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thornfield13713 · 6 months

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Do you have any backstory ideas for Ned the drow druid?

Some. Let's see...they're in their mid-hundreds - a young adult, by drow standards - and were born to an ancient noble family of Ched Nasad before the city's fall in 1372 DR. I suspect Ned wasn't much more than ten or twelve when their home city fell, a child just around the point that drow education begins, according to my old copy of Drow of the Underdark. That would put them at approximately a hundred and thirty years old by the time of BG3.

Their family were relatively lucky. Or at least, Ned's particular branch of it was, as they and their mother were visiting another branch of their house in Menzoberranzan, so that Ned could be presented to the head of the family, when the fall of their house happened, and that is where they remained. Ned's mother was ambitious for them - Ned showed every sign that they would make an excellent priestess of Lolth when the time came, and their mother was determined both that they should do so and that she should position herself to benefit from their rise. Accordingly, Ned enjoyed far more parental attention than most young aristocratic drow, and Ned's mother developed an attachment to her child that most of the structures of drow society are designed to prevent. Not that the drow can't love their children, but the way drow life is set up is sort of designed to minimise any chance of them being able to do so in any way that is good for those they love, the better to keep everyone devoted to the Spider Queen (there is a reason that Ned will probably have Vlaakith's number right from the moment they first hear Lae'zel speak of her).

Ned was put forward as an initiate. However, when the time came for Ned to become a priestess in full, Lolth put her foot down. Possibly she put all eight of her feet down. Lolth wants only female priestesses, and Ned, being nonbinary, didn't count. To appease Lolth, and deal with the embarrassment, the priesthood immediately resolved to have Ned turned into a drider and Ned, quite sensibly, booked it out of there- with the unexpected help of their mother. Ned's mother was not a particularly good or kind person. In fact, by most standards, she was pretty firmly evil. But she did love them, and their disgrace was enough for her to realise that she loved them for their own sake, not just that of the power she had hoped to gain from them. And that she loved them enough to defy Lolth herself in helping them escape.

Ned made it out of the city. Their mother didn't. They don't know if she's alive or dead. They sort of hope she's dead. It might be preferable to what the priesthood of Lolth would do to her otherwise.

After that, Ned was living out in the tunnels and caverns of the Underdark, always moving and never staying still. They journeyed south, along the way learning druidic magic, which came to them every bit as easily as their education as a cleric had done. They had their share of near-misses and interesting adventures in this time, as they learnt and travelled and developed their powers. Finally, however, their luck ran out. They were captured by neogi slavers, and sold to mind flayers, and thus they ended up on that fateful nautiloid, where they met the most fascinating githyanki.

#baldur's gate 3 #ned #(their full name is probably very fancy but they don't use it - the feminine forename doesn't suit them and their house has disowned them)

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alteredsilicone · 6 months

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The Dark Urge : Act I

A long ramble about my Dark Urge playthrough, split up between acts since this game gets meaty.

This is my third playthrough so more or less I knew what I was getting into (had some durge story bits spoiled too).

When I set out to play durge I also wanted to do an "evil" playthrough, so I set some goals: embrace the "big" durge decisions, be evil when possible without going full murder-hobo. Ally with Gortash, dominate the Brain. Make SH a Dark Justiciar, ascend Astarion, romance Minthara, push Gale towards Godhood and help Lae'zel stay loyal to Vlaakith. The results were... varied.

Recruiting Minthara meant the tieflings had to die, so I indulged the durge by watching Arabella die. Surprisingly this way the game guilt trips you less about doing bad things. (The guilt tripping aspect I will bring up at the very end, after my Act III retrospective)

I quickly learned why durge x Astarion is a popular ship - he really jumps on you from the very beginning, a total 180 to how he treats Tav. Anyways, he wasn't my romance goal so I let him be. For a while.

Alfira is one of my favorites, but she had to go. Sorry. I know there is an alternative by making a different NPC appear but I wanted an authentic(tm) durge experience. Besides, Alfira would die in the grove massacre anyways, two birds with one stone and all.

Dream Guardian interlude - I made her look like my first version of Viri, so it's a Viriception.

Since I'm collecting all the "evil" choices, I also decided to indulge the tadpoles. Partly for achievements, partly to see how it works. Truth be told I didn't use the tadpole skills too much, so if I replay durge (I might do for certain different story outcomes), I will ignore the tadpoles altogether.

