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The Once and Future Champion (Baldur's Gate 3/Dragon Age) (Complete)

neither Orpheus nor I would never abandon our duty
ever
Her voice trailed off quietly. "And Korrilla's soul will still be down here... somewhere. I hope that I can find her, and I hope she'll say that she's sorry. And then I'll tell her that she's forgiven."
Damn. That's an epic degree of loyalty and forgiveness there.
"Another thing that my children turned up in Rivington was a sick and disgusting plot to place smokepowder explosives inside toys being donated to refugee children."
The fuck?! ...Death cultists, man. Just when you think they can't get worse...
"So what you're saying is, we need to start really screwing up to bait her in?" Wyll asked amusedly.

"Why, you got some suggestions?" Karlach teased him.
Zing!
"I thought I'd told you not to try this." I glowered at Wyll. "You're ruining the entire alliance I went to so much trouble to negotiate. The one you agreed with!"
As soon as I saw the "betrayal" start, I knew exactly where this was going, and couldn't stop laughing. Well played!
 
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Takes a whole new meaning to "I trust Hawke enough to die for him."

Also, anyone else think Withers is pleased at how Hawke is using his, well, duty to his advantage? It's quite clear that Withers isn't allowed to assist in anything but resurrection. But...he never once stated rules for that.

A reminder that this is the same bro who throws your ass a party in the epilogue and calls the Dead Three a bitch.
 
The fuck?! ...Death cultists, man. Just when you think they cant get worse...
That's a quest which doesn't get followup in the game's Act 3, actually. You go investigate the fireworks house but nothing is there as a quest trigger to progress stuff - seems to have been content only partially completed which got released. Cliff's route of it being a bunch of crazy folk is pretty reasonable, all said.
 
Takes a whole new meaning to "I trust Hawke enough to die for him."

Also, anyone else think Withers is pleased at how Hawke is using his, well, duty to his advantage? It's quite clear that Withers isn't allowed to assist in anything but resurrection. But...he never once stated rules for that.

A reminder that this is the same bro who throws your ass a party in the epilogue and calls the Dead Three a bitch.

He approved of of Hawke the moment he 'convinced' Withers to rez the kid adventurer as proof of concept, and was sold on him when he came up with the solution to Karlachs dilemma. He is LOVING this.
 
"And once we find him, Orpheus can break him free of the elder brain's control." I agreed. "He can't do that for everyone we meet, but freeing Minsc was not the limit of his available resources. And with the Grand Duke back in his right mind we'd be in a much better position to regain control of all the un-corrupted Flaming Fist than even Florrick could help us do.
Missing the closing quotation mark, and also "better position" doesn't fit very smoothly with "than even Florrick could help us do."

"Worse yet, we may have more problems rescuing anyone from there." Jaheira disagreed. "Another thing that my children turned up in Rivington was a sick and disgusting plot to place smokepowder explosives inside toys being donated to refugee children." She shook her head disgustedly. "Fortunately they discovered this time in to prevent any casualties. The artificer who was sabotaging the toys was being blackmailed into it under threat of death, so we let him go. But he was able to tell them where he was getting his explosives from - a shop named Felogyr's Fireworks, here in the city."
in time
Some of her descriptions of the interactions with this guy use they/them, one we. Did her family run the entire investigation and interrogation themselves and just bring him to her for judgement? But even if so, it would be nice if that was a bit more explicit in the text.

"I had to set the shop on fire afterwards to cover for him. Gortash isn't supposed to suspect that we're still working against him, after all. Hopefully our dear Archduke will either believe it was an explosives accident or else blame Nine-Fingers' people for it." Jaheira sighed. "The relevant part to our prison quest was that large shipments of explosives had been manufactured there recently and shipped out on Gortash's direct orders to a secret facility known only by a code-name - for use as a self-destruct system. Now what kind of facility requires a self-destruct system?"
Valid, but I think switching these words would read slightly better.

Either Gortash had a bit of a blindspot regarding the dangers that humble people serving in obscure positions could potentially pose if you had enough of them, or else Karlach's theory was right that he'd been arranging for good shipments to his secret prison by gray-market means and had only switched to drawing from the Flaming Fist's supply system at the last minute. Once prompted, it only took several hours for Florrick's contacts in the Flaming Fist to turn up the information we needed. The only unaccounted-for shipments of food in sufficient quantities to be supplying a secret prison were all being sent to a waterfront warehouse named Flymm's Cargo. Jaheira's scouting of the building in wildshape late in the afternoon produced the starting revelation that the building was actually a secret docking facility for a gnomish underwater vehicle called a 'submarine'.
I suspect this was intended to be goods - actually, food would make more sense, wouldn't it?
startling

"I've got to get back and start setting up the cover story for the authors. Your clean-up crew can handle everything here. Orin's been laying very uncharacteristically low for the past several days, but she's not going to idle around forever." I said grimly.
others
 
That's a quest which doesn't get followup in the game's Act 3, actually. You go investigate the fireworks house but nothing is there as a quest trigger to progress stuff - seems to have been content only partially completed which got released. Cliff's route of it being a bunch of crazy folk is pretty reasonable, all said.
In game the guys at the fireworks shop are clearly identified as Banites, so it's some of Gortash's people. But why he wants terrorist bomb incidents among refugee children is never gone into, no. So either he's got people going offsides, or else Gortash had an objective the game doesn't tell us about and I can't figure out.

Can't have been random sadism, though. Gortash is evil as fuck, but he very seldom does anything without a purpose.
 
In game the guys at the fireworks shop are clearly identified as Banites, so it's some of Gortash's people. But why he wants terrorist bomb incidents among refugee children is never gone into, no. So either he's got people going offsides, or else Gortash had an objective the game doesn't tell us about and I can't figure out.

Can't have been random sadism, though. Gortash is evil as fuck, but he very seldom does anything without a purpose.
Or it's a splinter cell working to overthrow him so they can take his place. Either or. I personally ascribe to the latter interpretation.
 
In game the guys at the fireworks shop are clearly identified as Banites, so it's some of Gortash's people. But why he wants terrorist bomb incidents among refugee children is never gone into, no. So either he's got people going offsides, or else Gortash had an objective the game doesn't tell us about and I can't figure out.

Can't have been random sadism, though. Gortash is evil as fuck, but he very seldom does anything without a purpose.
He believed selling Karlach to Hell was character-building, he probably thinks blowing up orphaned refugees would help them grow as people.
 
He believed selling Karlach to Hell was character-building, he probably thinks blowing up orphaned refugees would help them grow as people.
In hindsight, he may have been setting up a thing where random chaos heightens fear among the refugees and the population generally, so his stock rebounds higher when his people later on 'bring the miscreants to justice'. It is canon that one of the early phases of Gortash's plan was to have Orin's cultists do some random murdering among the populace so as to make the current leadership of Baldur's Gate look impotent to stop the violence or maintain order, so that Gortash could ride in on his white horse and 'solve' the problem later.

