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

[Mr.Nobody]

Incoming Scottish Not Quite Mr. Skeltal?

Nah, most likely not. Much as I like the Oathbreaker Knight I'm not too sure Hawke can actually fall in the traditional Paladin way.

 

[cliffc999]

Hawke can, if he betrays his own core values hard enough, but I don't have him doing that penciled in anywhere and while obviously I reserve the right to have a better idea later on as the story evolves, I don't really think I'll want to.

 

[Mizu]

Would we have gotten murderous fanatic Durge or trying to be a good guy Durge, I wonder, if he wasn't killed? Not like the Emperor had a way to tell it was maybe not the former.

 

[2 Hot Crown Subdues the Sinful]

The Templar abilities made think of a cooler order of knights, and then my mind went down to the Warden Commander with a blight-infested tadpole turning the Psionic Weave into The Warp by way of Caelid.

 

[GrayBowser]

"Damn." I swore softly.

"Agreed." Gale commiserated with me. "Give her time. Hopefully you'll be forgiven when she realizes you never intended any of it."

Something about the particular emphasis he'd put on that word made me look at him - "Bad breakup?"

"Ohhhhh yes." he nodded, but didn't clarify.

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Lol!

Gale has been a quiet presence in this fic so far. Understandable considering he probably wants to stay on the right side of the anti-magic warrior who's used to all mages being a brief lapse away from corruption and violent self-destruction. Not least because those concerns are an underestimate of Gale's own situation! The Elminster conversation should be an interesting one...

 

[DIT_grue]

Spoiler: Suggestions

The Emperor breathed deeply, fighting for calm. It's enhanced intellect yet again reviewed every scrap of information it had obtained about Hawke and his companions, searching for a new angle, a scheme by which it could effectively manipulate and guide them. The penetration of the 'Guardian' deception so soon had been entirely outside its calculations and was potentially devastating to its plans. Ideally none of the adventurers the Emperor had selected would have known of its true nature until the Emperor had been ready to tell them - until they had been carefully led down the same path a man named Balduran had once tread, of being willing to embrace the power, the change, instead of desperately clinging to a pathetic 'humanity'.

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Its

Furthermore he's a castaway on a strange world, so I don't know enough about his cultural beliefs or his personal history to find suitable levers either. Family, patriotism, ambition - also irrelevant, when he has no history in this world to foster the first two yet and the third has yet to even form given that he's still floundering around here. Which you think would make my job easy, as rootless people interested only in their survival are very easy to get hooks into... except that this man has a willpower of adamantine and a thick skull to match! The only obvious psychological lever I can see on his behavior is his affections for that little priestess, but it's not like I can safely meddle in her brain, not with what she's linked to. Not to mention that they're both intelligent enough to already know that the other is their greatest potential weakness, and are both determined to not let that happen-

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you would think

 

[Kencord]

Fun side theory? We see the Emperor in our dreams, trying to play us. But...how often do we remember dreams? He's got access to our minds.

What I'm saying is we only ever, as PCs, see the BEST version or at least most acceptable version of our meeting with the 'Guardian'. If we catch the plot early or call it out? He stimulates the 'dream' part a bit harder and we just forget like any other dream and he can try again.

 

[Yacov]

And then their leader had seen through its first illusion as if it had not even been there, and shattered its second one!

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In hindsight, perhaps I should have picked that damned Bhaalspawn as my last candidate instead of this man after all... no, no, that's just my frustration talking. Trying to control or manipulate that monster would have been an even greater risk, which is precisely why I killed him instead. My plot would certainly have been vastly complicated if the Dark Urge's father had chosen to meddle with it. At least Hawke isn't giving me that kind of difficulty to contend with.

Click to shrink...

So that's why Hawke was chosen as a survivor of the crash. Both him and the Urge were probably pegged by the Emperor as potential leaders of the group. Blank Slate Urge would be a good leader and focus on the Party by virtue of it being the only thing they would focus on due to having nothing else. Right until Bhaal gets involved.

Everyone else in the party probably was pegged by the Emperor as either a follower, loner, or lancer.

A paladin, of all things! The Emperor snorted. Not that Hawke had the slightest idea he was one - the power of Oaths and creeds had apparently not been a consciously codified thing on his world. Or perhaps the source of power of these "templars" had been something entirely different, and Hawke had not become a paladin until his arrival on Faerun - his honorable nature and his dedication to his own personal code so strong that they could provide new fuel for the abilities he'd originally developed in some other way. He'd hardly be the first case in Faerunian history of someone whose personal devotion was so strong that it had spontaneously granted them paladinhood without sponsorship or initiation.

Click to shrink...

So Hawke is an unconscious paladin. Imagine being such a consistent and dedicated character that the universe just acknowledges it and grants you powers.

Does that mean his Holy Smite is also a Divine Smite? Even if the Smite is now radiant damage, that still does normal damage to almost everything in Faerun outside of Celestials.

Unfortunately, I don't know what his Oaths are. Paladins are usually pathetically easy to manipulate if you know the exact rules they have bound themselves to, but I doubt Hawke could even tell me what his particular strictures are because he doesn't even consciously know what he is!

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Of course the Emperor is going to have difficulty finding out Hawke's oaths. That would require learning who Hawke is as a person. Which would require the Emperor seeing Hawke as a person and an equal at some level. Which is something the Emperor really isn't keen on after losing his humanity.

The Emperor: "What do you mean I can't just look up his Oaths on the 5e Rulebook?"

 

[cliffc999]

"A ghaik." Lae'zel said, looking more nauseous than she had when the Emperor had been deliberately prodding our tadpoles to torment us with the initial symptoms of ceremorphosis. "A filthy ghaik stalks us! He holds our very minds, our identities, hostage!"

"Darkness protect us." Shadowheart gasped. "What do we-" she stopped, and turned to look me full in the eye. "How did you know?"

"That the Guardian was a mind flayer? When it confessed to being the one who saved us from the fall from the nautiloid." I explained. "Since I'd already glimpsed a mind flayer doing that during the crash - even if I hadn't been sure I could trust that glimpse until the Guardian's attempt to revisit that memory with its illusory form in the starring role prompted-"

"No, no, not that." Shadowheart interrupted. "How did you know that we'd need the mind flayer cure so badly, to focus on it as our top priority so soon? Even as far back as the Grove?" She noddded to me. "Even to the point of us giving up the artifact for it?"

"I didn't know that far back." I admitted. "And I certainly had no long-range plan to stymie the Guardian, who I didn't even know existed until they tried invading my dreams tonight."

"Then your intuition is the envy of many an archmage's most elaborate computations." Gale congratulated me. "Because the sooner we get these tadpoles out of our heads, the better. The less leverage a creature like that holds over us the safer we'll be."

"I entirely agree, but aren't you the same person who once advised us that we could risk dealing with a devil?" Wyll asked.

"Devils at least cleave to the letter of a bargain, even if they violate the spirit." Gale replied. "Which you know better than the rest of us is a thin protection indeed, given how very skilled they are at twisted words and twistier laws - but it's still something. Illithids, on the other hand?" Gale shivered. "Perhaps the single least trustworthy creatures in the entire planes. Eons of experience at manipulating sentient minds, thanks to the understanding of psychology only produced by having read - and consumed - such a vast number of sentient brains. Entirely inhuman and cold, no sentiment whatsoever. And not even the slightest trace of honor, either."

"A sage's wisdom indeed." Lae'zel nodded to him. "Ghaik have been known to pretend to honor, to consistency, for as long as it suits them - and then to unhesitatingly turn on and devour even the most loyal ally the instant they were no longer of use. There is only one cure for ghaik deceptions; to refuse to engage them at all, save with steel and fire."

"Hence our 'Guardian' friend making the approach he did - and with our ability to stay free-willed from the Absolute as his hostages." I agreed. "To proclude the obvious response."

"Hey, do you think that tentacled bastard can hear what we're saying right now?" Karlach asked worriedly.

"Depends on how closely he dares approach." Wyll said. "Unless he's able to read our minds at a distance."

"He seemed to have trouble seeing into mine." I noted. "But I'm not sure how protected I am, or how much any of the rest of you are."

"While a ghaik would normally need line-of-sight to use telepathy, we bear mind flayer tadpoles within us and that would potentially extend the range at which it could monitor us. But they cannot probe much deeper than surface thoughts unless they have you in their custody for a nontrivial period of time, or are willing to use enough haste to damage the mind being deep-probed." Lae'zel explained. "So planning against it will be problematic - it will not know everything we know, but we cannot actively scheme without those thoughts being at the surface of our minds."

"Well, unless it's trying the most insanely complicated double-bluff ever we already know at least one thing it doesn't want us to do, and a very likely reason why it doesn't want us to do it. And the instant our parasites are no longer a problem, it can't threaten to let the Absolute take us if we don't comply." I said. "At which point..." I trailed off knowingly.

Lae'zel smiled cruelly. "Indeed. Among the githyanki, a warrior does not become eligible to graduate from the creche and go to join the main body of our forces in the Astral Plane until after they personally bring the head of a ghaik to their superior. Hopefully I will have the opportunity to do that soon."

"Unless he decides to pre-empt that fate by just turning off our protection now." Shadowheart said.

"But then he's stranded by himself in the middle of a mountain pass with an outpost full of githyanki, with a druid's grove fully alerted against tadpole bearers on one end and the forces of the Absolute on the other." I shook my head. "And he wasn't stupid enough to believe at the end that I'd actually take his advice to abandon our desire to go to the creche. He knows where we're going, so if he hasn't pulled the plug yet-"

"But he needs the artifact as much as we do." Gale thought out loud. "More so, in fact - we can hope to escape susceptibility to the Absolute by having our tadpoles removed, but he's an illithid. He's permanently susceptible to whatever perversion of the illithid psionic network that the Absolute is using. And if we give the artifact to the githyanki they'll take it right back to their capital city of Tu'narath, hopelessly beyond his reach. There is no single place in the universe an illithid could less safely go than there. By all rights he should have pulled the plug on us the instant he knew we weren't going to be dissuaded from handing it over."

"Well, he hasn't." Karlach said practically. "Which means that either old tentacle face was lying out his arse about being able to control the artifact like that or else-" She shrugged.

