BG3: The Devil You Know
Aug. 16th, 2023 08:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alias_sqbrIn which Tav loses their way but finds some friends.
Spoils up to some level 5 quests.
Masterpost
Content note: Abusive relationship between two minor NPCs.
Thanks tokiezh for suggesting and moonvoice for confirming that the pretty dwarf with a beard who shows up in Tav's dreams is in fact MY pretty dwarf with a beard who I designed at the start of the game then "never saw again".
I am pretty sure I just misremembered them being referred to as a woman in-game. I mean I apparently forgot what they looked like, I am not always very observant >.>
Anyway, since it turns out they're my unique character, here's a screenshot, sadly taken with lower quality settings.
Some guides implied a long rest always continues the story but I think moonvoice is right and if there's nothing saved up to happen, nothing happens. Which is good because I ended up having to rest and heal A LOT due to some Choices.
But first: turns out I missed another companion! I think that's all the main ones now, though I'm sure more minor ones will join the camp as I go, I already have three.
And before that let's establish the difference between devils, demons, and tielfings, because I keep being confused, and since this is Generic Lore I can look it up without spoilers, though I can't be sure this all applies to the Baldur's Gate version of D&D.
So! The setting is made up of planes of existence which sit stacked from Evil to Good in a multi-dimensional sandwich, with the main story being set in the "material plane" in the middle. Below that is the Abyss, and below that is the nine hells, the highest of which is Avernus. (this is a simplification of what looks to be a pretty complicated system)
Demons and devils are both Evil denizens of the lower planes, but Demons are chaotic and want to destroy everything and Devils are fascists who want to control everything, so they are eternally in a Blood War, in Avernus. Demons live in the Abyss, are born from Chaos and afaict can look like a variety of monsters. Devils are created from evil souls, including anyone who sells their soul in a contract with a devil, and afaict usually look like sharp-faced, pointy-eared humanoids with weirdly coloured skin, huge rams horns on their foreheads, black irises, ridges of skin in various places, and possibly wings.
Tieflings are in theory any being whose ancestors are from both the material plane and some other plane, but in practice most are descended from humans and the king of the devils, Asmodeus. They generally look a lot like devils, except their horns are smaller and more smoothly merged with the skin, and they don't have skin ridges or wings.
Also, I didn't mention it, but a random devil offered to fix the brainworms if we made a contract with him and Wyll was very DON'T DO IT DEVILS ARE EVIL. Tav had no intention of taking the deal, they're not THAT trusting.
Ok! So! Shortly after meeting Wyll he asks you to help him track down an Evil Devil he's been tracking for some time. I looked into that early on and met some soldiers surrounded by dead bodies, who said they were also chasing her down and she'd killed almost all of their men as well as all the inhabitants of this outpost.
"Gee," I thought, "Sounds like a tough battle, I better save that for later".
But now that I was about to leave this whole area for the Underdark it seemed like a good idea to finish Wyll's quest. I prepared myself for a hard battle and followed the marker...
...to meet a tiefling woman, who said that she was an innocent victim who had escaped from the nine hells after being drafted into the Blood War. She said she was being chased by an evil pack of shapechanging devils who'd murdered everyone in the nearby outpost and pinned it on her.
The helpful little brainworms give everyone, including Wyll, a vision showing that this is true. He still wants to kill her, pointing out that she is wreathed in very un-tiefling-y flames, but it wasn't hard to talk him down. He then feels very guilty about nearly killing an innocent woman, and darkly says he's been playing a part in a pantomime and will have a price to pay.
The tielfing woman Karlach joined the party, and I LOVE HER. She is the big buff brash bi barbarian lady that Dragon Age fans have wanted for YEARS, and the fact she's a tall demonic looking woman covered in leather and studs does not hurt.
Her backstory is that as a vagrant teen she got tricked by her trusted boss into letting herself have an infernal engine put where her heart used to be, so she could both survive and utilise fire, and was then forced to fight for ten years in the Blood War, and only just escaped. She's got a sort of "cheerfully blunt but avoiding thinking about The Trauma" vibe, like Iron Bull, which is very likeable, and not something you see often in female characters.
She also can't touch anyone without making them burst into flame and asks if you could help her find a mechanic to tune her heart so she can hug and have sex and so forth. She says that in the meantime she is Just Trying Not To Think About It, which I'm sure will make her romance fun.
