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Kinda stalled near the end of act 2 with Stav, since I was hoping (somewhat optimistically) that a beefed up ending for the Astarion romance would come out before I got there. Pia described the ending he got and it sounds unpleasantly abrupt.
So naturally I made a new character!
And then they weren't working for me so I made a NEW new character.
No significant spoilers past the first ten minutes or so, just some rambling and pics.
So! Some things I wanted to try out:
Every time I think about playing an Origins character I get put off by having to play a conventionally presenting cis person when I coule play a non-binary person instead. I found a mod which lets you change Origin character appearance but it specifically doesn't work consistently for Wyll or Shadowheart and those are the two I'd most like to play. Looking that link up I came across this kinda androgynous voice 'genderswap', which could create an androgynous effect with some of the character specific appearance mods. Hmm. Maybe in another game!
Anyway. The first three goals all implied someone with high intelligence, plausibly a magic user. I decided it would be fun to play an amorally curious type, a little bit mad scientist. Poking around the different classes, the most obvious answer is wizard but I didn't want two in one party. I've been enjoyinganghraine's Bad Decisions Cleric of Mystra Romances Gale posts and I thought about doing something similar, but it didn't feel right.
I looked up what classes and races get the most unique content and the answers are apparently tiefling, drow, githyanki, and bard. Also people made wild magic sorcerer sound pretty fun since it has all sorts of unpredictable effects, and they said sorcerer had some fun conversations with Gale specifically since they have such different approaches to magic.
So I settled on a wild magic sorcerer lolth drow called Rin, who was raised not to see other species as really people and still hasn't entirely learned better, and has a lot of weird Gender going on as a transfem genderfluid person from a super sexist matriarchy.
I didn't take a screenshot of their Guardian but it's basically Minthara since that's the only kind of person they'd have any instinctive respect for.
I seriously considered playing Dark Urge, since that adds a whole backstory, but I listened to the intro and it felt too angsty, when Rin was specifically designed not to be angsty. Also Rin would absolutely give in to any significant urge to murder.
Having wild magic makes them inclined to be chaotic neutral: when you have huge amounts of power but very little control over it, it's easiest to just go with the flow and do whatever seems interesting without worrying too much about consequences.
The wild magic was fun, any time you cast a spell or give yourself advantage there's a chance Something Weird can happen. The only time this happened during my game was Rin accidentally creating a dark, blinding cloud of smoke around the party mid-battle, but apparently you can turn your whole party into cats and dogs.
I played happily enough until meeting Gale and just... wasn't feeling it! As in my previous playthroughs, the mean options didn't feel fun to pick very often, and the rest ended up a bit generically nice.
And the more I thought about it, the more I actually wanted to play a tiny, earnest Dark Urge githyanki bard. This combines a bunch of fun things I want to try, and also there's just something appealing about playing a githyanki (evil-leaning warrior race) and Dark Urge character (angsty backstory and urge to murder) as a bard (tends towards being twee, likeable, and helpful)
That still leaves a bunch of things left to try, but I can't do everything with every character.
It's hard to imagine how a githyanki could become a bard but since the Dark Urge is an amnesiac, that can just be Part Of The Mystery haha.
So! Meet Xem, a very confused non-binary person. Even githyanki cis men don't have facial hair so I'm not sure how they got that beard, and neither are they. Githyanki don't really do gender roles and also they have amnesia so their gender is mostly a big ??
It struck me at some point that Lae'zel's character design has elements of Cute Freckled Green Eyed Red-head and I decided to lean into that for Xem.
I don't know much about how bard works so mostly chose to start with a violin because it looked cute.
The random guardian generator gave me a very Geralt From TV's The Witcher looking human dude and I left him basically as is.
When the game starts you have the choice to try and remember your name, and the narrator says something like "You are The Dark Urge, whatever that is". When I went back into the character creator later to make Xem's hair a little less fluorescent than my first attempt their name had literally been changed to 'The Dark Urge'. I can't remember if the name I originally picked was Xem or something similar but that feels very in character. I'm imagining them going "Hi, my name is THE DARK... um... Xem! ...that's a name, right?"