"Or else we're missing something." Wyll agreed.

"Either way, we can't not go to the githyanki." Shadowheart agreed. "Mother Superior's potential wrath is one thing, but I'll face that any day over the prospect of having my mind snuffed out by the Absolute or eaten by a mind flayer."

"Well, it's almost dawn." I agreed, as I rose from where we were all sitting around our campfire. "Let's get moving now."

We were fairly high up in the mountains by this time, but rather than being the bleak the terrain was quite beautiful - light forests below the tree line, lining broad dirt trails that wound about and crossed each other as a majestic view of a mountain valley sloped away beneath us to our north. And shortly after breaking camp, before the sun had fully come over the horizon, we saw silouhettes ahead of us on the trail.

"Hail travelers!" I called out, using what I'd learned of Faerunian road courtesy. "How fares the way-" I broke off as the wind shifted and the charnel stench from them hit us. "What the hells?"

"Ghouls!" Shadowheart cried as the pack of humanoid figures ahead of us on the broke into a run, screeching like monsters. "Undead! Watch out for their touch, it paralyzes!"

Back when we'd fought those warlocks of Zariel who'd been hunting Karlach, one of them had first attempted to bribe me with a magic weapon he'd called the 'Sword of Justice'. I hadn't touched the damn thing because I didn't trust strange weapons picked up from fiend worshippers - well, not unless I was desperate and trapped on a crashing nautiloid, at least. But I'd finally had a chance to get it examined in the Grove and it turned out to legitimately be a holy, if minor, weapon intended to be carried by knights in the service of Tyr, the god of justice, so I'd switched over to using it instead of the Everburning Blade I'd looted from that cambion. I'd given that to Karlach, as it fit her style better than the mundane greataxe she'd been using.

And I thanked that decision afresh because the protective spell that the Sword of Justice could cast over its wielder several times a day helped deflect the blows of the ghouls, which in addition to the paralysis Shadowheart had warned me of also carried a risk of infection from their filthy, carrion-stained claws.

"Lady of Loss, ward thy servant! Turn Undead!" Shadowheart chanted, and over half of the ghouls charging us immediately flinched away and ran back down the path. I noticed that the ones that had been turned also glowed briefly with radiant energy, screeching out in pain as her divine power burned them.

"There's two more coming up the path! Big ones!" Wyll called out as he skewered the ghoul facing him with his rapier, then fired his eldritch blast at both of the advancing newcomers. The forked bolt slammed into them both, wounding them slightly and knocking them backwards.

Karlach, Lae'zel, and I made short work of the last few ghouls, while Gale stayed in reserve - our policy was that he not use his spells on anything but priority targets, given his limited number of them per day. And then we advanced to finish off the last two... well, they clearly weren't ghouls, seeing as how they stood seven feet tall. Some type of giant skeletons, wielding greatswords, but-

They both silently raised their blades and their hands glowed green with corrupt power, and something made the hair on the back of my neck stand on end. I glanced back-

"Lae'zel, Wyll! Rear guard!" I ordered immediately. The ghouls we'd killed were getting back up.

"Didn't we just kill these?" Wyll complained as he and Lae'zel formed a defense line behind, and Karlach and I closed up in front. Shadowheart fell back alongside Gale-

"Dammit, they're rallying the ones I turned as well!" she swore. "We're hemmed in on both sides!"

"Death Shepherds!" Gale said, as they finally drew close enough in the morning twilight for him to recognize. "Powerful- intelligent- re-animators! And we're surrounded by walking corpses!"

I gripped the Sword of Justice more firmly in both hands and concentrated on the Death Shepherds. Let's hope that my templar powers working last night weren't just because I was in a dream-

"Righteous Smite!" I cried, focusing my will, and I was shocked when instead of the area burst of cleansing magic-dispelling fire that that particular Templar talent produced, my greatsword lit up with white flame instead. I didn't have time to ponder this particular mystery right now, so I simply stepped into both advancing Death Shepherds and unleashed the maneuver that two-handed warriors in Thedas referred to as the Scythe, dashing forward almost ten feet in an eyeblink and tearing through both of them with a series of quick sweeping cuts. Whatever these particular creatures were they had at least some trades in common with the demonic, or Fade spirits, because the vastly increased damage that a Templar smite did to things of the Fade was clearly in play here. One of them shrieked and fell apart in an instant, the other fell back, terribly wounded, only to die to my follow-up attack.

Karlach and Shadowheart both ran forward as quickly as they could, to cover my flanks versus the ghouls that the Death Shepherds had rallied. A quickly muttered spell sheathed Shadowheart's mace in radiant damage, and Karlach's greatsword - formerly my greatsword - was already wreathed in fire. Between that and the cleansing flames still clinging briefly to my blade the ghouls facing us were torn apart like paper, and the burst of a Burning Hands spell behind us told us that Gale was lending his support to where Wyll and Lae'zel were rearguard. Soon enough, the battle was done.

"Well holy shit, first you help me kill fake paladins and now you turn out to be a real one!" Karlach laughed. "But why keep it under wraps?"

"What's a paladin?" I asked. "I'd thought people were just referring to some type of temple knight, but clearly not."

Shadowheart was just looking at me, as if she were uncertain to despair or to laugh, before she finally lapsed into the first genuine smile I'd seen from her since we'd started arguing over the Astral Prism. "Of course." she chuckled. "Last night I was ready to call you as stubborn as a paladin, and now it turns out you really are one. Of course you supported the githyanki's ownership claim to the artifact - your Oath required you to. I should have known."

"No, honestly." I said, puzzled. "I haven't the faintest idea what you're talking about."

After an explanation as to exactly what paladins in Faerun really were, and how they could draw magical power purely from willpower and the depth of their devotion to their particular Oath, I began to realize what had happened. While normally even the most dedicated person of faith in Faerun would not simply spontaneously become a paladin - at least, not without a touch of divine inspiration - my Templar training had provided an initial framework of discipline and devotion that was similar enough in some ways to the normal paladin abilities to allow the channels of power that I had already opened in my brain to be re-opened by the ambient magics of Faerun and my own particularly stubbornly honorable nature in a more 'native' pattern. Or at least that's what Gale theorized - at length - from what partial clues were available.

"I've never before heard of a case of someone achieving paladinhood without consciously understanding what the particular terms of their Oath were." Shadowheart said. "But if it's been purely instinctual for you so far, then you should also be getting an instinctive sense of wrongness if you're about to do something that would betray it. Just- just go along with your instincts, for now, and if you have the opportunity try to consciously analyze the ethical code by which you've been living your life so far and distill it down to its few key elements, do that when you have time. That should be a good guideline to start with." She paused thoughtfully. "Also, you should start meditating daily. I can teach you that."

I nodded as I breathed deeply, trying to get back my wind. Now that the adrenaline was wearing off I could feel just how much stamina I'd channeled into that single burst of power. Not enough to debilitate me, but certainly enough that I didn't want to pop that off too casually. I'd need to start training more and build up my endurance.

"Well, hopefully this will come in useful later. For now, we had a very urgent errand to be getting back to." I finally decided, and we continued onward.

"But what were Death Shepherds even doing here?" Gale wondered. "You don't find them just casually laying around a graveyard! They were originally created by priests of Myrkul, god of death and undeath, and he's been a dead god ever since the Time of Troubles over a century ago!"

"Did they leave their secrets for anyone else to discover?" I indulged him as we walked along.

"They must have. But again, why would a necromancer randomly dump one here?" he thought.

"You turn loose a monster that indiscriminately attacks travelers on a path if you're attempting to harass or interdict all traffic." I said. "Who doesn't want anyone taking this road?"

"If you suspect my people, you are in error." Lae'zel said. "Necromancy is a branch of magic kept under the strictest control by githyanki. We study it only to know how better to combat the undead; to actually work with necrotic forces ourselves is a sin against Vlaakith."

"I was thinking more the only other player in this game we already knew was raising forces to cut off the Risen Road." I said.

"The Cult of the Absolute." Shadowheart realized. "What on Toril are they up to?"

"Wait!" Lae'zel said, suddenly stepping off the path to peer more closely at something. "This is one of our trail signs!" she continued eagerly, staring at a nearby rock reading something I couldn't see at all. Whatever the githyanki used for trail markers was certainly subtle indeed. "The creche is nearby! That way!" she pointed down a particular branch of the path, and we eagerly trotted along.

"Damn! Look at the size of that place!" Karlach said as we came over a small rise and looked down into the valley below. A majestic building was visible on the other side of the valley, with a run of cables running from a wooden platform several hundred feet below and in front of us all the way across the valley to a similar platform next to the building complex. The building was beautiful, a sprawling edifice of stone several stories high, although even from here I could see gaps smashed in the roof and parts of the complex overgrown with vines and moss.

"That's Rosymorn Monastery!" Wyll said, shocked. "I was here once, as a child! What's happened to it?"

"That was a temple?" I inquired.

"An ancient holy site of Lathander the Morninglord, god of light and renewal." Wyll said. "Pilgrims used to come here from all over western Faerun. Legend says that Lathander himself visited the mortal world here once, and left a bit of his grace behind to comfort his followers forevermore."

"Andraste's ashes." I swore. "Literally - there was a place called Haven back on Thedas, where the remains of the Prophet Andraste - the Bride of the Maker - had been laid to rest, and lost for centuries until finally rediscovered by the Hero of Ferelden. But-" I shook my head. "It was destroyed, burnt down to bedrock by a magical catastrophe unleashed by an undying monster named Corypheus. Which isn't germane now, except to provide context to my next question - what destroyed a sacred site like that to where the devout did not attempt to come and rebuild it?"

"The church of Lathander isn't as prominent as it used to be." Shadowheart said, "especially not in this region. The nearest large center of Lathanderite worship was in Elturel, and the Descent savaged them pretty hard. And this mountain pass almost entirely shuts down in the winter, and we're not that far into spring. If this happened only months ago and not years, there would have been a delay in even knowing it had happened, and between that and what happened in Elturel they won't have had time yet to assemble a large enough force for reclamation and rebuilding."

"Lae'zel, did the trail marker tell you exactly where the creche was?" I tried to grapple with a slowly rising suspicion.