I needed a warrior anyway, so she is absolutely a permanent part of my party now. I have Tav for talking to animals and a mix of spellcasting and hitting things with sticks, Shadowheart for spells and healing, Astarion for picking locks and archery, and Karlach for bashing things. This is working pretty well!
Maybe I'll play a healer next so I don't have to have Shadowheart in my party, just to have a different experience. But for this playthrough, Shadowheart is my forever girl! Karlach is great but for now makes for a good bff.
Back at camp, a Sexy Blue Devil Lady appears and reveals herself to be Wyll's warlock patron, who tricked Wyll into making a deal for magic powers in return for killing "evil and heartless people", which had a loophole allowing her to send him after the literally heartless but not evil Karlach. Wyll is very angry at nearly being tricked into killing an innocent tiefling rather than some evil Devil, and even though he knows breaking his contract means he'll be punished, he absolutely refuses to hurt Karlach now. So he suffers the fires of hell and emerges... a devil! With dark irises(*), horns on his head, and weird skin.
(*)Well, iris, one of his eyes is made of pale stone, which is much more visible now!
His angst about this felt a little awkward under the circumstances.
Wyll: What do you see when you look at me now? :(
Tav, who also has dark irises, horns on their head, and weird skin: A guy??
I feel like there should have been a tiefling option to say "you kinda remind me of my cousin" or something. Like I guess to someone from this setting, tiefling horns have very different associations to devil horns, but they look pretty similar to me! He's not THAT angsty though, and says it was still worth making the deal to be able to help so many people.
Karlach is really grateful that Wyll was so steadfast in her defence, they're a little shippy. Astarion also seemed kinda into Gale and Wyll, in a wanting to drink their blood sort of way, I wonder if anything can happen between any of the companions.
Later, Lae'zel and Shadowheart got into an argument over the artefact, which is apparently a Githyanki cultural treasure, which is PRETTY UNCOMFORTABLE. Shadowheart was very snide about it then agreed to an honour duel only to ATTEMPT TO SLIT LAE'ZEL'S THROAT IN HER SLEEP, wtf Shadowheart. (though the shot of Shadowheart crouched over Lae'zel's prone form with a knife to her throat while they were both in sexy sleepwear was sure something) When Tav talked them down (NOT taking Shadowheart's side there are LIMITS) Shadowheart was all ok let's be allies and I think they're almost friends now??
People aren't totally wrong about this being a horny game, lol. I'm not minding it thus far though I'm glad there's only been ONE time I was exploring and stumbled across two monsters having sex before they attacked us.
Anyway, as I said above, I don't usually have Wyll in my party any more, since it's just too many spellcasters, but he happened to still be around when I was exploring and stumbled across a random sidequest... about the kidnapping of the Duke who runs Baldur's Gate, who is WYLL'S DAD. Wyll left that life behind to become a folk hero and prove himself (with, as it turns out, a little supernatural help). Wyll doesn't get along with his dad, but still wants to save him. And his dad was taken to Moonrise Towers, possibly to be brainwormed, which is where we're going anyway.
I stumbled across some Githyanki doing something near the entrance to the alternate overland route to Moonrise Towers, which I'm guessing Lae'zel would be interested in, but that can wait for another playthrough.
I also stumbled across a swamp with a bunch of traps and a quest involving a hag, but it looked hard, so I decided I should finally just go to the Underdark and continue the main plot.
Except the only way I knew into the Underdark...was in the goblin camp. Where it turned out they still all wanted to kill me.
I checked the guide I'd been following and they just gave advice on how best to murder the remaining goblins, even though they COULD have instead just had the player (eg me) open the door last time they were near there inside the camp. Hmmph. But! They also said that while this was the best way into the Underdark, there were others, such as... the "Auntie Ethel" hag quest I had already stumbled across.
Time to go back to the swamp! The guide said it was a difficult fight, and it sounded scary, so I decided to follow the guide more studiously than usual.
It's actually a great quest, very effectively creepy, and I kinda regret not experiencing it more organically, though it was still fun this way. And I still haven't actually finished it...