I have previously said that I legitimately admire Gortash as a villain, both because of legitimate competence at the task and because he's got style. And I still do. But this does not change the fact he is an epic piece of shit.
 
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Just started reading this, on chapter 15.

I love that Hawke is a Paladin of being a Paladin. Honor, freedom, responsibility, loyalty, mercy, justice. He doesn't need a god to point him right, he just does it.

Literally every good deity in Faerun: "Finally someone gets it!"

Though if any one deity gets to claim his soul later on, I'd say Torm. He isn't chaotic or neutral good, but lorewise he is willing to bend even Ao's laws to do whats right. Though now that I think of it, Bahamut would also be a very good fit for Hawke, which would be ironic.
 
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"If you want to do this yourself, you can." I told her softly. "And if you're afraid to do this alone, you won't."
Hawke is the single most space-shattering, dimension-ripping, steps-with-thunder, panty-melting, almighty petachad to ever stride through fiction, and every man or male-identifying person, both real and not, in all the cosmos should live in shame for not meeting his standard.

Shadowheart is a lucky gal.
 
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Hawke is the single most space-shattering, dimension-ripping, steps-with-thunder, panty-melting, almighty petachad to ever stride through fiction, and every man or male-identifying person, both real and not, in all the cosmos should live in shame for not meeting his standard.
For the sake of accuracy I must demur that not only is my Hawke interpolating rather a bit from where DA canon didn't cover, but it's an actual plot point in this fic that a lot of why he's so mature about relationships now is that he really fucked up with Merrill and he had to learn from that failure.
 
Can't have been random sadism, though. Gortash is evil as fuck, but he very seldom does anything without a purpose.

So I'm at chapter 12 and I just realized you abandoned two team mates that I don't think I can ever forgive you for. I don't mean the leech, fuck him... or don't.

I mean Scratch and that ball of baby feathers. How fucking dare you sir? You left behind best boy, and the adorable mascot. You didn't even write an aside of them being rescued and the Owlbear staying with the druids, or Scratch getting adopted by one of the Tiefling families going to the Gate. Never mind as a Ferelden it isn't natural for Hawke to be without an attack doggo buddy.

This is... mostly... a joke, but I am disappointed by the lost chance and scenes you could have written.
 
This is... mostly... a joke, but I am disappointed by the lost chance and scenes you could have written.
I skipped over the animals because I already was getting overloaded on characters to keep track of and for another reason I'm not going into right now.

Note that we didn't see the owlbear cub in the goblin camp, so the goblins didn't catch him. He's fine, Scratch is fine. You may safely presume both of them were rapidly found by the local druids and are being taken care of.
 
I skipped over the animals because I already was getting overloaded on characters to keep track of and for another reason I'm not going into right now.

Note that we didn't see the owlbear cub in the goblin camp, so the goblins didn't catch him. He's fine, Scratch is fine. You may safely presume both of them were rapidly found by the local druids and are being taken care of.
Hmm... that's ok I guess....
 
He approved of of Hawke the moment he 'convinced' Withers to rez the kid adventurer as proof of concept, and was sold on him when he came up with the solution to Karlachs dilemma. He is LOVING this.
From what we know of Jergal (his domains) he was one of the original major evil gods before he got so bored of it he did something near unheard of for a god and simply retired, a chosen of Jergal like Withers would logically thus approve of novel and interesting ways to do good.
 
The bombs could be another swerve for his cover. The Elder Brain is kicking up a fuss. After he gets it under control, City shaking needs to be explained and 'stopped'.

Combine off site munitions development with a 'plot' to smuggle explosives that destabilize the under city? To keep people from asking the right questions?

And that's just assuming it's not a Bhaal plot for chaos that are mooching off the Baneite infrastructure. Gotta keep looking like nominal Allies.
 
I skipped over the animals because I already was getting overloaded on characters to keep track of and for another reason I'm not going into right now.

I'm going to assume sparing Hawke and Shadowheart the trouble of modifying their house to fit a full grown but still cuddly owlbear in the epilogue :p
 
Chapter 36 New
The old and weathered idol of Selune stood alone in the ruined courtyard where a small temple to the goddess had once stood. Shadowheart and I both stood in the late evening moonlight, observing it.

"The last operating temple to Selune in the city, before it finally had to close down as well." I said, my voice downcast. "Viconia and her congregation did their work all too well."

"It's still consecrated. Barely." Shadowheart said quietly as she swept some dead leaves and detritus away from the flagstones surrounding the idol. "I suppose they felt that outright desecrating the site would have revealed that the temples of Selune in Baldur's Gate were failing due to sabotage and harassment, not merely bad luck and fading congregations."

"I'd leave you to your prayers alone, but we're still on the buddy system so long as Orin is still on the loose." I restated the obvious.

Shadowheart nodded and knelt to begin her vigil, while I silently stood guard. The patient minutes ticked by without counting, until she was done.

"Anything?" I asked her, when she remained silent after getting back to her feet.

"Her comfort. Her regard, and reassurance." Shadowheart replied softly. "But no guidance."

"No guidance would imply that She's not displeased with your current course of action. What's wrong?" I asked.

"My parents... are almost too good to be true." Shadowheart said with a flinch. "They've been held prisoner and tortured for decades. Decades. And so much of the torture was at my hand. They should be traumatized- they are traumatized! I think that's part of why Isobel is suggesting they be given some time away from me! But they still don't-" Her eyes began to tear up and I drew her into a hug. "Why don't they hate me? Their own daughter brought them nothing but pain for so much of their lives! How can they-"

"I sometimes don't believe it myself." I surprised her with my agreement. "If I'd been in their shoes, I can't imagine my coming through it so relatively well. I almost wonder if Viconia used the mirror on them to remove some memories and make the time pass faster for them, help make it all blur together. After all, her plot would be ruined if they finished breaking before you did."

"Even so." Shadowheart agreed. "How can-" she looked downcast. "How can such wonderful people be saddled with so much pain, so much misery - have almost their entire life stolen from them, in the case of my mother - just for the misfortune of being related to me? Do I even deserve to be their daughter?"

"Remember that the entire reason Shar targeted you was for the spite of corrupting a girl who had the potential to be one of her sister's most virtuous." I kissed her forehead as I drew her into a hug. "It's appalling to think that you were specifically targeted precisely because you were the most undeserving of such a fate, but that's the goddess of spite for you."

"I still can't make myself believe it sometimes." Shadowheart said as we broke apart and sat side by side on a nearby stone bench. "I know... even with my memories mostly gone, I still know... that back when I was doing it, part of me enjoyed it. What does that say about me?"

