#varash the githzerai

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Varash loves her owlcub so much.

Gale: What's its name?

Owlcub: *confused hoot*

Gale: What did it say?

Varash: His mother did not name him.

Wyll: Then we should give him one.

Astarion, shuddering delicately: Might I suggest 'Fleabag'?

Varash: He will name himself when he *knows* himself.

Karlach, looking up from the potato she's peeling: Spud!

Varash: 'Spud'?

Karlach, holding up her potato: Look, same shape.

Owlcub: *excited shrill hoots*

Varash, still mildly bewildered: Spud it is, then.

Lae'zel: Tchk.

#stuff #baldur's gate 3 #varash the githzerai #owlbear cub #precious baby

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When she knew:

When she showed how she knew him:

When he knew what she meant.

And how it's going.

#baldur's gate 3 #varash the githzerai #halsin #aaaaaaah my heart

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Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Baldur's Gate (Video Games) Rating: Not Rated Warnings: Major Character Death Relationships: Halsin (Baldur's Gate)/Original Female Character(s), Halsin/Tav (Baldur's Gate) Characters: Halsin, Original Female Character(s), technically a Tav, Varash, Githzerai Tav Additional Tags: Romance, Angst, Mention of major character death Series: Part 2 of Under the Same Sky Summary:

The battle is won, but the cost was high. Varash and Halsin begin to work through the aftermath, and what their future will be.

“The Netherbrain is dead, as is the ghaik. My mind is my own again, and the threat of ceremorphosis is ended.” She went to him, resting her forehead against his as his arms closed around her. “There is no joy in me for any of it. I had not known victory could taste so much like ash.” “The cost was high,” Halsin agreed. “It is only natural to grieve, my heart. It will ease in time, although you will not forget.” She lifted her head to meet his gaze, seeing there shadows of those he had lost over his years, carried with him always. The words came from her mouth like stones. There was responsibility in their weight, guilt at their edges sharp enough to cut. “I could have stopped them.”

#writing #baldur's gate 3 #varash the githzerai #halsin

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BG3 Epilogue

WELL wasn't that just about everything it needed to be?

I mean, apart from the fact that half the textures were missing, even after verifying the download and reloading.

Does anyone truly want to see Withers in a jumpsuit?

The noise I made when I saw Tara at my camp at last!

I am not sure if I'm happy about Scratch just wandering off to find another home, but he seems to be, so I guess we'll let that slide.

AND MILLIL? The literal God of Bards is playing at my party?

Plus an excellent kiss animation and finally hugging Halsin

BUT OF COURSE

the shining moment for Varash was Lae'zel talking about the diplomatic overtures to the githzerai. THIS IS EVERYTHING I WANTED FOR THEM AND FITS ALMOST PERFECTLY INTO MY PLANNED POST-GAME FIC OH HELP I LOVE IT

#baldur's gate 3 #varash the githzerai

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Here is Varash, a githzerai druid.

It would be nice if people of the prime material plane didn't keep assuming she was a githyanki. It would be nice if Lae'zel would keep assuming she was a githyanki.

#baldur's gate 3 #varash the githzerai

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Varash is meeting a lot of very strange people.

Many of them are travelling with her.

#baldur's gate 3 #varash does not understand what he wants #apart from her blood #which he can't have #one parasite is unacceptable #why would you allow a second one to weaken you? #varash the githzerai #astarion

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4, 10, 18, 19, 20 for Varash!

4. What hobbies does your Tav have? How did they acquire these interests?

Varash’s mother, Zhriinvar, is essentially a librarian (I haven’t quite worked out what they call it in gith, and how it differs, apart from deciding that not all the items in the library are books, in tir’su or otherwise; some are blocks of stone with memories psionically imprinted into them for others to experience. The oldest of these date back to the first years of the rebellion against the illithid). Varash reads a great deal and free ranging in a library led to other interests. The most important of these was her obsession with Faerûnian ecology – more of that at the proper question.

