BG3: The Dark Urge Makes Decisions
Oct. 29th, 2023 11:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alias_sqbrMasterpost
I'd heard a lot of people making dark jokes about Dark Urge playthroughs, but I hadn't realised how deliberately funny it is.
A lot of the game's basic dialogue choices divide into "be nice" vs "be rude", plus maybe "Attack". Meanwhile the specific Dark Urge lines are just... wildly inappropriate and weird, either talking about bizarre violence or actively trying not to.
So my choices when a nice old lady offered me soup are now, like:
And the usual "do something heroic, everyone praises you" moments are often undercut by a part of Xem writhing in disgust or bloodlust. It really adds a little something!
Content note: Suicide
Speaking ofnice friendly old ladies, I've had a few chances to tell people about the Urge and by far the most extended kindness Xem has received on the subject was from... Auntie Ethel.
I recently downloaded the full text of the game, so here's the exact dialogue.
Ethel: Shhh, it's all right - all you need is a bitta loving care, don't you think?
Xem: All I know is that right now, I'm imagining drowning you in the boiling stew over there.
Ethel: Oh, you cheeky pup! That might scare someone else, but I know what naughty kids need - a bitta love and care. If I was back I'd my teahouse, I'd make you a cuppa and tell you to put your feet up. Alas, here I can only tell you to be kind to yourself, petal.
Xem was really touched and thanked her for being so nice haha...
Looking it up, that 'kids' would be 'boys' or 'girls' depending on gender choice. On the whole the gender responsiveness is so smoothly integrated that I rarely notice it.
Anyway. The first companion Xem had the chance to tell was Lae'zel. And her response to another githyanki wanting to know if it's normal to constantly think of murder was of course "Yes".
Lae'zel: Many a good warrior savours the scent of blood in the air. There's no shame in a capricious murder now and again. Too many, though, and you waste energy and dull your weapon. My suggestion: attack with purpose, and savour your kills. And if the urge proves too much, well, I'm sure we can find you a goblin or two to carve up.
Xem appreciated her acceptance, but did not find this entirely helpful.
When Xem expressed concern about having a brainworm Lae'zel said 'We were flayed, beaten, burned, and poisoned in our training. It is our duty to withstand suffering, and our pleasure to conquer it.'
Which on the one hand does make Xem feel less self conscious about their few flashes of memory mostly being of torturing or murdering people, but again isn't quite the support they wanted.
In general, Xem is starting to suspect that Lae'zel may not be the best or most approving role model going forward if they want to avoid becoming a mindless killing machine.
They had higher hopes for Wyll, who is in general much more approving when Xem shows signs of basic decency, but his response to being told of the urge was broadly similar to Lae'zel's, except with 'demons' instead of 'goblins'.
The only person so far to actually encourage Xem not to murder anyone has been Gale, in a very Gale way:
Xem: I have violent thoughts. Depraved thoughts. Ones that refuse to go away...
Gale: We all have those from time to time. I once wished a most impure demise on a colleague of mine who bought the last remaining copy of Etheril's Enchiridion of Enchanting Easements. As regards to your own morbid little fantasies, I'm sure they're nothing to worry about. So long as they remain fantasies.
Astarion and Shadowheart meanwhile have avoided any sort of meaningful conversation. Astarion did make an attempt to hit on Xem but they passed an insight check to realise he was entirely insincere. They were deeply squicked and told him to back off, which he didn't like.
I was feeling unsure what to do next, and so opened up the quest log for the first time. The quest descriptions are usually generic bland RPG descriptions, "Farmer Giles has asked you to kill ten rats. You should investigate the basement." etc.
But there was a new quest I hadn't seen before, called "The Urge". I clicked it, and...
OK THEN. MOVING ON.
I recruited Karlach, which was fun, and then spent a few days feeling too ill to play.
Me: Hmm, too tired today for decisions or plot. But Xem was about to do the Withers Dungeon, and that's just a lot of mindless murder. Perfect!