The first time you meet Auntie Ethel is much earlier, as a little old lady with an Irish accent selling potions in the druid camp. It was thus very surreal to bump into her in the swamp, sadly claiming her innocence as she was accused by some strangers of being a hag who'd kidnapped a woman trying to make a deal with her. I might have believed her if Tav hadn't passed a perception check to realise she was lying. She spits out that Tav will regret this rudeness the next time they meet, and vanishes.
Further into the trap-filled swamp is the Riverside Teahouse, a pretty little teashop surrounded by flowers and butterflies and the blood soaked bodies of the two strangers. Inside, Auntie Ethel is encouraging a miserable young woman to eat more pie, in a sickly sweet tone with a threat beneath it.
Ethel tells Tav not to worry about the woman and offers to remove the parasite, apparently if you say yes she does something permanent and awful to your eye haha. When Tav insists on trying to rescue the girl, Auntie Ethel reveals her true monstrous mushroom-y form, and vanishes. Then follows a sequence of finding and walking through illusory doors by clicking on the space behind them, fighting unhappily mind controlled minions, and seeing the dead or otherwise miserable people who attempted to make deals with or fight Ethel in the past. Including one of the doors, who shows you how she cut off his limbs before transforming him into wood, and then begs you to flee before he is set on fire for letting your through. Every single one of them, when you ask if they have advice on how to deal with Ethel, just says "Run". It is VERY creepy.
BUT I WAS DETERMINED. I dragged my poor party through terraced tree branches covered in toxic gas and exploding flowers into the final fight against Ethel, where it's a race against time to defeat her before she kills the woman...and was VERY VERY SOUNDLY TROUNCED.
I googled "ways into the Underdark Baldur's Gate 3" and loaded an earlier save.
At this point murdering the entire goblin camp was looking like the easier option but I was determined, dammit!
And it turns out you don't even need to defeat Ethel, there's a mushroom teleport ring to the Underdark behind another hidden door within the terraces of poison gas. And I found it! My party was poisoned and singed but in the Underdark!
And totally lost! Since this wasn't the goblin camp entrance my quest marker was pointing me towards, I had no idea where to go next. So I wandered around for a while and got exploded by random mushrooms and did multiple VERY HARD optional fights without seeming to get any closer to my actual destination or any fast-travel markers, until Cam told me I should go to bed and I decided to check out one of the other entrances the next day.
One sounded like it would require another big fight, but another was right near a thieves den I'd already ingratiated myself into. The thieves said they would be leaving and blowing up the cave soon so I worried I'd lose access, but gave it a shot.
Sure enough, I was in the Underdark again, fighting some harder monsters, but nothing quite as hard as the ones near the Ethel entrance. And after some more wandering around I found the temple that was supposed to be near the goblin camp entrance!!
It was guarded by laser-eyed statues, in front of a locked gate. The game helpfully demonstrated how deadly the statues were by having one of the harder monsters I'd just fought walk up to them and get quickly incinerated.
There were some objects around that made me think there was probably some clever solution, but I decided to just rely on easy mode to get me through and got Astarion to unpick the gate as quickly as possible. By the time he got through and disabled the lasers two of the party were dead, but not all of them and that's what matters!
Nearby were a quick-travel marker (phew!) and the door into the goblin temple, which is not openable from this side. But that's ok! I'm in the Underdark!!
...and still lost. The game did not give any further guidance on where to go next. Shadowheart didn't have any super interesting responses to the temple either, after I went through all that.
So I just wandered around some more, but now at least I had a fast-travel marker I could come back to after visiting a merchant.
The Underdark is an underground area that is generally more deadly and strange than the surface, lots of monsters wandering around and exploding mushrooms etc which require some careful maneuvering. But it's also very pretty, with glowing crystals and giant mushrooms, and after enough wandering I eventually found some friendly NPCs.
Specifically, a semi-hive-mind of very odd looking mushroom people, and some more humanoid folk who'd chosen to live amongst them. This included a merchant who wants us to find her lost husband, a friendly hobgoblin scientist, and a friendly MINDFLAYER scientist.
The game gives you multiple options to go AHH A MINDFLAYER KILL IT but Tav of course was just happy to make a new friend. The mindflayer (who has a name, I just forgot it) used his rare magical abilities to escape the general mindflayer society mind-control and form his own life, and now works with his hobgoblin friend to make the Underdark a better place for everyone. He currently still needs to eat other people's brains to survive, but he's working on it, and in the meantime just eats bad people. As with Astarion I think the game expects that to give you pause, but there's no ethical consumption under murder happy RPG monarchism where all the animals can talk.
