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Total funding amounts to $125.3M.

bhaalsdeepbat · 3 months

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Some Astarion Endings Thoughts. This is mostly just analysis ramblings and going over the endings and how Ascended Astarion and Spawn Astarion differ.

You have the free the spawn ending, where the cycle of abuse is ended and the Player Character chose to give the other spawn a chance to either be the monster they were made to be OR try to be more than that. And it isn't a perfect solution because, yes, they're rabid, starving vampires. There is always a chance that choice goes wrong, especially if player choices led to the Gur being wiped out AND the other 6 spawn being killed during the ritual.

Mercy killing, not sacrificing the spawn, is seen as an equally good choice, though it's complicated for the reasons stated above. None of the Spawn are there by choice and mercy-killing them takes away the freedom and autonomy that Astarion was very lucky to have even experienced. It's a hard decision, but the characters recognize it was either this or risk unleashing a HOARD of ravenous Spawn. The Underdark is uniquely qualified to be home to 7000+ hungry Vampire Spawn, but not everyone is going to go down there. In fact, if you send the spawn there, you find out not all of them even make it to where they decide to settle.

Mercy killing the spawn ensures no one else can be hurt by any of the spawn, whether it be their bloodthirst or violence as a reaction to the cruelty they experienced. However, the spawn made by Cazador ARE all innocent people. If you play Oath of Devotion Paladin and mercy kill the spawn, you will break your Oath because every single victim of his is just that. A victim. Astarion has a few moments throughout the story where he tries to convince the player - and himself - that not all of Cazador's victims could be innocents, but they very much are.

Astarion desperately doesn't want to see himself in them. The spawn in the cells are a reflection of what he was like when Cazador had him locked in that tomb or when Cazador had him starving on bugs and rats, and he has NO idea what he looks like anymore. I'm not even sure he's fully convinced he doesn't look partially like that tbh

The third option for Astarion's spawn ending is to just leave the other spawn in their prisons, which is seen as a really fucking cruel fate. Killing them is better than just leaving them there to starve for the rest of their eternal lives. This is also Astarion's cruelest choice, the one he makes to spite the player AND the other spawn because of how helpless he feels if he's not properly convinced to give up the power that was just within his grasp. If he cannot be fully free of Cazador and the pain he caused, then none of the other spawn can, either.

Regardless of the player's decision on what to do with the spawn, if Astarion is kept a spawn, he's able to empathize with the other victims of Cazador and see himself in them. He is forced to contend with the fact that NONE of them deserved to be caught in Cazador's cruelty. In his Spawn ending, he sees the other spawn for what they are: victims of a cruel man trying to play power games by using people as pawns and currency.

Ascension is meant to represent locking into the cycle of abuse. For Astarion, this first step is achieved by sacrificing over seven thousand souls. This move alone changes the Spawn from representations of himself, and the depths of the horrors he experienced, into currency to trade for the power to ensure he will never be in that position ever again. Rather than victims of the same horrors, they become a necessary price to pay in service of elevating him to a station above their own.

And he does see himself as a being above everyone else once he Ascends. He sees mortals as cattle. Potential pets or food, but animals that need to be herded all the same.

This includes Tav/Durge.

The whole plan to seduce Tav/Durge was born from the person Astarion was while still reeling from two centuries of of Hell. It was habits and survival instincts from living under Cazador that start to unravel when the reality of it all starts to set in. You catch peeks of who he is behind his carefully constructed mask of charm and prepared scripts, poison delivered with sweet words and a perfectly composed smile.

When he confesses, he wants to give Tav/Durge something real, but it also a mirror to what will happen in his diverging pathways. If he remains Spawn, he can give them something real. They're equal, loving partners. Ascended Astarion sees their partner as a potential pet to be loved, lavished, but ultimately owned.