Sceleritas Fel was an excellent addition, obviously I humored and indulged him since I wanted to be papa's most specialest murderer.

As I was allying with the goblins I explored some stuff I didn't previously - got shackled up by Gut. Escaping her was quite easy, just had to avoid her afterwards. Then I rushed to Minthara.

I love Minthara's character a lot - she stayed in my party throughout the whole game. Needless to say, but I killed Karlach for Wyll (and stupidly didn't get his armor because I forgot to put him in my party, oh well), Wyll left me when I attacked the Grove (I assume he died offscreen or I killed him without noticing) and I never even met Halsin so he also just died offscreen.

I could also rant about the whole "evil playthrough cuts you from 20% of the content" aspect, but that is a tired rant. I don't mind the grove massacre being the price you pay for Minthara joining your party (she IS an evil character, she straight up agrees with all evil actions together with Astarion and is totally on board with dominating the Absolute and becoming rulers yourself), I just wish there was some alternative with playing on the more evil side.

Maybe befriend goblins? More drow? Anything, really? Then again, BG3 is already a massive game... Oh well, you can't have everything.

Anyways, now that I have done the first big quest, I went to the Underdark to try out one specific thing:

What happens if you sacrifice Gale to the fish people before Elminster stabilizes the orb?

He aggros, you kill him and then after two in-game days this happens:

Needless to say, I reloaded a save and just humored the fish people without killing Gale. Besides, for a corruption arc he needs to live. This is also why I only indulged the "big" durge reactions...

My personal philosophy is that being a murder-hobo is a boring way to be evil (death is not the worst thing that can happen y'know), I much rather would corrupt characters.

However, another part of me got curious about one thing: if you bite off Gale's hand when you find him in the portal, can you present it at the murder tribunal in Act 3?

Anyways.

Remember I said Astarion really gets the hots for durge? So, Minthara leaves for Moonrise so she isn't in my party at the moment this happens... durge decided to have some "fun".

This sequence was very corny, but I know it's all part of Astarion's play-pretend so I just let it play out. Spoiler alert - I will friendzone him later (for his own good).

I decided to feed durge the Noblestalk to get some memories/lore. I hoped for more but probably getting everything back in Act I would be anti-climatic, so this was a nice tidbit all the same. Also the environment bugged out, I should be in a dark dank cave, not outside.

Gale also decided he likes me. I promptly friendzoned him. Trust me, Galey, you do not want a romantic adventure with this tiefling (also he is soulbound to Nila, my other Tav, can't have him cheating on his wife...).

Anyways, Gale is a funny case because Larian keeps mucking up his romance flags, I couldn't replay his romance scene with my actual Galemancer Tav, but the romance does trigger later in Act I when you farm some approval (so either in the Underdark or Creche, depending which path you go on). But it also bugs out (I had to long rest twice with my Tav as the first time it triggered tiefling party dialogue before promptly cutting out, probably a bug because it was an old save where the romance SHOULD have triggered during the party).

Anyways, moving on. I am jumping over some zones/quests because nothing particularly interesting happened (I helped the Myconids but I do that always so that's that, though I let Glut die while fighting the Duergar, not on purpose he just got felted, sorry big guy).

Siding with this guy has exactly zero payoff (Act II spoiler - Balthazar turns him into a zombie and that's that), which is another evil run gripe. He is like Minthara where you can convince him to go against the Absolute, but instead it just goes nowhere apparently.

I just sided with him and suffered through killing a bunch of gnomes and Duergar. Well, at least I got some new scenes.

Astarion flirting interlude:

I put this here because the durge evil face is just so funny. These two would make a disaster pair, but, alas, we in this house are women-loving-women.

So, remember me setting out to push Lae'zel towards loyalty to Vlaakith?

I went as far as to stab the Dream Guardian...

Obviously I should have known better, because the Guardian has plot-armor for obvious reasons. This game kinda sorta railroads you to go against Vlaakith/side with the Guardian. Otherwise the game would just end for obvious reasons... So I decided that I might just shelve Lae'zel along the way.

Maybe I should have made some other decisions in later acts (like killing Voss), but I had my companion-squad already with me, so I decided to let it go.

And that concludes a "brief" overview of durge Act I:

#bg3 tag

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