-
The site has now migrated to Xenforo 2. If you see any issues with the forum operation, please post them in the feedback thread.
-
Due to issues with external spam filters, QQ is currently unable to send any mail to Microsoft E-mail addresses. This includes any account at live.com, hotmail.com or msn.com. Signing up to the forum with one of these addresses will result in your verification E-mail never arriving. For best results, please use a different E-mail provider for your QQ address.
-
The rules regarding NSFW links have been updated. See here for details.
The Once and Future Champion (Baldur's Gate 3/Dragon Age)
- Thread starter cliffc999
- Start date
DIT_grue
lurker
- Joined
- Jun 1, 2014
- Messages
- 1,078
- Likes received
- 1,792
A
This is plausibly a canon distinction, but since I'm unfamiliar and both previous mentions were of Sundermount I thought it worth checking.
bones
altar
The description when they entered the room seemed intended to be read as exhaustive but only mentioned a pair of unarmed ghouls.
in
Delete this word.
Kylia Quilor
I have two moods: Thirsty and Bitter
- Joined
- Sep 5, 2021
- Messages
- 3,217
- Likes received
- 19,977
I tried flying and jumping. Neither worked. I ended up just with lots of quick saving and checking back of the OG diagram
Chapter 24
New
cliffc999
Connoisseur.
- Joined
- Feb 16, 2017
- Messages
- 15,657
- Likes received
- 302,310
"We need to talk."
I'd spoken these words only several hours ago, to the woman I loved. Now I was speaking them to a devil - and not just any devil, but one savage enough to sleep on a bed of bones made from the stacked corpses of his victims, one who stood as tall as a giant and was twice as strong. The orthon was at least half as wide as he was tall, skin as red as dusk, wearing a menacing helmet made out of bones and with eyes that glowed like white-hot steel.
"Talk? Talk?" the orthon snorted contemptuously, as it menaced me at the point of an infernal crossbow sized for a giant, the tip of the loaded bolt already glowing with hellfire. "I don't talk to prey. You were mad to come here alone, little rabbit." It's head lifted up and looked briefly away, down the passage that I'd come. "I can smell your friends lurking up there. You actually dare to call this pathetic effort of yours an ambush? They are far too distant to reach me in time. No, this is an ambush."
A dozen other devils, deathly silent and masked like assassins, all faded into view from where they'd apparently been hiding under invisibility magic while a strange creature built like a giant panther but with tentacles sprouting from its back loomed out of the shadows barely a leap away from my throat. The orthon was standing on an elevated platform overlooking the ruined chamber that I'd entered, and his subordinate devils were arranged all around the rim with me caught directly in a crossfire from multiple angles. If my odds of survival had been problematic before, they were now essentially nonexistent.
"No, if we start fighting their orders are to run for the surface." And pay Withers to resurrect me immediately. I mentally added. It was only that level of precaution that had let me dare to risk this gambit at all.
"What, are you attempting to bargain?" The orthon laughed mockingly. "A warlord of Kara-Tur once tried the same! I made him watch while I ate his concubines and young, and then I fashioned a codpiece from his skull!" I mentally noted that he must have been very bored after being trapped down here for a century, which is almost certainly why he was spending this much time talking before shooting. Usually only amateurs did that, and if the sheer number of corpses this ruin had been littered with was any clue this devil was far from an amateur at killing.
"The devil who I'm certain cheated you tried to trick me into cleaning up after him." I said hurriedly, because his tolerance could literally run out at any second. "But I don't want to be played off like that, so now I'm talking to you."
The orthon's face morphed from sadistic amusement into pure rage, and he closed his eyes and took a deep breath, concentrating. "Yes, there is something else almost hidden by your fear stink... cherries, musk... and sulphur. RAPHAEL! I can smell him all over you! WHERE IS HE?!?"
"Lurking around watching safely from a distance where neither of us can find him, waiting for his little shadowplay to come off on schedule." I replied matter-of-factly. "Which is exactly why I want to ruin that schedule. He is no friend of mine."
The orthon growled so loudly I swore the walls shook. "You are correct. That perfumed trickster swindled me... trapped me!"
"How?" I asked. "The way to the surface is physically open... so was the Underdark route, before you closed it."
"It's not just walls that keep me here. Not traps, not the dark, not the creatures it hides. I am bound by the terms of my contract with Raphael. But I fulfilled them, yet the contract refuses to close! Why does it say that I have yet to finish? Why am I not free?!?" he roared in frustration.
"I was wondering how he could cheat you without the infernal breach of contract penalties backlashing on him." I nodded. "Right, cards on the table. You need to be freed from the trap that holds you here. I need the Umbral Gem I can see laying by your... throne... right over there." I looked away from the pile of rotting flesh and bone I'd noted and back to the devil. "So if I help you get free, you go back to the Hells in peace - for today." I added hurriedly. "And give the gem to me."
"I have been trapped here for a century, and my name has been feared in the Hells for many centuries more. What makes you, an insignificant mortal, think you can possibly outwit Raphael where I have failed?" the orthon sneered.
"Because whatever contract trickery he used on you was tailored to you, and the patterns in which you think." I pointed out. "And as you said, you're an old and powerful devil and I'm a relatively ordinary mortal. We don't think remotely alike and we couldn't possibly if we tried."
"Hmm." the orthon was taken aback for the first time in our conversation, and his crossbow lowered. "That's... a very good point." he reluctantly admitted. "Very well, I will let you know the terms of the contract, and you will hopefully - for your sake as well as mine - spot the loophole." And then, incredibly, he began to sing.
Spill all the blood sworn to the night.
Silence all prayers; smother each rite.
Wander Shar's halls; hungry to slay.
Leave no Justiciar alive to obey.
Leave none to hear it, then be set free.
This song is your oath, swear, swear it to me.
I marveled at how Raphael had made a contract out of six simple sentences when Mizora used her pages and pages and pages of impenetrable legalese, and yet had still trapped this devil for a century. And then he put it in song format, apparently just to troll his victim. We were really going to have to watch our step with that son-of-a-bitch...
"All right, I can readily spot two ways this contract can possibly be incomplete... and I really hope it's the first one, because you are screwed if it's the second one." I said readily.
"I can smell when a human lies." the orthon growled. "There's always that little stink of anxiety, no matter how good they are at keeping their faces straight." His eyes narrowed at me curiously. "But you're not lying. Two traps in the contract? How? This is the simplest contract imaginable!"
"Starting with the worst possibility - 'Leave none to hear it, then be set free.'" I recited. "First off, it doesn't specify what 'it' is, except that 'it' is obviously a sound of some type, so it could be any one of several things. The sounds of your battle, the cries and screams of the Justiciars, possibly even the song itself. The problem is that 'leave none alive' is also ambiguously worded. You were intended to assume that it meant 'leave no Justiciar alive', except the different phrasing is used just in the previous sentence so it actually doesn't mean that. Which means if Raphael is being a particular bastard at the interpretation you'd have to kill not only all the Justiciars but also all your own minions... and quite possibly yourself." I held up a hand. "So before we even think about testing that possibility let's explore the other one." I finished hurriedly.
"Unbelievable." the orthon said, his jaw almost agape. "To fit so much deception into a mere phrase... Raphael has much to answer for." He shook his head as if shooing away an annoying fly. "You have proven yourself of respectable wit, human, so I give you the honor of knowing my name. I am Yurgir."
"I am Hawke." I returned his courtesy. "And the second possible trap is even simpler - at least one Justiciar is still alive, or has escaped here."
"That is most unlikely." Yurgir said grimly. "My contract binds me only to slay all Justiciars within Shar's halls - if any of them successfully fled the complex, they were not covered by the contract. That question I thought to ask Raphael at the time of our original negotiation, even if I now see I should have asked others as well. Furthermore, very few mortals live a century."
"Then if this is why the contract still binds you, at least one of them has to still be in here - and in a condition where they still count as 'alive', which none of the undead around here qualify as." I thought. "Raphael said he was 'profiting richly' from this gambit. Tell me if you would - is Raphael profiting by your absence in Hell? Are there things you're not free to attend to, that he can help himself to?"
"Only matters of slaughter, of carnage and the Blood War." Yurgir nodded. "Things very far removed from Raphael's sphere of interests." And then his brows furrowed and his voice grew thick with rage. "But there is a vast potential profit waiting for that bastard, now that you prompt my thought - me."
"The breach of contract penalty for you is that you become his servant?" I thought out loud.
"His slave." Yurgir spat. "I must remain here until the contract no longer binds me, for if I leave here prematurely in any fashion - even by death - then I will arrive in Hell with his chains upon me forever."
"No wonder he tried to manipulate us into killing you." I said, rubbing my chin. "All right, I'm thinking now that it's probably that at least one Justiciar is still hiding out in here somehow, rather than the suicide trap. Because while that one would also play right into Raphael's hands he'd need you to actually do it before he could collect his hoped-for prize - which means if that was what he was intending then he'd have made sure you found out how you were trapped and that death was your only escape as soon as possible. Because as you said, it's been a century by now. And I already know he's starting to get impatient - that's why we're here. So if he hasn't already sent you the clue, then that's not the clue. And I know he didn't prompt me with it, and it's a bit of a stretch that he'd figure I could work all this out on my own-"
"Raphael, ever assume that anyone could outwit him at anything?" Yurgir snorted. "You should sooner expect charity from a duergar. No, whatever scheme he is weaving would presume that you were too dull to spot a trap in his words, not that you would be too clever to miss one."
"So it's the hideout possibility, almost certainly." I agreed.
"But how could one possibly be hiding from me? I have searched this complex ceaselessly for a century! How could they conceal themselves from my keenest senses?!? How would they not age, how would they eat, how would they drink?" Yurgir fumed. "It is inconceivable!"
Suddenly a mental image occurred to me - one that was entirely in keeping with Raphael's style, or at least as much of it as I was slowly beginning to learn from my observations of him. "I found the remains of one Dark Justiciar that you'd never caught, huddled in a corner on the opposite side of this complex and unable to leave the barracks he was trapped in until he starved to death. And now I'm imagining that somewhere there might have been another one cowardly enough to want to flee and hide from you... only this one just happened to meet a devil who took advantage of his desperation, and sold him a hiding place. One that would keep him alive and safe down here almost indefinitely." I thought out loud.
"HE WOULD DO THAT!" Yurgir raged. "Of course he would! That lying two-faced copper-pinching-!" I took a step back in alarm as he appeared about to launch into a berserk rage... and then my alarm grew at how swiftly he forced his rage to channel into a quiet, cold menace instead. "You will find this oh-so-clever holdout for me, Hawke. And you will slay him."