Turns out the lost husband used to be abusive but has become much nicer since he became brain damaged by mushrooms, so his wife is choosing not to cure him and treating him like an annoying but useful servant. Not sure how I feel about that!
I met the squishy slimy sovereign of a different mushroom colony who were all murdered except for him, and he joins you to help get his revenge. MUSHROOM FRIEND :D
...who appears to be stuck on a ledge instead of following along. Oh well.
I still don't know where I'm supposed to go to further the main quest since I apparently activated the overland alternate route quest, and now it just point me back to that. But have picked up a few Underdark sidequests so will just do those and keep exploring and see where that leads. This game generally makes wandering around pretty satisfying, there's usually something interesting around the corner, whether it's a new companion or monsters having sex.
The most recent thing I stumbled into was a group of slaver dwarves, who Tav had the option to make a deal with and very much Did Not. The game helpfully gave some advice on how to run away from overwhelming battles, which made me worry this fight was going to be EVEN WORSE than an ENTIRE CAMP OF ANGRY GOBLINS but it was just like 5 not especially difficult dwarves.
And now I am going to finish this post and force myself to do boring things like have a shower before seeing what's over the next hill.
Spoils up to some level 5 quests.
Masterpost
Content note: Abusive relationship between two minor NPCs.
Thanks to
kiezh for suggesting and moonvoice for confirming that the pretty dwarf with a beard who shows up in Tav's dreams is in fact MY pretty dwarf with a beard who I designed at the start of the game then "never saw again". I am pretty sure I just misremembered them being referred to as a woman in-game. I mean I apparently forgot what they looked like, I am not always very observant >.>
Anyway, since it turns out they're my unique character, here's a screenshot, sadly taken with lower quality settings.
Some guides implied a long rest always continues the story but I think moonvoice is right and if there's nothing saved up to happen, nothing happens. Which is good because I ended up having to rest and heal A LOT due to some Choices.
But first: turns out I missed another companion! I think that's all the main ones now, though I'm sure more minor ones will join the camp as I go, I already have three.
And before that let's establish the difference between devils, demons, and tielfings, because I keep being confused, and since this is Generic Lore I can look it up without spoilers, though I can't be sure this all applies to the Baldur's Gate version of D&D.
So! The setting is made up of planes of existence which sit stacked from Evil to Good in a multi-dimensional sandwich, with the main story being set in the "material plane" in the middle. Below that is the Abyss, and below that is the nine hells, the highest of which is Avernus. (this is a simplification of what looks to be a pretty complicated system)
Demons and devils are both Evil denizens of the lower planes, but Demons are chaotic and want to destroy everything and Devils are fascists who want to control everything, so they are eternally in a Blood War, in Avernus. Demons live in the Abyss, are born from Chaos and afaict can look like a variety of monsters. Devils are created from evil souls, including anyone who sells their soul in a contract with a devil, and afaict usually look like sharp-faced, pointy-eared humanoids with weirdly coloured skin, huge rams horns on their foreheads, black irises, ridges of skin in various places, and possibly wings.
Tieflings are in theory any being whose ancestors are from both the material plane and some other plane, but in practice most are descended from humans and the king of the devils, Asmodeus. They generally look a lot like devils, except their horns are smaller and more smoothly merged with the skin, and they don't have skin ridges or wings.
Also, I didn't mention it, but a random devil offered to fix the brainworms if we made a contract with him and Wyll was very DON'T DO IT DEVILS ARE EVIL. Tav had no intention of taking the deal, they're not THAT trusting.
Ok! So! Shortly after meeting Wyll he asks you to help him track down an Evil Devil he's been tracking for some time. I looked into that early on and met some soldiers surrounded by dead bodies, who said they were also chasing her down and she'd killed almost all of their men as well as all the inhabitants of this outpost.
"Gee," I thought, "Sounds like a tough battle, I better save that for later".
But now that I was about to leave this whole area for the Underdark it seemed like a good idea to finish Wyll's quest. I prepared myself for a hard battle and followed the marker...
