That's it. After 126 hours I finished Baldur's Gate and now is time for some fanarts.
The House of Hope section was one of my favourites, so I decide to put my experience into comic.
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Lylith Embersong, the Songsmith
A watercolor painting of my bard from Baldur's Gate 3
Lylith Embersong was a tiefling child born into a traveling troupe. Her mother (a tiefling) taught her fighting and her father (a human) taught her music. Many years prior, the troupe leader had reneged on a contract with Raphael. The troupe leader hid for years while on the run, but Korilla tracked him down. Lylith is playing in the troupe leader’s tent (he was like a grandfather to her) but when Korilla shows up, he sends Lylith away. Lylith eavesdrops outside the tent, but can barely hear the conversation. Korilla warns the troupe leader that surrendering means only some will perish, but trying to escape again will result in the entire troupe’s death. The troupe leader surrenders.
Raphael sends imps to destroy the troupe. Lylith is one of the few escapees, but her parents die in the attack, while saving her. The knowledge “This is what happens when you mess with the hells” burns into the brains of the survivors. Lylith is unaware of Raphael’s role in destroying the troupe and murdering her family. Her only clues are that a devil, the troupe leader, and the threatening dwarf woman are connected to the attack. All Lylith has left of her parents are the red earrings she had stolen from her mother’s jewelry box (red scintilla), her father’s violin, and the clothes on her back.
Most of the survivors from the troupe settle in Baldur’s Gate, including Lylith Embersong. She survives by busking on street corners, playing her father’s violin for coin. Times are rough and money is hard to come by. (It's easy to imagine that if she had been unlucky she might’ve crossed paths with Astarion in those rough days.) Thankfully as she grows older, her skills gain her enough recognition that she’s hired to work patriar functions. Lylith’s skill in discerning people’s intentions sharpens working the cutthroat world of nobility.
Lylith is filled with trepidation when she meets Raphael in Act 1, but she dismisses those feelings as her past, haunting her. Her sense of paranoia heightens when she sees Korilla at the tiefling party. Before Lylith can interrogate her, Korilla vanishes. Her feelings intensify, in Act 2, when she meets Yurgir and Lyrthindor and learns about their contracts. Finally, in Act 3, Lylith meets Korilla at Sharess’s Caress. Lylith wants to grab Korilla by the arms and question her, but knows that playing things cool will get her more information. Korilla drops the name of her employer, ‘Raphael’.
If Korilla works for Raphael, then it was Raphael who killed her family and the troupe. Mind reeling, she goes upstairs and sees the argument between Voss and Raphael. When Lylith speaks to Raphael, she realizes he’s playing her. Either Raphael doesn’t know he was the cause of her parents’ deaths (unlikely that he wouldn’t know the souls affected by that attack), or he is playing dumb on purpose because he thinks she doesn’t know. (Can you imagine how gleeful Raphael would be? To cause a soul’s misery in early life. To be the cause for its burning desire for vengeance? And then to bind that soul in a legal contract? Do you really think he’d ever let her go?)
Raphael offers her the contract. Lylith is upset that Raphael would try to use her after what he did to her family, so she refuses him, but keeps her realization quiet. She is waiting for the perfect moment to strike. In his arrogance, Raphael slips up and grants her the path towards vengeance. He tells Lylith the location of the Orphic hammer. With this knowledge, she concocts a plan. She plans to break into his house for two reasons: to steal the Orphic Hammer and to lure Raphael back to kill him in the Hells (permanent death for Devils). It is a hard fought battle, but Lylith Embersong prevails. She slays Raphael. She’s a tiefling, a child of the hells too, and no one messes with a child of the hells.
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Keep seeing posts around about people lamenting how they've managed to lose/sell the Orphic Hammer right before the end boss, and someone said "what if you were forced to drop it in combat and lost it" and
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My first playthrough of bg3, I skipped the creche and lae'zel's plot entirely (I thought it was a choice between underdark OR the mountain pass) which is sad for other reasons but made Raphael's long game extra funny because it's just like. "You give me ultimate power that I will probably do evil with and in return I... will help you free some asshole who might try and kill you?" Like whew okay I need to think about that one for awhile.
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Did anyone else feel... extremely uncomfortable when they encountered Haarlep in the House of Hope? Like, I had to reload a few times because I was curious to see it play out the first time and it felt very violating, so I reloaded and attacked them when they had their guard down.
Not trying to be a bummer here, but I didn't want the incubus to use my form. It felt wrong.
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