"We'll get right on that." I promised quickly.
"And do not even think of trying to flee back to the surface with your task incomplete." Yurgir growled. "I may be trapped here, but my merregons are not. Nor are any other devils I could potentially send them to go contact. You would never know a peaceful night's rest again, and when I finally returned to Hell, one way or another - then your soul would forever be mine."
"Understood!" I smiled brightly through my growing misapprehension, and fled back up the passage to the others while I was still alive.
"Good news is, I didn't get killed by the orthon and he's perfectly willing to give us the last Umbral Gem - which he definitely has, I saw it - as soon as we help him escape Raphael's trap." My smile faded. "Bad news is, we have to find a Dark Justiciar somewhere in this entire warren who's been successfully hiding from our new devil acquaintance for the entire past century without a trace. Or else they have us hunted down and killed by every infernal contact who owes them one."
"Our hero." Karlach couldn't help but snark. "Great job figuring there, boss. Now we're caught between two powerful devils, and they both want to mangle us if we put a single toe wrong."
"Would you rather be fighting an orthon and his entire squad of merregons to the death right now?" I retorted. "In a basement, no less?"
"Under those circumstances I think Hawke really did the best he could." Wyll said quickly, and Gale and Lae'zel nodded vigorously.
"That's bad, I take it?" Shadowheart asked.
"On a scale of one to fighting that Grymforge golem without the drop hammer, it would be approximately a 9." Gale replied briskly.
After I outlined the problem in detail, we began an immediate strategy huddle.
"Right, so let's try and figure out where this holdout is hiding and how... using our brains, preferably, because Yurgir's been physically tearing up every corner of this complex for a century and getting nowhere." Shadowheart said. "First off, our target has to still be alive. Which means they survived in here for a century without dying of old age or needing any supplies."
"Could they be petrified? Like the spectator statues?" Karlach asked.
"That might be it, but it's a bit risky." Wyll said. "Raphael's plot fails if the Justiciar dies by any means, and who's to say that a frustrated orthon with too much time on his hands wouldn't go vandalizing random statuary just to vent his frustration and thus one day free himself just by sheer happenstance? Gods know he's been harsh enough on the rest of the architecture around here. Raphael clearly prides himself on artistry - he'd want a trap that didn't rely on luck to succeed."
"Granting our friend some type of magic that lets him tuck himself away in an extradimensional space?" Gale theorized.
"Would that not not count as their leaving the temple area?" Lae'zel poked a hole in that one. "Which would relieve the devil of his obligation to slay that particular quarry. Perhaps a permanent invisibility?"
"Not with Yurgir's sense of smell as keen it is." I shook my head. "Plus, it doesn't solve the supply problem or the aging problem."
"So something he can't see or smell or hear, that also doesn't need to eat or drink and doesn't grow old?" Karlach said. "What, are they a bloody ghost? No, wait, that's not alive."
Shadowheart's eyes opened in realization. "Not something that he can't perceive, but something that he's overlooking. Remember how Hawke found that secret passage in the treasure chamber in Rosymorn? He didn't go looking for a hidden switch, he went looking for something in plain sight that the githyanki inquisitor had seen every day but had thought was something else. So we're looking for something that's alive and thriving down here, but that Yurgir would consider entirely unsuspicious to have present."
"Or too insignificant to be worth bothering with." I slapped my forehead. "Remember that complaint Balthazar wrote on his map? About how unusually rat-infested these ruins were? Rats can eat anything and survive virtually anywhere, and Yurgir wouldn't even bother stepping on one - they're so insignificant to him."
"So he got polymorphed into an immortal rat?" Gale raised his eyebrows. "Isn't that a bit far-fetched? And even if it's not, how exactly do you intend to find one specific rat in the middle of the entire horde skittering and chittering around every nook and cranny in all these catacombs and caves?"
"Aren't the Underdark mushrooms also alive?" Lae'zel said.
"Polymorph man into rat is just about conceivable for magic. Man into mushroom is something that I don't know anyone has ever researched." Gale replied.
"Barring any suggestions to the contrary, I suggest we try to find the biggest rat nest in this place and see if there's any more clues there." I finally decided.
"We could look for months and never find it, and none of us have spells for speaking with animals." Wyll pointed out.
"I've been saving all the scrolls we've been looting hither and yon." Gale said, rummaging back in his pack. "Let's see if we've got... yes, found one!" He triumphantly held up a scroll. "Right, all I need to do is read from this and for the next day I can speak to any animal we encounter." After he completed a long, tongue-twisting incantation from the scroll we found a rat for him to talk to. We all saw Gale's expression change after a brief conversation, and then the rat hissed at him and left.
"Something was very wrong with that rat." Gale said worriedly. "He wasn't just territorial in an animal way about this place - he was proud. Defensive. Was angry at me for profaning the 'sacred darkness'."
"Are you telling me that we had the rat we were looking for right here and it just ran off?" I raged.
"No, that's the really disturbing part. When I asked him not to be so angry it told us that 'We outnumber you. Leave me be!' And then it hissed something about 'Join an army. Became an army.'" Gale said. "So either we are talking about an undying magic rat that also has a severe case of multiple personality disorder, or else our hypothetical Dark Justiciar survivor became a cranium rat. Rats." Gale corrected himself. "That is to say, a psionically active rat which, in sufficient numbers, can sustain a crude hive mind intellect. Or not so crude if you get a really huge swarm of them. And yes, the hivemind can outlive any individual rat in the swarm, just so long as enough new rats are bred to replace losses."
"So if our theory is correct then he's not just a rat, but his soul is somehow split up into every rat in this damn place." I said. "Which means we're either entirely off base or else Raphael really didn't skimp on just how impossible this would have been for Yurgir to solve by himself."
"But we're not Yurgir, wasn't that the whole point?" Shadowheart said. "So what can we do that he couldn't?"
"First thought that comes to mind is, we can use magic." Gale said. "I mean, arcane or clerical magic, not just his own fiendish powers."
"If we're going with the theory that Raphael gave our holdout some way to hide, it's not likely he walked up and said 'Hey, do you want to spend the rest of your life chittering and eating rotten meat off the floor?'" Wyll said. "Speaking from my own experience at being trapped by a devil, he'd make a vague promise that sounded like it was just the solution to the dilemma at hand and only let them find out the unpleasant details after they'd already accepted the gift."
"So you're thinking he handed them some type of item or ritual that promised escape, without being clear on just what kind of escape, and once our Dark Justiciar was a swarm of cranium rats it was too late for him to change back?" I followed along. "But that means that the item or the ritual chamber is still laying around in this complex somewhere, because once he was a swarm of rats he wouldn't have hands to tidy up with. That's something we can actually search for."
"It's not in the ruined wing, because Yurgir would certainly have noticed a magical item or a ritual circle." Gale reasoned. "It's also likely not in the barracks section that Balthazar forted up in, because he'd also have noticed something like that. Which leaves the various trial rooms... except we didn't notice anything like that either."
"We weren't intensively searching them, either." Shadowheart said. "We could try looking through them again?"
"There's somewhere else we didn't search." I pointed out and down over the railing and into the pit. "That midden of bones and filth, right down there at the bottom of the pit and the base of the giant statue. The sort of place you'd imagine you'd find a large, filthy rat nest."
We climbed back down to the lower level of the trials wing, and found a section of cracked wall we could scale downward from there to reach the pit. A brief search turned up an old ritual circle hastily drawon on the floor just behind the foot of the statue, and a book called "One Becomes Many" that promised to give its wielder the power of an army if he but drew the circle and spoke the words... a book whose introduction was actually signed by Raphael.
"I don't believe it, we actually figured it out." Karlach said. "Pity this poor sod didn't ask what kind of army the book would transform him into."
"That's a devil for you." Wyll agreed. "It always sounds so good up front, and then you find out that words mean things."
"All right, I'm pretty sure if we just do this to the ritual circle and then light the candles again, it'll reverse the ritual. Or at the very least draw all the cranium rats here to defend their secret." Gale said.
"Which leaves us stuck in the bottom of a pit being devoured by dozens if not hundreds of maddened rats with the intelligence of men." I deflated his enthusiasm. "So before we go lighting the candles, how's about we do a bit of preparation?"
Sure enough, touching off the ritual drowned us in a rat tide... or it would have, if everybody else hadn't climbed out of the pit and left me down in the bottom to finish the final candle lighting alone. As soon as the rat swarm began, I simply used the Amulet of Misty Step to blink right out of the pit and rejoin my friends... and then before the rats could climb up after us Gale cast his Grease spell underneath all of them, leaving them unable to climb out of the pit. And also leaving them standing on a thick layer of very flammable grease that Shadowheart then dropped a torch onto.
"Ewwww." her nose wrinkled as the stench of dozens and dozens of rats being burned to death wafted up to us. The last rat surprised us by shifting and polymorphing back into the form of a Dark Justiciar of Shar, his human form resumed as the spell was broken. I began to call out to him that he could simply leave the complex if he wanted and Yurgir wouldn't pursue, but apparently his sanity had taken more than a few hits from spending a century as a swarm of rats and he attacked us in an incoherent rage instead. And with the job finally done, we all returned to Yurgir.
"We found one - Raphael had given them this ritual book to let themselves transform into a swarm of cranium rats and hide here from you that way. Here's the proof." I handed the tome to Yurgir.
"Yes... it's gone. That infernal song is gone! The contract is completed!" Yurgir roared joyously. "You have fulfilled your end of our bargain." he acknowledged with a solemn nod. "The Umbral Gem is yours... and soon, vengeance will be mine."
"Are you certain of that?" Raphael asked smugly, as he materialized in the doorway in a flash of fire.
"I HAVE YOU NOW!" Yurgir roared, his infernal crossbow coming up to take a bead directly on Raphael's head as all the merregons and the panther-monster made ready to spring. We all hurriedly stepped as far back out of the line of fire as the boundaries of the room allowed. "You have no hold over me any longer, Raphael! I am free!"
"I think 'free' might be overstating matters, Yurgir." Raphael replied smoothly. "The contract is technically completed, but you didn't remain in compliance with all of the terms. The devil's in the details, you see, and the details are in the fine print."
"What fine print?!?" Yurgir scoffed. "For all your weasel words in the phrasing, that was the shortest contract I've ever been a party to! It barely even qualified as a wager!"