I took a deep, reluctant breath and faced the question. "When I killed the man who'd murdered my mother, I enjoyed doing it very much. I would have made it last longer if I could have. I would have drawn it out, reveled in it. I wanted to so badly that I could taste it."

"But you didn't." Shadowheart said. "Not like me."

"The only reason I didn't do it is because he fought to the death." I admitted. "It's difficult to kill someone slowly when they're a powerful necromancer and coming at you with everything they have. I put him down quickly because the necessity of battle required that I do so. But I'm honest enough to admit that that was the only reason I was doing it. The one person along with me at the time was Varric, and not even he could have stopped me from killing that bastard slowly and painfully if I'd had the opportunity to. I doubt he'd even have tried to, he loved my mother almost as much as I did." I looked her straight in the eye and continued. "My point is that there's a dark part of most human minds that can legitimately enjoy inflicting pain on the helpless, if the rest of our mind believes that the target is 'deserving' of it. Why I would have enjoyed it is obvious - revenge. But you were being raised and mentally conditioned by religious fanatics who taught you that even the most horrible suffering is justified is it has "meaning", and that's why you were feeling what you were feeling. But now you know what was really happening and what lies they were telling you, and you're not even remotely taking pleasure in it now. That's what's important."

"Hawke, a moment of temptation felt by a virtuous man is in no way equivalent to decades of being a loyal devotee of an evil religion." Shadowheart insisted.

"Virtuous? Me?" I scoffed. "I can tell similar stories, if not quite that severe, about much of my life. You look at me now and you see the brave and honorable - if not always straightforward - paladin, and you think that's how I always was. But I wasn't. I really wasn't."

"I very much doubt that you were helping torture or kill innocent people." Shadowheart said darkly.

"I may have. I'm not certain if I did or not." I shocked her. "I told you the story of how my family had to flee Ferelden and seek shelter in Kirkwall, but I didn't go into details as to exactly how we got into the city. By the time we'd gotten there the city had placed a ban on further refugees from the Blight being allowed to enter it - they were already at full capacity and more. And while Mother had originally been Kirkwall nobility before she ran away from home to marry Father, and her younger brother still lived in the city... well, technically being ex-pats and not refugees didn't matter much to the guards, particularly since Uncle Gamlen had foolishly gambled away the family fortune in the interim and our 'nobility' was threadbare at best without the family holdings or the ability to maintain them. So we weren't getting in unless we paid a substantial set of bribes, and we didn't have the money." I sighed. "Uncle Gamlen had a couple of contacts who could raise that cash in a hurry provided that I'd pay them back with at least a year's worth of service. I had a choice between signing on with a smuggler named Athenril and a sellsword captain named Meeran. Both of them had a test job they wanted me to do before they'd risk any money on my being as good as Gamlen claimed I was. And neither one were clean jobs."

"What did you do?" Shadowheart asked.

"Mother, Bethany, our friend Aveline and I were all sleeping on the streets with only the clothes on our backs and our weapons and armor." I said. "So ultimately I chose to sign on with Meeran rather than Athenril because I was more familiar with fighting than I was with smuggling-"

"From what I've seen on our trip here, you're more than a bit familiar with smuggling." Shadowheart quirked a smile.

"That all came later and was largely Varric's fault." I smiled back briefly, before my expression turned sober again. "At any rate, I chose to go with the sellswords - and then I found out that Meeran's test job for me was to kill a former client he was having a dispute with. Meeran claimed that a noble named Freidrich had set some of his people up to die by giving them faulty information for a job. Friedrich was already trying to flee town on the next ship, so he was already waiting on the docks. If Meeran killed him he'd be the obvious suspect, but having some random and nameless refugee kill him in a quarrel while Meeran was conspicuously elsewhere under the eyes of the guards? Then the man is dead and neither of us get arrested." I shrugged. "And so I killed Freidrich, along with his two bodyguards. Walked right up, told him straight-out that I was going to take him down as retaliation for what he'd done, and his guards made it even easier for me by drawing steel first so as far as anyone else could see he'd started the quarrel - nobody else had been standing close enough to hear my threats. And that was that. I was now officially a hired killer and so was Bethany." I shook my head. "I salved my conscience with the thought that he hadn't denied what I'd accused him of... but honestly? What kind of proof is that? And I certainly didn't have any other proof, I'd just met all these people. And yet I took lives over the accusation, and led my baby sister to do likewise."

"Your entire family were penniless refugees sleeping on the streets and about to be thrown back into the ocean." Shadowheart insisted. "You were desperate. I can't see where you had much choi-" Her eyes suddenly narrowed at me. "Very clever."

"Exactly." I nodded back at her. "You can plead duress even more than I could. I was poor and desperate, but I still had some other options than killing a man I didn't know based on nothing but the accusations of another stranger. You were outright coerced, as well as under the influence of massive doses of mind-altering magic. By all rights you're more in the clear for your activities with the Sharrans than I was with the Red Iron Company." I snorted. "Because that year I spent working for them? In addition to killing Friedrich for my initation several of the jobs we did were borderline... and I still think Meeran was doing some things I would have considered unacceptable, and just had the sense not to tell me about them. And I only quit the Red Iron after I'd gotten a role in Bartrand's expedition and didn't need to take Meeran's coin anymore. But that's how I re-established the family fortunes, and some of the things I was willing to stoop to to maintain them." I shook my head. "I ended up the hero of Kirkwall when I'd never had the ambition to be anything except wealthy and settled. And then I lost almost everything I'd built, and had only the heroic reputation left..." I sighed. "Somehow the reputation became real, because at some point I found myself wanting it to be. But I never felt like it had become real until well after it had already finished doing so."

"I... understand what you're saying about me, but I still can't make myself feel it." Shadowheart admitted. "But you can't still be thinking that you're a bad person, not after everything you've done since."

"Your reassurance is doing exactly as much to help settle my doubts as mine are helping you - and exactly as little." I said ruefully. "I suppose it's because we both know that we are each other's least objective judge in the entire world."

"That's certainly true." Shadowheart smiled. "But you're right that we also both have a lot of other people who still accept us as being good people. Even with them knowing as much about us as they do. Thank you for reminding me "

"As well as your goddess, and my Oath. We've both been brought low. We've both done things we'll always regret. But we've both survived, and we've both changed for the better." I said warmly. "As to how horrible you feel about what happened to your parents... of course you feel that way, and there's nothing wrong about those feelings. It was horrible."

"That's what I'm having so much trouble figuring out!" Shadowheart insisted. "I helped torture them for so many years! They have to resent that on some level! They have to resent me." She huddled into herself painfully. "And... on some level at least, they have to be afraid of me."

"But we're not." her father's voice broke into our thoughts. We both looked up to see Arnell and Emmeline Hallowleaf standing there watching us, with the vigilant spectre of Aylin in her human disguise waiting back at the entrance to the courtyard.