*loads save*
Me: Oh that's right, everyone was pretty beat up just before I saved. Better long rest.
Alfira: FOUND YOU AT LAST :D
Me: Ah, crap.
See, I have avoided some spoilers for the Dark Urge, but several people had warned me that the only way to avoid murdering Alfira the adorable tiefling bard is to knock her out before she comes to your camp, otherwise you kill her in your sleep. But if you DO knock her out, you just kill a different innocent person.
Fun!
I was prepared to have Alfira's death on Xem's conscience if necessary, but it felt in character for Xem to try really hard not to murder anyone.
First I let the scene play out for a while to see what happens: Alfira says she wants to join your party and go on adventures, if you try and say no everyone else thinks you're making a weird choice and in the end you either let her stay or kill her.
No thank you!
So I loaded the earlier save back up and looked up my options online. Apparently if the PC is dead when Alfira's in camp and everyone goes to sleep, you can resurrect the PC the next morning without anyone dying (except you)
Suicide to save someone's life seemed ENTIRELY in character for Xem so I gave it a shot! In fact, I gave it many shots! Mostly by getting Lae'zel to hit Xem with a sword, since it felt like they'd ask her to do it.
But when Xem was fully dead the game wouldn't let me go back to camp, and when we were in camp I couldn't get the game let Xem fully die instead of just being knocked out. I'm sure there is some way to do it, but eventually I decided Xem had had enough of unsuccessfully committing suicide and we went to knock out Alfira instead. She went down in one hit lol.
And that night, instead of Alfira, the dragonborn bard Quill showed up. She exists purely to die in this scene, and is pointedly helpless and likeable because this game enjoys twisting the knife. Xem told her to go away but she just sadly said she'd just go sleep by herself in the wilderness, implying she'd be nearby.
And in the middle of the night Xem woke covered in blood, looking down at Quill's murdered corpse in the middle of an eldritch symbol drawn in blood.
There was the choice to try and cover it up but Xem told everyone the truth. They were weirdly cool with it. Lae'zel and Astarion both thought it was an unnecessarily messy murder, but Lae'zel said it was probably some side effect of the brainworm and then noone brought it up again??
I checked if anyone had anything to say but they just kept talking about how weird it is that Gale eats magical items. And I was like "ok yes that is odd but I did just ritualistically murder a passing musician and then go back to sleep covered in her blood leaving the corpse in an occult symbol drawn in gore next to Karlach's bed?"
Oh well! At least Xem is less worried everyone will reject them for their urges now!
The next day the blood was still there, I think it may be a permanent part of that campsite now, hooray!
Xem sadly went back to the tiefling camp to make sure Alfira was ok, which she was except for the dark circles under her eyes from being at 1 HP. So Xem awkwardly healed her then walked away.
And now I have met the murder butler! He is a CREEPY LITTLE DUDE who shows up at camp and says he has been sent to help you with your Murderous Destiny, but has been instructed not to explain the details.
I'd just tweaked my look (I got sick of the beard) and adjusted the pronouns to he/him for a bit and then forgot I did that so being referred to as "Master" made the dialogue a little more unsettlingly surreal. Also it is both annoying and delightful that every time you adjust your appearance the name changes back to The Dark Urge, like you are constantly having to internally fight to call yourself anything else.
I have left everyone on non lethal damage now just by default as part of Xem being
really confused about when it's ok to murder. But then half the people we fight get killed by eldritch blasts or arrows anyway. Sorry Xem, no escaping your murder destiny!
I still feel like Xem is on track to romance Gale, he is the only person in the party who is genuinely not enthused about murder, which Xem is really into. He's so calm and nice! And also a terrible person to make your moral compass so this'll be great.
On his end he really likes how earnest and nice Xem is and how accepting of the whole "I might explode and kill everyone" thing. They might kill everyone too! They have something in common!
Xem still kind of sees Lae'zel as an older sister mentor but the default party is now Team Nice: Gale, Karlach, and Wyll. Everyone gets along great and gives lots of approval!