"The fine print of infernal contract law in general, my large friend, not the particular terms of our individual bargain." Raphael smirked. "You were a subcontractor, remember? Have you forgotten that subcontractors are not themselves allowed to further subcontract on a deal without permission of the primary contractor first, so as to avoid potential conflict-of-interest problems?" Raphael sighed with blatantly insincere affect as he rubbed his chin. "Oh if you'd only gone and squished that last pesky little rat yourself, you'd be walking away happy as an imp devouring their first baby right now. But you didn't. You made a deal with Hawke to do it for you, and now you're stuck."
"Slavery was the penalty for breach of contract, not for disagreements over method! I do not acknowledge your claim, and I have your throat within my reach!" Yurgir snarled back at him. "Pay me what you owe or prepare to die!"
"Consider your position." Raphael waved away Yurgir's threat as if it were a breeze. "Your reputation has already suffered from your prolonged... absence. If it became publicly known how you only blundered free at the end due to the charity of a mortal you would entirely forfeit what little face you had left. You would be a laughingstock in Hell. No infamy. No contracts. No one afraid of you anymore. You'd be an object lesson that even lemures would mock." Raphael smirked at Yurgir as if he were an emperor tormenting a serf. "Unless, of course, you consider instead my infinite mercy. A new contract. A chance to balance the books. Not to mention a welcome change of scenery."
"If you've got any allies who are better at paperwork than you are, you might want to invite them to the negotiation." I felt obligated to throw Yurgir a life-line.
"Indeed I will." Yurgir nodded to me, before turning back to face Raphael. At his angry wave his merregons all lowered their weapons, and he likewise slung his own crossbow. "Fine." he growled to Raphael. "We'll negotiate the terms in detail somewhere better than here, but I have two non-negotiable demands up front. First off, no indefinite durations and no lists of conditions to be fulfilled that you can play games with again! A strictly finite period of service only!"
"Understandable, I suppose." Raphael said condescendingly. "And your second request?"
"No. More. Songs." Yurgir spat.
"But what's life without a touch of whimsy? Oh, so barren and cold!" Raphael chuckled. "Very well, I can grant you that much. Let us be off to the House of Hope for cocktails and canapes... and a brand new signature on a brand new deal." Raphael turned to me. "But first, it would be rude not to reward your subcontractor. The greater reward, for the greater hunter."
"Sorry it worked out this way." I acknowledged Yurgir as he turned towards me. "I didn't know about the subcontracting catch."
"It's not your fault." Yurgir replied calmly. "I was the one who ordered you to slay the last Dark Justiciar, and you did only as I demanded. Here, take this." He unslung his crossbow and handed it to me, and it shrunk down as it left his hands to become a miniature crossbow that could fit in one of mine. "And take good care of it, it's a fine weapon." He turned and waved a hand at the Umbral Gem sitting by his bed of bones. "That and anything else I leave behind here is also yours."
"Time to go." Raphael broke in smoothly. "Oh, and Hawke? A point for you to ponder until our next meeting. Here you thought you were being oh-so-clever, unriddling all the layers I had at work here despite my best attempts to hide them... and yet in the end I still am the only one who came out ahead." He looked me up and down with a mocking grin, then snorted in dismissal. "Do keep that in mind." And then both Raphael, Yurgir, and all his minions were gone.
"... let's just go." I finally cursed, and we picked up the Umbral Gem and left.
One of the Umbral Gems unlocked a second floating platform that whisked us down and around to confront the giant vault-like door of the inner sanctum, and the remaining three unlocked the door. The whispers of dark power that we'd subliminally been sensing all the while we'd been in this buried fortress became an almost audible breeze blowing in our faces as we marched down the wide blackstone corridor to be confronted at the end by a giant pool of liquid shadows that yet somehow still glowed with darkness despite the contradiction that was in terms, with stone steps leading down into it as if it were an open cellarway.
"This- this is a portal directly to Shar's realm." Shadowheart spoke, her voice empty of all but sorrow. "The Nightsong lies in there." She turned to us. "You can't come. Lady Shar demands that I face it alone."
"Like hell!" Karlach shouted. "Do you think we're idiots?"
"Shadowheart, don't do this!" Wyll begged. "We're your friends! Let us help you! Take it from one who knows - eternal damnation is worse than anything else she could possibly be threatening you with!"
"I don't even understand why you're so insistent!" Gale asked. "Fearing an angry goddess is a rational act, yes, but fear alone can't dictate the course of your life! You'd exist only in perpetual misery!"
"Shadowheart." Lae'zel's calmness cut through our raging emotions like a blade. "We both swore our lives to goddesses who only abused and exploited us... but after my eyes were finally opened to Vlaakith's lies, I had the strength to walk away! Am I so much stronger than you? Are you so unable to match me?" she challenged.
"It's not the same." Shadowheart insisted. "Vlaakith was no true goddess. Shar is, and she-" Shadowheart yet again fought back whatever inner vision of horror had been consuming her throughout all this. "Cannot be defied in this."
"That is cowardice talking! I cannot believe that I ever respected you!" Lae'zel spat.
"I know what you're doing." Shadowheart actually smiled at Lae'zel, against all expectations. "But it won't work. You can't goad me into turning back either."
"... then I will merely ask you." Lae'zel dropped her act. "Please do not commit yourself to this darkness... my friend."
"Thank you, Lae'zel." Shadowheart said. "To hear you say that means a lot. But... I think this is good-bye."
"That it is." Lae'zel bowed to her solemnly. "If you must condemn your soul to this pit, then for your sake I pray that it will stay there. Because whatever creature dares to walk back up those stairs wearing your face, it will meet my blade."
"Aren't you going to say anything?!?" Wyll rounded on me in an almost-frenzy of grief.
"Just one thing." I said to Shadowheart. "I'm coming with you."
"Hawke-" Shadowheart insisted, and I drove right over her.
"No. On my Oath, you will not face the Nightsong without me!" I vowed.
"Damn you!" Shadowheart wailed... but she didn't argue. She knew how useless it was to try.
I reached into my pouch and withdrew the Astral Prism, and was relieved when it allowed itself to be handed to Gale. "Hang onto this. No matter what else happens, we'll make sure the Nightsong can't protect Ketheric anymore. If we don't come back-" I forced myself to keep talking without a visible change in expression. "-then it was a privilege to fight by your side. All of you." I sighed. "Jaheira knows the outline of the plan from here. Once Ketheric is vulnerable, regroup at Last Light and... keep the faith."
"Not without you." Gale demurred, and we gave each other's arms a manly clasp as he took the Prism from me. "Until we're certain one way or the other, we'll all be right here."
Entering the pool of shadow was like wading down a stairway into ice-cold water. And the instant it went over our heads, it became like drowning in ice-cold water. The world around us faded away into pitch blackness, and we felt the stairs beneath our feet vanish as we drifted down, down into the strangling, choking dark-
Gasping for breath, both Shadowheart and I regained consciousness. We were laying on a small rocky platform suspended in a void the dark purple color of clouds at the very end of twilight, as purple-white lightning crackled and thundered amongst them. As Shadowheart and I drew silently close to the edge of the floating rock we could see more rocks suspended haphazardly in the void, with remnants and pieces of Sharran temple architecture jutting from them at random. I felt strangely... light, as if I were a balloon in danger of floating away at the first gentle push-
Without a word or a backward glance Shadowheart leapt forward into space, falling dozens of feet through the air towards the rocks below. My heart leapt into my mouth as I saw her descend, and then I gaped in shock as she didn't accelerate like something normally did when falling from a height. Instead she simply descended at a slow, steady pace, to land lightly upon the rock at a lethally far distance below us as if she'd just stepped downward from a porch.
I leapt into space after her, and went through the same impossibly light fall and gentle landing as she briskly marched ahead. Down and down and down we went, from one floating stepping stone to another, as we descended hundreds of feet towards a large open ampitheatre at the bottom. Barely visible in the distance was the brightness of an elaborate ritual circle laid out at the ampitheatre's center in glowing runes, forming one giant glyph when seen from above.
Shadowheart leapt and marched unhesitatingly along, the Spear of Night clutched in her hands and her vision fixed solely on the objective below. She moved like a woman in a trance, muttering something indecipherable under her breath - a devotional chant of some type, judging from the tempo. My heart had already finished sinking, but now it sat like a dull leaden stone in my belly as the prospect of her reconsidering, of her turning away at the last, grew less and less likely. I had been preparing myself for this horrific prospect while simultaneously praying I would never have to go through with it, but it looked like no prayers would be answered in this dark realm.
Because this was indeed my last journey with Merrill to Sundermount all over again - except this time, two people wouldn't be coming back.
As we both leapt to lightly descend and land on the ampitheatre platform, set at the very bottom of the swirling spiral of rocks that had formed a gravitically impossible obstacle course to reach here, we got our first sight of the Nightsong. She was a tall woman, slightly taller even than Karlach, and like her had a thick muscular frame of positively voloptuous proportions. She was dressed in a single ragged shift of coarse cloth, which was so covered with dried bloodstains and unpatched rents and tears that you could barely make out its original canvas color. Her long blonde hair was unkempt and ragged, that of a prisoner who had not been allowed to bathe or trim herself in far too long, and her skin and eyes were both an unearthly pale white - not merely the paleness of someone long imprisoned away from the sun, but the pure alabaster white of a marble statue.
"I have felt you coming." the Nightsong greeted us from where she stood at the very center of the circle of runes, her voice grimly intent. "The first in a century." Her eyes suddenly focused on the spear in Shadowheart's hands, and widened.
"And the last." Shadowheart said distantly, the Spear of Night held at parade rest. "So you will be the sacrifice."
"We both will be the sacrifice!" the Nightsong retorted heatedly. Her lunge forward towards Shadowheart was brought to a helpless struggling halt before she could get even five feet. Multiple tendrils of force faded into visibility, helplessly pinioning her by her arms and legs and only releasing their clutching grasp and fading back into nothingness when the Nightsong abandoned her attempt. "As you seal my fate, so shall you seal your own! To be a Dark Justiciar is to deaden your heart to everything but loss! You will know no love, no joy - only a helpless, inescapable servitude!"
"But that is what I want!" Shadowheart replied heatedly, shocking me to my core.
"Of course you do." the Nightsong scoffed. "Your dark goddess' bible of lies promises all of you that to have your souls stripped and scourged is supposedly a great prize. But I have seen many of you come and go in such a fashion, and not a one of them was better off for the transaction!" Despite her ragged and helpless imprisonment, the Nightsong still looked down at Shadowheart with a disdainful bearing worthy of royalty. "Your mistress will wring you dry like a sodden dustrag, and then discard you like one the instant you have nothing left to give her. And in return you will have gained nothing, and lost everything."