The ownership is for a couple of reasons. One is so that he can ensure he has someone who will never turn on him. It's clear he has an alignment shift to being straight up evil and wants to conquer...and he talks about it in front of Faerun's best monster hunters. He needs to make sure Tav/Durge isn't included in that. He also wants to make sure they never leave him. Since he never faces what Cazador did, nor does he face the fact that things ARE changing and it's generally a good thing for people to grow and relationships to change with that growth, he wants to make sure things remain in stasis. Spawn Astarion trusts Tav/Durge to not do anything to hurt him and trusts the future they have together, whatever that may be. Turning them into a Spawn when Astarion Ascends ensures that there IS no change. Ever. Tav/Durge and the relationship are quite literally frozen in time.

Once Astarion Ascends, he stops seeing any of his companions as anything but potential pawns. His Origin Ascended ending provides an excellent glimpse at how he views the companions. Their collective strength is just ripe for plucking and he isn't afraid to make them spawn by force. I think the coldness the player can comment on after he Ascends is because he no longer feels any kinship toward the companions. He can create a script and run through it, but there won't be warmth where his beating heart is still rotted to its core.

Ascending him also starts him on the path to becoming another Cazador. If you go into the room with Vellioth's skull AFTER the ritual, rather than before, you get specific interactions with the various items that are WILDLY different from Spawnstarion (who also reacts differently depending on if it's before or after the ritual).

Astarion shows hesitation if taken into the room BEFORE the ritual, because he's forced to see the names of the people he has to sacrifice to ascend AND he sees how pathetic Cazador is when it comes to Vellioth. If you interact with the list of names or Vellioth's skull after choosing NOT to ascend, Astarion shows more remorse and empathy.

and as a side note THAT is who he is beneath the burden of his pain, when he is able start freeing himself from it. cazador's symbol is the knot of rats. Astarion sees the knot and cannot see himself in it, even though he himself is just one of the rats who happened to escape.

Ascended Astarion, on the other hand, is flippant. There's a list of names of ALL the spawn he sacrificed to ascended, and he just. He doesn't take seriously AT ALL that he just sent all those souls to be tormented in the Hells. Ascended Astarion never sees himself as a rat to begin with. He sees himself as a victim, but the others caught in Cazador's trap were all unfortunates and other bad words he can use to make them seem less deserving of empathy (empathy that he no longer has, when he ascends imo)

Astarion spent the first two acts feeling like he needed to rely on them for protection because he never felt his own strength was enough, even though his kit is fucking BROKEN. Ascending him affirms that he wasn't strong enough to protect them in any meaningful way as is, and also that no part of him was enough as just a spawn. He doesn't want to continue to rely on the player for protection, but Ascended Astarion is more than happy to make the most powerful beings in Faerun his spawn so they can keep him protected. All that power from the ritual, and he wants an army of powerful Spawn to do the dirty work for him.

As an extension of this, turning romanced Tav/Durge into a spawn is to make sure he has complete control over the one person he views as stronger than himself. Slaying Cazador is something he always credits to the player. Ascended Astarion is constantly haunted by Cazador and what he did. Tav/Durge was the one being stronger than him, which makes them a threat if they ever turn on him. Now, he knows he has one person he can always trust.

He even starts laying out the building blocks to potentially set rules similar to the ones Cazador had for his spawn. The way he starts mentioning them is very manipulative, too. They're statements made to seem like he's just expressing the depth of his devotion (still creepy), but he's really setting up being able to reiterate the rules without it being weird once the tadpoles are dealt with. He's fully aware that the tadpole will prevent Spawn!Player from being completely under his control. It's why you can break up with him before the end, but then he refuses to let the player go at the very end.

Spawn ending, when not romanced, Astarion decides to just travel by himself and become a hero. He doesn't find another group to travel with. He goes by himself. Spawn Astarion recognizes his own strength, embraces his Vampirism, not as something that taints him, but as a power to be unleashed on the real monsters. HE does the dirty work.

I love love love exploring both endings and I love the way Astarion's character can grow depending on player choice, then completely branch into two different ways once you hit the Ascension vs Spawn choice.

ty for reading my ramblings. I know this wasn't a straightforward analysis or anything, and def doesn't have an actual conclusion or like. point beyond character exploration. a lot of these thoughts are just me thinking character through so i can write them better. i want to explore these aspects of him, but I do ramble things first to get general characterization thoughts out.