"I'm not saying you don't mean that, but I just don't see how that's possible." Shadowheart replied with a guilty flinch. "How many times did you have to-?"

"To see our little girl suffering?" Emmeline said gently. "Far too many times."

"The pain was significant." Arnell admitted. "But with proper healing the body can forget pain. And so can the mind, in time. But to see what they were doing to you? That was worse than any pain." He took Shadowheart's hands gently in his own. "The reason we don't resent your part in what happened to us is because there were three victims in the Chamber of Loss all those years, not two. Even if you couldn't remember it, you were suffering right along with us. DeVir and Shar were torturing all of us, not just the two of us."

"You're not our tormentor and you never were, Jenevelle. You're our daughter." Emmeline said.

"Please don't-" Shadowheart said guiltly. "That name. My birth name. I can't- it's still not real to me. I can't remember being her." Her voice turned soft and shadowed. "I don't think I'll ever remember being her. And I can't just pretend that I was never that other girl in the cloister either. I've already forgotten more, reinvented myself more, than anyone ever should. I'm so sorry, but I can't be your Jenevelle. Only Shadowheart."

"Whatever you want to call yourself, you're still our little girl." Emmeline smiled at her. "You always will be."

"All those years, the only thing we prayed for was that one day you would be free. That you would no longer be under Shar's control - be free to feel again, to love again." her father hugged her. "And you have."

"Would you like a moment alone?" I asked all three of them.

"Actually, young man, I would like you to tell me a bit about yourself. And also to ask you what precisely your intentions are towards our daughter." her mother fixed me with her gaze.

I chuckled helplessly to myself, and yielded to the inevitable. "It all started a very long ways away from here, in a kingdom called Ferelden..."



I was still a supplicant when I came face to face with him: Masked in gold, his skin fine and worn as parchment. Jergal, the death-keeper, the End of Everything. I asked what he needed of me. He asked a simple question: "What is the worth of a single mortal's life?" I knew not how to respond, and said as such. He seemed nonplussed; neither disappointed nor pleased. I fell to my knees in respect for his awesome power. This garnered no reaction. There I stayed, trembling with an emotion I could not name. And when I stood again, the Final Scribe was gone.

"Wrath of ye gods." Gale gaped at the crumbling journal incredulously.

The very next day after we'd pulled our not-so-faking-the-dead gambit on Gortash Shadowheart, Gale, Lae'zel, and I had started our expeditions into the sewers. We didn't expect to find the Temple of Bhaal on these blind exploration runs, especially given just how extensive the sewers underneath Baldur's Gate were, but we were hoping to meet a few doppelgangers. Or at the very least to keep the pressure up on Orin and force her into making some kind of move we could counter.

So far, however, the result of our expedition had been a random encounter with a crazed mage commanding animated blobs of grease, of all things, and laying the unquiet ghost of one of his victims to rest by finding her skull and reuniting it with her severed body. And then we thought we'd found something significant, but the ancient lair we'd tunneled into turned out to be the lair of an ancient eldritch evil entirely unconnected to the Bhaalites. It had been the secret domain of a mummy lord, whose grave jars that allowed it to respawn even after being slain had been hidden here. Destroying the jars had proven elementary enough, and overcoming the curses and minion undead guarding its secret lair had been moderately strenuous. Tracking down the last jar - which it had hidden inside the body of one of the sentient zombies serving it, without the man's knowledge - had been annoying, but entirely doable. Not that we'd even wanted to fight a mummy lord this morning, but after having inadvertently disturbed its secret chamber we knew that either we destroyed this 'Mystic Carrion', as it had named itself, or it would destroy us.

And then the world had fallen out from underneath us when Gale had found the aforementioned journal amongst the mummy lord's research materials, and with the irresistible urge to poke his nose into strange and arcane books that only an archmage could have he'd opened it up and read it. The writings of some long-dead scribe of ancient pre-Netherese civilization, it spoke of an encounter with Jergal himself, the Final Scribe, one-time paramount god of death and several other domains who had then chosen to retire from those offices by gifting the bulk of his powers and portfolios to several mortals of antiquity who would later become the Dead Three.

"A god. We've had a god following us around and resurrecting us the entire time. For- for two hundred gold coins each!" Shadowheart gaped incredulously. Because the description of the entity in question, as well as the question it had asked on first meeting, was of course exactly the same as-

"Curious." Wither's - Jergal's voice broke into our conversation softly. "I had not expected thee to find such an ancient record, nor indeed for one to still be intact enough to find."

"When we first met you, Shadowheart sensed your divine aspect of Jergal and thought you were one of his Chosen. We hadn't remotely imagined the full scope of the truth." I said.

"Nor should you have. 'Twould be a most unlikely conclusion to leap to, after all." he replied urbanely.

"Several very obvious questions are begged at this point." Lae'zel said politely. "Would you be willing to answer any of them?"

"I cannot offer you substantially more assistance than I already have." Jergal replied. "Ao's constraints still lie upon me, as they do upon all gods after the Sundering."

"Except for the Dead Three." I didn't ask. "Who chose to be reduced to the stature of quasi-deity in order to allow themselves a free hand to meddle on the Prime. And who are now deliberately unleashing the Absolute to let them win anyway despite their reduction. Because as you pointed out to us at Moonrise Towers, converting someone to ililthid permanently removes their soul from the cycle of creation. And once they've done that - obliterated the souls of every inhabitant of Faerun save their own most faithful - then all the other gods will wither to nothing, leaving three one-eyed gods to still entirely dominate the country of the blind. Metaphorically speaking."

"When did you figure that out?" Gale looked at me incredulously.

"In the House of Hope, when something the Archivist said triggered that whole line of speculation." I answered matter-of-factly, only to sigh at all of their expressions. "I entirely forgot to mention that yesterday, didn't I?"

"You did." Shadowheart rolled her eyes at me gently. "In fairness, that was a very busy day for all of us."

"Hawke is correct." Jergal said. "This is the true scope of the Dead Three's plot. And this is why they are indifferent to the fate of their Chosen should the elder brain succeed in breaking free, and why they do not offer their servants any assistance against that contingency. In the long run Gortash and Orin are both entirely expendable to their patrons, just as Ketheric Thorm was to his."

"You can't assist us directly, as that breaks Ao's restrictions." Gale reasoned. "But simply resurrecting us for a fee is something that any cleric or Chosen is allowed to do if they can cast the spell, so you can do the same for us while acting within that role. Even if your resurrection magic is far more powerful than anything that any mortal caster can wield, and even if you're offering it to us for far less of a price than anyone else would."

"And even if it does an immense amount to tip the odds in our favor - which it has, several times." Shadowheart observed. "We're still not immune to failing our quest if we have such relatively easy access to resurrection, but we're enormously less likely to fail with it."