"I have only one thing left to lose." Shadowheart retorted, her masklike expression starting to crack. "And going through with this is the only way I can avoid that!"
"Then strike, little assassin." the Nightsong defied her. "Take the spear your goddess has empowered to pierce through my immortality, to slay that which normally cannot die. Enjoy your victory, for there will be no prize! You don't even know who you are, yet still you so eagerly rush to be the Nightsinger's slave!"
I'd been remaining silent up until now because my words had been entirely failing to reach Shadowheart, so I had hoped that the Nightsong's own defiance would provoke some kind of reaction for her. But as Shadowheart's jaw firmed and her hands began to lift the spear, I knew that the time had run out of words.
The sound of my blade scraping free of its sheath turned both heads, as I stepped forward to the very edge of the ritual circle. I didn't have quite enough room between the two women to step between them without risking crossing the boundary myself, but I was more than close enough to Shadowheart's line of attack that she couldn't possibly finish her thrust before I could intervene.
"What?" the Nightsong turned to look at me for the first time. "I had thought you merely the Sharran's henchman, warrior. But you came here to stop her?"
"I came here hoping she would stop herself." I said quietly. "But I won't let her do this. I can't."
Shadowheart turned her head slightly, switching her gaze from the Nightsong to me. "This isn't just about me, Hawke. Remember what Gale learned about the soul cage? What the Nightsong just told us about her immortality? She is what keeps Ketheric Thorm alive. This is the only weapon that can slay her!" Shadowheart hefted the Spear of Night slightly. "You have to let me do this, or we'll never stop the Absolute. Even if that means... what it means."
"There must be another way!" I demanded, begged, pleaded. "Your eternal damnation - it's too much! I won't pay this price for victory!"
"Then I will!" Shadowheart shouted, her voice a trumpet of defiance. "Strike me down or stand aside, Hawke!"
"You're still lying to yourself!" I screamed back. "Our mission, your devotion, Alfira, even fear of dying - those were all excuses, all just rationalizations! All just things you kept trying to tell me so you didn't have to say why you're really doing this! Tell me why, damn it!" I demanded. "If this is the end of everything, then at least let your last words say what you wish you could!"
"I'm doing this because I love you!" Shadowheart's voice rang out loudly enough to echo back even from the edges of a boundless void, her voice tearing with the sorrow of all the heavens. "Do you think I let you come here with me, knowing what you intended, because I was afraid of my death?" she nodded towards my bared greatsword. "When I died in the Grymforge, I faced Lady Shar directly in the afterlife, and there she gave me her ultimatum - I either committed myself to her as a Dark Justiciar, or she'd kill you! You would be marked for death in the eyes of every follower she had, your downfall as much of a holy tasking as that of any priestess of shadow turned apostate! And no matter how many you defeated, they would never stop! Not even you could survive that..." she trailed off, choking on sobs.
"Mother save me." the Nightsong whispered, her soft and shocked. "I had thought that I knew the depths of the Nightsinger's cruelty, but I was only a child dabbling her toes at the shore of a boundless ocean." Her head bowed in resignation - and apology. "I am sorry, priestess."
Shadowheart's hands trembled so greatly she could barely keep the spear upright, but still she refused to put it down. "Strike me down if you must - I won't fight you. My failing this trial by death will not condemn you either. But if you can't do that-" she broke off, and continued in a bare whisper. "-then step aside, and let me save you." Her eyes looked up into mine, begging. "You can't do anything for either of us, Hawke. So please... just let me do this for you."
My hands sheathed my blade, and my muscles relaxed from their battle-ready tautness. At this moment I could no more strike Shadowheart down than I could myself, not with the revelation of why. I knew now what Shadowheart had meant by a choice she'd already made, and how the consequences of that choice bound her - she'd fallen in love with me, which let Shar use me as a hostage against her. It was a magnficent subtle cruelty that would have made even Raphael eat his heart out in envy - to reach out and with one twist, just one single threat, take everything that was leading Shadowheart away from Shar and instead have it propel her towards her own self-damnation with irresistible force. The greater Shadowheart's love for me, the stronger her wish to not deaden her heart and care about others, the more tightly she would be driven into the depths of Shar's embrace. The perfect trap.
Or it would have been, if a selfish and cruel creature like her had understood anything about love save for its most superficial uses. My hands sheathed my sword without a tremor. My heart unclenched from its icy rigor and started beating again. The leaden stone in my guts was dispelled, the impossible paradox facing us was about to be unbound. Because when Shadowheart had finally told us why she was actually doing this, I finally knew what to say.
"Have you forgotten what you promised me under the moonlight?" I shocked both of them with my smile. "Not for me... but with me."
Shadowheart's one hand came entirely loose from the spear haft, and the other dangled it down loosely at her side. Her mouth quivered, her eyes filled with tears. She looked helplessly at me, then up at the Nightsong, then down at her hands. Time stopped as she hung on the agonizing rack of her indecision.
And then her eyes cleared. Her face firmed up with purpose. Her hand clenched tightly on the haft, and with a scream of anguish and rage she hurled the Spear of Night with every bit of her strength-
-directly away from the Nightsong and out over the edge of the platform, and down, down into oblivion.
Author's Note: And now you finally know why Shadowheart was doing it. Really, I tried to be fair and put in the clues all along - she clearly wasn't doing it because she wanted a reward, or was afraid of her own death, so what else could it have been? And it is entirely Shar to try and twist the strengths of someone's virtues towards fueling their drive to self-destruction instead, because Shar is the worst.
In the game Shadowheart is torn between her devotion to Shar and her friendship and/or love for Tav all the way up to the end of Act 2. My Hawke basically nuked that one before they were even out of Act One, so Shar pivoted to this. Because Shar's entire investment in Shadowheart was to build up to when she murdered Dame Aylin in the name of Shar, because of... well, reasons. *g*
And yes, while I don't usually write ahead, I had this scene as one of the very first written in my head when I started this story. We've been leading up to this for over a dozen chapters, so let's hope it was worth it.
I'd spoken these words only several hours ago, to the woman I loved. Now I was speaking them to a devil - and not just any devil, but one savage enough to sleep on a bed of bones made from the stacked corpses of his victims, one who stood as tall as a giant and was twice as strong. The orthon was at least half as wide as he was tall, skin as red as dusk, wearing a menacing helmet made out of bones and with eyes that glowed like white-hot steel.
"Talk? Talk?" the orthon snorted contemptuously, as it menaced me at the point of an infernal crossbow sized for a giant, the tip of the loaded bolt already glowing with hellfire. "I don't talk to prey. You were mad to come here alone, little rabbit." It's head lifted up and looked briefly away, down the passage that I'd come. "I can smell your friends lurking up there. You actually dare to call this pathetic effort of yours an ambush? They are far too distant to reach me in time. No, this is an ambush."
A dozen other devils, deathly silent and masked like assassins, all faded into view from where they'd apparently been hiding under invisibility magic while a strange creature built like a giant panther but with tentacles sprouting from its back loomed out of the shadows barely a leap away from my throat. The orthon was standing on an elevated platform overlooking the ruined chamber that I'd entered, and his subordinate devils were arranged all around the rim with me caught directly in a crossfire from multiple angles. If my odds of survival had been problematic before, they were now essentially nonexistent.
"No, if we start fighting their orders are to run for the surface." And pay Withers to resurrect me immediately. I mentally added. It was only that level of precaution that had let me dare to risk this gambit at all.
"What, are you attempting to bargain?" The orthon laughed mockingly. "A warlord of Kara-Tur once tried the same! I made him watch while I ate his concubines and young, and then I fashioned a codpiece from his skull!" I mentally noted that he must have been very bored after being trapped down here for a century, which is almost certainly why he was spending this much time talking before shooting. Usually only amateurs did that, and if the sheer number of corpses this ruin had been littered with was any clue this devil was far from an amateur at killing.
"The devil who I'm certain cheated you tried to trick me into cleaning up after him." I said hurriedly, because his tolerance could literally run out at any second. "But I don't want to be played off like that, so now I'm talking to you."
The orthon's face morphed from sadistic amusement into pure rage, and he closed his eyes and took a deep breath, concentrating. "Yes, there is something else almost hidden by your fear stink... cherries, musk... and sulphur. RAPHAEL! I can smell him all over you! WHERE IS HE?!?"
"Lurking around watching safely from a distance where neither of us can find him, waiting for his little shadowplay to come off on schedule." I replied matter-of-factly. "Which is exactly why I want to ruin that schedule. He is no friend of mine."
The orthon growled so loudly I swore the walls shook. "You are correct. That perfumed trickster swindled me... trapped me!"
"How?" I asked. "The way to the surface is physically open... so was the Underdark route, before you closed it."
"It's not just walls that keep me here. Not traps, not the dark, not the creatures it hides. I am bound by the terms of my contract with Raphael. But I fulfilled them, yet the contract refuses to close! Why does it say that I have yet to finish? Why am I not free?!?" he roared in frustration.
"I was wondering how he could cheat you without the infernal breach of contract penalties backlashing on him." I nodded. "Right, cards on the table. You need to be freed from the trap that holds you here. I need the Umbral Gem I can see laying by your... throne... right over there." I looked away from the pile of rotting flesh and bone I'd noted and back to the devil. "So if I help you get free, you go back to the Hells in peace - for today." I added hurriedly. "And give the gem to me."
"I have been trapped here for a century, and my name has been feared in the Hells for many centuries more. What makes you, an insignificant mortal, think you can possibly outwit Raphael where I have failed?" the orthon sneered.
"Because whatever contract trickery he used on you was tailored to you, and the patterns in which you think." I pointed out. "And as you said, you're an old and powerful devil and I'm a relatively ordinary mortal. We don't think remotely alike and we couldn't possibly if we tried."
"Hmm." the orthon was taken aback for the first time in our conversation, and his crossbow lowered. "That's... a very good point." he reluctantly admitted. "Very well, I will let you know the terms of the contract, and you will hopefully - for your sake as well as mine - spot the loophole." And then, incredibly, he began to sing.
Spill all the blood sworn to the night.
Silence all prayers; smother each rite.
Wander Shar's halls; hungry to slay.
Leave no Justiciar alive to obey.
Leave none to hear it, then be set free.
This song is your oath, swear, swear it to me.
I marveled at how Raphael had made a contract out of six simple sentences when Mizora used her pages and pages and pages of impenetrable legalese, and yet had still trapped this devil for a century. And then he put it in song format, apparently just to troll his victim. We were really going to have to watch our step with that son-of-a-bitch...