"Yes." she said, somberly. "Across the valley."

"Let's get closer." I sighed. It took only a bit of muscle to unstick the mechanism, which had apparently been lying here unattended all winter, and Karlach and I manually cranked the windlass to first bring the cable car across the valley to us and then ride it back to a point near the monastery entrance."

"Travelstone." Gale noted as we stepped off the platform. "Just like the one we saw further up the mountain pass last night. So at least we can retrace our steps more easily, because if we go very much farther we might pass beyond the range limit for the ones back at the Grove."

As we marched under the eaves of the abandoned monastery I looked up more closely at the damage to the roof, noting the patterns. A set of distinctive claw marks along the edges of one particularly large rift in the stone confirmed my suspicion.

"That damage was done by a dragon." I pointed at it. "Now why would a dragon attack a temple complex like this, what with all the defenses it would have? Or be used to break open that particular point in the roof, right at a structural gap?" I rubbed my chin. "Perhaps because it had a rider, directing it to?"

"You suspect my people?" Lae'zel said hotly, before her expression turned subdued. "I- cannot deny the possibility." she reluctantly conceded. "Particularly since we should almost be on top of the creche by now, and there is nowhere but this monastery that it could be within."

"What are your people's creches, anyway?" I asked her. "I thought your people lived in the Astral Plane?"

"The astral plane is a timeless, unbounded eternal space." Lae'zel said. "And it can preserve life almost indefinitely. However, the same force that holds back the effects of time on mortal flesh also prevent maturation and growth. Our eggs must be hatched on other planes, the children raised and educated likewise. Only after a githyanki has grown to full adulthood and proven themselves in battle versus the ghaik may they be invited to leave the material plane behind and see the true flowering of our civilization in the Silver Void."

"Movement up ahead." Wyll broke into our thoughts. "Quietly now..."

As we drew near to what had been the monastery's main entrance we saw confirmation of our guess - the githyanki creche was here. Several githyanki warriors were herding along a trio of frightened halflings at crossbow point. Halflings that I could all see were wearing amulets like the one Brynna and Andrick had worn - badges of allegiance to the Absolute.

As we silently watched from the nearby shadows one of the halflings tried to break and run, only to be shot in the back as they fled by one of the guards. The other two, terrified beyond any resistance, were chivvied through the open front gate of the monastery - a pair of giant metal doors several stories high. With a deafening clang the doors swung shut behind the githyanki patrol and their prisoners, and then all was silence.

"Charming people." I said darkly.

"Those were servants of the Absolute. Enemies." Lae'zel insisted. "Warriors of the githyanki are not as 'sentimental' as you."

"Doesn't seem to be any sentries." Wyll said, carefully studying the nearby walls and stained glass windows. "They're not using the surface part of this complex."

"If there is an underground portion, that would have been deemed better for concealment and defensibility." Lae'zel agreed. "And the ruins up top would help retain the illusion of this place being uninhabited. Beneath notice."

"Shadowheart?" I asked her, nodding towards the corpse, and she drew forth the Amulet of Lost Voices.

"Who were you?" she asked.

"Corlis... novice of the Absolute..."

"Why did the githyanki take you prisoner?"

"Searching for their 'weapon'... questioning everyone they catch..."

"What were you originally doing?"

"Heading to Moonrise... answering the call..."

"Whose call? Why?"

"Gathering forces... for the General's army..."

The magic faded away, all questions exhausted.

"So after we're done here, we get to deal with an entire army being mustered at Moonrise." Karlach said. "Look, I'm a tall girl, but there's only so deep into the shit even I want to try wading!"

"Lae'zel, would your people be willing to deploy a military force against an army being raised by mind flayers and their servants?" I asked her.

"Of course!" she looked at me as if I were an idiot. "Only the revelation that the Astral Prism is a holy artifact stolen from the vaults of Vlaakith herself explains why they have not done it already!"

"Then hopefully after we help them end their search, they'll all be freed up for other projects - such as killing every mind flayer at Moonrise Towers." I nodded with satisfaction, before turning aside to Shadowheart. "And this one I'll admit I was scheming ahead on."

"Layers upon layers." she said with reluctant approval. "Well... let's find a way in, then."

The front gates were sealed, and I didn't think it was a good idea to try knocking. So we looked around and soon enough found a broken stained-glass window at floor level. Climbing in there put us inside an abandoned, half-looted winery... a winery that had a pack of drunken kobolds already busy looting the rest of it. Dealing with them was simple enough, if a bit challenging due to all the firewine they'd swallowed making them combustible if we hit them wrong, but we got through it with few enough wounds that a short rest put us back at full capacity.

I insisted on a search of the upper levels before we tried the basement, both because I wanted to make sure there wasn't anything behind us and sitting on the exit before we went down into any sublevels, and because I wanted a clearer picture of what had happened here. The next hour was a grim one indeed as we found more and more evidence that this had been a place of peace and sanctity, a genuine community of the devout and a haven for pilgrims, before a githyanki task force had assaulted it and mercilessly slaughtered everyone within.

We even found an abandoned tir'su disc in the rubble, a githyanki scout's report that had been cast aside after it was of no further use.

Location - good. Close to road, but secluded. Building looks well-fortified. Defence - minimal - seems to be a religious building. Space - ample, underground, hidden. Was easy enough to sneak in without being observed. Prime spot for a crèche. Suggest immediate occupation. - M'lar Rih'al.

"All of these innocent people dead." I swore. "Simply because it was convenient to seize an already-existing structure. They couldn't even simply find an abandoned patch of ground and build their own dwelling - and if they were coming down from the astral plane they could have potentially landed anywhere!"

Lae'zel didn't even try defending this one. I wasn't sure if that's because she actually felt shame over it, or because she did approve of her people's ruthlessness but already knew that I never would. She just nodded, her expression taut, and moved off with Gale to search another part of the ruins.

"I understand the reasoning behind what we're doing here." Shadowheart whispered to me quietly, "and it still makes sense - but do not even hope to make friends with these githyanki, even if we can turn them loose on our enemies. When we first met on the nautiloid, I told you how uncertain they were as allies."

"It's odd. I can't imagine Lae'zel being so quick to commit atrocities like these-" I began.

"I can." Shadowheart said. "Not because she'd enjoy it, I'll agree with you there. But because her loyalty - and her fear of her superiors - would compel her to obey orders even if they appalled her." Her face briefly twisted. "We have that much in common, at least."

"You certainly weren't wrong about githyanki in general." I agreed grimly, staring at the skeletons lying on the floor that months ago had been living monks. "But we are still desperate and still rapidly running out of options. So what else can we do?"

"Nothing that I've thought of, or else I'd have already suggested it." she conceded. "What's your plan in case they betray us?"

"In order of preference - warp well away from here using the travelstone network, fight our way out, and die." I shrugged. "That last one is really not plan A, but if we have no choice anyway then at least a clean death is preferable to being taken by the Absolute."

"Agreed." Shadowheart nodded soberly. "Whatever happens..."

"... we do it together." I nodded back, and we exchanged brief smiles.

"Gale?" I heard Lae'zel ask. "What is that?"

We all hurried over, to find the two of them staring up at an elaborate golden mechanical contraption on the highest point of the monastery's roof.

"Wait, that's not githyanki technology?" Karlach asked. "Because the only place I've seen anything like that is some of the fiendish siege artillery in Avernus. That's certainly not fiend work, though."

"No, it's part of the original monastery." Wyll said. "I remember seeing it the last time I was here. I'd thought it was just ornamental - an abstract statue."

"That's no statue. That is clearly an arcano-magical channelling system." Gale nodded in thought. "And from the size of it, it's intended to focus a tremendous amount of energy. Where that energy would come from, though, I've no idea. I'd need a closer look but from what I can see down here that's just a projector - there's no generators here."

"A weapon?" Lae'zel wondered. "One built by those who originally inhabited here? But why would my people just ignore it, if it were so powerful?"

"Perhaps they mistook it for a statue." I sighed, knowing that I couldn't stall around up here for much longer no matter how much I wished to. "Come on. Let's head down."

You should listen to your instincts. the Guardian's voice sounded mentally in all of our heads. Going to the githyanki will only lead you to disaster.

"He's here?" Lae'zel swore, looking frantically around as she drew her sword. "So close to a creche of my people? This is a bold ghaik indeed!"

I tapped one finger to the side of my head. "Remember what you said earlier about his using the tadpole connection in our head to increase his working range? That's almost certainly what he's doing."

"Yes." Lae'zel relaxed. "You are right. He would not dare enter the creche along with us, not unless he was truly mad."

At least leave one of your number behind so that if the rest of you die, your 'Withers' may be induced to resurrect them! the Guardian suggested.

"Any volunteers to remain here, alone and vulnerable, so the mind flayer that's stalking us can leap out and haul you away?" I asked sarcastically, and everyone grimly chuckled.

And so you adamantly insist on rushing headling to your doom. When this blows up in your faces, I will speak to you again and you will hopefully listen more closely to my advice in the future - assuming any of us have a future! the Guardian fumed, and then went silent.

Eventually we found a way back down to the ground floor of the monastery, inside the sealed main gate this time, and headed down the cellar stairs from there. As soon as we passed through the doors leading to the catacombs underneath the monastery, the appearance of ruin and abandon fell away. The corridors were immaculately clean, the furnishings free of dust, and the lamps and braziers were all lit and well-maintained. And the guard post at the foot of the stairs, manned by a squad of githyanki warriors, told us why.

"Istik!" the leader of the guards challenged us as we drew near. "State your business, quickly!"

"I am no istik." Lae'zel said hotly, stepping up alongside me. "I am Lae'zel of Creche K'llir, and I and my associates have urgent business here!"

"I wasn't informed of any reinforcements arriving." the sergeant of the guard challenged us. "Who authorized this?"

"By protocol, any warrior of the gith must be admitted to any creche if they are in need of the zaith'isk." Lae'zel said. "Take us to the ghustil, quickly!"

"The zaith'isk?" the sergeant said alarmedly, recoiling away from us as if we were covered in a noxious substance. "You are infected? How long?"

"Long enough we really don't want to wait much further." I broke in impatiently. "Could you please direct us to your decontamination or cleansing or whatever?"