It was fun watching the opening cinematic as a githyanki with amnesia, watching all the githyanki looking cool on their dragons as they fought the mindflayers thinking "So... we're the good guys?" Xem imprinted on Lae'zel like a baby duckling as a cool older sister who can explain things, we'll see how that goes given that Lae'zel isn't usually into discouraging murder. Xem already ignored her advice to leave the [githyanki term for non-githyanki] to die, but did enjoy feeling included as one of Us.
(I am unsure how old Xem is chronologically, but they're plausibly older than the 20ish Lae'zel. But everyone is older in terms of remembered lived experience)
Speaking of which, I'd heard Shadowheart's prejudice against githyanki becomes even more obvious when you play a githyanki yourself, and boy does it! YES WE CAN DO NICE THINGS JUST TO BE NICE, ACTUALLY, SHADOWHEART. She'll probably react to finding out about the Dark Urge by going "isn't that normal for you people", *mutter* It's also a bit rich to talk about us all "taking without giving in return" when [spoilers].
Otherwise the basic plot has mostly played out the same as my previous games. But every now and then it's like... I loot a corpse and Xem just stares at it, transfixed, half remembering visions of thousands of other corpses and feeling their face form a smile. After we met Astarion Xem was left with thoughts of a pretty corpse. The contrast with all the mostly kinda blandly friendly choices they make is delightful. THEY ARE TRYING SO HARD.
Currently still very much on board for a Galemance. Afaict all the companions are pretty understanding about the Dark Urge, but something about his combination of chill good naturedness, *coughs to avoid spoilers* messy romantic history, and willingness to go along with horrific warcrimes feels especially appealing. Like he creates a vibe of calm kind safeness and would encourage Xem not to turn into a serial killing monster, but if they did, well... he'd roll with it and probably think it was hot.
I know some Dark things are in Xem's future and will see how I deal with that. But they can still have a happy ending eventually!
Kinda stalled near the end of act 2 with Stav, since I was hoping (somewhat optimistically) that a beefed up ending for the Astarion romance would come out before I got there. Pia described the ending he got and it sounds unpleasantly abrupt.
So naturally I made a new character!
And then they weren't working for me so I made a NEW new character.
No significant spoilers past the first ten minutes or so, just some rambling and pics.
So! Some things I wanted to try out:
- a character who makes Bad Decisions and doesn't feel too sad about it, especially all the not actively evil but shady things like Dark Magics For The Greater Good
- romancing Gale. He's an interesting character and also I'd rather do it now before the bug making him vocally fall in love with characters who have shown no interest undercuts the vibes any further. And I like the idea of him as a romance with a character who does bad things, since he's willing to roll with that sort of thing and I wouldn't feel like I was undermining the "learning to be good despite past trauma" arcs for some of the other characters.
- someone good at and interested in arcana/history etc
- a bard, because people keep saying they have good content
- someone cheerfully genderfluid, since you can switch gender and appearance on a whim now
- a dark urge (has a mysterious backstory and Urge To Murder) or origins character (one of the existing companions)
Every time I think about playing an Origins character I get put off by having to play a conventionally presenting cis person when I coule play a non-binary person instead. I found a mod which lets you change Origin character appearance but it specifically doesn't work consistently for Wyll or Shadowheart and those are the two I'd most like to play. Looking that link up I came across this kinda androgynous voice 'genderswap', which could create an androgynous effect with some of the character specific appearance mods. Hmm. Maybe in another game!
Anyway. The first three goals all implied someone with high intelligence, plausibly a magic user. I decided it would be fun to play an amorally curious type, a little bit mad scientist. Poking around the different classes, the most obvious answer is wizard but I didn't want two in one party. I've been enjoying
anghraine's Bad Decisions Cleric of Mystra Romances Gale posts and I thought about doing something similar, but it didn't feel right.I looked up what classes and races get the most unique content and the answers are apparently tiefling, drow, githyanki, and bard. Also people made wild magic sorcerer sound pretty fun since it has all sorts of unpredictable effects, and they said sorcerer had some fun conversations with Gale specifically since they have such different approaches to magic.
So I settled on a wild magic sorcerer lolth drow called Rin, who was raised not to see other species as really people and still hasn't entirely learned better, and has a lot of weird Gender going on as a transfem genderfluid person from a super sexist matriarchy.
I didn't take a screenshot of their Guardian but it's basically Minthara since that's the only kind of person they'd have any instinctive respect for.