"All right, I can readily spot two ways this contract can possibly be incomplete... and I really hope it's the first one, because you are screwed if it's the second one." I said readily.
"I can smell when a human lies." the orthon growled. "There's always that little stink of anxiety, no matter how good they are at keeping their faces straight." His eyes narrowed at me curiously. "But you're not lying. Two traps in the contract? How? This is the simplest contract imaginable!"
"Starting with the worst possibility - 'Leave none to hear it, then be set free.'" I recited. "First off, it doesn't specify what 'it' is, except that 'it' is obviously a sound of some type, so it could be any one of several things. The sounds of your battle, the cries and screams of the Justiciars, possibly even the song itself. The problem is that 'leave none alive' is also ambiguously worded. You were intended to assume that it meant 'leave no Justiciar alive', except the different phrasing is used just in the previous sentence so it actually doesn't mean that. Which means if Raphael is being a particular bastard at the interpretation you'd have to kill not only all the Justiciars but also all your own minions... and quite possibly yourself." I held up a hand. "So before we even think about testing that possibility let's explore the other one." I finished hurriedly.
"Unbelievable." the orthon said, his jaw almost agape. "To fit so much deception into a mere phrase... Raphael has much to answer for." He shook his head as if shooing away an annoying fly. "You have proven yourself of respectable wit, human, so I give you the honor of knowing my name. I am Yurgir."
"I am Hawke." I returned his courtesy. "And the second possible trap is even simpler - at least one Justiciar is still alive, or has escaped here."
"That is most unlikely." Yurgir said grimly. "My contract binds me only to slay all Justiciars within Shar's halls - if any of them successfully fled the complex, they were not covered by the contract. That question I thought to ask Raphael at the time of our original negotiation, even if I now see I should have asked others as well. Furthermore, very few mortals live a century."
"Then if this is why the contract still binds you, at least one of them has to still be in here - and in a condition where they still count as 'alive', which none of the undead around here qualify as." I thought. "Raphael said he was 'profiting richly' from this gambit. Tell me if you would - is Raphael profiting by your absence in Hell? Are there things you're not free to attend to, that he can help himself to?"
"Only matters of slaughter, of carnage and the Blood War." Yurgir nodded. "Things very far removed from Raphael's sphere of interests." And then his brows furrowed and his voice grew thick with rage. "But there is a vast potential profit waiting for that bastard, now that you prompt my thought - me."
"The breach of contract penalty for you is that you become his servant?" I thought out loud.
"His slave." Yurgir spat. "I must remain here until the contract no longer binds me, for if I leave here prematurely in any fashion - even by death - then I will arrive in Hell with his chains upon me forever."
"No wonder he tried to manipulate us into killing you." I said, rubbing my chin. "All right, I'm thinking now that it's probably that at least one Justiciar is still hiding out in here somehow, rather than the suicide trap. Because while that one would also play right into Raphael's hands he'd need you to actually do it before he could collect his hoped-for prize - which means if that was what he was intending then he'd have made sure you found out how you were trapped and that death was your only escape as soon as possible. Because as you said, it's been a century by now. And I already know he's starting to get impatient - that's why we're here. So if he hasn't already sent you the clue, then that's not the clue. And I know he didn't prompt me with it, and it's a bit of a stretch that he'd figure I could work all this out on my own-"
"Raphael, ever assume that anyone could outwit him at anything?" Yurgir snorted. "You should sooner expect charity from a duergar. No, whatever scheme he is weaving would presume that you were too dull to spot a trap in his words, not that you would be too clever to miss one."
"So it's the hideout possibility, almost certainly." I agreed.
"But how could one possibly be hiding from me? I have searched this complex ceaselessly for a century! How could they conceal themselves from my keenest senses?!? How would they not age, how would they eat, how would they drink?" Yurgir fumed. "It is inconceivable!"
Suddenly a mental image occurred to me - one that was entirely in keeping with Raphael's style, or at least as much of it as I was slowly beginning to learn from my observations of him. "I found the remains of one Dark Justiciar that you'd never caught, huddled in a corner on the opposite side of this complex and unable to leave the barracks he was trapped in until he starved to death. And now I'm imagining that somewhere there might have been another one cowardly enough to want to flee and hide from you... only this one just happened to meet a devil who took advantage of his desperation, and sold him a hiding place. One that would keep him alive and safe down here almost indefinitely." I thought out loud.
"HE WOULD DO THAT!" Yurgir raged. "Of course he would! That lying two-faced copper-pinching-!" I took a step back in alarm as he appeared about to launch into a berserk rage... and then my alarm grew at how swiftly he forced his rage to channel into a quiet, cold menace instead. "You will find this oh-so-clever holdout for me, Hawke. And you will slay him."
"We'll get right on that." I promised quickly.
"And do not even think of trying to flee back to the surface with your task incomplete." Yurgir growled. "I may be trapped here, but my merregons are not. Nor are any other devils I could potentially send them to go contact. You would never know a peaceful night's rest again, and when I finally returned to Hell, one way or another - then your soul would forever be mine."
"Understood!" I smiled brightly through my growing misapprehension, and fled back up the passage to the others while I was still alive.
"Good news is, I didn't get killed by the orthon and he's perfectly willing to give us the last Umbral Gem - which he definitely has, I saw it - as soon as we help him escape Raphael's trap." My smile faded. "Bad news is, we have to find a Dark Justiciar somewhere in this entire warren who's been successfully hiding from our new devil acquaintance for the entire past century without a trace. Or else they have us hunted down and killed by every infernal contact who owes them one."
"Our hero." Karlach couldn't help but snark. "Great job figuring there, boss. Now we're caught between two powerful devils, and they both want to mangle us if we put a single toe wrong."
"Would you rather be fighting an orthon and his entire squad of merregons to the death right now?" I retorted. "In a basement, no less?"
"Under those circumstances I think Hawke really did the best he could." Wyll said quickly, and Gale and Lae'zel nodded vigorously.
"That's bad, I take it?" Shadowheart asked.
"On a scale of one to fighting that Grymforge golem without the drop hammer, it would be approximately a 9." Gale replied briskly.
After I outlined the problem in detail, we began an immediate strategy huddle.
"Right, so let's try and figure out where this holdout is hiding and how... using our brains, preferably, because Yurgir's been physically tearing up every corner of this complex for a century and getting nowhere." Shadowheart said. "First off, our target has to still be alive. Which means they survived in here for a century without dying of old age or needing any supplies."
"Could they be petrified? Like the spectator statues?" Karlach asked.
"That might be it, but it's a bit risky." Wyll said. "Raphael's plot fails if the Justiciar dies by any means, and who's to say that a frustrated orthon with too much time on his hands wouldn't go vandalizing random statuary just to vent his frustration and thus one day free himself just by sheer happenstance? Gods know he's been harsh enough on the rest of the architecture around here. Raphael clearly prides himself on artistry - he'd want a trap that didn't rely on luck to succeed."
"Granting our friend some type of magic that lets him tuck himself away in an extradimensional space?" Gale theorized.
"Would that not not count as their leaving the temple area?" Lae'zel poked a hole in that one. "Which would relieve the devil of his obligation to slay that particular quarry. Perhaps a permanent invisibility?"
"Not with Yurgir's sense of smell as keen it is." I shook my head. "Plus, it doesn't solve the supply problem or the aging problem."
"So something he can't see or smell or hear, that also doesn't need to eat or drink and doesn't grow old?" Karlach said. "What, are they a bloody ghost? No, wait, that's not alive."
Shadowheart's eyes opened in realization. "Not something that he can't perceive, but something that he's overlooking. Remember how Hawke found that secret passage in the treasure chamber in Rosymorn? He didn't go looking for a hidden switch, he went looking for something in plain sight that the githyanki inquisitor had seen every day but had thought was something else. So we're looking for something that's alive and thriving down here, but that Yurgir would consider entirely unsuspicious to have present."
"Or too insignificant to be worth bothering with." I slapped my forehead. "Remember that complaint Balthazar wrote on his map? About how unusually rat-infested these ruins were? Rats can eat anything and survive virtually anywhere, and Yurgir wouldn't even bother stepping on one - they're so insignificant to him."
"So he got polymorphed into an immortal rat?" Gale raised his eyebrows. "Isn't that a bit far-fetched? And even if it's not, how exactly do you intend to find one specific rat in the middle of the entire horde skittering and chittering around every nook and cranny in all these catacombs and caves?"
"Aren't the Underdark mushrooms also alive?" Lae'zel said.
"Polymorph man into rat is just about conceivable for magic. Man into mushroom is something that I don't know anyone has ever researched." Gale replied.
"Barring any suggestions to the contrary, I suggest we try to find the biggest rat nest in this place and see if there's any more clues there." I finally decided.
"We could look for months and never find it, and none of us have spells for speaking with animals." Wyll pointed out.
"I've been saving all the scrolls we've been looting hither and yon." Gale said, rummaging back in his pack. "Let's see if we've got... yes, found one!" He triumphantly held up a scroll. "Right, all I need to do is read from this and for the next day I can speak to any animal we encounter." After he completed a long, tongue-twisting incantation from the scroll we found a rat for him to talk to. We all saw Gale's expression change after a brief conversation, and then the rat hissed at him and left.
"Something was very wrong with that rat." Gale said worriedly. "He wasn't just territorial in an animal way about this place - he was proud. Defensive. Was angry at me for profaning the 'sacred darkness'."
"Are you telling me that we had the rat we were looking for right here and it just ran off?" I raged.
"No, that's the really disturbing part. When I asked him not to be so angry it told us that 'We outnumber you. Leave me be!' And then it hissed something about 'Join an army. Became an army.'" Gale said. "So either we are talking about an undying magic rat that also has a severe case of multiple personality disorder, or else our hypothetical Dark Justiciar survivor became a cranium rat. Rats." Gale corrected himself. "That is to say, a psionically active rat which, in sufficient numbers, can sustain a crude hive mind intellect. Or not so crude if you get a really huge swarm of them. And yes, the hivemind can outlive any individual rat in the swarm, just so long as enough new rats are bred to replace losses."
"So if our theory is correct then he's not just a rat, but his soul is somehow split up into every rat in this damn place." I said. "Which means we're either entirely off base or else Raphael really didn't skimp on just how impossible this would have been for Yurgir to solve by himself."
"But we're not Yurgir, wasn't that the whole point?" Shadowheart said. "So what can we do that he couldn't?"
"First thought that comes to mind is, we can use magic." Gale said. "I mean, arcane or clerical magic, not just his own fiendish powers."