"When first we met, Hawke asked me who had foretold our meeting." Jergal said. "As thou hast deduced my true identity it now reveals little to answer the question. Helm, God of Guardians, requested that I aid the bearers of the Astral Prism to hopefully have them triumph against the Dead Three's plot where normally they would fail. And within the limits of Ao's constraints, I have done so."

"Have any other gods...?" Gale trailed off awkwardly.

"Thy patron has not spoken to me about this affair, if that is what thou ask." Jergal said calmly. "Several deities are at least partially aware of the threat the Absolute poses and have inspired their own servants to combat against it to greater or lesser degree, but they are keeping their own counsel just as I am keeping mine."

"We know what Selune's contribution is, at least." I agreed. "And since you've been observing us throughout, you know we're stuck. Is there any hint you can give us regarding the Temple of Bhaal?"

"Only that thou art concentrating muchly on finding it, when the most difficult part will be defeating those within after thou does so." Jergal remonstrated with us mildly, and then vanished in-between eyeblinks.

"... I'm not even sure how to react to this." Shadowheart admitted.

"Blunt truth? If there's going to be gods cheating their way through this affair, then be happy at least some of them are cheating in our favor." I sighed. "But for now, let's head topside. Somebody just hinted there's a lot more trouble waiting for us in that temple than we might be prepared for, so, we need to brainstorm a different approach."

Wyll and Karlach still had to lay low in case Gortash was keeping a closer eye on us than we'd thought, but by the simple expedient of holding the meeting in Rivington - where we'd sent Isobel and Aylin out to help look after the refugees - we were able to get everyone else together with reasonable discretion. I brought everyone up to speed on what we'd figured out to date, and about Jergal's warning that we were facing a greater danger in the Temple of Bhaal than we had prepared for.

"But given that we were already expecting a small army of shapeshifting assassins on their home ground, complete with as many traps as they can possibly cram into the architecture, then how exactly does something get substantially worse than that unless they have a large army of shapeshifting assassins? Which I can't see how they would have, given the logistics of concealing so many." I concluded.

"You cannot? Because my mind immediately leaps to an obvious conclusion, given that we have already faced a similar situation." Aylin unhesitatingly replied. "Particularly if we also take into consideration that whatever this increased threat is it is not very mobile, or else Orin would not be waiting for us to come to her when she could bring the threat to us."

"Oh gods." Jaheira facepalmed. "Yes, now that you phrase it that way it is obvious in hindsight. Just as we had to face the Reaper under Moonrise Towers, the Avatar of Bhaal is almost certainly down there in the undercity somewhere waiting for us."

"Shit." I swore. "We barely survived Myrkul - and that was with Ketheric helping us from the inside!" I nodded to Isobel. "We won't remotely have that kind of edge in our favor if we have to face Orin while she's possessed by Bhaal! Leaving aside that I would imagine the god of assassins is more dangerous in close-quarters combat than even the god of the dead!"

"Boo has seen men possessed by the God of Murder before." Minsc said resolutely. "The Slayer form that Bhaal can grant his most faithful is very formidable, but it can be defeated with a good sword and enough courage!"

"Jergal also said that Gortash and Orin are considered expendable by their patrons." Gale said reasonably. "Wouldn't that imply that she is not going to be given any special aid?"

"It implies that, yes." I nodded. "It doesn't prove that, however. So what happens if we go in assuming that everything is fine, and only then find out it isn't?"

"Point taken." Gale agreed ruefully.

"Jergal would not have warned us about something that we could readily beat to death simply by ganging up on it. He didn't remotely feel a need to get involved even when we were doing things like going to Hell to fight Raphael in his own home." Shadowheart pointed out.

"Agreed." Jaheira said. "But if we will be fighting a true divine avatar..." She sighed. "Even Sarevok or Irenicus did not quite reach that height of power."

"Aylin, we're definitely going to need your help on this one." I asked.

"And you shall have all that I can provide." she agreed. "But if Bhaal is prepared to truly cast all restraint to the winds..."

"If we need more divine aid, then we must get it somehow." Lae'zel said. "Unfortunately, the only entity of my even remote acquaintance that can channel even quasi-divine amounts of power is Vlaakith."

"There may be something." Isobel said gravely. "The Moonmaiden will answer a senior priestess' call for as much direct intervention as Ao will allow her to provide... but virtually no priestess has that call answered more than once in a lifetime. I have already used my one guaranteed boon - to provide the shield over Last Light Inn, as it happens." She turned to look at her fellow priestess. "But Shadowheart has not."

"I've been a priestess of Selune for barely over a week!" Shadowheart protested.

"And you earned Her personal blessing on your very first day as one." Isobel smiled while fingering a lock of her own silver hair. "Furthermore, you were already an accomplished priestess before converting to Selunite worship and that progress has carried over. I can explain everything else you will need to know."

"I was once a candidate to be one of Mystra's Chosen, but that ship sailed before I even had a chance to embark." Gale said sadly. "I have no line of communication to the Lady of Mysteries any longer, and I cannot imagine she would be amenable to any requests I made even if I did."

"Aylin, how much power can you channel personally?" I kept thinking out loud.

"More than you have seen me do so far. Less than I would need to match opposition of the scale we fear without further aid. Witness that I needed your help versus Myrkul's avatar." she answered matter-of-factly.

"Right." I said. "Barring late-arriving thoughts, that would seem to be all the divine favors we can stack up. Next up, mundane methods of improving our odds beyond that we already have."

"Potions." Gale said. "As many augmenting ones as I can brew and are safe to take in combination. We have sufficient gold for the ingredients, but it would take me at least a full day to brew them."

"Smokepowder, and perhaps other alchemical devices." Lae'zel immediately contributed. "You may recall that the deep gnomes we rescued from Moonrise Towers asked you for a meeting in Baldur's Gate. The press of events has prevented us from attending sooner, but we should attend to that matter without delay."

"More troops." Jaheira said. "We have allies we have not yet made full use of."

"Few of your Harpers have the experience to match the Bhaalites in close-combat, particularly on their home ground." Lae'zel rebutted. "As for Orpheus' Honor Guard, they certainly do but have we not already agreed to deploy them as infrequently as possible?"

"We need them to keep Orpheus alive during the endgame." I agreed. "I don't know what the elder brain's going to throw at us when we finally make a run at it, but we have to assume it will be keeping some kind of troop detachment around the brain pool. Mind flayers, Absolutist thralls, hordes of intellect devourers, it could be anything. If we lose Orpheus then we lose everything, and the brain will know that - he'll need his bodyguard as fresh to fight as possible."

"Nine-Fingers will not send her people into such a deathmatch either." Minsc demurred.

"And Gortash won't send his Banites." I agreed. "Possibly the Steel Watch doesn't fall within the constraints Bane has him operating under, but I very much doubt we could get one down into the undercity."