...to meet a tiefling woman, who said that she was an innocent victim who had escaped from the nine hells after being drafted into the Blood War. She said she was being chased by an evil pack of shapechanging devils who'd murdered everyone in the nearby outpost and pinned it on her.
The helpful little brainworms give everyone, including Wyll, a vision showing that this is true. He still wants to kill her, pointing out that she is wreathed in very un-tiefling-y flames, but it wasn't hard to talk him down. He then feels very guilty about nearly killing an innocent woman, and darkly says he's been playing a part in a pantomime and will have a price to pay.
The tielfing woman Karlach joined the party, and I LOVE HER. She is the big buff brash bi barbarian lady that Dragon Age fans have wanted for YEARS, and the fact she's a tall demonic looking woman covered in leather and studs does not hurt.
Her backstory is that as a vagrant teen she got tricked by her trusted boss into letting herself have an infernal engine put where her heart used to be, so she could both survive and utilise fire, and was then forced to fight for ten years in the Blood War, and only just escaped. She's got a sort of "cheerfully blunt but avoiding thinking about The Trauma" vibe, like Iron Bull, which is very likeable, and not something you see often in female characters.
She also can't touch anyone without making them burst into flame and asks if you could help her find a mechanic to tune her heart so she can hug and have sex and so forth. She says that in the meantime she is Just Trying Not To Think About It, which I'm sure will make her romance fun.
I needed a warrior anyway, so she is absolutely a permanent part of my party now. I have Tav for talking to animals and a mix of spellcasting and hitting things with sticks, Shadowheart for spells and healing, Astarion for picking locks and archery, and Karlach for bashing things. This is working pretty well!
Maybe I'll play a healer next so I don't have to have Shadowheart in my party, just to have a different experience. But for this playthrough, Shadowheart is my forever girl! Karlach is great but for now makes for a good bff.
Back at camp, a Sexy Blue Devil Lady appears and reveals herself to be Wyll's warlock patron, who tricked Wyll into making a deal for magic powers in return for killing "evil and heartless people", which had a loophole allowing her to send him after the literally heartless but not evil Karlach. Wyll is very angry at nearly being tricked into killing an innocent tiefling rather than some evil Devil, and even though he knows breaking his contract means he'll be punished, he absolutely refuses to hurt Karlach now. So he suffers the fires of hell and emerges... a devil! With dark irises(*), horns on his head, and weird skin.
(*)Well, iris, one of his eyes is made of pale stone, which is much more visible now!
His angst about this felt a little awkward under the circumstances.
Wyll: What do you see when you look at me now? :(
Tav, who also has dark irises, horns on their head, and weird skin: A guy??
I feel like there should have been a tiefling option to say "you kinda remind me of my cousin" or something. Like I guess to someone from this setting, tiefling horns have very different associations to devil horns, but they look pretty similar to me! He's not THAT angsty though, and says it was still worth making the deal to be able to help so many people.
Karlach is really grateful that Wyll was so steadfast in her defence, they're a little shippy. Astarion also seemed kinda into Gale and Wyll, in a wanting to drink their blood sort of way, I wonder if anything can happen between any of the companions.
Later, Lae'zel and Shadowheart got into an argument over the artefact, which is apparently a Githyanki cultural treasure, which is PRETTY UNCOMFORTABLE. Shadowheart was very snide about it then agreed to an honour duel only to ATTEMPT TO SLIT LAE'ZEL'S THROAT IN HER SLEEP, wtf Shadowheart. (though the shot of Shadowheart crouched over Lae'zel's prone form with a knife to her throat while they were both in sexy sleepwear was sure something) When Tav talked them down (NOT taking Shadowheart's side there are LIMITS) Shadowheart was all ok let's be allies and I think they're almost friends now??
People aren't totally wrong about this being a horny game, lol. I'm not minding it thus far though I'm glad there's only been ONE time I was exploring and stumbled across two monsters having sex before they attacked us.
Anyway, as I said above, I don't usually have Wyll in my party any more, since it's just too many spellcasters, but he happened to still be around when I was exploring and stumbled across a random sidequest... about the kidnapping of the Duke who runs Baldur's Gate, who is WYLL'S DAD. Wyll left that life behind to become a folk hero and prove himself (with, as it turns out, a little supernatural help). Wyll doesn't get along with his dad, but still wants to save him. And his dad was taken to Moonrise Towers, possibly to be brainwormed, which is where we're going anyway.