"If we're going with the theory that Raphael gave our holdout some way to hide, it's not likely he walked up and said 'Hey, do you want to spend the rest of your life chittering and eating rotten meat off the floor?'" Wyll said. "Speaking from my own experience at being trapped by a devil, he'd make a vague promise that sounded like it was just the solution to the dilemma at hand and only let them find out the unpleasant details after they'd already accepted the gift."
"So you're thinking he handed them some type of item or ritual that promised escape, without being clear on just what kind of escape, and once our Dark Justiciar was a swarm of cranium rats it was too late for him to change back?" I followed along. "But that means that the item or the ritual chamber is still laying around in this complex somewhere, because once he was a swarm of rats he wouldn't have hands to tidy up with. That's something we can actually search for."
"It's not in the ruined wing, because Yurgir would certainly have noticed a magical item or a ritual circle." Gale reasoned. "It's also likely not in the barracks section that Balthazar forted up in, because he'd also have noticed something like that. Which leaves the various trial rooms... except we didn't notice anything like that either."
"We weren't intensively searching them, either." Shadowheart said. "We could try looking through them again?"
"There's somewhere else we didn't search." I pointed out and down over the railing and into the pit. "That midden of bones and filth, right down there at the bottom of the pit and the base of the giant statue. The sort of place you'd imagine you'd find a large, filthy rat nest."
We climbed back down to the lower level of the trials wing, and found a section of cracked wall we could scale downward from there to reach the pit. A brief search turned up an old ritual circle hastily drawon on the floor just behind the foot of the statue, and a book called "One Becomes Many" that promised to give its wielder the power of an army if he but drew the circle and spoke the words... a book whose introduction was actually signed by Raphael.
"I don't believe it, we actually figured it out." Karlach said. "Pity this poor sod didn't ask what kind of army the book would transform him into."
"That's a devil for you." Wyll agreed. "It always sounds so good up front, and then you find out that words mean things."
"All right, I'm pretty sure if we just do this to the ritual circle and then light the candles again, it'll reverse the ritual. Or at the very least draw all the cranium rats here to defend their secret." Gale said.
"Which leaves us stuck in the bottom of a pit being devoured by dozens if not hundreds of maddened rats with the intelligence of men." I deflated his enthusiasm. "So before we go lighting the candles, how's about we do a bit of preparation?"
Sure enough, touching off the ritual drowned us in a rat tide... or it would have, if everybody else hadn't climbed out of the pit and left me down in the bottom to finish the final candle lighting alone. As soon as the rat swarm began, I simply used the Amulet of Misty Step to blink right out of the pit and rejoin my friends... and then before the rats could climb up after us Gale cast his Grease spell underneath all of them, leaving them unable to climb out of the pit. And also leaving them standing on a thick layer of very flammable grease that Shadowheart then dropped a torch onto.
"Ewwww." her nose wrinkled as the stench of dozens and dozens of rats being burned to death wafted up to us. The last rat surprised us by shifting and polymorphing back into the form of a Dark Justiciar of Shar, his human form resumed as the spell was broken. I began to call out to him that he could simply leave the complex if he wanted and Yurgir wouldn't pursue, but apparently his sanity had taken more than a few hits from spending a century as a swarm of rats and he attacked us in an incoherent rage instead. And with the job finally done, we all returned to Yurgir.
"We found one - Raphael had given them this ritual book to let themselves transform into a swarm of cranium rats and hide here from you that way. Here's the proof." I handed the tome to Yurgir.
"Yes... it's gone. That infernal song is gone! The contract is completed!" Yurgir roared joyously. "You have fulfilled your end of our bargain." he acknowledged with a solemn nod. "The Umbral Gem is yours... and soon, vengeance will be mine."
"Are you certain of that?" Raphael asked smugly, as he materialized in the doorway in a flash of fire.
"I HAVE YOU NOW!" Yurgir roared, his infernal crossbow coming up to take a bead directly on Raphael's head as all the merregons and the panther-monster made ready to spring. We all hurriedly stepped as far back out of the line of fire as the boundaries of the room allowed. "You have no hold over me any longer, Raphael! I am free!"
"I think 'free' might be overstating matters, Yurgir." Raphael replied smoothly. "The contract is technically completed, but you didn't remain in compliance with all of the terms. The devil's in the details, you see, and the details are in the fine print."
"What fine print?!?" Yurgir scoffed. "For all your weasel words in the phrasing, that was the shortest contract I've ever been a party to! It barely even qualified as a wager!"
"The fine print of infernal contract law in general, my large friend, not the particular terms of our individual bargain." Raphael smirked. "You were a subcontractor, remember? Have you forgotten that subcontractors are not themselves allowed to further subcontract on a deal without permission of the primary contractor first, so as to avoid potential conflict-of-interest problems?" Raphael sighed with blatantly insincere affect as he rubbed his chin. "Oh if you'd only gone and squished that last pesky little rat yourself, you'd be walking away happy as an imp devouring their first baby right now. But you didn't. You made a deal with Hawke to do it for you, and now you're stuck."
"Slavery was the penalty for breach of contract, not for disagreements over method! I do not acknowledge your claim, and I have your throat within my reach!" Yurgir snarled back at him. "Pay me what you owe or prepare to die!"
"Consider your position." Raphael waved away Yurgir's threat as if it were a breeze. "Your reputation has already suffered from your prolonged... absence. If it became publicly known how you only blundered free at the end due to the charity of a mortal you would entirely forfeit what little face you had left. You would be a laughingstock in Hell. No infamy. No contracts. No one afraid of you anymore. You'd be an object lesson that even lemures would mock." Raphael smirked at Yurgir as if he were an emperor tormenting a serf. "Unless, of course, you consider instead my infinite mercy. A new contract. A chance to balance the books. Not to mention a welcome change of scenery."
"If you've got any allies who are better at paperwork than you are, you might want to invite them to the negotiation." I felt obligated to throw Yurgir a life-line.
"Indeed I will." Yurgir nodded to me, before turning back to face Raphael. At his angry wave his merregons all lowered their weapons, and he likewise slung his own crossbow. "Fine." he growled to Raphael. "We'll negotiate the terms in detail somewhere better than here, but I have two non-negotiable demands up front. First off, no indefinite durations and no lists of conditions to be fulfilled that you can play games with again! A strictly finite period of service only!"
"Understandable, I suppose." Raphael said condescendingly. "And your second request?"
"No. More. Songs." Yurgir spat.
"But what's life without a touch of whimsy? Oh, so barren and cold!" Raphael chuckled. "Very well, I can grant you that much. Let us be off to the House of Hope for cocktails and canapes... and a brand new signature on a brand new deal." Raphael turned to me. "But first, it would be rude not to reward your subcontractor. The greater reward, for the greater hunter."
"Sorry it worked out this way." I acknowledged Yurgir as he turned towards me. "I didn't know about the subcontracting catch."
"It's not your fault." Yurgir replied calmly. "I was the one who ordered you to slay the last Dark Justiciar, and you did only as I demanded. Here, take this." He unslung his crossbow and handed it to me, and it shrunk down as it left his hands to become a miniature crossbow that could fit in one of mine. "And take good care of it, it's a fine weapon." He turned and waved a hand at the Umbral Gem sitting by his bed of bones. "That and anything else I leave behind here is also yours."
"Time to go." Raphael broke in smoothly. "Oh, and Hawke? A point for you to ponder until our next meeting. Here you thought you were being oh-so-clever, unriddling all the layers I had at work here despite my best attempts to hide them... and yet in the end I still am the only one who came out ahead." He looked me up and down with a mocking grin, then snorted in dismissal. "Do keep that in mind." And then both Raphael, Yurgir, and all his minions were gone.
"... let's just go." I finally cursed, and we picked up the Umbral Gem and left.
One of the Umbral Gems unlocked a second floating platform that whisked us down and around to confront the giant vault-like door of the inner sanctum, and the remaining three unlocked the door. The whispers of dark power that we'd subliminally been sensing all the while we'd been in this buried fortress became an almost audible breeze blowing in our faces as we marched down the wide blackstone corridor to be confronted at the end by a giant pool of liquid shadows that yet somehow still glowed with darkness despite the contradiction that was in terms, with stone steps leading down into it as if it were an open cellarway.
"This- this is a portal directly to Shar's realm." Shadowheart spoke, her voice empty of all but sorrow. "The Nightsong lies in there." She turned to us. "You can't come. Lady Shar demands that I face it alone."
"Like hell!" Karlach shouted. "Do you think we're idiots?"
"Shadowheart, don't do this!" Wyll begged. "We're your friends! Let us help you! Take it from one who knows - eternal damnation is worse than anything else she could possibly be threatening you with!"
"I don't even understand why you're so insistent!" Gale asked. "Fearing an angry goddess is a rational act, yes, but fear alone can't dictate the course of your life! You'd exist only in perpetual misery!"
"Shadowheart." Lae'zel's calmness cut through our raging emotions like a blade. "We both swore our lives to goddesses who only abused and exploited us... but after my eyes were finally opened to Vlaakith's lies, I had the strength to walk away! Am I so much stronger than you? Are you so unable to match me?" she challenged.
"It's not the same." Shadowheart insisted. "Vlaakith was no true goddess. Shar is, and she-" Shadowheart yet again fought back whatever inner vision of horror had been consuming her throughout all this. "Cannot be defied in this."
"That is cowardice talking! I cannot believe that I ever respected you!" Lae'zel spat.
"I know what you're doing." Shadowheart actually smiled at Lae'zel, against all expectations. "But it won't work. You can't goad me into turning back either."
"... then I will merely ask you." Lae'zel dropped her act. "Please do not commit yourself to this darkness... my friend."
"Thank you, Lae'zel." Shadowheart said. "To hear you say that means a lot. But... I think this is good-bye."
"That it is." Lae'zel bowed to her solemnly. "If you must condemn your soul to this pit, then for your sake I pray that it will stay there. Because whatever creature dares to walk back up those stairs wearing your face, it will meet my blade."
"Aren't you going to say anything?!?" Wyll rounded on me in an almost-frenzy of grief.
"Just one thing." I said to Shadowheart. "I'm coming with you."
"Hawke-" Shadowheart insisted, and I drove right over her.
"No. On my Oath, you will not face the Nightsong without me!" I vowed.
"Damn you!" Shadowheart wailed... but she didn't argue. She knew how useless it was to try.