"I notice we're not talking about the problem of finding the temple." Shadowheart observed mildly.

"Ever since Jergal gave us the clue that Bhaal is keeping something big down there, that stopped being a problem." I pointed out. "If there really is a quasi-divine avatar lurking down there, Aylin should be able to sense it if she gets remotely close."

"I would." Aylin nodded. "However, the undercity is quite extensive and I would still need to be within the approximate vicinity."

"Cazador." I remarked. "It only recently occurred to me that he had to have known at least the rough area the Temple of Bhaal was located in - as the vampire lord of Baldur's Gate his spawn had to have been using the undercity the entire time, and he's been in town since before the first Temple of Bhaal was built underneath Sarevok. Which means he'd have known what sections of the sewers and tunnels would be wise for his spawn to avoid. By now the Lathanderites have to have finished reducing his lair, so someone needs to check in with them. He has to have compiled maps of the undercity for his own use, and those maps will have the unsafe areas marked. In addition, we've been overlooking the possibility of druidic magic. Jaheira can speak to the rats in the sewers..." I trailed off. "By the day after tomorrow, we should have our target pinpointed. Call it one more day at most to scout it out and execute an attack plan. But as soon as we kill Orin, that triggers our endgame versus Gortash and the Elder Brain. So for everything we've been preparing, we'll have two or three days at most to finish getting it ready."

"Everything?" Jaheira asked.

"The rumormongering we'll have Alfira and her fellow bards spread among the general populace about basic measures to safeguard against possible threats. Preparing Councilor Florrick's loyalists in the Flaming Fist. Re-assembling the Harpers you brought back from Moonrise and scattered among the Outer City. The raid teams against the Steel Watch Foundry and Gortash's underwater prison. All of it." I agreed.

"We might need the extra day." Jaheira agreed. "But yes, I can make it happen on that schedule. Wyll will of a certainty want to lead the prison rescue team anyway."

"His own father is in there, that position is his by right. And Karlach will certainly want to be part of the Gortash takedown." I agreed. "The Foundry takedown team will have to update its plans anyway based on whatever I can get out of the Ironhand Gnomes, who I'll have to go see right after this meeting."

"Then we'll-" Isobel began, only to be cut off as a rush of footsteps and the distinctive jingle of men in full armor sounded outside the barn in which we were meeting.

"It's about time they showed up." I grinned, as we all rose to our feet and drew our weapons. "Let's go see how many of Orin's people we can thin out-"

It was a coin toss as to which group was more surprised when I threw the barn doors open wide to confront our attackers. On the one hand, Aradin and his latest crew of mercenaries were quite appalled to see all of my party except Karlach and Wyll and two legendary heroes of Baldur's Gate in addition to their expected targets. On the other hand, we were incredulous to see that instead of the crew of elite Bhaalite assassins we were expecting it was instead a half-dozen scruffy adventurers and sellswords of middling talent at best, only one of whom we'd ever even met before.

"Weren't you supposed to be on a ship to greener pastures?" I glared at Aradin.

"Lorroakan picked up somehow that the Nightsong was in town and offered me double the gold." Aradin said matter-of-factly. "And the refugees were talkin' all about the priestess from Moonrise Towers and her big friend bein' out here and helpin' heal the sick and all. So I came out and looked for myself, and sure enough, the tall one's got a celestial aura you can feel - even if most of the people out here don't know enough to recognize it. So I rounded up a new crew and made a try. You were all off doin' your own business in the city, after all. I should have had more than enough muscle to take those two - if you lot hadn't all been here."

"You did not." Aylin shook her head scornfully.

"You really didn't." Isobel said wearily.

"As you might have guessed from your boss' reaction, you are all very much outclassed." I looked at the mercenaries. "Anybody who doesn't want to die, this is their one chance to leave peacefully. We don't know you and we don't care about you."

"Hawke?" Aradin looked at me worriedly.

"But you I've already warned once." I shook my head at him grimly. "And your promise not to try again would be worthless - you already gave it to me once before, and now you've broken it. So we will be crossing swords." I waved everybody else back. "We're not going to turn this into a group murder. If he beats me fairly, he gets to leave in peace. And if he doesn't... then he doesn't."

"Shit." Aradin swore, and drew his sword as I drew mine. "All right you lot, clear off. If I win I'll catch up to you. And if I don't, you're free to keep what I already paid you." None of his hired swords even looked back once as they took to their heels.

"A worse man would have gladly fed the cannon fodder into our blades to get himself a chance to run." I acknowledged him. "The saddest part of this is that you were almost decent enough. If only you'd cared for anything besides gold."

"You talk big, but I saw you fight outside the Grove. I was matching you then, and I'll match you now." Aradin said confidently. I sighed inwardly but didn't bother explaining that outside the Grove I had still been significantly weakened by my tadpole and that now I wasn't. After all, I'd already decided that he was simply too untrustworthy to leave alive behind us a second time.

It really didn't take me very long.



I made the meeting with the Ironhand Gnomes, and I was appalled to find out that Wulbren's plan for dealing with the Steel Watch Foundry was to blow it up with his augmented runepowder bomb - with all the Gondians still inside. Pointing out to him that they were slaves who were working under threat of death for them and their families met his sneering objection that I had been 'obviously' misinformed, along with a tirade about how the Ironhand gnomes had been unfairly driven out of Baldur's Gate over a century ago under threat of death solely due to the lies and slanders of the Gondians, who had unfairly maligned them solely to get a monopoly on magitech in Baldur's Gate and were just the sort of horrible, ruthless, exploitative bastards who'd eagerly be working hand in glove with Gortash.

Since I not only had Gortash's open admission that he'd enslaved the Gondians but also had Jaheira and Minsc as living witnesses that the real reason the Ironhand Gnomes had been exiled from Baldur's Gate a century ago is because they'd been working for Sarevok, and that Wulbren's ancestors had only avoided mass execution due to the then Grand Duke's mercy, I immediately realized that I was at best talking to a fanatic whose grandparents had raised him on a diet of revisionist history and race hatred, if not a conscienceless manipulator attempting to willfuly mislead me into massacreing innocents so that his Ironhand gnomes could get a tech monopoly in Baldur's Gate.

Which is why I readily agreed with everything he said and gladly accepted the bomb with a promise to put it where it would do the most good. After all, there was no point in arguing with either a fanatic or a liar - and since he'd emphasized in his rant that the runepowder bomb had cost his people an incredible amount of expense and time to make, then leaving here with the bomb was the best way to prevent him from finding someone else to go massacre the innocent Gondians with it for a long, long time. Because by the time he could finish making another device, we'd either have defeated the elder brain weeks ago or else we'd all be dead.

