![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alias_sqbrMasterpost
So I finally did the Githyanki Creche! And, well. Stav still hasn't murdered as many children as Tav, or the average githyanki creche member for that matter, and I think that counts for something.
Some of my thoughts are about how everything ties into the larger plot, but are under an extra inner cut.
As I write this post I'm actually nearing the end of Act 2, but I'll put all that in another post. I'm still having fun playing the game, but being a lot more slow and thorough without that drive to get to the end. Which is overall working really well, there's enough weird little things I missed or different choices I can make to make it not feel too samey.
All I knew going into this area was that it was a Githyanki creche (a place where young Githyanki are raised and trained before joining wider Githyanki society on the astral plane) up in the mountains, and that it could very easily end with having to murder a lot of Githyanki children. The latter fact barely counts as extra information, given everything I knew about both this game and the Githyanki.
I had been imagining some sort of isolated, rocky, utilitarian camp without much non-Githyanki stuff going on. I was thus happily surprised by the fact that that the githyanki creche is actually inside a ruined but still beautiful monastery, full of stained glass and trees growing over broken stonework and Weird Religious Stuff.
Rather less happily for the original inhabitants, the githyanki are the reason the monastery is ruined and abandoned, and the monks did not go happily or quietly. So the ruins are full of environmental storytelling about sad monks making a final stand, surrounded by little pieces of the life they used to have. It makes for an interesting but sad environment.
The monks had a now overgrown steampunk-ish giant magic laser on the roof, I couldn't figure out how to interact it with it and when I tried had to murder a giant eagle and it's chick who didn't like me invading their territory. But they had apparently stolen the territory from a sparrow I met earlier, and giant eagle chicks don't count as children. So it's fine.
On the downside I just am not a fan of the githyanki as a fictional society. I find them unpleasant, implausible, and subtextually uncomfortable. "Ex-slaves form a colonialist militaristic society built around unquestioning worship of their cruel and demanding goddess-queen" is... eh. We do see a few githyanki in non-combat-related roles like egg-raising or supply organising but it still doesn't feel like a real society.
Their child raising approach is as horrifying as I was expecting, lots of "if you murder another child they deserved it for being weak" etc. On the way in to see the doctor that Lae'zel is convinced can cure everyone of brainworms, we passed two young teens practicing telekinesis by roughly throwing a sadly yowling box back and forth, and they refused to say who or what was inside :(
All that said, I still DID NOT make a deal with the human woman outside who wanted to pay us to steal a githyanki egg for the Society of Brilliance, the Underdark nerds, who want to try and raise it to be Civilised. NOPE. BAD. I AM JUDGING YOU AND YOUR SOCIETY, MINDFLAYER FRIEND.
Anyway, the doctor was a bit of a mad scientist and was worryingly excited about us all having brainworms. It turns out the Githyanki have a machine which can extract both mindflayer tadpoles and memories from people. Lae'zel was very enthused to be put into it and have all this dealt with, despite the parade of red flags from Dr Evil and her tentacled machine.
The longer Lae'zel is in the machine, the more obvious it becomes that it is destroying her mind and killing her very painfully. There is a sequence of very difficult persuasion etc checks to get Lae'zel to leave and I failed all of them /o\ But in the end her brainworm is too strong and the machine explodes. Apparently this permanently lowered one of her stats but she still seems to be doing ok. What's a little brain-damage between friends.
Dr Evil is not happy about us exploding her machine and when we refused to quietly wait to be dissected there was a battle with her and everyone nearby. It was only after I'd killed everyone that I realised this included the kids with the box, oops. When I opened the box an angry space cat came out and I had to kill that too /o\
Lae'zel was all "The Dr was clearly a traitor! My goddess Vlaakith would never let a REAL doctor fail like that! We must tell the commanding officer!!"
Once the commanding officer turned against us we got the key to go talk to the visiting Inquisitor. And Lae'zel was sure HE would listen!!
And... well, he didn't immediately try to kill us! Instead he summoned a sort of hologram of Vlaakith herself, and after some extreme side-eye from Lae'zel and threats from Vlaakith, Stav begrudgingly bowed and asked what she wanted.
(EDIT: Came across an amusing video of what happens if you don't start being polite. Good call, Stav)
She said the artefact containing Dream Friend had been stolen from the Githyanki by an agent of the mindflayers, and commanded that Stav and party go kill it, under threat of death.
I was a little torn here, because Stav is a contrary anti-authoritarian barbarian who was quite sure that Vlaakith was up to no good. But I also really wanted to know what would happen if we tried to fight Dream Friend!
I eventually decide that Stav would (a) not want to anger a literal Goddess unnecessarily and (b) Didn't trust Dream Friend either, so a chance to at least go meet him on Stav's terms and demand answers sounded good. Worst case, they could always pop back out and fight Vlaakith after all.