I reached into my pouch and withdrew the Astral Prism, and was relieved when it allowed itself to be handed to Gale. "Hang onto this. No matter what else happens, we'll make sure the Nightsong can't protect Ketheric anymore. If we don't come back-" I forced myself to keep talking without a visible change in expression. "-then it was a privilege to fight by your side. All of you." I sighed. "Jaheira knows the outline of the plan from here. Once Ketheric is vulnerable, regroup at Last Light and... keep the faith."
"Not without you." Gale demurred, and we gave each other's arms a manly clasp as he took the Prism from me. "Until we're certain one way or the other, we'll all be right here."
Entering the pool of shadow was like wading down a stairway into ice-cold water. And the instant it went over our heads, it became like drowning in ice-cold water. The world around us faded away into pitch blackness, and we felt the stairs beneath our feet vanish as we drifted down, down into the strangling, choking dark-
Gasping for breath, both Shadowheart and I regained consciousness. We were laying on a small rocky platform suspended in a void the dark purple color of clouds at the very end of twilight, as purple-white lightning crackled and thundered amongst them. As Shadowheart and I drew silently close to the edge of the floating rock we could see more rocks suspended haphazardly in the void, with remnants and pieces of Sharran temple architecture jutting from them at random. I felt strangely... light, as if I were a balloon in danger of floating away at the first gentle push-
Without a word or a backward glance Shadowheart leapt forward into space, falling dozens of feet through the air towards the rocks below. My heart leapt into my mouth as I saw her descend, and then I gaped in shock as she didn't accelerate like something normally did when falling from a height. Instead she simply descended at a slow, steady pace, to land lightly upon the rock at a lethally far distance below us as if she'd just stepped downward from a porch.
I leapt into space after her, and went through the same impossibly light fall and gentle landing as she briskly marched ahead. Down and down and down we went, from one floating stepping stone to another, as we descended hundreds of feet towards a large open ampitheatre at the bottom. Barely visible in the distance was the brightness of an elaborate ritual circle laid out at the ampitheatre's center in glowing runes, forming one giant glyph when seen from above.
Shadowheart leapt and marched unhesitatingly along, the Spear of Night clutched in her hands and her vision fixed solely on the objective below. She moved like a woman in a trance, muttering something indecipherable under her breath - a devotional chant of some type, judging from the tempo. My heart had already finished sinking, but now it sat like a dull leaden stone in my belly as the prospect of her reconsidering, of her turning away at the last, grew less and less likely. I had been preparing myself for this horrific prospect while simultaneously praying I would never have to go through with it, but it looked like no prayers would be answered in this dark realm.
Because this was indeed my last journey with Merrill to Sundermount all over again - except this time, two people wouldn't be coming back.
As we both leapt to lightly descend and land on the ampitheatre platform, set at the very bottom of the swirling spiral of rocks that had formed a gravitically impossible obstacle course to reach here, we got our first sight of the Nightsong. She was a tall woman, slightly taller even than Karlach, and like her had a thick muscular frame of positively voloptuous proportions. She was dressed in a single ragged shift of coarse cloth, which was so covered with dried bloodstains and unpatched rents and tears that you could barely make out its original canvas color. Her long blonde hair was unkempt and ragged, that of a prisoner who had not been allowed to bathe or trim herself in far too long, and her skin and eyes were both an unearthly pale white - not merely the paleness of someone long imprisoned away from the sun, but the pure alabaster white of a marble statue.
"I have felt you coming." the Nightsong greeted us from where she stood at the very center of the circle of runes, her voice grimly intent. "The first in a century." Her eyes suddenly focused on the spear in Shadowheart's hands, and widened.
"And the last." Shadowheart said distantly, the Spear of Night held at parade rest. "So you will be the sacrifice."
"We both will be the sacrifice!" the Nightsong retorted heatedly. Her lunge forward towards Shadowheart was brought to a helpless struggling halt before she could get even five feet. Multiple tendrils of force faded into visibility, helplessly pinioning her by her arms and legs and only releasing their clutching grasp and fading back into nothingness when the Nightsong abandoned her attempt. "As you seal my fate, so shall you seal your own! To be a Dark Justiciar is to deaden your heart to everything but loss! You will know no love, no joy - only a helpless, inescapable servitude!"
"But that is what I want!" Shadowheart replied heatedly, shocking me to my core.
"Of course you do." the Nightsong scoffed. "Your dark goddess' bible of lies promises all of you that to have your souls stripped and scourged is supposedly a great prize. But I have seen many of you come and go in such a fashion, and not a one of them was better off for the transaction!" Despite her ragged and helpless imprisonment, the Nightsong still looked down at Shadowheart with a disdainful bearing worthy of royalty. "Your mistress will wring you dry like a sodden dustrag, and then discard you like one the instant you have nothing left to give her. And in return you will have gained nothing, and lost everything."
"I have only one thing left to lose." Shadowheart retorted, her masklike expression starting to crack. "And going through with this is the only way I can avoid that!"
"Then strike, little assassin." the Nightsong defied her. "Take the spear your goddess has empowered to pierce through my immortality, to slay that which normally cannot die. Enjoy your victory, for there will be no prize! You don't even know who you are, yet still you so eagerly rush to be the Nightsinger's slave!"
I'd been remaining silent up until now because my words had been entirely failing to reach Shadowheart, so I had hoped that the Nightsong's own defiance would provoke some kind of reaction for her. But as Shadowheart's jaw firmed and her hands began to lift the spear, I knew that the time had run out of words.
The sound of my blade scraping free of its sheath turned both heads, as I stepped forward to the very edge of the ritual circle. I didn't have quite enough room between the two women to step between them without risking crossing the boundary myself, but I was more than close enough to Shadowheart's line of attack that she couldn't possibly finish her thrust before I could intervene.
"What?" the Nightsong turned to look at me for the first time. "I had thought you merely the Sharran's henchman, warrior. But you came here to stop her?"
"I came here hoping she would stop herself." I said quietly. "But I won't let her do this. I can't."
Shadowheart turned her head slightly, switching her gaze from the Nightsong to me. "This isn't just about me, Hawke. Remember what Gale learned about the soul cage? What the Nightsong just told us about her immortality? She is what keeps Ketheric Thorm alive. This is the only weapon that can slay her!" Shadowheart hefted the Spear of Night slightly. "You have to let me do this, or we'll never stop the Absolute. Even if that means... what it means."
"There must be another way!" I demanded, begged, pleaded. "Your eternal damnation - it's too much! I won't pay this price for victory!"
"Then I will!" Shadowheart shouted, her voice a trumpet of defiance. "Strike me down or stand aside, Hawke!"
"You're still lying to yourself!" I screamed back. "Our mission, your devotion, Alfira, even fear of dying - those were all excuses, all just rationalizations! All just things you kept trying to tell me so you didn't have to say why you're really doing this! Tell me why, damn it!" I demanded. "If this is the end of everything, then at least let your last words say what you wish you could!"
"I'm doing this because I love you!" Shadowheart's voice rang out loudly enough to echo back even from the edges of a boundless void, her voice tearing with the sorrow of all the heavens. "Do you think I let you come here with me, knowing what you intended, because I was afraid of my death?" she nodded towards my bared greatsword. "When I died in the Grymforge, I faced Lady Shar directly in the afterlife, and there she gave me her ultimatum - I either committed myself to her as a Dark Justiciar, or she'd kill you! You would be marked for death in the eyes of every follower she had, your downfall as much of a holy tasking as that of any priestess of shadow turned apostate! And no matter how many you defeated, they would never stop! Not even you could survive that..." she trailed off, choking on sobs.
"Mother save me." the Nightsong whispered, her soft and shocked. "I had thought that I knew the depths of the Nightsinger's cruelty, but I was only a child dabbling her toes at the shore of a boundless ocean." Her head bowed in resignation - and apology. "I am sorry, priestess."
Shadowheart's hands trembled so greatly she could barely keep the spear upright, but still she refused to put it down. "Strike me down if you must - I won't fight you. My failing this trial by death will not condemn you either. But if you can't do that-" she broke off, and continued in a bare whisper. "-then step aside, and let me save you." Her eyes looked up into mine, begging. "You can't do anything for either of us, Hawke. So please... just let me do this for you."
My hands sheathed my blade, and my muscles relaxed from their battle-ready tautness. At this moment I could no more strike Shadowheart down than I could myself, not with the revelation of why. I knew now what Shadowheart had meant by a choice she'd already made, and how the consequences of that choice bound her - she'd fallen in love with me, which let Shar use me as a hostage against her. It was a magnficent subtle cruelty that would have made even Raphael eat his heart out in envy - to reach out and with one twist, just one single threat, take everything that was leading Shadowheart away from Shar and instead have it propel her towards her own self-damnation with irresistible force. The greater Shadowheart's love for me, the stronger her wish to not deaden her heart and care about others, the more tightly she would be driven into the depths of Shar's embrace. The perfect trap.
Or it would have been, if a selfish and cruel creature like her had understood anything about love save for its most superficial uses. My hands sheathed my sword without a tremor. My heart unclenched from its icy rigor and started beating again. The leaden stone in my guts was dispelled, the impossible paradox facing us was about to be unbound. Because when Shadowheart had finally told us why she was actually doing this, I finally knew what to say.
"Have you forgotten what you promised me under the moonlight?" I shocked both of them with my smile. "Not for me... but with me."
Shadowheart's one hand came entirely loose from the spear haft, and the other dangled it down loosely at her side. Her mouth quivered, her eyes filled with tears. She looked helplessly at me, then up at the Nightsong, then down at her hands. Time stopped as she hung on the agonizing rack of her indecision.
And then her eyes cleared. Her face firmed up with purpose. Her hand clenched tightly on the haft, and with a scream of anguish and rage she hurled the Spear of Night with every bit of her strength-
-directly away from the Nightsong and out over the edge of the platform, and down, down into oblivion.
Author's Note: And now you finally know why Shadowheart was doing it. Really, I tried to be fair and put in the clues all along - she clearly wasn't doing it because she wanted a reward, or was afraid of her own death, so what else could it have been? And it is entirely Shar to try and twist the strengths of someone's virtues towards fueling their drive to self-destruction instead, because Shar is the worst.
In the game Shadowheart is torn between her devotion to Shar and her friendship and/or love for Tav all the way up to the end of Act 2. My Hawke basically nuked that one before they were even out of Act One, so Shar pivoted to this. Because Shar's entire investment in Shadowheart was to build up to when she murdered Dame Aylin in the name of Shar, because of... well, reasons. *g*
And yes, while I don't usually write ahead, I had this scene as one of the very first written in my head when I started this story. We've been leading up to this for over a dozen chapters, so let's hope it was worth it.