I stumbled across some Githyanki doing something near the entrance to the alternate overland route to Moonrise Towers, which I'm guessing Lae'zel would be interested in, but that can wait for another playthrough.
I also stumbled across a swamp with a bunch of traps and a quest involving a hag, but it looked hard, so I decided I should finally just go to the Underdark and continue the main plot.
Except the only way I knew into the Underdark...was in the goblin camp. Where it turned out they still all wanted to kill me.
I checked the guide I'd been following and they just gave advice on how best to murder the remaining goblins, even though they COULD have instead just had the player (eg me) open the door last time they were near there inside the camp. Hmmph. But! They also said that while this was the best way into the Underdark, there were others, such as... the "Auntie Ethel" hag quest I had already stumbled across.
Time to go back to the swamp! The guide said it was a difficult fight, and it sounded scary, so I decided to follow the guide more studiously than usual.
It's actually a great quest, very effectively creepy, and I kinda regret not experiencing it more organically, though it was still fun this way. And I still haven't actually finished it...
The first time you meet Auntie Ethel is much earlier, as a little old lady with an Irish accent selling potions in the druid camp. It was thus very surreal to bump into her in the swamp, sadly claiming her innocence as she was accused by some strangers of being a hag who'd kidnapped a woman trying to make a deal with her. I might have believed her if Tav hadn't passed a perception check to realise she was lying. She spits out that Tav will regret this rudeness the next time they meet, and vanishes.
Further into the trap-filled swamp is the Riverside Teahouse, a pretty little teashop surrounded by flowers and butterflies and the blood soaked bodies of the two strangers. Inside, Auntie Ethel is encouraging a miserable young woman to eat more pie, in a sickly sweet tone with a threat beneath it.
Ethel tells Tav not to worry about the woman and offers to remove the parasite, apparently if you say yes she does something permanent and awful to your eye haha. When Tav insists on trying to rescue the girl, Auntie Ethel reveals her true monstrous mushroom-y form, and vanishes. Then follows a sequence of finding and walking through illusory doors by clicking on the space behind them, fighting unhappily mind controlled minions, and seeing the dead or otherwise miserable people who attempted to make deals with or fight Ethel in the past. Including one of the doors, who shows you how she cut off his limbs before transforming him into wood, and then begs you to flee before he is set on fire for letting your through. Every single one of them, when you ask if they have advice on how to deal with Ethel, just says "Run". It is VERY creepy.
BUT I WAS DETERMINED. I dragged my poor party through terraced tree branches covered in toxic gas and exploding flowers into the final fight against Ethel, where it's a race against time to defeat her before she kills the woman...and was VERY VERY SOUNDLY TROUNCED.
I googled "ways into the Underdark Baldur's Gate 3" and loaded an earlier save.
At this point murdering the entire goblin camp was looking like the easier option but I was determined, dammit!
And it turns out you don't even need to defeat Ethel, there's a mushroom teleport ring to the Underdark behind another hidden door within the terraces of poison gas. And I found it! My party was poisoned and singed but in the Underdark!
And totally lost! Since this wasn't the goblin camp entrance my quest marker was pointing me towards, I had no idea where to go next. So I wandered around for a while and got exploded by random mushrooms and did multiple VERY HARD optional fights without seeming to get any closer to my actual destination or any fast-travel markers, until Cam told me I should go to bed and I decided to check out one of the other entrances the next day.
One sounded like it would require another big fight, but another was right near a thieves den I'd already ingratiated myself into. The thieves said they would be leaving and blowing up the cave soon so I worried I'd lose access, but gave it a shot.
Sure enough, I was in the Underdark again, fighting some harder monsters, but nothing quite as hard as the ones near the Ethel entrance. And after some more wandering around I found the temple that was supposed to be near the goblin camp entrance!!
It was guarded by laser-eyed statues, in front of a locked gate. The game helpfully demonstrated how deadly the statues were by having one of the harder monsters I'd just fought walk up to them and get quickly incinerated.
There were some objects around that made me think there was probably some clever solution, but I decided to just rely on easy mode to get me through and got Astarion to unpick the gate as quickly as possible. By the time he got through and disabled the lasers two of the party were dead, but not all of them and that's what matters!
