BG3: Stav in the Shadowlands
Oct. 16th, 2023 09:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alias_sqbrMasterpost
On to Act 2!
First, the second most important change since the game's release: Stav is now LEGALLY and OFFICIALLY called Stav, hooray. It's not like anyone actually says their name out loud, but it's nice seeing it in the action sidebar etc.
(The first most important change was fixing the bug where the hairless cat His Majesty temporarily got fur. The indignity!!)
Coming into this area from the creche meant I bumped into a bunch of Absolute followers, who said they needed a lyre belonging to Minthara. The dialogue was full of hints that if we'd killed Minthara it would have been on her corpse. Which it probably was! Before I looted her body and sold everything from that battle to some random vendor!!
How was I supposed to know I'd need to keep her LYRE?? Something to do next time I guess.
So I just wandered over to the Last Light Inn, which all went fairly similarly except for me only having to do the damn battle ONCE, hooray for cheats. The guide said "you'll probably lose this battle" but HELL NO I am NOT letting all those tieflings die after going to so much effort to save them >:(
The scene where you assert Astarion's right to set boundaries was extra sweet when in a relationship with him.
Unfortunately it was only after three hours of further gameplay that I realised the specific way I'd supported his right to say no to sex had been interpreted as saying Stav wanted to break up completely. So naturally I THREW THOSE THREE HOURS AWAY and replayed everything, and I regret NOTHING. I still headcanon that they're not having sex any more, not until Astarion very unambiguously says he wants it. There's this great bit where he's like "Doing what I want? I'm not sure what that is..." *holds Stav's hand* "But this...this is nice". My heart ;_;
Of course the real sign that my relationship with Astarion had levelled up was Gale giving this speech about how Stav had broken his heart lol. I decided this was a good time to swap him and Lae'zel out for Shadowheart and Halsin, since they have a lot more personal connection to events in the latter half of Act 2.
Thus far Halsin hasn't said a lot except for during the Thaniel plot, but it was nice to let him deal with that personally.
Apparently in early access, he's the one who (accidentally?) killed Isobel, which is why his weapon is called Sorrow and he feels so personally responsible for the Shadow curse. So I'm keeping that as headcanon.
Speaking of which, I've ended up learning a lot more about this whole area this time. And everything I've learned is SUPER SAD.
The arc as I understand it:
Ketheric Thorm was a happily married Selunite with a wife and child(ren), lord of Moonrise Towers, latest in a long line of Thorms. Then his wife died. Then his daughter Isobel got together with Aylin, the literal daughter of Selune, and he got a bit weird about it.
Then Isobel died and he went completely unhinged. He allied with Selune's evil sister Shar, and I think helped Shar capture Aylin as a way to make Ketheric immortal. With the help of Balthazar he did some weird rituals with the bones of his ancestors in his family mausoleum, which lay atop an ancient Shar temple. He took control of Shar's Justiciars and forced everyone in his lands to convert to Shar or die.
Halsin, Jahiera and the harpers defeated Ketheric. But upon his 'death' Shar created the Shadow curse, stealing away/corrupting the land spirit Thaniel and creating a curse which killed or corrupted every living thing. Ketheric's (living?) Thorm relatives experienced a sort of immortality, but as insane (and, in two cases, 'monstrously' fat :/) monsters surrounded by undead minions: a 'doctor' who tortures people to death as Shar worship, a toll-keeper turned into literal gold who demands to be fed more, and a barkeeper who constantly drinks bizarre concoctions and demands all visitors do the same.
Meanwhile, Ketheric was not actually dead, thanks to his deal with Shar. Or he was dead but Myrkul brought him back? Anyway, he betrayed Shar when he was recruited to become the Chosen of Myrkul, god of Murder, as part of Gortash's plan to crate the Absolute. In return, Isobel was brought back to life.