We're in the goblin camp right now and I made an effort to talk to optional evil companion Minthara and pain priest Abdirak before everything went south. Minthara gives this Hard-minded Snooty General speech asking if you're of use to her or not and Xem backed away quickly.
But Abdirak saying he could ease Xem's troubles by causing them pain instead of them murdering other people was very appealing, so they went for it and took all the bard/performance options to play up how much pain they were in. He was very happy afterwards, Xem got a permanent boost, and the three watching party members were a bit awkward but not disapproving, Gale in particular was clearly trying not to kinkshame.
Oh also I got the Absolute's Brand from the goblin priestess. I'm starting to think Xem is channeling their violent urges into masochism...
After killing their way through half the goblin camp Xem needed a rest. As they headed towards bed they were cornered by Lae'zel, who was convinced the brainworms were about to make everyone transform and said she was going to mercy-kill everyone, starting with Xem.
Xem really appreciated that Lae'zel chose to kill them first, and given how hard they'd tried previously to have Lae'zel kill them I made a save to see what would happen if I just let it happen.
Lae'zel slit Xem's throat and stared at their corpse for a moment and then the rest of the party attacked her and I was thrust into a battle as Gale and Wyll attempting to kill Lae'zel.
And while Xem would obviously appreciate their death being avenged in principle they wouldn't want Lae'zel to die just for an innocent mercy kill! So I went back to the previous save and persuaded Lae'zel she just had a fever and then Xem went to sleep. Guess you live to murder another day, Xem!
They then dreamed of the Dream Visitor, who said he'd just saved them from transforming and holding out his hand.
I decided to let Xem fantasise about cutting that hand off, to see what would happen. And nothing did! Instead he told Xem they needed to keep their urges under control, then gave the usual spiel about Unlocking Their Potential With The Power Of Brainworms, which sounded way too much like the murder butler to Xem and they said no thank you.
The next morning Xem went to see if Lae'zel had anything to say about the attempted murder, but instead she just declared the dream visitor a mindflayer trick and then propositioned Xem for sex.
Xem was a little taken aback but incredibly flattered and decided this was an excellent idea. I'm sure Lae'zel will be fine with Xem then sleeping with Gale at the first opportunity.
I like how Lae'zel's default greeting for a githyanki PC is "Speak, kin." instead of just "Speak."
Shadowheart has decided that Xem is so cool that maybe she misjudged the githyanki as a people. Good for her, I guess.
I've decided that Xem's current approach to gender is to try out following the lead of whoever they are currently using as a role model. So I guess I should make them she for a bit when they get with Lae'zel, then he again once they lean back towards Gale. Not sure how it'll settle in the end, and maybe they'll settle on not settling!
I made sure to keep Minthara's lute after killing her, and since it had better stats than my violin have equipped it. It's probably only a little bit cursed. Being a bard is pretty fun, especially insulting people and being dramatic. These combine a little oddly with Xem's earnest cluelessness but it creates an extra layer to their complex personality.
I'd heard a lot of people making dark jokes about Dark Urge playthroughs, but I hadn't realised how deliberately funny it is.
A lot of the game's basic dialogue choices divide into "be nice" vs "be rude", plus maybe "Attack". Meanwhile the specific Dark Urge lines are just... wildly inappropriate and weird, either talking about bizarre violence or actively trying not to.
So my choices when a nice old lady offered me soup are now, like:
- [GITHYANKI] This slop is beneath me.
- [GITHYANKI] This is a delicacy of your land? I'll try anything once.
- Stop thinking about delicious dwarf and take the bowl.
And the usual "do something heroic, everyone praises you" moments are often undercut by a part of Xem writhing in disgust or bloodlust. It really adds a little something!
Content note: Suicide
Speaking of
I recently downloaded the full text of the game, so here's the exact dialogue.
Ethel: Shhh, it's all right - all you need is a bitta loving care, don't you think?
Xem: All I know is that right now, I'm imagining drowning you in the boiling stew over there.