Dream Friend was all "I'm not angry just disappointed" and said that yes, he had stolen the artefact from the Githyanki, but the actual reason Vlaakith wants to kill him was to hide that she has been keeping herself immortal by devouring the souls of everyone given the "honour" of serving in her personal guard.
What I love about this is that both the Emporer and Vlaakith are telling partial truths, especially about how I should not trust the other haha.
I don't remember exactly how he described the situation with the artefact but I was darkly amused by what a disingenuous manipulator he was being, making it sound like it was HIS power keeping us safe and not that of poor Prince Orpheus.
Oh also at some point I took a screenshot of the Emporer's attempt to look Sexy in a dream with Stav, which was rather undermined by him looking like a short lovecraftian Santa.
I didn't find out about Vlaakith being evil-even-by-Githyanki-standards until right at the end of my previous game, and it felt a bit out of nowhere. It makes sense that the player was generally assumed to have learned it much earlier, and Lae'zel's feelings are given a little more space here. It'll be interesting seeing how much this knowledge affects Lae'zel's attitude to later events.
Anyway, in the end Stav decided not to kill him, but apparently it doesn't work even if you do try. And when Stav popped back out of the artefact the Githyanki were clearly planning on killing them all regardless of how the the fight had gone.
The guide I was vaguely following said to make a rush to the nearest point that allowed teleports then get out before the entire creche tried to murder us, so I did that, and managed not to murder any more children on the way! Hooray!
Back at camp, Lae'zel was a bit depressed about having her entire worldview thrown upside down, but eventually decided that she hadn't abandoned Vlaakith, Vlaakith had abandoned her. And then Voss, the asshole githyanki general who had been Clearly Up To Something earlier, showed up to camp. Turns out what he's up to is trying to depose Vlaakith! He said to meet us in a "tavern" in Baldur's Gate that I know is actually a brothel so that will be fun.
I had a chance to ask Lae'zel about the whole Laying Eggs thing. She got offended at being called "humanoid" then said they started laying eggs when they escaped slavery and moved to the astral plane, with certain githyanki assigned laying duties, and she thinks it's a much better way of doing things.
And yes, those are Lae'zel's default pajamas. After taking this screenshot I got her a shirt, she looks cold.
And that's the Githyanki creche storyline done at last! I get the feeling I could have blown it all up with the monk superweapon but am glad I didn't.
So I finally did the Githyanki Creche! And, well. Stav still hasn't murdered as many children as Tav, or the average githyanki creche member for that matter, and I think that counts for something.
Some of my thoughts are about how everything ties into the larger plot, but are under an extra inner cut.
As I write this post I'm actually nearing the end of Act 2, but I'll put all that in another post. I'm still having fun playing the game, but being a lot more slow and thorough without that drive to get to the end. Which is overall working really well, there's enough weird little things I missed or different choices I can make to make it not feel too samey.
All I knew going into this area was that it was a Githyanki creche (a place where young Githyanki are raised and trained before joining wider Githyanki society on the astral plane) up in the mountains, and that it could very easily end with having to murder a lot of Githyanki children. The latter fact barely counts as extra information, given everything I knew about both this game and the Githyanki.
I had been imagining some sort of isolated, rocky, utilitarian camp without much non-Githyanki stuff going on. I was thus happily surprised by the fact that that the githyanki creche is actually inside a ruined but still beautiful monastery, full of stained glass and trees growing over broken stonework and Weird Religious Stuff.
Rather less happily for the original inhabitants, the githyanki are the reason the monastery is ruined and abandoned, and the monks did not go happily or quietly. So the ruins are full of environmental storytelling about sad monks making a final stand, surrounded by little pieces of the life they used to have. It makes for an interesting but sad environment.
The monks had a now overgrown steampunk-ish giant magic laser on the roof, I couldn't figure out how to interact it with it and when I tried had to murder a giant eagle and it's chick who didn't like me invading their territory. But they had apparently stolen the territory from a sparrow I met earlier, and giant eagle chicks don't count as children. So it's fine.
On the downside I just am not a fan of the githyanki as a fictional society. I find them unpleasant, implausible, and subtextually uncomfortable. "Ex-slaves form a colonialist militaristic society built around unquestioning worship of their cruel and demanding goddess-queen" is... eh. We do see a few githyanki in non-combat-related roles like egg-raising or supply organising but it still doesn't feel like a real society.
Their child raising approach is as horrifying as I was expecting, lots of "if you murder another child they deserved it for being weak" etc. On the way in to see the doctor that Lae'zel is convinced can cure everyone of brainworms, we passed two young teens practicing telekinesis by roughly throwing a sadly yowling box back and forth, and they refused to say who or what was inside :(
All that said, I still DID NOT make a deal with the human woman outside who wanted to pay us to steal a githyanki egg for the Society of Brilliance, the Underdark nerds, who want to try and raise it to be Civilised. NOPE. BAD. I AM JUDGING YOU AND YOUR SOCIETY, MINDFLAYER FRIEND.