"Down this hall to the central junction, first left, left again." she replied curtly. "Don't stray from the route and don't try anything. The eyes of Creche Y'llek will be upon you."

"Thank you." I said politely, and we marched off. We weren't provided with an escort, but we passed enough githyanki - both adults and adolescents still in training - in the hallway that it wasn't much of a security lapse on their part anyway. I entirely believed her admonition that if we tried sneaking off anywhere, we'd regret it.

"I'd have expected more of a reaction than this to non-githyanki entering here." I said to Lae'zel. Because while we were certainly drawing curious looks, there wasn't any real alarm.

"Istik - outlanders - are sometimes hired as mercenaries when force augmentation is needed." Lae'zel said. "It is not that common to see them in the halls of a githyanki creche, but it is still enough of an occurrence to not cause immediate suspicion. In addition, you are being escorted by a githyanki warrior."

"Plan B is looking less viable all the time." Shadowheart noted quietly as we headed deeper and deeper into the underground catacombs, once a deep shelter and storage for monks and now a githyanki military base. "How's A looking?"

I checked my attunement to the travelstone network and my eyebrows went up with alarm. "I can't- something's blocking it."

"Dammit!" Gale swore. "I should have thought of that! Githyanki are an interplanar military force, and fight an enemy capable of astral and ethereal travel. Of course one of their bases would have wards against unauthorized planar travel... and those same wards must be interfering with the travelstone."

"Well, fuck." Karlach swore.

And so you finally begin to realize how thoroughly you have erred. the Guardian said smugly.

While you're busy patting yourself on the back, ask yourself why you didn't think to warn us of this planar warding stuff before we walked right into it. I mentally replied. We're not infallible, but apparently neither are you.

"Well at least that shut him up." Wyll muttered, as we drew up to an intersection dominated by a massive painting. "Who is that?"

"Vlaakith." Lae'zel said, bowing to the image. "Our undying liege, both queen and god, all glory to her eternal name."

"That's got to be disquieting for you." Shadowheart said to me.

"What, the idea of a goddess descending to the mortal plane to lead her people directly?" I said. "Actually, no. The prophet Andraste did that very thing on Thedas only a few centuries before I was born. Although exactly how divine she was before her ascension to the Maker's side is still a matter of debate. It's established historical fact that she was a miraculous existence, though."

Shadowheart turned to look at me, her eyebrows raised. "I thought you said Thedas had been abandoned by the gods!"

"Because Andraste was betrayed by one of her faithful and her mortal form was slain." I said. "That was what induced the Maker to turn his back on us, even if the Chantry continues to beseech his return."

"This is not relevant. We stand on the brink of a cure!" Lae'zel insisted.

"Agreed." I said, fighting down my hesitation. I took one last look at the picture of a tall regal githyanki - even if her face was oddly pale, her features somehow sharper and drier, and her eyes a solid onyx black instead of being just eyes like Lae'zel's - and we went down the hallway to the door leading to the base's medical section, where the ghustil - chief physician - would see to our treatment. The infirmary had several soldiers on guard or acting as orderlies, and the beds contained several more wounded here for treatment. One of the soldiers curtly informed us that the ghustil was in her laboratory, and pointed us towards the door. We headed to the rear of the infirmary and let ourselves in.

"Vertical incision from pineal eye to end of notochord. Intestinal colouration consistent with samples 231 to 259. That's it. I'm very close to... I just need to... yes, that's it." she muttered to herself, staring into some type of apparatus where magical fields levitated a partially-dissected mind flayer parasite inside a transparent containment chamber. A quick adjustment of her hands on one of the controls rotated the parasite slightly, and she peered more closely at it though an elaborate series of magnifying lenses clamped to the monocle she wore over one eye-

"Ghustil." Lae'zel said, bowing slightly in respect. "We have urgent need of your services."

"Have one of my assistants handle it, I'm busy." she snapped, not even turning around.

"We bear mind flayer parasites." Lae'zel insisted. "We seek the zaith'isk, for cleansing."

The ghustil snapped upright and turned around as quickly as if we'd set her lab coat on fire. "Parasites? Infected? Which one of you?" she peered at us intently.

"All of us." I said.

"When was the implantation done?" she queried.

"At least four days ago." I replied.

She looked at us even more intently. "Four days? You should be showing the beginning of the skull mutations, as well as severe metabolic distress. But you look as clean as if you were still on the first day."

"Our parasites were altered, by some type of unknown magic." Lae'zel explained. "Can you cleanse us?"

"Infected for that long, but not the slightest visible symptom. Either your tadpoles are special, or you are. And we certainly must find out which." She nodded. "I am Ghustil Stornugoss of Creche Y'llek, and as per protocol I will grant you cleansing by zaith'isk. But you must do exactly as I say."

"Of course, ghustil." Lae'zel said. "What do you require?"

"For you to get in the zaith'isk as quickly as possible." Stornugoss replied. "Time is of the essence."

Lae'zel immediately stepped forward, and I laid a gentle hand on her arm. "Wait." I said, and she turned to glower at me in suppressed rage. "If there's a risk, I want to see it first before I lead any of you into it."

"I am githyanki. This is Vlaakith's purity, distilled to its finest essence! Do not deny me my rightful place here!!" Lae'zel insisted.

"Lae'zel... please." I asked her simply. "I don't-"

"I don't have all day to wait for you to make up your minds!" Ghustil Stornugoss demanded impatiently. "All right, fine! The big-mouthed istik goes first! Now get in!"

The zaith'isk was a frightening-looking device indeed. A chair made out of eldritch metal, subtly wrong in its proportions, and surmounted by a large, frightening-looking spiked device that would go over the head of anyone who sat in it - a device that very vaguely reminded me of things I'd seen on the nautiloid, as if someone had reproduced one of the nauseating living machines of the mind flayers in astral steel.

Ghustil Stornugoss moved to a nearby control panel, her spasm of impatience now replaced by a coolly intent scholar about to conduct an interesting examination. "Do not fear. My experience in operating this machine is unparalleled. There is nothing on any plane stronger than a zaith'isk for dealing with unwanted afflictions."

"Do I need to do anything in particular?" I asked her.

"You must focus on the parasite at all times." Ghustil Stornugoss said intently. "The parasite will attempt to evade the cleansing, to hide within your mind. If the zaith'isk seeks it out blindly, cerebral damage could occur. Concentrate your will - remain aware of precisely where your infection is striking. Guide the zaith'isk to it."

"I'm ready." I said, taking a deep breath.

Wordlessly, she activated the controls and the zaith'isk leapt into operation. Coruscating fields of magical energy snapped into existence around my head, then began to bear down. The agony was immense- I swore I could feel my skull deforming-

"Concentrate!" she insisted.

I focused my will into a spear of silverite and imagined myself striking deep into my own mind, impaling the hiding parasite with a single clean blow. The parasite writhed, as if it could run away, could burrow deeper-

"Yes! Yes! Keep going!" Ghustil Stornugoss said eagerly. "Increasing intensity... now!"

The energy fields pushing into my head became spikes, daggers, a crown of thorns. My body locked tight in a single endless spasm. The zaith'isk was a force in my mind, a hungry searching entity, wanting to feed-

I remembered how I'd used the tadpole to push the minds of other True Souls, and started to draw upon the same mental trick. If I could get the tadpole to feed me power, I could use that connection to follow it back, to lead the zaith'isk to the source of that power and let it drain the tadpole dry... the concentration it took to achieve this was unbelievable-

"Something's wrong!" I dimly heard Shadowheart saying in the background. "He's in agony-!"

"Silence!" the ghustil demanded. "I need all my concentration for this!" I glimpsed her intently adjusting the controls out of the corner of my eye. "Prepare yourself! FInal stage in three... two... one... now!"

The world fell away and I floated in a black void of agony. I was horrified- I could feel myself ebbing away, as the parasite only grew stronger. As if it were evolving-

Hawke! the Guardian's voice broke into my mind. You are on the verge of death! Now will you accept my aid?

I sent back a mental image of both my middle fingers. It probably wasn't lying about me being in severe danger right now, I'd give it that much, but I still-

"That's it, we're almost there!" the ghustil gloated. "The zaith'isk never fails!"

I felt the device's lust for the parasite, and for every single part of me that had ever been touched by its presence. Horror descended upon me as I realized that the zaith'isk was not going to cure me of the parasite, but to consume me- and the tadpole flared in response, as a deeply buried magic - ancient, unfamiliar, rotten - surged forth from it, trying to protect itself.

And now you know the truth. the Guardian said with grim satisfaction. The githyanki never had a cure for the parasite. The zaith'isk is meant to kill any githyanki who submits to it, while simultaneously subjecting both host and parasite to a psionic mind probe to destruction for purposes of gathering intelligence. They only teach their young warriors that this is a cleansing in order to remove their fear of infection when fighting my kind... and to trick infected warriors into willingly delivering themselves to their final decontamination, instead of having to hunt them down. And now, Hawke, I will ask you one final time - will you accept my aid?

I felt the truth of the mind flayer's words - not because I had any trust in my telepathic contact with it, but because it made too damn much sense. if the githyanki had really had a cure for mind flayer infection, they could have sold zaith'isk rides to all the other races victimized by mind flayers for as much wealth, as many allies, as they could possibly need. Ideal logistics to better prosecute their eternal war. And since the githyanki were not stupid, and were willing to use other races as mercenaries when useful, then the fact that they did not do this meant that they did not actually have a cure to sell. And their teaching their own warriors the lie that they did have one would serve precisely the purpose the Guardian laid out - to encourage infected githyanki not to hide their infection from their superiors or flee, but to trustingly submit themselves for decontamination... and be effciently purged before they could threaten the rest of the githyanki war machine.

Just this once! I told it, with the greatest of reluctance. But I'd shoved my own head into this trap, and now I had only one way out.

The Guardian's answer was a sudden flood of power around my mind - not penetrating into it, not violating my thoughts, but shielding my mind from the psionic flensing of the zaith'isk. With another surge of power he contemptuously upset the balance of the delicate mechanisms, and the entire machine shorted out around me and spat sparks as the whole process crashed to a halt.