Ethel: Oh, you cheeky pup! That might scare someone else, but I know what naughty kids need - a bitta love and care. If I was back I'd my teahouse, I'd make you a cuppa and tell you to put your feet up. Alas, here I can only tell you to be kind to yourself, petal.
Xem was really touched and thanked her for being so nice haha...
Looking it up, that 'kids' would be 'boys' or 'girls' depending on gender choice. On the whole the gender responsiveness is so smoothly integrated that I rarely notice it.
Anyway. The first companion Xem had the chance to tell was Lae'zel. And her response to another githyanki wanting to know if it's normal to constantly think of murder was of course "Yes".
Lae'zel: Many a good warrior savours the scent of blood in the air. There's no shame in a capricious murder now and again. Too many, though, and you waste energy and dull your weapon. My suggestion: attack with purpose, and savour your kills. And if the urge proves too much, well, I'm sure we can find you a goblin or two to carve up.
Xem appreciated her acceptance, but did not find this entirely helpful.
When Xem expressed concern about having a brainworm Lae'zel said 'We were flayed, beaten, burned, and poisoned in our training. It is our duty to withstand suffering, and our pleasure to conquer it.'
Which on the one hand does make Xem feel less self conscious about their few flashes of memory mostly being of torturing or murdering people, but again isn't quite the support they wanted.
In general, Xem is starting to suspect that Lae'zel may not be the best or most approving role model going forward if they want to avoid becoming a mindless killing machine.
They had higher hopes for Wyll, who is in general much more approving when Xem shows signs of basic decency, but his response to being told of the urge was broadly similar to Lae'zel's, except with 'demons' instead of 'goblins'.
The only person so far to actually encourage Xem not to murder anyone has been Gale, in a very Gale way:
Xem: I have violent thoughts. Depraved thoughts. Ones that refuse to go away...
Gale: We all have those from time to time. I once wished a most impure demise on a colleague of mine who bought the last remaining copy of Etheril's Enchiridion of Enchanting Easements. As regards to your own morbid little fantasies, I'm sure they're nothing to worry about. So long as they remain fantasies.
Astarion and Shadowheart meanwhile have avoided any sort of meaningful conversation. Astarion did make an attempt to hit on Xem but they passed an insight check to realise he was entirely insincere. They were deeply squicked and told him to back off, which he didn't like.
I was feeling unsure what to do next, and so opened up the quest log for the first time. The quest descriptions are usually generic bland RPG descriptions, "Farmer Giles has asked you to kill ten rats. You should investigate the basement." etc.
But there was a new quest I hadn't seen before, called "The Urge". I clicked it, and...
OK THEN. MOVING ON.
I recruited Karlach, which was fun, and then spent a few days feeling too ill to play.
Me: Hmm, too tired today for decisions or plot. But Xem was about to do the Withers Dungeon, and that's just a lot of mindless murder. Perfect!
*loads save*
Me: Oh that's right, everyone was pretty beat up just before I saved. Better long rest.
Alfira: FOUND YOU AT LAST :D
Me: Ah, crap.
See, I have avoided some spoilers for the Dark Urge, but several people had warned me that the only way to avoid murdering Alfira the adorable tiefling bard is to knock her out before she comes to your camp, otherwise you kill her in your sleep. But if you DO knock her out, you just kill a different innocent person.
Fun!
I was prepared to have Alfira's death on Xem's conscience if necessary, but it felt in character for Xem to try really hard not to murder anyone.
First I let the scene play out for a while to see what happens: Alfira says she wants to join your party and go on adventures, if you try and say no everyone else thinks you're making a weird choice and in the end you either let her stay or kill her.
No thank you!
So I loaded the earlier save back up and looked up my options online. Apparently if the PC is dead when Alfira's in camp and everyone goes to sleep, you can resurrect the PC the next morning without anyone dying (except you)
Suicide to save someone's life seemed ENTIRELY in character for Xem so I gave it a shot! In fact, I gave it many shots! Mostly by getting Lae'zel to hit Xem with a sword, since it felt like they'd ask her to do it.