Nearby were a quick-travel marker (phew!) and the door into the goblin temple, which is not openable from this side. But that's ok! I'm in the Underdark!!
...and still lost. The game did not give any further guidance on where to go next. Shadowheart didn't have any super interesting responses to the temple either, after I went through all that.
So I just wandered around some more, but now at least I had a fast-travel marker I could come back to after visiting a merchant.
The Underdark is an underground area that is generally more deadly and strange than the surface, lots of monsters wandering around and exploding mushrooms etc which require some careful maneuvering. But it's also very pretty, with glowing crystals and giant mushrooms, and after enough wandering I eventually found some friendly NPCs.
Specifically, a semi-hive-mind of very odd looking mushroom people, and some more humanoid folk who'd chosen to live amongst them. This included a merchant who wants us to find her lost husband, a friendly hobgoblin scientist, and a friendly MINDFLAYER scientist.
The game gives you multiple options to go AHH A MINDFLAYER KILL IT but Tav of course was just happy to make a new friend. The mindflayer (who has a name, I just forgot it) used his rare magical abilities to escape the general mindflayer society mind-control and form his own life, and now works with his hobgoblin friend to make the Underdark a better place for everyone. He currently still needs to eat other people's brains to survive, but he's working on it, and in the meantime just eats bad people. As with Astarion I think the game expects that to give you pause, but there's no ethical consumption under murder happy RPG monarchism where all the animals can talk.
Turns out the lost husband used to be abusive but has become much nicer since he became brain damaged by mushrooms, so his wife is choosing not to cure him and treating him like an annoying but useful servant. Not sure how I feel about that!
I met the squishy slimy sovereign of a different mushroom colony who were all murdered except for him, and he joins you to help get his revenge. MUSHROOM FRIEND :D
...who appears to be stuck on a ledge instead of following along. Oh well.
I still don't know where I'm supposed to go to further the main quest since I apparently activated the overland alternate route quest, and now it just point me back to that. But have picked up a few Underdark sidequests so will just do those and keep exploring and see where that leads. This game generally makes wandering around pretty satisfying, there's usually something interesting around the corner, whether it's a new companion or monsters having sex.
The most recent thing I stumbled into was a group of slaver dwarves, who Tav had the option to make a deal with and very much Did Not. The game helpfully gave some advice on how to run away from overwhelming battles, which made me worry this fight was going to be EVEN WORSE than an ENTIRE CAMP OF ANGRY GOBLINS but it was just like 5 not especially difficult dwarves.
And now I am going to finish this post and force myself to do boring things like have a shower before seeing what's over the next hill.
no subject
Date: 2023-08-16 06:56 pm (UTC)That's a very well-designed dwarf! You put so much care into the character creation.
It's funny reading this after Planescape Torment, because I keep going, "HEY I KNOW THOSE WORDS!" I know about the Blood War!
I'm amused how brainworms relates to Twitter fandom slang -- this game really gives you brainworms, huh.
as a vagrant teen she got tricked by her trusted boss into letting herself have an infernal engine put where her heart used to be, so she could both survive and utilise fire, and was then forced to fight for ten years in the Blood War, and only just escaped
omg???? This is so romance love interest woobie stuff.
killing "evil and heartless people", which had a loophole allowing her to send him after the literally heartless but not evil Karlach.
NICE.
agreed to an honour duel only to ATTEMPT TO SLIT LAE'ZEL'S THROAT IN HER SLEEP, wtf Shadowheart
OMG
there's no ethical consumption under murder happy RPG monarchism where all the animals can talk.
Beautiful.
Tav is making SO MANY FRIENDS. I hope they get a chance to befriend Aunt Ethel.
no subject
Date: 2023-08-19 05:54 am (UTC)I'm really glad to hear you're enjoying it! And yes this game definitely gives me brainworms in the twitter sense haha.
The romance woobie levels are off the charts for everyone it's great.
I think the odds of befriending Ethel are Low but never say never!
no subject
Date: 2023-08-19 06:05 am (UTC)...that I have now watched, and in the process discovered that I want to romance Astarion. ;D So I will be getting the game as soon as I can and joining you. ;p
no subject
Date: 2023-08-19 06:55 am (UTC)Heehee. Excellent :D Astarion doesn't suit Tav but he's definitely a top romance contender for my next playthrough.