Barcus was also there, and despairing of ever talking sense into his hateful and malicious friend - or ex-friend, at the rate they were going. He entirely approved of my plan to pretend to go along with Wulbren long enough to get the bomb away from him, and also gladly agreed to help supply us with smokepowder and alchemical weapons for the upcoming fight against the Bhaalites provided that I could pay for the ingredients. Since we were more than amply funded by all the loot from Moonrise as well as Jaheira's Harper war chest, that proved no obstacle at all.

We then had to make a stop on the way home at Sorcerous Sundries, because the same logic that led to my killing Aradin also applied to Lorroakan. Not that facing an archmage in his tower was a comforting prospect, but he was clearly willing to keep sponsoring assassination or kidnapping attempts against us to steal Aylin away for her immortality and he simply wasn't going to stop. We couldn't afford to turn our back on a potential foe like that while we were already engaged in so many complex stratagems against opponents of deadly quality like Orin and Gortash, and so we simply infiltrated his tower by pretending to be bringing Aylin to him for the reward and then all betrayed and killed him at the meet. His host of summoned elementals and magic item collection proved relatively formidable, but Lae'zel, Aylin, and Shadowheart were able to keep the elementals occupied while Isobel and I dealt with the wizard.

Aylin had demanded the right to kill Lorroakan herself, to a degree that made me slightly worry about her objectivity in this regard - I'd never seen her get so angrily intense about anything even when she was facing down the Gauntlet of Shar or the Reaper - so I'd decided to make damn sure she didn't do it. As a paladin myself I well knew the danger of doing the right thing but for the wrong reason and while filled with hatred, and while I'd have had no chance in convincing Aylin to hold off she was no more able to deny Isobel's heartfelt request than I would have been able to defy Shadowheart in a similar context. Ah, the things you did for love.

We were all shocked to find out that Lorroakan was no true archmage at all but instead a mere sorcerer and one of only middling talent besides. He'd only been believed to be a powerful archmage because he'd been fortunate enough to find the tower of the legendary Ramazith wide-open and defenseless after that archmage's disappearance and move himself in. The vast collection of magic items and bound elementals already in the tower allowed him to fake a degree of power he simply didn't have, and since he virtually never left the tower the hollowness of his charade was never exposed. Even his taking Rolan as an apprentice had been just a desperate attempt on Lorroakan's part to keep up the charade - he'd intended to use Rolan's more modest wizardly powers to fulfill commissions for arcane consults or enchantments that his own sorcerous talents had been unable to provide and that he'd been starting to run out of excuses for not doing, while stringing Rolan along with demands that he 'prove himself' first before being taught anything... and verbally and physically abusing him whenever Rolan pressed the point, or protested against Lorroakan's inane attempts at 'training'. The man didn't even have the education to actually comprehend most of the arcane library he'd been so boastful about owning!

Upon hearing that we felt no hesitation in pointing out that as Lorroakan's apprentice - however hollow the position had been, Lorroakan had still publicly claimed him as such - he was now the legal and rightful heir to the tower of Ramazith and everything in it upon Lorrakan's death. Particularly since the sorcerer had had no other heirs or even known family. Rolan's generous offer to lend the full resources of the Tower into supporting our quest, once we'd also explained the potential threat Baldur's Gate had been facing, was a tremendous increase to our available resources. So we now had free access to Sorcerous Sundries' stock of enchanted items and scrolls, as well as the use of a truly world-class wizarding laboratory for Gale. In addition, the floating tower of Ramazith as a new and nigh-impregnable backup headquarters for us if we needed one. Since the airborne tower was linked by teleportal to Sorcerous Sundries, we wouldn't even have any difficulties with the commute.

And then the gods laughed at us yet again because after the second unplanned diversion of the day, we ran into a third right outside of Sorcerous Sundries.

"Hello, Gale." Elminster greeted us soberly.

"Elminster!" Gale said relievedly. "Please tell us She's reconsidered and is allowing us more assistance. We've found out more about the true scope of the threat, and it's even worse than you were told."

"Sadly, no." the old sage disappointed us. "Although I have made some small amount of progress on the matter you requested I look into, Hawke."

"You might make more after this is over, given that we recently got in touch with a faction of friendly githyanki." I replied. "But that will all have to wait until we have resolved the Absolute crisis."

"Hang on, what's this about-?" Gale began.

"The last time we ran into Elminster you might recall I spoke to him privately right before he left?" I said. "I was taking advantage of the unexpected meeting with an archmage of his experience to ask him about something entirely unrelated to the Absolute. Not relevant to our quest, and I'll tell you about it later."

"I welcome the opportunity for discussion." Elminster agreed. "But we must address my purpose for being here today. By now you are aware of the true heart of the problem - Karsus' pestilent Crown. The very artifact that unmade an empire, and threatened to do the same to the Weave itself." Elminster's voice lowered, becoming that of an old and weary man. "What Mystra asked of you was extreme, but I believe we can both see now that it was not asked of you either frivolously or lightly."

"And yet I still didn't do it." Gale said flatly. "I don't for a moment think that you're disappointed to hear that, but I'm presuming that She is."

"You will have the opportunity to ask Her yourself very soon." Elminster replied soberly. "Because Mystra commands thy presence."

"What a coincidence, and just this morning I was wishing I could have an opportunity to speak with Her!" Gale replied brightly. "Your timing is, as ever, ideal."

"Gale?" Elminster's voice turned anxious. "I know that a degree of resentment is inevitable in your position, but I pray that you do not-?"

"What?" Gale blinked in honest puzzlement before realizing. "Oh, that! If you're afraid that I intend to spit defiance and thunder at her, and vow to reforge the Crown of Karsus for my own, then relax. I'm not." He grinned. "Now I entirely could, if I wanted to - it turned out that Sorcerous Sundries had a complete unredacted copy of the Annals of Karsus in its vault. Fascinating reading!" he grinned.

"Gale." Elminster pleaded. "Godhood sounds like a wonderful thing, but-"

"Elminster." Gale reached out and clasped him by the shoulders with both hands. "It's all right. I genuinely meant what I said about not having the slightest ambition to actually wear the damned thing. I won't deny that the temptation was immense for a while, but you're right - achieving godhood would only make me more miserable in the end. I'd lose all ability to actually be with or help the people I care about, and whatever new ambitions eventually crept in to fill the days of my hypothetical divine self would almost certainly be far less fulfilling or wholesome." He smiled crookedly. "I won't lie and say that I figured all that out by myself, but with my friends' help I did eventually figure it out."

"I... am more gratified to hear that than words can express. my dear boy." Elminster smiled at him, before wiping suspiciously at the corners of his eyes. "Damn this dust of the road!"

"And in proof of that claim, here, you can have the book." Gale said, reaching into his pack and drawing out Karsus' journal to hand to Elminster. "I've already taken all the notes I needed to about everything relevant to trying to get the elder brain back under control, and the rest would do better being safely locked away than it would riding around in my backpack. I'd been considering just returning it to the vault at Sorcerous Sundries, but putting it into your keeping would be even better."