But when Xem was fully dead the game wouldn't let me go back to camp, and when we were in camp I couldn't get the game let Xem fully die instead of just being knocked out. I'm sure there is some way to do it, but eventually I decided Xem had had enough of unsuccessfully committing suicide and we went to knock out Alfira instead. She went down in one hit lol.
And that night, instead of Alfira, the dragonborn bard Quill showed up. She exists purely to die in this scene, and is pointedly helpless and likeable because this game enjoys twisting the knife. Xem told her to go away but she just sadly said she'd just go sleep by herself in the wilderness, implying she'd be nearby.
And in the middle of the night Xem woke covered in blood, looking down at Quill's murdered corpse in the middle of an eldritch symbol drawn in blood.
There was the choice to try and cover it up but Xem told everyone the truth. They were weirdly cool with it. Lae'zel and Astarion both thought it was an unnecessarily messy murder, but Lae'zel said it was probably some side effect of the brainworm and then noone brought it up again??
I checked if anyone had anything to say but they just kept talking about how weird it is that Gale eats magical items. And I was like "ok yes that is odd but I did just ritualistically murder a passing musician and then go back to sleep covered in her blood leaving the corpse in an occult symbol drawn in gore next to Karlach's bed?"
Oh well! At least Xem is less worried everyone will reject them for their urges now!
The next day the blood was still there, I think it may be a permanent part of that campsite now, hooray!
Xem sadly went back to the tiefling camp to make sure Alfira was ok, which she was except for the dark circles under her eyes from being at 1 HP. So Xem awkwardly healed her then walked away.
And now I have met the murder butler! He is a CREEPY LITTLE DUDE who shows up at camp and says he has been sent to help you with your Murderous Destiny, but has been instructed not to explain the details.
I'd just tweaked my look (I got sick of the beard) and adjusted the pronouns to he/him for a bit and then forgot I did that so being referred to as "Master" made the dialogue a little more unsettlingly surreal. Also it is both annoying and delightful that every time you adjust your appearance the name changes back to The Dark Urge, like you are constantly having to internally fight to call yourself anything else.
I have left everyone on non lethal damage now just by default as part of Xem being
really confused about when it's ok to murder. But then half the people we fight get killed by eldritch blasts or arrows anyway. Sorry Xem, no escaping your murder destiny!
I still feel like Xem is on track to romance Gale, he is the only person in the party who is genuinely not enthused about murder, which Xem is really into. He's so calm and nice! And also a terrible person to make your moral compass so this'll be great.
On his end he really likes how earnest and nice Xem is and how accepting of the whole "I might explode and kill everyone" thing. They might kill everyone too! They have something in common!
Xem still kind of sees Lae'zel as an older sister mentor but the default party is now Team Nice: Gale, Karlach, and Wyll. Everyone gets along great and gives lots of approval!
We're in the goblin camp right now and I made an effort to talk to optional evil companion Minthara and pain priest Abdirak before everything went south. Minthara gives this Hard-minded Snooty General speech asking if you're of use to her or not and Xem backed away quickly.
But Abdirak saying he could ease Xem's troubles by causing them pain instead of them murdering other people was very appealing, so they went for it and took all the bard/performance options to play up how much pain they were in. He was very happy afterwards, Xem got a permanent boost, and the three watching party members were a bit awkward but not disapproving, Gale in particular was clearly trying not to kinkshame.
Oh also I got the Absolute's Brand from the goblin priestess. I'm starting to think Xem is channeling their violent urges into masochism...
After killing their way through half the goblin camp Xem needed a rest. As they headed towards bed they were cornered by Lae'zel, who was convinced the brainworms were about to make everyone transform and said she was going to mercy-kill everyone, starting with Xem.
Xem really appreciated that Lae'zel chose to kill them first, and given how hard they'd tried previously to have Lae'zel kill them I made a save to see what would happen if I just let it happen.