She is also a singer, in a way; I headcanon that githzerai music is both choral and highly abstract, so to hear her sing her part without the others would just sound weird and probably unpleasant. I think she’s interested in Alfira’s music but does not fundamentally get it – where are the other singers? why is a machine involved? and the scale/harmonies do not make sense to her ears.

10. What would your Tav consider to be their greatest skill? Is this accurate?

A trained will. Among the githzerai, she has received a little more training than most but isn’t anything very special. Out on the Prime, it’s very off-putting for her that not only does it not matter in quite the same way (Prime reality does not reshape itself solely in response to concentrated will) but mostly her companions grumble about how stubborn she is. Like it’s a bad thing.

She is not entirely wrong, but probably only because she sees everything else as governed by her will. Observation, memory, even compassion to a degree – they’re all aspects of what she wills to be.

18. What is your Tav’s greatest fear?

She’s basically living it during the game. Culturally there is nothing the githzerai fear more than to be slaves, again under the thrall of the illithids. She has a ghaik tadpole in her brain, a ghaik lying and manipulating her, and a ghaik abomination trying to destroy the world she loves. She has only the narrowest hope that she can do anything about any of it, and she fears that she and Lae’zel will not be able to kill the others and each other before they turn.

19. What is your Tav’s greatest desire?

To be whole, free of the parasite, and with Halsin in this beautiful world she left her own to explore.

20. What is your Tav’s greatest regret?

Hard to say! I’m not sure she really experiences regret, or would recognise it if she did. There are certainly aspects of the endgame that made her doubt that she had done the right thing, in a way she had probably never known before, but I don’t think it’s regret.

WELL I had to leave this overnight and I remembered one, although I haven’t quite decided yet whether it’s canon. In the game as I played it, Varash never found Halsin in the goblin camp. She killed off the leaders, scoured the place but somehow missed that one important door, and by the time I’d given up and found a guide, Halsin had rescued himself and gone home. I even think it was part of her initial respect for him, and the impression she received in the shadow-cursed lands of a person who knew what he needed to do and was 80% of the way there, but needed a little assistance over that last 20% - he needs someone to keep the portal open for him, not to do the research and the rescue; he needed someone to just get him enough of a diversion that he could get out.

But then he tells her about his captivity under the drow matron, and as she thinks about it later she thinks about how nobody came for him then, he just had to fight his way free when finally there was a diversion, and that the exact same thing happened in the goblin camp, and she – wishes she had found him, and decides that it will never happen again (Probably just as well that Orin took Lae’zel).

#baldur's gate 3 #varash the githzerai #bettydice #thank you for asking! #githzerai headcanon

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Ladies and gentlemen and assorted denizens of Tumblr, please give me some ideas on an important aspect of Varash's backstory.

As a young githzerai, studying among her people on the plane of Limbo, Varash became very interested, not to say obsessive, about the ecology of Faerun on the Prime Material Plane. This passion led her to follow the druid's path, albeit in rather an academic fashion despite attempts to *will* an animal into being. Eventually she found an opportunity to go study Faerun in person - a trip that was interrupted by the nautiloid.

So Varash's first days after the crash are a mixture of horror and hatred at her infection, Extreme Tension with Lae'zel, confusion at these weird Prime Material people, and sheer delight at finally experiencing this world she's studied for years and getting bullied by squirrels.

My question is this: which animal first piqued Varash's interest? I think it was probably a mammal, and a natural beast rather than anything more exotic, but that's all I know.

Suggestions?

#baldur's gate 3 #varash the githzerai

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#baldur's gate 3 #bettydice #bettydice is responsible this #jadesabre301 #is also responsible this as she wanted all of you to see it #varash the githzerai #lae'zel

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2, 4, 12, 19!

Hi Quark! I had to do a few substitutions for yours, alas.

Jade asked 2, so 1: What was your Tav’s place of birth and raising like?