I knew the gist of all that last time but I've been picking up more details of it this time. The sad little notes from locals as anyone who questioned Shar was tortured to death, and then anyone who survived that and the following war watching in horror as the Shadow Curse took hold D:
In Moonrise Towers you meet Ketheric's dog, who died with Isobel and is still loyal to Ketheric even after being turned into some weird necromantic undead thing :(
Also the barkeep kept referring to Ketheric as Father, it would be SUPER dark if Ketheric went to all this trouble for Isobel but just left his son to rot. But maybe he didn't mean LITERALLY Father?
There's also little moments which show that Selune worshippers sometimes do things like torture etc too.
Randomly: Apparently Astarion is racist against gnomes if you're not playing a gnome, and has a bunch of other lines here and there implying he's Weird about the shorter species >:( WELL I GUESS HE REALISED HE WAS WRONG BECAUSE STAV IS SO AWESOME.
Also I came across a link to all the dialogue files, woo.
Anyway. The end of the Act was basically the same, except with less personal connection to Shadowheart. We freed Aylin, defeated Moonrise towers, fought Ketheric, went through a HUGE AND CREEPY ASS mindflayer colony, defeated Ketheric again, the end.
I tried talking Ketheric down which ends with him depressed about how he's been a puppet of the gods and looking like he might surrender but then Aylin is determined to fight him and he goes evil again. OH WELL.
I did do the fights without cheats this time, last time I was too anxious. I successfully completed them all but Jaheira PERMANENTLY DIED in the first fight against Ketheric. NOPE. So I fought that one again with cheats.
I took a break and started my Xem playthrough, but have now started Act 3 with Stav. I think I might rush to get the main Astarion content then leave it for a while, see if Larian adds more content.
On to Act 2!
First, the second most important change since the game's release: Stav is now LEGALLY and OFFICIALLY called Stav, hooray. It's not like anyone actually says their name out loud, but it's nice seeing it in the action sidebar etc.
(The first most important change was fixing the bug where the hairless cat His Majesty temporarily got fur. The indignity!!)
Coming into this area from the creche meant I bumped into a bunch of Absolute followers, who said they needed a lyre belonging to Minthara. The dialogue was full of hints that if we'd killed Minthara it would have been on her corpse. Which it probably was! Before I looted her body and sold everything from that battle to some random vendor!!
How was I supposed to know I'd need to keep her LYRE?? Something to do next time I guess.
So I just wandered over to the Last Light Inn, which all went fairly similarly except for me only having to do the damn battle ONCE, hooray for cheats. The guide said "you'll probably lose this battle" but HELL NO I am NOT letting all those tieflings die after going to so much effort to save them >:(
The scene where you assert Astarion's right to set boundaries was extra sweet when in a relationship with him.
Unfortunately it was only after three hours of further gameplay that I realised the specific way I'd supported his right to say no to sex had been interpreted as saying Stav wanted to break up completely. So naturally I THREW THOSE THREE HOURS AWAY and replayed everything, and I regret NOTHING. I still headcanon that they're not having sex any more, not until Astarion very unambiguously says he wants it. There's this great bit where he's like "Doing what I want? I'm not sure what that is..." *holds Stav's hand* "But this...this is nice". My heart ;_;
Of course the real sign that my relationship with Astarion had levelled up was Gale giving this speech about how Stav had broken his heart lol. I decided this was a good time to swap him and Lae'zel out for Shadowheart and Halsin, since they have a lot more personal connection to events in the latter half of Act 2.
Thus far Halsin hasn't said a lot except for during the Thaniel plot, but it was nice to let him deal with that personally.
Apparently in early access, he's the one who (accidentally?) killed Isobel, which is why his weapon is called Sorrow and he feels so personally responsible for the Shadow curse. So I'm keeping that as headcanon.
Speaking of which, I've ended up learning a lot more about this whole area this time. And everything I've learned is SUPER SAD.
The arc as I understand it:
Ketheric Thorm was a happily married Selunite with a wife and child(ren), lord of Moonrise Towers, latest in a long line of Thorms. Then his wife died. Then his daughter Isobel got together with Aylin, the literal daughter of Selune, and he got a bit weird about it.