#bat plays bg3 #astarion #bg3 #spawn astarion #ascended astarion #long post

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strigital · 4 months

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do you mind? i'm very busy imagining spawn Astarion with the ability to polymorph into a bat and his darling druid tav who wildshapes into a raven both swooping through the golden and purple evening sky, ebony feathers gleaming in the setting sun, red eyes reflecting the first evening's stars, two winged creatures in love doing saltos and dancing in the clouds, falling down wings tucked in only to unfurl them mere inches before hitting the surface of the sea, causing the water to splash with the gusts of air from their wings, only for those falling droplets to reflect the sunset perfectly and create a magnificent rainbow that bat!astarion and raven!tav fly over - a rainbow bridge into a new tomorrow, a future free of worries, full of love and new possibilities.

then the sun sets, the stars come out and you watch a raven and a bat flutter off into the horizon, cawing and squeeking with glee. you don't know that these animals are soulmates in disguise, but something about the way they dance and zigzag through the purple skies tells you: they're in love.

happy.

free.

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invinciblerodent · 3 months

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and another very small, very minor entry on the list of Things I'm Getting Just a Tiny Little Bit Miffy About Seeing Repeated (Not Angry Just Ever So Slightly Annoyed)TM:

dnd elves do, in fact, mature at the same rate humans do. they're not "like children" or "not considered full adults" until they hit 100- not to anyone other than other, older elves.

like I get where the thought comes from, I fully understand it, I've read many of the source materials myself, I've read Mordenkainen's and see where the misunderstanding comes from, but... to a human, or a tiefling, or anyone else shorter-lived than an elf, a 50-, 60-, 90-year-old elf is just like a 50-, 60-, 90-year-old of their own race would be. they just look much younger than their age, and act in accordance with their personality, which is.... much less tied to someone's age than many may think. (I mean, have you never met a 50-year-old who seems just staggeringly immature? a 20-year-old who is wiser than their years would allow? have you never been to a retail establishment???????)

it's only the other elves who view a younger one as emotionally immature, and that's mainly because they have yet to bury their first generation of friends and loved ones: something a shorter-lived person only has to do once, while elves may very well go through several cycles of that in one lifetime. They have also not yet had their Drawing of the Veil, when they stop being able to access primal memories, memories of their soul's previous lives, but it's mainly the "all my once-powerful and vibrant friends are now frail and dying from old age, and yet here I remain, as young, strong, and beautiful as the day they met me, untouched by the inexorable crawl of time, what is mortality, what is death" thing.

if the people of Faerun in general thought of a 40-year-old elf as immature, as if they were a child, Astarion would have just patently not been an appointed civil administrator and judicial officer (which is what a magistrate is) 200 years ago. like he could have of course been lying when he said that that's what he was, but taking it as the once-truth, nobody would have let someone they see as a child fill such a position of responsibility. It was, however, a perfectly mundane thing for a learned adult man, such as he was, to do. (what he may or may not have done with the power he allegedly had, the kind of person he was, and whether letting him have power was the right move overall, is pretty much completely irrelevant at this juncture. corrupt officials exist regardless of age, just look at the judicial system of any country today.)

an older elf like Halsin, their maturity is not just on a different level, it's measured by a different metric than that of a shorter-lived character.

it's hard to accurately roleplay or grasp something like this with our human minds, none of us have ever spoken to a 300-year-old after all, but.... a 100-year-old elf is not a "young adult", unless you're an elf yourself. If you're a human, they're just... an adult.

#squirrel plays bg3 #at this point “squirrel rants” might be more accurate though #anyway I just read a little thing where the author had Wyll think of the PC as very young #and I thought they were supposed to be like.... 18-23-ish maybe?#nope they were 90 #and I had to stand up and go make myself a cup of coffee so i could stop giggling #oh yes Wyll Ravengard the literal 24 year old thinks Miss Player Character the woman of 90 FUCKING YEARS OF AGE is oh so very young #...... and now I hc that Astarion does tease Iona about her age from time to time #i think he'd enjoy it; especially her giving back as well as she gets without batting an eye #what can i say; elves just do sexy banter different #sometimes hitting on your (65F) immortal boyfriend (240M) just involves asking if he needs a sitdown to rest his creaking knees

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justabiteofspite · 1 month

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Nothing big or significant happened to my Selunite Gith Tav Catha last night during my and @bhaalsdeepbat's playthrough at all, why do you ask?