Varash’s hometown is a little monastery with attached town/support services (suitable githy syllables yet to be determined). It is fairly remote, as outposts in Limbo go, and insular even for the githzerai, who tend to be a bit wary of strangers; probably most of the inhabitants have never met a non-gith. In theory, the First Zerth of the monastery is the main authority of both monastery and town, but in practice it’s cooperative.

4 and 5 already done, so 6. What is your Tav’s favourite childhood memory?

Apart from that first day of falling in love with Faerûnian ecology – which was probably when she was thirteenish – I think most of her childhood was characterised by a quiet contentment without much by way of highs or lows. When she was recommended for an apprenticeship to the tor’jhra’karach, maybe? It was definitely an honour.

12. What opinion does your Tav have about the Gods?

Complicated! Forgotten Realms theology is a bit of a mess, and it’s really unclear how much sway the gods of Abeir-Toril even have over other Planes of existence, even though technically most of them have their own planar domains. Mask of the Betrayer suggests that even people who’ve never heard of the gods or lived in a reality where they’ve appeared are still subject to their judgement, which is a whole thing.

Culturally the githzerai seem to skew pretty secular, although there are temples in their capital city. Earlier editions have them worshipping Zaerith Menyar-Ag-Gith as a god-king and a Messianic relationship with Zerthimon, who led the civil unrest against Gith, but those editions also had the githzerai as basically indistinguishable from the githyanki, so I do not subscribe.

I think Varash is aware of the gods, and their messy histories, and the punishments for not worshipping them, but it doesn’t really become relevant to her until she comes to Faerûn. Then she’s travelling with people who have intimate and complicated relationships with their deities, and she starts to reflect on it all a bit more. Eventually she probably settles into a fairly Lawful Neutral perspective on them: they exist, they occupy their particular place in the ecology, better learn to live with it. She does, eventually, come to share something of Halsin’s devotion to Silvanus.

19 and 20 already done, so normally I’d go to 21 but I can’t work out how to answer it, so you get 24 instead: What first impression does your Tav give off to strangers?

Everyone thinks she’s a githyanki. EVERYONE. Now, you know and I know that this is because the game barely acknowledges githzerai exist, but it’s amusing to me, and it makes sense when the githyanki are out here raiding and riding dragons around and laying eggs on Faerûn, and the githzerai are tucked up in Limbo contemplating their navels.

If that gets dispelled (letting people think she’s githyanki is the very first lie of omission Varash learns to tell; Lae’zel and a crashing ship is an efficient teacher), the next impression is probably that she’s curious, nosey, or a very good listener, depending on whether they want to talk. Varash wants to know. Granted, sometimes she wants to know so she can decide whether you need to die, but she will always listen. Varash will always let the villain finish their monologue, and ask for clarification on any obscure points of motivation or course of action. There are several companions that this really annoys.

#baldur's gate 3 #varash the githzerai #loquaciousquark #thank you for asking! #githzerai headcanon

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PRIME NUMBERS FOR VARASH

PRIME NUMBERS JADE

why do you make me do maths (or just ask google) ((1 isn’t a prime number, huh, I don't think I knew that))

2.  What relationship did your Tav have with their family/guardian(s) growing up? Has that changed with age?

I think her mother, Zhriinvar, is not a physically affectionate person or very warm in manner, although Varash never felt unloved. There is a kind of formality in the way they interact that would look very distant to an observer. However, when it became clear just how much Varash was longing for Faerûn, Zhriinvar worked very hard to make it happen, including polite and formal pestering of the appropriate authorities. There would have been a lot more pestering when the Sending Stone Varash was sent with stopped responding. I don’t think she actually learns the full truth until Varash gets back to Limbo, but she is eventually told that Varash is in deadly danger and that she cannot help. Their reunion is probably the first time Varash has seen her mother cry.