"What?" Ghustil Stornugoss cried as all of her instruments went dead and the zaith'isk crashed to a halt. "What happened? What did you do?"

"Didn't... do anything." I mumbled weakly as I pulled the apparatus off my head and sat up. "Something went wrong."

"I can see that, you simpleton!" she raged, coming over to kneel slightly down and peer in my eyes intently. "And your parasite?"

"It's dead." I lied, keeping my best poker face up. "I felt it die."

"Then at least that much worked." she said. "But that damned feedback has ruined the apparatus! It will take me hours to repair it - I'll have to study the logs, try to figure out how to compensate for that effect in the future-" She breathed deeply in and out, calming herself down. "But at least I got useful data about these altered parasites, new data." She nodded. "Find quarters for these istik and yourself, warrior." she said to Lae'zel. "I'll want the rest of you back in here as soon as the zaith'isk is ready to resume operation."

We left the infirmary, and as soon as we were in an unoccupied section of hallway Lae'zel grabbed my arm and whispered to me urgently. "Something was wrong! I felt your pain - the zaith'isk was killing you!"

I realized the Guardian had spoken only to me the last time, as opposed to its usual policy of broadcasting to all of us. I tried to figure out how I could possibly explain to Lae'zel, in only a few brief words, that her people had been lying to her the entire time-

"The ghustil must have sabotaged it." Lae'zel cut me off. "Or someone else did. There is a traitor in this base. We must report this to the commanding officer at once."

I knew there had been no sabotage, no traitor. That the zaith'isk had only been working as intended. But Lae'zel's remark also reminded me that I'd had two objectives in mind coming here, and her suggestion was a perfect route to achieving the second one as expeditiously as possible.

"All right. Let's go." I told her, and our group headed towards the heart of the githyanki creche.

---

Author's Note: I had originally intended for a chapter or two more to progress between the Emperor revealing Hawke's paladinhood and Hawke figuring it out himself, but then I remembered the undead encounter happens right there in the mountain pass. So of course he's going to bust out the smite there, and that will tip off his friends. Plus, yes, his powers get to tweak and evolve a bit to be more Faerunian. This is a fanfic, after all.

But hey, at least it helped Shadowheart understand why he went against her re: the Astral Prism. I mean, paladins gotta paladin. Everybody knows that.

Oh, and why didn't I mention Hawke switching to the Sword of Justice earlier? Because I forgot to, so I put it in now.

As for the 'planar wards' - in-game you can't use the fast travel system in combat or in hostile areas, but the entire githyanki creche is a hostile area even when you're just walking in for the first time and even before you've aggro'ed the base. So yet again I ride the USS Make Shit Up to fill in.

 

[2 Hot Crown Subdues the Sinful]

Just this once! I told it, with the greatest of reluctance.

Click to shrink...

Soon you'll be banging squiward in the shadow realm.

 

[DIT_grue]

Spoiler: Suggestions

"Hence our 'Guardian' friend making the approach he did - and with our ability to stay free-willed from the Absolute as his hostages." I agreed. "To proclude the obvious response."

Click to shrink...

preclude

We were fairly high up in the mountains by this time, but rather than being the bleak the terrain was quite beautiful - light forests below the tree line, lining broad dirt trails that wound about and crossed each other as a majestic view of a mountain valley sloped away beneath us to our north. And shortly after breaking camp, before the sun had fully come over the horizon, we saw silouhettes ahead of us on the trail.

Click to shrink...

Delete this word.
silhouettes

"Righteous Smite!" I cried, focusing my will, and I was shocked when instead of the area burst of cleansing magic-dispelling fire that that particular Templar talent produced, my greatsword lit up with white flame instead. I didn't have time to ponder this particular mystery right now, so I simply stepped into both advancing Death Shepherds and unleashed the maneuver that two-handed warriors in Thedas referred to as the Scythe, dashing forward almost ten feet in an eyeblink and tearing through both of them with a series of quick sweeping cuts. Whatever these particular creatures were they had at least some trades in common with the demonic, or Fade spirits, because the vastly increased damage that a Templar smite did to things of the Fade was clearly in play here. One of them shrieked and fell apart in an instant, the other fell back, terribly wounded, only to die to my follow-up attack.

Click to shrink...

I suspect this should be traits?

"I've never before heard of a case of someone achieving paladinhood without consciously understanding what the particular terms of their Oath were." Shadowheart said. "But if it's been purely instinctual for you so far, then you should also be getting an instinctive sense of wrongness if you're about to do something that would betray it. Just- just go along with your instincts, for now, and if you have the opportunity try to consciously analyze the ethical code by which you've been living your life so far and distill it down to its few key elements, do that when you have time. That should be a good guideline to start with." She paused thoughtfully. "Also, you should start meditating daily. I can teach you that."

Click to shrink...

To match with the end of the sentence, I think this should be to try.

"Wait!" Lae'zel said, suddenly stepping off the path to peer more closely at something. "This is one of our trail signs!" she continued eagerly, staring at a nearby rock reading something I couldn't see at all. Whatever the githyanki used for trail markers was certainly subtle indeed. "The creche is nearby! That way!" she pointed down a particular branch of the path, and we eagerly trotted along.

Click to shrink...

A comma between these words would make the intended meaning clearer, I feel.

"Let's get closer." I sighed. It took only a bit of muscle to unstick the mechanism, which had apparently been lying here unattended all winter, and Karlach and I manually cranked the windlass to first bring the cable car across the valley to us and then ride it back to a point near the monastery entrance."

Click to shrink...

Delete the stray quotation mark at the end of this paragraph.

 

[TyricGaias]

Soon you'll be banging squiward in the shadow realm.

Click to shrink...

Eww
edit: To clarify my disgust has to do with The Emperor's personality, not his squidiness. Not my cup of tea but I don't kinkshame.

 

[wellis]

Eww
edit: To clarify my disgust has to do with The Emperor's personality, not his squidiness. Not my cup of tea but I don't kinkshame.

Click to shrink...

With the Emperor, I think I kinkshame there. It's truly sexless. Doesn't even have genitals either.

 

[Mr.Nobody]

And that's why you don't accept random magical devices from the extra planar frog people. It's always nigh constantly going to kill you in some form or fashion.

Never anything nice like summoning puppies or the like.

 

[Yacov]

And that's why you don't accept random magical devices from the extra planar frog people. It's always nigh constantly going to kill you in some form or fashion.

Never anything nice like summoning puppies or the like.

Click to shrink...

Especially former slave frog people. They tend to steal a lot of their tech base from their former masters, who's tech focus was enslaving people.

 

[Quinn Porthos]

With the Emperor, I think I kinkshame there. It's truly sexless. Doesn't even have genitals either.

Click to shrink...

Doesn't need them. It has face tentacles. But yeah. Don't fuck the mindraperflayer. That's icky.

 

[cliffc999]

Our dramatic intention to rush into the heart of the creche and beard the kith'rak in their lair ran into the prosaic reality that Lae'zel had never been to Creche Y'llek before and so didn't actually know her way around. We took a wrong turning and ended up in the training hall instead of the commander's office, where we arrived just in time to see a class of young githyanki - if they'd been human, I'd have said they were teenagers of approximately fourteen to sixteen years - all standing around the edge of the exercise floor watching two more of their number fight a training duel with daggers as a bearded, scarred instructor stood nearby as referee.

"Why aren't they wearing armor?" I asked Lae'zel curiously. One of the two combatants was clearly more skilled and aggressive than the other, who was concentrating frantically on an all-out defense and very likely to lose at the rate he-

The victor of the duel brushed aside his opponent's last desperate attempt at a parry and closed in for the winning thrust... and most of our jaws dropped when he did not pause the blow at the last second, as would be normal practice in weapons training, but unhesitatingly sank his blade into his opponent's chest right up the hilt. It was a textbook killing strike, a thrust into the opponent's solar plexus angled sharply upwards to bring the short blade directly underneath the tip of the sternum and into the heart from below. The complete lack of reaction from the instructor, or from most of the dead githyanki's classmates, told me that this was not a case of someone turning a sparring match into a murder but had instead been the intended result all along.

"The sa'varsh will order an armorless death-duel when it is intended that a weakling be culled from the class quickly." Lae'zel said softly. "I have been in two such matches myself."

"The best student matched against the worst, for a foregone conclusion?" I said tonelessly. "Why doesn't the instructor just do it himself?"

"The sa'varsh has already learned the lesson." Lae'zel said matter-of-factly.

"Which one were you?" Shadowheart asked frostily. "The one expected to win, or the one expected to die?"

"Both." Lae'zel surprised us.

"Istik!" the instructor called out to us harshly. "If you're going to stand and gawk, then make yourself useful and drag out this carrion off the floor so I don't have to waste the time of any of my students doing it! Just toss it over there in the corner for later."

My hand twitched with a temptation to ask the sa'varsh if he really wanted to show his class what a death-duel looked like, but I forced it down and wordlessly went to pick up the dead boy and bear him away. Behind me I could dimly hear the instructor go back into a brutal harangue about how the enemy deserved no mercy, that hesitation was death, et cetera, et cetera. I looked at the dead boy I was carrying - the sa'varsh had proven that githyanki could grow beards, if they wanted, but this boy wasn't even clean-shaven. He'd barely begun to sprout a single hair on his chin...

"This is common, among githyanki. Deliberately killing the weakest ones in a class to both harden and encourage the others." I questioned Lae'zel as I laid the dead boy down. A tir'su disk fell out of his pocket as I did that, and I decided that I'd rather take it myself then let any of the classmates who'd cheered his death loot it.

"Routine, yes." Lae'zel said. "We are the multiverse's first line of defense against the Grand Design, the ongoing illithid plot to enslave all sapient life everywhere. Weakness is death, for us and uncounted others."

"Maker help me, even the qunari didn't take it this far." I swore viciously. "They culled the weakest from their warriors, yes, but they at least them live to be reassigned to other duties! An army still needs food, clothing - everything that's made, or grown - it's why a city under siege still shelters and feeds refugees and farmers in addition to soldiers! After the war is won you still need the people who work, and not just the people who fight, or else you've won only starvation!"