Lae'zel slit Xem's throat and stared at their corpse for a moment and then the rest of the party attacked her and I was thrust into a battle as Gale and Wyll attempting to kill Lae'zel.
And while Xem would obviously appreciate their death being avenged in principle they wouldn't want Lae'zel to die just for an innocent mercy kill! So I went back to the previous save and persuaded Lae'zel she just had a fever and then Xem went to sleep. Guess you live to murder another day, Xem!
They then dreamed of the Dream Visitor, who said he'd just saved them from transforming and holding out his hand.
I decided to let Xem fantasise about cutting that hand off, to see what would happen. And nothing did! Instead he told Xem they needed to keep their urges under control, then gave the usual spiel about Unlocking Their Potential With The Power Of Brainworms, which sounded way too much like the murder butler to Xem and they said no thank you.
The next morning Xem went to see if Lae'zel had anything to say about the attempted murder, but instead she just declared the dream visitor a mindflayer trick and then propositioned Xem for sex.
Xem was a little taken aback but incredibly flattered and decided this was an excellent idea. I'm sure Lae'zel will be fine with Xem then sleeping with Gale at the first opportunity.
I like how Lae'zel's default greeting for a githyanki PC is "Speak, kin." instead of just "Speak."
Shadowheart has decided that Xem is so cool that maybe she misjudged the githyanki as a people. Good for her, I guess.
I've decided that Xem's current approach to gender is to try out following the lead of whoever they are currently using as a role model. So I guess I should make them she for a bit when they get with Lae'zel, then he again once they lean back towards Gale. Not sure how it'll settle in the end, and maybe they'll settle on not settling!
I made sure to keep Minthara's lute after killing her, and since it had better stats than my violin have equipped it. It's probably only a little bit cursed. Being a bard is pretty fun, especially insulting people and being dramatic. These combine a little oddly with Xem's earnest cluelessness but it creates an extra layer to their complex personality.
no subject
Date: 2023-10-29 03:25 pm (UTC)(And Alfira, lol)
no subject
Date: 2023-10-30 03:53 am (UTC)Aflira didn't even seem to hold a grudge about being bashed on the head to near death, which is pretty nice of her really.
no subject
Date: 2023-10-30 03:25 pm (UTC)You worked so hard to save Alfira, omg! (Love that you let Xem fantasize about cutting off the Dream Visitor's hand, but not Gale. ;D). Xem is trying so hard to not to murder and I support them (and find this hilarious because my dark urge approach is MURDER EVERYTHING BUT SENSIBLY). <3
Xem was a little taken aback but incredibly flattered and decided this was an excellent idea. I'm sure Lae'zel will be fine with Xem then sleeping with Gale at the first opportunity.
[...]
Shadowheart has decided that Xem is so cool that maybe she misjudged the githyanki as a people. Good for her, I guess.
LOL! And yes, Lae'zel is known for her understanding. :D
no subject
Date: 2023-12-05 08:26 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-11-09 12:16 am (UTC)Playing as vanilla githyanki Tav, I hadn't thought about how the githyanki options would look alongside the Dark Urge options... oh noooo I love it. I saw someone on tumblr say "do I have Dark Urges or just Gith Urges?" and it feels like that just about sums it up. I also love how the party's general bias toward "murder is okay" comes out even more on Durge playthroughs. (Gale's sense of morality is endlessly fascinating to me.)
You put in so much effort to save Alfira!! I am very impressed, even if the game didn't reward you for it by not forcing you to murder another nice person. :(
I'm fond of the "Yes, kin. Speak!", too. The first part really softens up the second.
no subject
Date: 2023-11-18 12:47 pm (UTC)Yes, I love the "do I have Dark Urges or just Gith Urges?" aspect! I really should take Xem to the creche I am sure it will go Great.
no subject
Date: 2023-11-16 07:30 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-11-18 11:49 am (UTC)Haha, I see. I guess it's better I failed then.