Zhriinvar’s mother is also in the picture, but I know little about her apart from the fact she’s completely shameless and will absolutely look Halsin up and down and ask them how the two of them even fit.

3.  Did your Tav receive any formal or informal education? If yes, how well did they learn? If no, why not?

Formal, absolutely. All the children are educated by the zerths in history, literature, basic martial skills and psionics, etc. Varash probably wasn’t anything outstanding scholastically, but by the time she was finished with basic education she had demonstrated a strong will and was steered into her apprenticeship. Which leads neatly into -

5. Did your Tav have any formal or informal employment? If yes, what was their job? If no, how did they make ends meet? How did they feel about it?

OKAY SO I admit I didn’t think much about backgrounds and how they were supposed to work when I made Varash; I picked Guild Artisan for the proficiencies. BUT I worked out how it fit.

The githzerai primarily live in fortress cities on the Plane of Limbo, which is basically Elemental Chaos. Most (maybe all, the wiki isn’t clear) of these fortresses are the result of one immensely powerful githzerai psionic (referred to as an Anarch) imposing their will on the stuff of Limbo to create and hold it. I think that Varash’s hometown is smaller and more of a group effort, and Varash was apprenticed and eventually a very minor worker in that discipline. When I’m being flippant, I say she was an interior decorator. That is, the best of the tor’jhra’karach (my made-up word, although ‘karach’ is used in Planescape: Torment for chaos matter) make houses and rooms; she was responsible for small items of furniture or room decoration. Just because you’re monastic and ascetic doesn’t mean that everything has to be plain adamantine.

7. What circumstances led to your Tav becoming their Class/Subclass?

She fell down a wiki hole, basically. She’d looked at a few books on Faerûnian ecology for inspiration when she discovered goats and got obsessed. Mammals are weird, and those eyes, and durability, and so many different kinds, from domestic varieties to antelope, and, oh, that’s a lion, how fascinating – and so on. She devoured everything she could find on the subject, which included a fair amount of druid texts, wanted more, thought about it all the time – and that kind of distraction is really, really dangerous if the place you live in and the very stuff you’re working with is responsive to your will. She had a small accident, a lapse of concentration at the worst possible moment, which led to her scar (exact details as yet unclear), which was a final catalyst for getting her to Faerûn: it was clear she wasn’t happy here and wasn’t safe here, so get her to the world of her dreams. Either she gets it out of her system and comes home again, or this is truly the path she was meant to walk and she shouldn’t be held from it.

Once in Faerûn, Varash discovered that she had, almost accidentally, become a druid herself: her longing and study had created a channel for that power to flow through as soon as her feet touched the soil. Circle of the Moon: it began with the animals and it’s where her heart truly lies.

11.  What would your Tav consider to be their greatest flaw? Is this accurate?

The answer to that one is very different at the end of the game than during, but as I’m currently writing about that one, we’ll go with during. I’m not even sure if ‘flaw’ is quite the right word, but she finds most of the companions and about everyone else who isn’t githyanki very, very alien. She keeps judging them and reacting to them by her own culture’s values, which presupposes a degree of self-knowledge that, for most of the companions, just isn’t there. Shadowheart, for example, has literally has no idea who she is, and believes she chose that willingly, and that’s utterly incomprehensible to Varash.

Varash knows that the cultural context is different, that these people are not her own, and that expecting them to behave in any way like a githzerai would isn’t fair, but the ways they do react keep on blindsiding her. Wyll sold himself into slavery and isn’t even really trying to get free? And he can’t or won’t explain his reasoning? It just completely throws her.

13.   How does your Tav feel about the wilderness?

Adores it. This is what she came for. The solidity of it is very strange – the world keeps on being what it is – but it’s an attractive strange and not an off-putting one. Even the thistles. Even the thunderstorm she didn’t recognise immediately – books are never going to convey just how loud thunder is or how wet rain is.

She is not as inherently anti-city as Halsin, but Baldur's Gate does not impress her favourably.