"I-" Lae'zel cut herself off. "Am no kith'rak, or even sergeant. Matters of large-scale logistics were not within my training. I- cannot judge the accuracy of your statement."

"We need to talk." I told the group, as we found an unoccupied room to step into. "Because my plan-" I sighed. "My plan took into account a certain measure of githyanki ruthlessness, and what I thought was a generous measure at that, but I am beginning to realize I might have significantly underestimated it." I glared intently at Lae'zel. "One shout from you can bring half the guards in this base down on us, and if you do that before I've finished talking you might very well ruin everything. Do I have your word to hear me out first?"

"I am no fool. You are proposing to abandon our deal." Lae'zel said hotly. "But you are no fool either, and if you thought you did not have a reason that would convince me you would simply have had one of the group strike me from behind as unhesitatingly as you had me assassinate that goblin when we were rescuing the druid." She breathed deeply. "And you have already proven several times that you can often see farther ahead than I. Very well, make your case."

"There was no sabotage of the zaith'isk - which I would have told you if I'd had time." I opened. "According to the Guardian, at least." I explained everything he told me about the zaith'isk.

"Then why didn't the ghustil react when you said your parasite was dead, when she knew that wasn't supposed to happen?" Shadowheart inquired as she turned a wary eye to the door.

"Because she was testing for whether or not I'd figured out that we were being lied to." I said. "If we had, she'd have had nothing for it but to call the guards - and it's much easier for her to simply go along with the pretense and have us stay here all unsuspecting while she plans her next move." I said. "The point is, while I accepted its aid getting me free of the zaith'isk because I realized the damn device was going to kill me, and I could see the logic behind its words, that still didn't mean I necessarily believed him. I don't need Lae'zel to remind me that taking a mind flayer's word for anything is idiotic."

"But the ruthlessness you saw in the training hall has made you more willing to believe the ghaik's version of events." Lae'zel said. "Why? That does not in any way prove deception!"

"No, but it does prove that githyanki policy considers even their own childrens' lives as expendable commodities." I pointed out. "Which certainly lends more weight to the Guardian's interpretation. And Lae'zel, I remind you that our compromise for me to hand over the artifact willingly required you to be able to guarantee that we wouldn't simply be killed off after they no longer needed us. Can you still guarantee that?"

"I-but you cannot know this betrayal will happen!" Lae'zel pleaded desperately.

"I can suspect, but you're right, at present we can't know." I said. "And there's still a possible chance for us to get cured - even if the zaith'isk is a lie, Vlaakith is a goddess. And if we hand the artifact back, we're going to do her a very large favor. Halsin said that powerful enough magic could cure even our special tadpoles, it's just that he doesn't have magic powerful enough. But what's more powerful than a divine miracle?"

"So we take the artifact and hand it over anyway?" Wyll said. "Then what do you need to ask us?"

"If you're willing to bet your lives on it." I said. "Because if we try to hand it over to Vlaakith herself and they do decide to pay us off with a knife, then we are not getting out of that alive. It would take a divine miracle just for us to hope to escape." I sighed. "The ghustil has almost certainly told the gate guards we're not allowed to leave, but if we can fight our way past that one squad and just get outside the door then we can use the travelstones to warp safely away. But if we go to the commander and commit to the plan of trying to trade the artifact to Vlaakith for a miracle cure, then that's all or nothing. She either agrees to cure us or it's certain death when they take the artifact from us anyway." I nodded to them. "And there's only one artifact to protect us, so we can't even split the party and let the ones who want to leave go their own way. But we can still vote, as a team. Majority rules, whether it's go or stay. If there's a tie-" I shrugged. "Flip a coin?"

"Go." Gale said immediately, his face pale with sweat. "I- I can't risk it, I'm sorry. If I get killed here- we should go."

"Stay, of course." Lae'zel immediately followed.

"Shit." Karlach swore. "What do you think we should do, boss?"

"That's why I'm voting last." I said. "So my opinion doesn't influence anyone else's."

"Then... ah, fuck it. Stay, I guess." Karlach shrugged.

"Go." Wyll said. "Moonrise Towers might be as suicidal odds as here, but at least on that route we need only trust ourselves - not the most ruthless god-queen of a very ruthless race."

"Stay." Shadowheart shocked us all. "Because even if he hasn't said, I already know how Hawke is going to vote." She turned to me with a rueful smile. "And we promised we'd do it together."

"We certainly did." I sighed. "And she's right, I was also going to choose 'Stay'."

"Oh Mystra save us, I really hope this works." Gale moaned nauseously. I was wondering at his sudden fright now, given that I'd already seen his courage in several fights, but- well, he was a scholar, not a soldier, and this sort of desperate leaping into the jaws of death and hoping we could dodge the teeth we were about to be doing would scare even most soldiers.

What are you doing?!? the Guardian's voice suddenly roared in our heads, as panicked as it was enraged.

Whether this works or not, we'll be getting rid of you. I thought back at it icily.

You are mad! You are utterly mad! I will- it broke off.

Yes, what exactly are you going to do? I challenged it. We're standing in the middle of an entire creche full of heavily armed githyanki, who will all unhesitatingly murder you the instant they even suspect you're here. And even if you withdraw the artifact's protection, the Absolute taking us over simply guarantees those same githyanki will slaughter us. That's just death, and we've already decided we're willing to face it as an alternative to keeping these damned tadpoles in our brains. You should never have let us walk in here. Because once we did, there went all your last options.

Vlaakith will betray you. the Guardian insisted. She lies as easily as you breathe. She has been lying for her entire existence.

"Blasphemy!" Lae'zel shouted furiously.

"Indoor voice!" Shadowheart hissed at her frantically.

"Hawke! Let us delay no longer! Every second this insolent lying ghaik continues to bedevil us is an eternity too long!" Lae'zel insisted.

If you want to run, you aren't bound by the majority vote. I thought at the Guardian. That would re-enslave you to the Absolute, but I hope to have the githyanki god-queen sending an army to help kill it soon. It's not much of a chance of survival for you, but it's still greater than the zero you'll have staying here. Maybe you should take it.

Impressive. the Guardian thought back, strangely calm. Cunning, ruthless, exquisitely logical - you used your emotional distractions to divert me from perceiving your true scheme until after I was no longer in any position to interfere with it. Well done, Hawke. You remind me... of me. it finished knowingly.

"Ignore him." Shadowheart urged me. "And let's get this over with."

Go. the Guardian said quietly. See what happens. By day's end you will either all be corpses or you will have needed me to save your lives yet another time. And although I obviously would have preferred a different course of events than this, one remaining chance is still better than none. But now I shall withdraw for a time. Even your limited intellects can likely figure out the reason why.

And with a sense of finality, the Guardian's presence in our minds vanished.

The arcane art of asking a passing githyanki for directions had us pointed down the proper hallway to the commander's office, but also produced the warning that a Ch'r'ai - an agent of Queen Vlaakith's Inquisition and acting on her authority - was also present at the creche, having been sent to take charge of the search for the artifact, and that it would really be a good idea to lay low until he was gone if at all possible.

"Welcome news," Lae'zel said as we walked along, "even if I never in my life thought I would ever say such a thing about the prospect of confronting an inquisitor. A kith'rak would likely not have the seniority to even try contacting Tu'narath directly."

"Here we are." I said as we drew up on the door. As it was already ajar, we simply opened it and went in.

A squad of githyanki warriors were standing at rigid attention as a female githyanki in armor resembling Lae'zel's bowed before a bald male githyanki dressed in elaborate silver-plated armor.

"-the latest batch of cultists know nothing of the Astral Prism." she was saying insistently. "They were just trying to find Moonrise. They all head there - we have drafted plans to assault the tower! We are ready to fight, ch'r'ai! We will sift the tower's ashes for the missing artifact, if you would give us the word!"

"Quiet." the inquisitor said with a soft, catlike menace. "Stop wasting time with military diversions and find the Astral Prism, Therezzyn. My patience falters."

"Yes, ch'r'ai." she said, coming to an even more rigid attention than her soldiers, before turning to the other githyanki in the room. "You heard him! Go! Redouble your efforts!" I saw her flush with shame as not a single one of them moved an inch.

"Do as she says." the inquisitor said quietly. "She remains your kith'rak... for now." The soldiers broke into a scramble for the door and we stepped aside to let them out. The inquisitor turned away from the creche's commander contemptuously and headed towards a large mirror-like device on the far wall-

"Were you looking for this?" I said loudly, holding up the Astral Prism on my palm.

"Who dares-?" the inquisitor spat as they both swiveled to face me, before his eyes went wide at seeing what I held. "The Astral Prism! You have found it!"

"Ch'r'ai." Lae'zel said, stepping forward and bowing. "I am Lae'zel, warrior of creche K'llir, and these are istik I have... contracted with. We have heard of your mission here, and we bring you it's fulfillment."

"So you have." he murmured as he drew near. "Oh, so you have." He turned to the kith'rak. "How fortunate some of us are, to have the solutions to their problems just walk in the door on their own." He turned back to me. "Hand it over. Now." he demanded.

I unhesitatingly placed it in his outhrust hand... and it quite predictably flared with power and leaped back into mine. "That's the problem." I explained to him. "It's bonded to me somehow. I'll need to speak to your superior about this... and several other critical matters. Such as the mind flayer invasion Faerun is currently suffering."

"Hrm." the inquisitor narrowed his eyes suspiciously, and I felt his magic briefly brush against the artifact and my mind before withdrawing. "Lae'zel said she was contracted to you, not that you were in her service. Don't think to use this to hold out for too much of a reward, mercenary."

"I am entirely willing to tell you and your liege everything that has happened, and to surrender this artifact to her custody as soon as I can. Lae'zel has already translated the most elementary of the tir'su script on the Prism - we know who it belongs to."

"Very well." the inquisitor decided swiftly. "Follow me." He turned to the kith'rak. "Seal the gateway behind us after we pass through, and do not re-open it under any circumstances without my or my deputy's specific authorization."

"As you command, ch'r'ai." she bowed to him, and then hurried over to the mirror-device on the far wall. She withdrew something from her pouch and fitted it to a socket on the device's frame, and the mirror suddenly glowed golden with magic.