"Gale, if we are not permitted to meet again then let me just say that I have never been more proud of you." his old teacher congratulated him with a hug. "Mystra will receive you at her altar at the Stormshore Tabernacle - simply approach, and She will provide you a planar conduit to a neutral meeting ground."

"Good." Gale said, and then briefly explained what we'd found out and why. "So as you can see, we're going to need all the help we can get."

"And hopefully She will be willing to provide some." Elminster agreed. "At any rate, my charge is fulfilled and now I must depart as per Her commands. Fare thee well, all of you."

"And you as well, sir." We finished making our farewells and with a flash of magic, Elminster was gone.



Author's Note: Getting these last couple of chapters done has been like excreting octahedral masonry without lube, and real life hasn't been too cooperative either. The ironic thing is that I've got the chapters past the Orin fight fairly well storyboarded, I just have to get to and through the smegging thing. Hopefully the next couple of chapters will get us over the hump.

And yes, even Diplomatic Hawke is still a fairly amoral guy during the early parts of DA2. I usually do the smuggler route rather than the sellsword route precisely because Athenril is just asking me to go collect gold from a guy who owes her money, while Meeran wants me to take someone's head, and legbreaking is less morally dubious than contract killing. But I'd already established earlier that this Hawke had gone the sellsword route, which came in handy for this particular sequence. Because Shadowheart needs to be reassured that just because she was once a bad guy that does not mean she is bad guy, as Wreck-It Ralph would put it, and Hawke's own experience is certainly relevant to that.

I swear to God that I'd already storyboarded the Jergal reveal for this chapter before the recent reader discussion. I'm not sure if my ability to drag out a plot reveal just long enough to make readers desperately blurt it out first is an example of me having horrible timing or great timing, but that does seem to be a pattern in this story.

One of the more amusing pastimes for an author is when you know things that your characters don't know. Hawke and company are actually overthinking the Orin fight more than a bit going off of what Jergal said. Then again, they're not actually wrong - as anybody who's played the game already knows, Bhaal does indeed have a divine presence down there constantly throwing buffs on Orin during the fight (and in Honor Mode, also throwing some heinous debuffs on you). But it's not quite 'Avatar of Myrkul' bad, even if they are prepping for it's totally that bad.

Divine Intervention is entirely an ability high-level clerics have in BG3... as a one-time-only-per-game ability. It has several possible uses, all of which are fairly powerful effects, but it's not exactly wide-open. Retconning Isobel's own protective dome of plot device over Last Light as her invocation of DI is my idea, not the game's, but it makes sense.

And Aradin shows up again to get murked. Normally he successfully fucks off and stays fucked off if you make an Intimidate check, which Hawke certainly did, but I needed to close out the Lorroakan questline. Also, I'd set up this particular gun on the mantelpiece for multiple chapters, it was time to finally shoot it. And Aylin does apparently fall from grace at least a bit if she kills Lorroakan out of vengeance (in-game, she's pretty triggered by the idea of someone trying to put her back in a soul cage after so recently escaping a century of Ketheric's torture, so she loses her shit a little when Lorroakan tries to), because I only just found out that she actually loses her 'Child of the Moonmaiden' buff after you finish that questline and she goes full 'Bane breaks the Bat' on Lorroakan after you beat him down.

So fuck that shit, I am not being That DM and having fun making the paladin fall, because her fellow paladin and her... you know, I'm not sure if Aylin and Isobel are actually gay married or if they're just shacking up, but they're certainly as close as a married couple, so yeah. Anyway, her fellow paladin and her beloved domestic partner have entirely spared Aylin that fate and good riddance to angsty rubbish.

BG3 players also know that the Ironhand Gnomes are indeed absolute shitlords about it. Fortunately Hawke has entirely cotton'ed onto the standard BG3 player solution for the problem - accept the quest, take the bomb away from Wulbren, then go save the Gondians your own way and laugh in his face about it later.

And yeah, Gale gets to highlight his character development to his old teacher. Elminster is having a very good day today.
 
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"Gale, if we are not permitted to meet again then let me just say that I have never been more proud of you." his old teacher congratulated him with a hug. "Mystra will receive you at her altar at the Stormshore Tabernacle - simply approach, and She will provide you a planar conduit to a neutral meeting ground."
Plot twist: It's just a booty call.
 
is justified is it has "meaning"
if
"Would you like a moment alone?" I asked all three of them."

"Actually, young man, I would like you to tell me a bit about yourself. And also to ask you what precisely your intentions are towards our daughter." her mother fixed me with her gaze.
I was wondering when he'd get cornered by the parents. :p
a crazed mage commanding animated blobs of grease
What?! Seriously, what?! Why grease? That's a niche gimmick if I've ever heard one.
 
Hold on, so we need to somewhat organically find the Bhaal Temple?

Two easy options.

1. Writer's Conveneince option - the gang fight in the Park. A collective of Bhaal Cultists jump you in the park, set off the random encounter and either interrogate or follow a 'survivor'. Its narrative bullshit, kinda weak to me, but it would get you there.

2. Logical Questline Option - More reasonably? Talk to your people. Nine Fingers would have, by now, heard of the Crazy Mage in the Sewers. The Greasy Mage. Whose buddy was killed, almost certainly by cultists? Whose other buddy, the merchant, is standing near the sewer outlet of Mystic Carrion, with the vow of silence, and basically staring at the Bhaal Cult's front door like an asshole? He might know. And? You were JUST THERE (not mad at you, just the sheer balls on this guy for keeping his yap shut during this)

Edit - Re-read the chapter, found that the party met Greasy Boi, but not the merchant and zigged when they should have zagged to find the Bhaal Door. Painful
 
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"Sadly, no." the old sage disappointed us. "Although I have made some small amount of progress on the matter you requested I look into, Hawke."

"You might make more after this is over, given that we recently got in touch with a faction of friendly githyanki." I replied. "But that will all have to wait until we have resolved the Absolute crisis."

"Hang on, what's this about-?" Gale began.

"The last time we ran into Elminster you might recall I spoke to him privately right before he left?" I said. "I was taking advantage of the unexpected meeting with an archmage of his experience to ask him about something entirely unrelated to the Absolute. Not relevant to our quest, and I'll tell you about it later."

I was wondering if I'd forgotten something what Hawke had asked Elminster about, so I combed through the threadmarks until I found the first chapter he appeared in; and this is all the mention of that conversation there was:

"And I as well." With a final embrace, the two men parted. Elminster made his farewells to us, and I took him aside for a quiet word or two of my own. And then he was gone.

So, yeah, Hawke and Elminster have a Chekov's Object-of-unknown-nature lined up. The question is, what is it?
 

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