17. How good of a liar is your Tav? How do they feel about lying?

She’s terrible. I think the githzerai probably don’t even have a strong concept of lying among themselves: deception is what the ghaik do. And it seems like a really bad idea in a place where reality is, to a large degree, what you tell it to be. I think by the end of the game she can tell a few lies by omission, but you’re better off getting Astarion to talk to people.

19 I’ve already answered, and you’re not getting a substitute because you already asked so many, greedy Jade. <3

23. What are 2-3 songs that your Tav would relate to?

Well, it shames me to admit it, but I was writing all this out, having been mulling it over for months, and I said to myself: “Oh shit, she’s the Little Mermaid.”

So ‘Part of Your World’, I guess.

I am not good at theme songs, which isn’t even specifically what this question is asking for. They either come to me or they don’t, and having scrolled through my entire music library the closest thing I’ve found is probably ‘Be Still’ by the Killers.

29. What advice would you give to your Tav?

Have patience; you will get to kill that ghaik eventually. Most of your companions will make good decisions with minimal prodding, but some of them won’t.

#baldur's gate 3 #jadesabre301 #varash the githzerai #thank you for asking! #githzerai headcanon

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Three Owlbear Moon (featuring cowboy Wyll)

#baldur's gate 3 #varash the githzerai

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So I remembered that the incorrect quote generator exists.

#baldur's gate 3 #incorrect quotes #varash the githzerai #i didn't even shuffle the names for the bear one

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Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Baldur's Gate (Video Games) Rating: Not Rated Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Halsin (Baldur's Gate)/Original Female Character(s) Characters: Halsin, Original Female Character(s), technically a Tav I guess?, Varash Additional Tags: Romance, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, THAT conversation about the drow Summary:

Halsin and Varash escape Baldur's Gate for a brief respite after Varash has an upsetting morning. Halsin gives comfort and is offered it in return.

_______________________

“Halsin,” she says. The way she pronounces his name has been endearing ever since they first met; she treats the syllables as though they were dandelion seeds and would fly away at too rough a voicing. “Will you come with me?”

“Of course,” he says. It has been true, without reservation, ever since the shadow curse was lifted, and he wonders a little that she should ask now.

Varash gazes at him. There is something softer in those russet eyes, although the tension has not left her body. Golden light flares about her as she takes on falcon’s form and drives herself upward. Halsin follows, swift wings lifting him into the lightening sky.

#baldur's gate 3 #writing #varash the githzerai #halsin

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So I made a Khem for Varash's dream figure, because I wanted to see how close I could get. Turns out, apart from the armour, it's pretty close, and when you set her against a background of fire.... *chef's kiss*

#baldur's gate 3 #khemuret xul #varash the githzerai

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Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Baldur's Gate (Video Games) Rating: General Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Characters: Lae'zel (Baldur's Gate), Original Female Character(s), technically a Tav, Varash Additional Tags: Githyanki and Githzerai, Character tension, personal headcanons about the gith Summary:

Lae'zel is rescued from a cage by one of her kin - but the relationship is more distant than she thought, and considerably more fraught.

______________________

Lae’zel grins, a flash of hunger and fierce joy even through the loathsome squirming of the tadpole in her skull. Oh, the horned ones will pay now, for the parasites recognise each other. This is the one Lae’zel met on the nautiloid, in command of the istik they took from the jaws of the ghaik’s trap and three more besides. She tells Lae’zel’s captors to lower the cage and free her. They argue, and then they die. It is too quick for Lae’zel to learn much of the istik, although she notes with some disapproval that her kin has not yet found herself a proper sword and must still use the clumsy quarterstaff she had taken from the nautiloid.

“Whatever passes,” her kin orders the istik as she lowers the cage, “do not interfere.”

#writing #baldur's gate 3 #varash the githzerai #I love her tension with Lae'zel so much #I'm going to write more of it