Last edited:
TyricGaias
Getting sticky.
- Joined
- Jun 9, 2020
- Messages
- 79
- Likes received
- 548
Wa-was that not clear why she was acting the way she did? I mean in game your companions fall in love with you real quick.
Last edited:
Simonbob
Really? You don't say.
- Joined
- Jan 3, 2014
- Messages
- 1,148
- Likes received
- 12,891
I saw that one coming half the fic ago.
Still well done. I'd say fuck Shar, but there's a rule about crazy, and Shar's way worse than any mortal'd be.
Katana_Master
Versed in the lewd.
- Joined
- Jan 27, 2021
- Messages
- 1,006
- Likes received
- 6,122
Can someone remind me exactly what Hawkeye and Shadowheart promised together?
cliffc999
Connoisseur.
- Joined
- Feb 16, 2017
- Messages
- 15,657
- Likes received
- 302,310
If it helps, try to imagine the entire salt planetoid that Shar just got fisted up the ass with.
She had this entire century long plan to have Selune's daughter killed in the most insulting way possible, just to twist the knife, and devoted an insane amount of time and resources to abducting and conditioning the perfect tool for it, and it's all building up to an epic climax of self-destruction fueled by love twisted to fear...
... and at the very last second this damn himbo paladin ruins the whole thing with one sentence.
But wait, it gets worse! Because when Shar obsessively goes back over the whole thing looking for where it went wrong, she's going to realize that all the pivotal romance moments took place outdoors, under the light of the moon. (Which they did. I didn't keep mentioning the moon for no reason.)
And then she will realize that Selune was laughing at her the entire time.
Shar just had a very bad day. *g*
She had this entire century long plan to have Selune's daughter killed in the most insulting way possible, just to twist the knife, and devoted an insane amount of time and resources to abducting and conditioning the perfect tool for it, and it's all building up to an epic climax of self-destruction fueled by love twisted to fear...
... and at the very last second this damn himbo paladin ruins the whole thing with one sentence.
But wait, it gets worse! Because when Shar obsessively goes back over the whole thing looking for where it went wrong, she's going to realize that all the pivotal romance moments took place outdoors, under the light of the moon. (Which they did. I didn't keep mentioning the moon for no reason.)
And then she will realize that Selune was laughing at her the entire time.
Shar just had a very bad day. *g*
End section of chapter 9.
Last edited:
S!ËGFR!ÊD
Experienced.
- Joined
- Sep 12, 2020
- Messages
- 2,558
- Likes received
- 19,415
Ah, irony, the universe's greatest form of entertainment. Not even the heavens are free from it.
EljackMalas
I don't lie, I just tell the wrong truth.
- Joined
- Oct 21, 2021
- Messages
- 244
- Likes received
- 2,835
God. That part about Raphael scheming was pure genius. You are a master.
Larekko12
Connoisseur.
- Joined
- Feb 19, 2013
- Messages
- 18,063
- Likes received
- 57,419
That was it?
I mean the gaslight is real but my boy is a paladin throwing shade on devil kings. Bout to step up to fuck with Dead gods of Death. Will literally curse out the god of Magic.
Etc.
She must not be thinking of she thinks his response will be anything but let's throw down. This ain't playing soul games on a battlefield he can't touch. This is just assassins everywhere.
I mean the gaslight is real but my boy is a paladin throwing shade on devil kings. Bout to step up to fuck with Dead gods of Death. Will literally curse out the god of Magic.
Etc.
She must not be thinking of she thinks his response will be anything but let's throw down. This ain't playing soul games on a battlefield he can't touch. This is just assassins everywhere.
cliffc999
Connoisseur.
- Joined
- Feb 16, 2017
- Messages
- 15,657
- Likes received
- 302,310
Of course Shadowheart knew what Hawke's response would be. Why else do you think she spent so much time not telling him what her real reason was? She ran through those multiple layers of misdirection before it finally came out because she knew her only slim chance of ever getting Hawke to accept it required him not knowing that he was the hostage being used against her.
The thing to remember about Shadowheart is that even if her poker face is not as great as it should be she still was raised by Sharrans, and had a lot of lessons on how to be manipulative and deceitful. Good God, just look at her starting character sheet - her clerical subclass is Trickery Domain. She's been trying to manipulate Hawke into cutting her loose for multiple chapters by this point, so a lot of what he was saying to him was, shall we say, calculated for effect?
Note that Shadowheart and Hawke just got on the personal shit list of a greater deity, and the most obsessively spiteful and sadistic one in the multiverse at that. Shadowheart's fear was anything but vaporware, especially not given how many decades she's been conditioned by the Church of Shar to be subservient and afraid.
Also, 'assassins everywhere' is still a threat even to high level adventurers if they just keep coming. I mean, has Shar impressed you as someone who actually cares about the lives of her worshippers? Or doesn't have most of them intimidated to the point they'll die on cue?
But hey, like Gale said, there comes a point at which you have to stop being afraid or else your life is just more hell before you die and spend eternity in actual hell, even if the odds do suck that bad.
Last edited:
Matrix Dragon
Making the rounds.
- Joined
- Sep 17, 2016
- Messages
- 43
- Likes received
- 374
I'm not so sure about that Raphael. They didn't have to fight a siege engine, Yurgir has chances to renegotiate his contract... It wasn't a clean win over you, but it was still a win.
Well HUH. She had it bad enough for Hawke Shar stopped gaslighting and went for the direct threat.
TyricGaias
Getting sticky.
- Joined
- Jun 9, 2020
- Messages
- 79
- Likes received
- 548
Well maybe a nice Primordial Moon Goddess will have their back?
Also is Hawke's oath powered by himself? That's something paladins can do in this setting right?
Also is Hawke's oath powered by himself? That's something paladins can do in this setting right?
Matrix Dragon
Making the rounds.
- Joined
- Sep 17, 2016
- Messages
- 43
- Likes received
- 374
In the game, Selune provides magic the second Shar cuts Shadowheart off. I fully expect Selune to help where she can.
cliffc999
Connoisseur.
- Joined
- Feb 16, 2017
- Messages
- 15,657
- Likes received
- 302,310
This might be a spoiler, but Raphael sometimes says things just to make other people doubt themselves.
Seeing as how that's Selune's daughter standing right there whose life they just saved, as well as the part where a high priestess of Selune has already been offering Shadowheart her help to please turn away from the Dark Side for several chapters now, it's really not a spoiler to say 'probably'.
As I understand it, that's the new default for 5e paladins. So yes.
Last edited:
TyricGaias
Getting sticky.
- Joined
- Jun 9, 2020
- Messages
- 79
- Likes received
- 548
Roughly what level would say they are all at this point?
cliffc999
Connoisseur.
- Joined
- Feb 16, 2017
- Messages
- 15,657
- Likes received
- 302,310
By the end of act two the average BG3 party is level 9-10. Given that they have yet to run the final series of boss fights I'd say they're around level 8-9.
Note that they were at least level 7 by the time they hit the githyanki ambush as Gale drops an Ice Storm during that fight, which is a 4th level spell.
Last edited:
sicksock
Pigs can always find mud.
- Joined
- Aug 27, 2023
- Messages
- 442
- Likes received
- 4,952
What was it that Hawke called him again? Oh right "grand champion at being full of shit".
That one made me laugh, i hope Raphael was spying on them and heard it.
Matrix Dragon
Making the rounds.
- Joined
- Sep 17, 2016
- Messages
- 43
- Likes received
- 374
Well yeah. I was just making an observation.
RedX
Not too sore, are you?
- Joined
- Jul 9, 2014
- Messages
- 434
- Likes received
- 2,160
I'm just wondering if it had to be a manipulated Selunite that killed the Nightsong, or if Shar let her cruelty and petty need to stick it to her sister get ahead of practicality... and it backfiring on her hard.
I mean, why send an Acolyte like Shadowheart to kill Dame Aylin, when she could have sent Viconia or one of any number of other loyal Justicars that would've done it with a smile?
I mean, why send an Acolyte like Shadowheart to kill Dame Aylin, when she could have sent Viconia or one of any number of other loyal Justicars that would've done it with a smile?
cliffc999
Connoisseur.
- Joined
- Feb 16, 2017
- Messages
- 15,657
- Likes received
- 302,310
As near as I can figure it was all about Shar's need to be petty and cruel. The petty and cruelty was the entire point. She just had to do it in the most insulting, infuriating, heartbreaking way possible... and, of course, it all backfired.
BTW, have you seen some of the sick shit that happens if you take Shadowheart down the Dark Justiciar route? Especially if you're romancing her? There's literally a scene of her pouring the murdered Aylin's blood all over a shrine of Selune to taunt the goddess, before fucking her boyfriend on top of it.
The funniest part of this video for me is that this is from a Dark Urge playthrough, and you can see the point where even he's making a facial expression of 'Perhaps this is going a bit too far'.
Last edited:
TyricGaias
Getting sticky.
- Joined
- Jun 9, 2020
- Messages
- 79
- Likes received
- 548
There is something darkly funny about
RedX
Not too sore, are you?
- Joined
- Jul 9, 2014
- Messages
- 434
- Likes received
- 2,160
Yeah, that's about what I thought. She really can't help herself, can she? It'd be sad, if her inflicting her drama on everyone else wasn't just making it infuriating.
Cracking good storytelling, though- both you and Larian.
Last edited:
Israelhexen
Not left-handed
- Joined
- Jun 20, 2014
- Messages
- 38
- Likes received
- 531
Would a baatezu really do that? Just go on the
cliffc999
Connoisseur.
- Joined
- Feb 16, 2017
- Messages
- 15,657
- Likes received
- 302,310
Ungroup your party before trying it. If any of the people automatically following you touch a wrong square, you fail.
Matrix Dragon
Making the rounds.
- Joined
- Sep 17, 2016
- Messages
- 43
- Likes received
- 374
It really is that scene from Honor Among Thieves.
MacShimi
Getting out there.
- Joined
- Dec 28, 2020
- Messages
- 23
- Likes received
- 74
Typo: replace "cousre" with "course."
Typo: replace "bed" (a piece of furniture designed to accomodate sleep or rest in the prone position), with "bead," (to take aim at).
LordofBones
Versed in the lewd.
- Joined
- Jun 24, 2014
- Messages
- 1,730
- Likes received
- 21,026
Reminder that the baatezu founded an entire university-city to teach diplomacy. The baatezu here were really, really well-done - yes they are absolutely evil but they're not *spit* tanar'ri.