#bat: “he sounds like shrek”#quote of the century #bg3 #catha the war cleric #now catha the oathbreaker #spite plays

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undead-potatoes · 4 months

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So originally I was trying to romance Karlach on my first playthrough, but couldn't get her approval high enough before the tiefling party (I picked her up way too late rip). Which in hindsight suits me just fine, I think maybe Jay and Gale is a better romantic match anyways (and you all know how normal I've been about Gale so).

But now I'm thinking of doing a little UNO reverse card move. See I didn't have a set sexuality for Jay back then, but now I know he's firmly in camp gay dude, and I'm just imagining Karlach coming onto Jay and him having to turn her down in the most awkward little flip on the "straight best friend" trope.

Which is ALSO why Karlach going "eww no!!" when her friend asks if Karlach and Tav are together was so funny to me, just her going full "he's gay and that would be weird and I totally didn't find out when I had a little crush on him, just not embarrassed about it at all"

#Sunny Plays BG3 #OC: Tav #mostly bc Jay and Karlach clicked so well straight off the bat and it makes sense for Karlach to latch onto that #tho I imagine there might have been some very lighthearted and playful flirting between them that Jay just read as banter #it's okay Karlach I know Wyll will treat you right

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twiddlestix · 8 months

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God I love Lae'zel so much! Made a new playthrough just to romance her

SHE'S A REALLY GOOD CHARACTER AND I'M SO SAD THAT PEOPLE WILL JUST IGNORE HER BC SHES NOT SUPER DUPER NICE TO YOU ALL OF THE TIME! could not be me tho. when she is mean to me i giggle

like yeah there couldn't possibly be any narrative reasoning to explain why she's the way she is 🙄 she just mean i guess

#hot women can be mean to me all they want i will still love them #and like i think the only companions who are 'nice' to you right off the bat are gale and wyll?#im guessing this is just if youre nice to them too? not sure how they are if youre rude lol #like people who kill astarion when they first meet him or leave lae'zel in the cage. why???? like its a video game just play the video game #like yeah those are options but cmon now #have fun playing through the story without two of the major pieces i guess #bg3 #ask

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boghermit · 8 months

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Normal reactions to walking in on a bugbear and an ogre fucking nasty style in a barn

Astarion's reaction

#bg3 spoilers #DIRTY OLD BAT #sam plays bg3

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invinciblerodent · 6 months

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why have I not been using Hold Person more often??? we just bullied Sarevok to death in literally two turns!!!!!! I'm still buzzing that was so cool!!!!!!

WE'RE COMING, LAE'ZEL!!!!!!!

i mean first we're gonna take a lil nappy nap ofc, but THEN!!!

THEN WE'RE COMING, LAE'ZEL!!!!!!!

#squirrel plays bg3 #it's so OP when the cleric has super high dex #because when Arvid goes first he can do some truly incredible shit right off the bat #I just... held him immobile and Karlach and Astarion fkin. killed him #wham bam bam 25 dmg 40 dmg sneak attack reckless attack bam bam bam #while Gale just counterspelled the heals #and once he was dead I just dropped a Spirit Guardians and in two fireballs to deal with the rest and the fight was literally done

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azatas · 8 months

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shadowheart: a vampire den. better watch my neck

tav: drinking that potion that makes my blood explode isn't looking like such a bad decision now, is it?

astarion: no that was still an incredibly stupid thing to do

#i forgot that her BLOOD EXPLODES now #and astarion was like 'don't drink that it smells awful and i don't want to see you hurt- HEY. SPIT IT OUT'#but she killed like five bats after getting hit it was hilarious #dee plays bg3 #bg3 spoilers

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