Then Isobel died and he went completely unhinged. He allied with Selune's evil sister Shar, and I think helped Shar capture Aylin as a way to make Ketheric immortal. With the help of Balthazar he did some weird rituals with the bones of his ancestors in his family mausoleum, which lay atop an ancient Shar temple. He took control of Shar's Justiciars and forced everyone in his lands to convert to Shar or die.
Halsin, Jahiera and the harpers defeated Ketheric. But upon his 'death' Shar created the Shadow curse, stealing away/corrupting the land spirit Thaniel and creating a curse which killed or corrupted every living thing. Ketheric's (living?) Thorm relatives experienced a sort of immortality, but as insane (and, in two cases, 'monstrously' fat :/) monsters surrounded by undead minions: a 'doctor' who tortures people to death as Shar worship, a toll-keeper turned into literal gold who demands to be fed more, and a barkeeper who constantly drinks bizarre concoctions and demands all visitors do the same.
Meanwhile, Ketheric was not actually dead, thanks to his deal with Shar. Or he was dead but Myrkul brought him back? Anyway, he betrayed Shar when he was recruited to become the Chosen of Myrkul, god of Murder, as part of Gortash's plan to crate the Absolute. In return, Isobel was brought back to life.
I knew the gist of all that last time but I've been picking up more details of it this time. The sad little notes from locals as anyone who questioned Shar was tortured to death, and then anyone who survived that and the following war watching in horror as the Shadow Curse took hold D:
In Moonrise Towers you meet Ketheric's dog, who died with Isobel and is still loyal to Ketheric even after being turned into some weird necromantic undead thing :(
Also the barkeep kept referring to Ketheric as Father, it would be SUPER dark if Ketheric went to all this trouble for Isobel but just left his son to rot. But maybe he didn't mean LITERALLY Father?
There's also little moments which show that Selune worshippers sometimes do things like torture etc too.
Randomly: Apparently Astarion is racist against gnomes if you're not playing a gnome, and has a bunch of other lines here and there implying he's Weird about the shorter species >:( WELL I GUESS HE REALISED HE WAS WRONG BECAUSE STAV IS SO AWESOME.
Also I came across a link to all the dialogue files, woo.
Anyway. The end of the Act was basically the same, except with less personal connection to Shadowheart. We freed Aylin, defeated Moonrise towers, fought Ketheric, went through a HUGE AND CREEPY ASS mindflayer colony, defeated Ketheric again, the end.
I tried talking Ketheric down which ends with him depressed about how he's been a puppet of the gods and looking like he might surrender but then Aylin is determined to fight him and he goes evil again. OH WELL.
I did do the fights without cheats this time, last time I was too anxious. I successfully completed them all but Jaheira PERMANENTLY DIED in the first fight against Ketheric. NOPE. So I fought that one again with cheats.
I took a break and started my Xem playthrough, but have now started Act 3 with Stav. I think I might rush to get the main Astarion content then leave it for a while, see if Larian adds more content.
no subject
Date: 2023-10-16 04:17 pm (UTC)Meanwhile, Ketheric was not actually dead, thanks to his deal with Shar. Or he was dead but Myrkul brought him back? Anyway, he betrayed Shar when he was recruited to become the Chosen of Myrkul, god of Murder, as part of Gortash's plan to crate the Absolute. In return, Isobel was brought back to life.
I think he was not dead, just hiding. Or maybe constrained? And Myrkul's domain includes necromancy, and Myrkul made Ketheric an offer he couldn't refuse.
(Which is mind-boggling in a sweet way, because betraying SHAR just seems like the worst idea. She's basically the goddess of asshole moves, and she has the key to his immortality.)
In Moonrise Towers you meet Ketheric's dog, who died with Isobel and is still loyal to Ketheric even after being turned into some weird necromantic undead thing :(
Oh! I, uh, messed up Act 2 (dealt with Aylin before Moonrise Tower, so the entire tower was on lockdown and everyone just fought me), so I didn't see a lot of this content.
no subject
Date: 2023-10-17 02:27 am (UTC)Yeah I assume that meeting the dog after that point would have just been a short sad fight :(