Anyway, the doctor was a bit of a mad scientist and was worryingly excited about us all having brainworms. It turns out the Githyanki have a machine which can extract both mindflayer tadpoles and memories from people. Lae'zel was very enthused to be put into it and have all this dealt with, despite the parade of red flags from Dr Evil and her tentacled machine.
The longer Lae'zel is in the machine, the more obvious it becomes that it is destroying her mind and killing her very painfully. There is a sequence of very difficult persuasion etc checks to get Lae'zel to leave and I failed all of them /o\ But in the end her brainworm is too strong and the machine explodes. Apparently this permanently lowered one of her stats but she still seems to be doing ok. What's a little brain-damage between friends.
Dr Evil is not happy about us exploding her machine and when we refused to quietly wait to be dissected there was a battle with her and everyone nearby. It was only after I'd killed everyone that I realised this included the kids with the box, oops. When I opened the box an angry space cat came out and I had to kill that too /o\
Lae'zel was all "The Dr was clearly a traitor! My goddess Vlaakith would never let a REAL doctor fail like that! We must tell the commanding officer!!"
Once the commanding officer turned against us we got the key to go talk to the visiting Inquisitor. And Lae'zel was sure HE would listen!!
And... well, he didn't immediately try to kill us! Instead he summoned a sort of hologram of Vlaakith herself, and after some extreme side-eye from Lae'zel and threats from Vlaakith, Stav begrudgingly bowed and asked what she wanted.
(EDIT: Came across an amusing video of what happens if you don't start being polite. Good call, Stav)
She said the artefact containing Dream Friend had been stolen from the Githyanki by an agent of the mindflayers, and commanded that Stav and party go kill it, under threat of death.
I was a little torn here, because Stav is a contrary anti-authoritarian barbarian who was quite sure that Vlaakith was up to no good. But I also really wanted to know what would happen if we tried to fight Dream Friend!
I eventually decide that Stav would (a) not want to anger a literal Goddess unnecessarily and (b) Didn't trust Dream Friend either, so a chance to at least go meet him on Stav's terms and demand answers sounded good. Worst case, they could always pop back out and fight Vlaakith after all.
Dream Friend was all "I'm not angry just disappointed" and said that yes, he had stolen the artefact from the Githyanki, but the actual reason Vlaakith wants to kill him was to hide that she has been keeping herself immortal by devouring the souls of everyone given the "honour" of serving in her personal guard.
Spoilers for the whole game
What I love about this is that both the Emporer and Vlaakith are telling partial truths, especially about how I should not trust the other haha.
I don't remember exactly how he described the situation with the artefact but I was darkly amused by what a disingenuous manipulator he was being, making it sound like it was HIS power keeping us safe and not that of poor Prince Orpheus.
Oh also at some point I took a screenshot of the Emporer's attempt to look Sexy in a dream with Stav, which was rather undermined by him looking like a short lovecraftian Santa.
I didn't find out about Vlaakith being evil-even-by-Githyanki-standards until right at the end of my previous game, and it felt a bit out of nowhere. It makes sense that the player was generally assumed to have learned it much earlier, and Lae'zel's feelings are given a little more space here. It'll be interesting seeing how much this knowledge affects Lae'zel's attitude to later events.
Anyway, in the end Stav decided not to kill him, but apparently it doesn't work even if you do try. And when Stav popped back out of the artefact the Githyanki were clearly planning on killing them all regardless of how the the fight had gone.
The guide I was vaguely following said to make a rush to the nearest point that allowed teleports then get out before the entire creche tried to murder us, so I did that, and managed not to murder any more children on the way! Hooray!
Back at camp, Lae'zel was a bit depressed about having her entire worldview thrown upside down, but eventually decided that she hadn't abandoned Vlaakith, Vlaakith had abandoned her. And then Voss, the asshole githyanki general who had been Clearly Up To Something earlier, showed up to camp. Turns out what he's up to is trying to depose Vlaakith! He said to meet us in a "tavern" in Baldur's Gate that I know is actually a brothel so that will be fun.
I had a chance to ask Lae'zel about the whole Laying Eggs thing. She got offended at being called "humanoid" then said they started laying eggs when they escaped slavery and moved to the astral plane, with certain githyanki assigned laying duties, and she thinks it's a much better way of doing things.
And yes, those are Lae'zel's default pajamas. After taking this screenshot I got her a shirt, she looks cold.
And that's the Githyanki creche storyline done at last! I get the feeling I could have blown it all up with the monk superweapon but am glad I didn't.
