an opportunity to influence their love interests and affect their storylines for better or for worse, just like how one would in a real relationship. Kudos!
But… I need to say it. As much as I love Baldur's Gate and BG3, the "bad girl" romance options are numerous (Viconia, Hexxat & arguably Safana in the predecessor games; Shadowheart, Lae'Zel, & Minthara + Mizora as a fling in 3) compared to the male (Dorn in 2, Astarion in 3). There's something off about it that I can't put my finger on. Plus, player have more control on whether to "fix" the bad girls or "make her worse". Meanwhile, Astarion is the only "bad boy" you can do that with. You can't even steer Dorn to a lighter path- he will straight up leave you if you are too good.
In Baldur's Gate 3, every male romance option except Astarion starts off as "good boy" romances. Gale and Wyll did questionable things but their alignment ultimately leans towards good. Halsin is a walking green flag. What if we want to roleplay a character who is into the "bad boys"? This is why we were clamoring for a Raphael and Abdirak romance since Early Access. I see folks wanting Nere and Gortash too. Where are our bastards? Please, we want to play with fire 👀
golden+selunite, and silver+DJ :] i'm too fickle.. read more for different versions
here's the alternative colours, the lineart, and the background i wasn't happy with. spent a lot of time on this one and guess i should have planned a background first, because solid colour felt too boring.
i'm not really satisfied with this, but oh well, learn from our mistakes and all that. i should do actual studies instead probably
viconia devir denied lolth because the goddess demanded a child sacrifice. her brother sacrificed himself for her, and she fled to the alien surface in order to survive. she was forced into sexual slavery and escaped only because the slaver died. at one point, she found a farm to eke out a peaceful existence and was tortured and buried alive by her neighbor, who she thought of as her friend. throughout her entire life, she is constantly hunted by both lolth's followers and racist surface-dwellers who wanted to hurt and kill her
like, in a game about overcoming your past, breaking free of the powers that've shackled you, viconia could've been SUCH an interesting NPC ally. what's even more insane is that it's clear that minthara's writers took inspiration from viconia's story. both of them escaped the cults that took advantage of them. we could've had interactions between the two women! we could've had viconia sympathize with astarion's plight as spawn! viconia did NOT deserve her rewrite into a flat, boring villain for shadowheart's arc
little shadowheart detail i noticed - she doesn't just parrot sharran dogma. she imitates the way viconia speaks about shar. most noticeable here when they mention shar's 'endless darkness' - their inflection and emphasis is the same.
the way she has to resort to using viconia's voice to sound like a true believer of shar...
Another commission for @shartstan97 - part two to this piece. Here, Nocturne comes to try to comfort (Oathbreaker paladin) Shadowheart after the events of the House of Grief<3
Thank you for commissioning me! This was a very cool project
So, I was initially fascinated by the concept of Shar in Baldur's Gate 3, but I think that's partially because I didn't have the context from previous games and was taking Shadowheart's propaganda at face value. What I've come to understand over the course of playing (and yes, I'm one of those who has started a million playthroughs and has yet to finish one, har har) is that Shar is a vindictive, petty goddess, most interested in inflicting suffering for its own sake, for her amusement, for the power it brings, and to satisfy ancient resentments. In this way, Shar seems quite similar to Lolth (perhaps adding a layer to our understanding of Viconia, who has not veered from the traditional drow priestess as far as she might believe).
But the propaganda that Shadowheart has been subjected to? The ideals that Shar and Sharites keep pretenses of? Also quite bad. And far more insidious.
Shar offers her followers a sacred darkness, but it is not the cool, natural relief that I have found in the real nighttime of our world, but rather the numb void of dissociation. Shar says that life is constant pain and disappointment, and so the best thing you can achieve is oblivion. It's seductive in the same way that Big Mouth's Depression Kitty is seductive. Forget your pain by completely and totally giving up on life. Does it matter that she's lying about offering relief and just tearing you down so she can induct you into her cult and take advantage of you? If she were telling the truth, that would also be a terrible fate.
No wonder they hate Selune so much. Hope is painful. And she is specifically the one light of hope shining amid a vast, dark sky, for what is the moon if not that? Yes, in the long, dark night, it's easy to see hope as the lie.