"Enter the portal." the inquisitor ordered us, and we did so. The other side of the portal brought us out onto an elaborate stone walkway over a deep chasm.

"The monastery's treasure chamber, accessible only to their highest priests and guarded by their clever little magics." the inquisitor said matter-of-factly as he led us down the walkway towards the large door at its far end. "Y'llek forces claimed the treasure, of course - gold, some amusing trinkets, but little else - but had no further use for the chamber itself until I arrived and appropriated it for my secure quarters and working spaces."

He nodded to the guards standing outside his chamber and they pulled open the doors for us. Entering within showed us some empty shelves and looted chests still carelessly stuffed into the corners, his bed and personal effects set up in one corner, and a desk and a map table in the other. A large device made of astral steel, like a metal starburst low to the floor and with a glowing lens floating in the center, lay in the exact center of the chamber.

The inquisitor stood at the peak of the starburst raised one hand, which flared briefly with power. The glowing lens shone brightly in turn, and suddenly a flare of white-gold power erupted up from its heart and formed into the light-image of a githyanki woman, projected over ten feet tall, staring imperiously down at us from a white face with onyx eyes surmounted by an elaborate crown-

"Vlaakith gha'g shkath zai!" the inquisitor intoned hieratically, kneeling down and bowing his head.

"My queen!" Lae'zel gasped in awe. "Shkath zai!" she chanted, immediately assuming the same position.

"You are permitted to look upon me." the image of Vlaakith orated imperiously, her amplified voice echoing back from all the corners of the room. "You are invited to kneel."

The absolute last thing I was going to do was be needlessly cheeky with any strange royalty, let alone the god-queen of this arrogant, proud, and ruthless a race - and especially not when I needed her help. I came down immediately on one knee, in a formal genuflection worthy of Empress Celene's court in Val Royeaux, and all my friends behind me assumed similar poses.

Vlaakith's image loomed forward, peering closely down at Lae'zel's quivering expression. "These attendants you keep... you have taught them well. My child. My Lae'zel." she said with faint kindness and a brief, toothy smile.

"You know me, Deathless Queen?" Lae'zel blurted.

"Urlon of K'liir speaks most highly. As did Al'chaia before him." Vlaakith informed her proudly as she drew herself upright again. My eyes narrowed in suspicion, and I kept my face aimed downwards at the floor so Vlaakith wouldn't see. Vlaakith's power as a goddess - or even just githyanki psionics - could have given her Lae'zel's name from her surface thoughts, or the inquisitor could have sent that name to Vlaakith through whatever mental message he'd channeled through this communications device to request his queen's attention in the first place. And Vlaakith could reasonably be expected to know the names of her creche commanders, even from memory. But for her to have already reviewed Lae'zel's service record specifically, she would have had to have known Lae'zel was a factor in these matters before her personal agent had reported our finding the artifact today-

Vlaakith's gaze shifted to the rest of us. "I can sense what afflicts you all. You seek purity. I may yet grant it." I went taut with eagerness at hearing Vlaakith confirm that she could cure us-

She turned the weight of her gaze to me. "Istik. You bear that which is ours. But are you friend, or are you thief?"

"I come as a supplicant." I admitted matter-of-frankly. "We did not steal your treasure, but we wish to return it - after we can do so without immediately forfeiting our mind to the Absolute through our parasites." I looked up at her, and made the most respectful request I had ever made in my life. "If you grant us your purity, then we are freed of any need to remain near this." I held up the Astral Prism for her to view. "And at this juncture, you are our only hope."

"Well spoken, and well reasoned." Vlaakith nodded. "Your will to survive is worthy of any child of Gith. But I cannot accept my sacred artifact from your hands at this juncture, because it is corrupted!" she thundered. "And you will cleanse it for me."

My eyes opened wide as I suddenly realized exactly how someone had been following us even into the heart of the githyanki creche.

"There is someone inside." Vlaakith confirmed. "Their mind is warped - broken - a blight." she spat contemptuously. "They are an agent of the Grand Design. Sent to sabotage the Astral Prism - our last line of defense against the return of the Illithid Empire of old. As long as they live, the Prism is compromised. Kill them!" she demanded.

"Your Majesty, nothing would give me greater pleasure." I said to her with the utmost sincerity.

"Use the planecaster's power to send them into the artifact. Vlaakith ordered the inquisitor. "Be swift and merciless to that which you find within, no matter what deception it tries to beguile you with, no matter what guise it assumes to deceive your gaze. Cut out its lying tongue, and then claim its head!" she ordered us. "Do this, and I will cleanse you and your allies. And for Lae'zel - ascension."

"Ascension!" Lae'zel whispered to herself in religious awe. "An honor gained, a burden borne..."

"They are not to leave until is done." Vlaakith ordered the inquisitor.

"As you command, my queen." he acknowledged with a bow of his head.

"Ch'mar, zal'a Vlaakith." Lae'zel said proudly, also bowing. "We will not waste a second."

Vlaakith nodded back to us in silent acknowledgement, and her image faded and withdrew.

"Place the Prism there." the inquisitor instructed me, pointing at a particular socket. "I shall adjust the mechanism."

I knelt and placed the Astral Prism precisely where he'd pointed, and he laid his hand adjacent to it on the planecaster and concentrated. "There. Now step back."

An energy field burst forth from the planecaster in a brilliant cone, pointed upwards, and levitated the Astral Prism within it. The symbols on the polygon all glowed red, then white-hot. The seams of its sides began to soften, to shift, and a terrible force began to pull the Prism apart, to reveal a glimpse of a shining something, glaring so bright- We blinked, and when our eyes opened again the Prism was no longer visible, just a large glowing column of pulsating light at the center of the planecaster, standing taller than a man.

"The portal is open! Go now!" the inquisitor demanded, and I led us into the light.

We arrived on a small rocky island drifting through a starry void. I nodded to myself - I had seen this place before, in the dream where I'd first met the 'Guardian'. So he had been hiding inside some pocket dimensional realm, contained within the Astral Prism.

"Right. Cut the mind flayer's head off, get these tadpoles out of our heads." Karlach said eagerly. "Now where's he hiding-?"

"I had warned you that Vlaakith lied as easily as a mortal breathes, but even I had anticipated that she would have needed to put some actual effort into deceiving you." the Guardian's voice echoed out of the empty air around us. "Disappointing."

"I don't trust her." I admitted frankly, and Lae'zel spun to me with a furious glare. "I just mistrust her far less than I mistrust you."

"There were several obvious self-contradictions just in the speech she gave you. Surely you spotted at least one?" the Guardian asked us condescendingly.

"Well, I had been wondering how she knew so much about Lae'zel's records when she'd have had no reason to look them up before today." I admitted. "But what were the-" I blinked. "Oh, crap."

"So eagerly close to your hoped-for cure that you let yourself overlook the obvious." the Guardian replied. "Why are you being sent in here, instead of her most loyal inquisitor and his elite operatives? People she should logically trust to have a chance to touch the innermost workings of her most valued property far more than a common warrior of the lowest rank she has only met today and five strange istik? People far more experienced at killing a powerful, experienced illithid than you would be? And even if she feels that you must be a part of the solution due to whatever bond you seem to have with this artifact, why is the inquisitor and his forces not at least accompanying you?"

"He's got a point there." Shadowheart said grudgingly. "As much as I desperately didn't want to admit it."

"Lies! All lies!" Lae'zel shouted adamantly. "Vlaakith ordered us to ignore all its deceptions and claim its head! Why are we standing here?"

"Well for one thing, we don't know where he is." Wyll pointed out simply. "Do you have any mind flayer tracking tricks you could use right now?"

Lae'zel growled wordlessly, but acknowledged Wyll's point - it's not like we could leap immediately to the killing him part if we hadn't found him yet. I motioned the group to follow me and we started walking across the surface of the floating rock, looking carefully around. The weird gravity in this dimension meant that 'down' was always towards the center of this floating meteor, even though we were in space and its diameter was so low we could circumnavigate it in only several minutes-

"You've got until we've finished searching the space to finish talking." I told the Guardian.

"She wishes me slain, without exposing her most loyal to me." the Guardian stated. "Not because she fears my corrupting them, or lying to them, but because she fears me telling the truth to them. Vlaakith has been hiding a secret from all her people, just as every Vlaakith before her has all the way back to the original Undying Queen, for all the history of the githyanki. And for her to even suspect that you may have been told it has already signed your death warrants. Look." he finished, and a viewing portal opened up in the empty air off to our left. Visible through it was a view of the underground chamber we'd just left - and of the inquisitor deploying his elite guards in an ambush formation around the planecaster and the prism, set to catch us in a crossfire the instant we stepped out. "You see? He already has his orders from his queen - as soon as you leave the prism, you are to die."

"Any idiot with a Silent Image spell could do that one." Gale said, his face still pale and shaken.

"Keep talking." I said, as we kept searching.

"Will you actually listen this time?" the Guardian said. "Or should I simply prepare my soul for eternity's journey, now that your most elaborate suicide attempt is finally at its climax? Choose one or the other, but choose quickly! Vlaakith's assassins will not wait for long!"

I closed my eyes, thinking as furiously as I could. If there was even a credible chance Vlaakith's offer was sincere, then we had to find and finish off the Guardian now. But if it was a lie from the beginning, then killing the Guardian would doom us all. A narrow passage with no brother, no friend - either start trusting the sonofabitch, or don't, but no way to-

Wait. This was a false dichotomy, one of the simplest of the cons that Varric had spent so much time teaching me how to be on guard against. Let the mark get himself in over his head. Offer him a simple either-or choice between doom and escape. Don't let him have time to explore alternatives. The mark flinches away from the obvious doom and chooses the other path, and that means he's started to trust you a little bit. And you just keep exploiting that momentum once you've started it, and before you know it you could sell somebody 'wandering hills from the Anderfels' as supposedly being the newest gourmet delicacy out of Orlais... and get them to pay you in advance.

"Hold." I told the group. "The Guardian is trying to get us to believe that Vlaakith is lying, and that this proves he isn't. Vlaakith is saying the same thing, only in reverse. But we don't actually have to take either of their words for it." I said. "We simply step back outside the Prism and tell the inquisitor that we couldn't find the bastard, he's hiding from us too well, and could he please lend us some of his more experienced illithid trackers... which actually has the benefit of being the truth, so he can't even say that we're lying!" I shrugged. "He'll either help us, or try to kill us. And then either way we'll know for sure."