I seriously considered playing Dark Urge, since that adds a whole backstory, but I listened to the intro and it felt too angsty, when Rin was specifically designed not to be angsty. Also Rin would absolutely give in to any significant urge to murder.
Having wild magic makes them inclined to be chaotic neutral: when you have huge amounts of power but very little control over it, it's easiest to just go with the flow and do whatever seems interesting without worrying too much about consequences.
The wild magic was fun, any time you cast a spell or give yourself advantage there's a chance Something Weird can happen. The only time this happened during my game was Rin accidentally creating a dark, blinding cloud of smoke around the party mid-battle, but apparently you can turn your whole party into cats and dogs.
I played happily enough until meeting Gale and just... wasn't feeling it! As in my previous playthroughs, the mean options didn't feel fun to pick very often, and the rest ended up a bit generically nice.
And the more I thought about it, the more I actually wanted to play a tiny, earnest Dark Urge githyanki bard. This combines a bunch of fun things I want to try, and also there's just something appealing about playing a githyanki (evil-leaning warrior race) and Dark Urge character (angsty backstory and urge to murder) as a bard (tends towards being twee, likeable, and helpful)
That still leaves a bunch of things left to try, but I can't do everything with every character.
It's hard to imagine how a githyanki could become a bard but since the Dark Urge is an amnesiac, that can just be Part Of The Mystery haha.
So! Meet Xem, a very confused non-binary person. Even githyanki cis men don't have facial hair so I'm not sure how they got that beard, and neither are they. Githyanki don't really do gender roles and also they have amnesia so their gender is mostly a big ??
It struck me at some point that Lae'zel's character design has elements of Cute Freckled Green Eyed Red-head and I decided to lean into that for Xem.
I don't know much about how bard works so mostly chose to start with a violin because it looked cute.
The random guardian generator gave me a very Geralt From TV's The Witcher looking human dude and I left him basically as is.
When the game starts you have the choice to try and remember your name, and the narrator says something like "You are The Dark Urge, whatever that is". When I went back into the character creator later to make Xem's hair a little less fluorescent than my first attempt their name had literally been changed to 'The Dark Urge'. I can't remember if the name I originally picked was Xem or something similar but that feels very in character. I'm imagining them going "Hi, my name is THE DARK... um... Xem! ...that's a name, right?"
It was fun watching the opening cinematic as a githyanki with amnesia, watching all the githyanki looking cool on their dragons as they fought the mindflayers thinking "So... we're the good guys?" Xem imprinted on Lae'zel like a baby duckling as a cool older sister who can explain things, we'll see how that goes given that Lae'zel isn't usually into discouraging murder. Xem already ignored her advice to leave the [githyanki term for non-githyanki] to die, but did enjoy feeling included as one of Us.
(I am unsure how old Xem is chronologically, but they're plausibly older than the 20ish Lae'zel. But everyone is older in terms of remembered lived experience)
Speaking of which, I'd heard Shadowheart's prejudice against githyanki becomes even more obvious when you play a githyanki yourself, and boy does it! YES WE CAN DO NICE THINGS JUST TO BE NICE, ACTUALLY, SHADOWHEART. She'll probably react to finding out about the Dark Urge by going "isn't that normal for you people", *mutter* It's also a bit rich to talk about us all "taking without giving in return" when [spoilers].
Otherwise the basic plot has mostly played out the same as my previous games. But every now and then it's like... I loot a corpse and Xem just stares at it, transfixed, half remembering visions of thousands of other corpses and feeling their face form a smile. After we met Astarion Xem was left with thoughts of a pretty corpse. The contrast with all the mostly kinda blandly friendly choices they make is delightful. THEY ARE TRYING SO HARD.
Currently still very much on board for a Galemance. Afaict all the companions are pretty understanding about the Dark Urge, but something about his combination of chill good naturedness, *coughs to avoid spoilers* messy romantic history, and willingness to go along with horrific warcrimes feels especially appealing. Like he creates a vibe of calm kind safeness and would encourage Xem not to turn into a serial killing monster, but if they did, well... he'd roll with it and probably think it was hot.
I know some Dark things are in Xem's future and will see how I deal with that. But they can still have a happy ending eventually!
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Date: 2023-10-30 05:49 am (UTC)Though as it turns out it was RIP [redacted2] instead ;)