"And the only thing more devastating than an ambush is thinking that you're going to ambush the enemy, but them being forewarned and counter-ambushing you at your most confident." Gale turned to me, his expression holding hope and not despair for the first time in almost an hour. "Just like you proved before in Moonhaven."

"Show us that image again." I told the Guardian. "Not that we still believe you, but if you are the one telling the truth for once then I want to know exactly how they're stacking up on our exit point."

The viewing portal opened again, and I carefully studied it. Right... the inquisitor standing where he's the first thing we see as we leave, two warriors visible to right and left flank, and two... hmm, those are spellcasters, and they're behind those support pillars... ah. The inquisitor starts talking to us when we step out, giving the spellcasters time to finish casting and striking us from both sides with crowd control spells, then the three with swords up front go to close-quarters against us after our mobility is crippled and we're stunned and cut us to pieces as their arcane friends barrage us from the backline. Competent - and nasty, if those operatives are as experienced as I think they are - but if you know what's coming-

I ran everybody through the tactical plan I'd just come up with in response to what I've seen. I even threw in an element of redundancy in case- well, in case we lost someone in the first round.

"You have wasted your efforts. Vlaakith's truth will enlighten you, and this lying ghaik will die." Lae'zel insisted.

"I really, really hope so." I agreed with her. "You honestly think I want him to be the right one?"

"No." Lae'zel agreed with a flash of humor, and we stepped back through the portal into the material world again.

"Lae'zel." the inquisitor greeted her as soon as we materialized. "You are named H'sharlak. Bend your head, for my blade is ready."

"Ch'r'ai, please!" Lae'zel begged, her eyes going wide with terror. "There must be-"

Damn, damn, damn! The Guardian's gloating over this was going to be insufferable.

Lae'zel fell to her knees in supplication, her sword falling to the ground and rolling away, and the inquisitor stared down at her coldly. His sword began to leave the scabbard- and then he suddenly looked up and realized that we were not either flinching away or rushing to Lae'zel's defense as could be expected, but had instead begun to disperse in a loose wedge formation. I made eye contact with him and nodded as the realization dawned- his attempt to make us focus on him while his hidden ambushers came in from the sides had failed.

"NOW!" he cried desperately, and the killing started.

Wyll and Gale had both prepared counter-spells and were in position to nullify the ambushing mages even as they stepped out and unleashed their spells - spells that fizzled before they even started. Shadowheart cast her most powerful spell and summoned a dark, flowing ring of Spirit Guardians, their necrotic energies wounding and entangling all nearby enemies - meaning not only the inquisitor, but also his two flanking swordsmen as they came rushing in on their commander's signal. And with four out of five enemies taken at least partially if not fully out of the action economy in the surprise round, that left me and Karlach free to kill.

With bounding leaps both of us ignored the obvious targets in front of us and swiftly charged to crush one of the githyanki mages in each corner, removing the bulk of the inquisitor's firepower in the first round. Gale fell back out of melee range as Wyll leapt forward to engage the inquisitor, going on all-out defense with his rapier to parry the man's silver sword. Shadowheart raised her shield and mace likewise, not even attempting to strike a blow but simply parrying the attacks of the githyanki warriors as she slowly withdrew, letting her Spirit Guardians do the work of harrying and weakening the enemy further.

"Stay on them!" the Inquisitor cried desperately, as he spun about to face both me and Karlach. He concentrated on an arcane spell, hoping to at least delay our rush - and his eyes widened in panic as I shut that attempt down with a Cleanse of my own. Karlach never broke step, hitting him with a charge maneuver that knocked him reeling, and then began to duel him in earnest as he started already stunned, shocked, wounded, and at a disadvantage. Of the last two remaining githyanki, one died to my greatsword across his shoulders and the other to Wyll's rapier through the back of his lungs, as we unchivalrously each ignored the one of each who'd turned to face us to take the killing blow on the other one. By the time we were done with that, Shadowheart had finished helping double-team the inquisitor. All the githyanki in this chamber save one were stone dead.

Lae'zel was still kneeling helplessly on the ground, having never moved a single muscle throughout the entire fight.

"Lae'zel." Shadowheart said compassionately to the kneeling githyanki as she wept quietly. "You have to get up."

"H'sharlak." she moaned. "Outcast! Anathema! Why-" Lae'zel sobbed. "I followed the creeds, I kept her faith-"

"You were betrayed." I said to her softly.

"Yes, I was!" she shrieked back up at me. "By you! If we had just done as we were commanded-" her hand scrabbled near her sheath for her missing sword.

"We would still have died!" I shouted down at her. "He didn't even ask you if the damned mind flayer was dead before he pronounced sentence on you! You weren't condemned for failing, you were condemned for just being there!" I swore. "Just as a certain abominable someone predicted, damn them to the bottommost hell."

"The ch'r'ai could have- he could sense the Prism was still corrupted-" Lae'zel desperately protested.

"Vlaakith could have sensed that." I agreed. "But she wasn't here when we came back out, just the inquisitor. And he'd already had the damned thing in his hand when I tried to give it to him the first time, however briefly, but he never said a word!" I tried to reach her. "Everything I just said, you saw with your own two eyes. There's no ghaik deception there, no illusion." I sighed. "No matter what people say."

"But-" Lae'zel said. "My life... it was never mine to give. It was hers. To just be... cast away...?" She sniffled, her eyes clouded with tears. "This... this must be a test, a trial..."

"This is going to be your tomb if you stay here much longer." Shadowheart said. "I'm sorry, Lae'zel. I can't imagine-" She shook her head. "No, I can imagine it. Just barely, but I can. And the very idea horrifies me. What you are going through-" Her lip firmed with scorn. "She was not worthy of you. She never was."

"But without my goddess... my home... my people..." Lae'zel whispered. "What do I do?"

"You come with us." I told her. "Because even with all you've lost, you still have your comrades. And we still have a mission." I tapped the side of my head meaningfully. "There won't be any githyanki help now, to come and stop the Absolute. And that means we still have to, or else the ghaik win."

"Yes." Lae'zel said, clutching at my hand like a life-line. "The mission." She gulped, trying to gather the shreds of her resolve. "Even if all others are lost... so long as one child of Gith stands, the Grand Design will still fear us... they must..."

"That's the spirit." Gale encouraged her as she rose unsteadily to her feet. "Here, you dropped your sword."

"And here I thought we'd gotten screwed over by fiends." Karlach said to Wyll, to receive his enthusiastic nod back in return.

Touching. Truly touching. the Guardian's voice sounded mockingly in our heads, along with what I swore was a sarcastic slow clapping. Now, if you could possibly spare a bit of your attention as to how I am going to help you get out of here? It paused meaningfully. Along with, of course, a negotiation as to what you might do for me in return-

"Actually, I was thinking of finding a way out of here on our own." I replied.

Of course you were. the Guardian said. All you need to do is go right back up that hallway and kill your way through every single githyanki in Creche Y'llek, starting from the position of being on the other side of a magical portal that the kith'rak in charge of this creche controls and when all of your possible escape routes lead directly through her office. It snorted in negation. You'd have better odds of arm wrestling an elder brain.

"I'm certainly up for not owing our tentacled stalker any more favors, but even with the inquisitor's orders to not disturb him until he contacts her again eventually the kith'rak is going to have to come down here to find out why he's not answering calls." Wyll said. "And I don't have the sort of magic that can teleport our entire group out of here, and neither does Gale or Shadowheart."

"And neither does the Guardian, or else he'd have used it to involuntarily shunt us outside of the base before he ever let us take him face to... not quite a face... with Vlaakith herself." I analyzed.

In the interests of not waiting an hour for you to slowly and laboriously work it out for yourselves, I will just tell that I know far more about how to circumvent the planar warding that the githyanki use to shield their bases than you do. And once I disable it, you can simply use the travelstones. I heard it snort. Don't think to try and play chicken with me and get that assistance for free by staging a sit-down strike until the githyanki are about to charge in here. I have an option to exercise before that happens - one that works out adequately for me, even if it might or might not require me to jettison some dead weight that I haven't entirely decided to give up on yet. We 'heard' it chuckle. Of course, maybe I'm bluffing. You know how to find out for certain.

"Or I could just look for the secret passage leading out of here." I said.

"That would be wonderful." Shadowheart agreed. "So why are you so certain there is one?"

"Those records we found upstairs, talking about the 'most holy artifact' that this pilgrimage site was built around." I said. "It wasn't anywhere we searched upstairs. The inquisitor boasted about the treasures they took from here, but never mentioned any unique artifact - just gold and suchlike. And this was the most securely defended treasure room in the entire complex, and it's certainly not still in here." I shrugged. "Which means there's very likely a hidden section of the treasure level that the githyanki never found."

"How do you make it all sound so simple?" Karlach looked at me.

"Practice." I answered her. "Come on, let's start searching."

The simple trick of thumping on the walls didn't work if the builders of a place were smart enough to use a thick enough wall section to put their secret door in, but a secret door needed a mechanism and an extremely experienced githyanki internal security agent had lived in this room for weeks and never seen anything - and he was presumably the type to search a strange room very carefully for traps before he slept in it. Therefore, the lever was probably something in plain sight that he'd looked straight at and yet still overlooked due to its obviousness. A 'Purloined Letter', as Varric had put it. So I made sure to pay particular attention to that pair of ornamental statues off in that dead-end alcove-

"Lathander greets the rising sun." I muttered, reading the inscription on one of the statues. "You said this was a temple to the god of the dawn, right?"

"Yes. And this one says 'Lathander bids the setting sun farewell'." Wyll read the inscription on the statue facing the one I'd just read from across the alcove. "A matched set."

"Wait." Shadowheart said suspiciously. "A religious inscription in a temple of Lathander mentioned a setting sun? That doesn't fit at all." She knelt to peer more carefully at the statue, narrowing her eyes. "Hang on... there's a small gap at the bottom of the base. It goes all the way around..." she carefully traced it. "Why isn't this built flush to the floor?"

I reached out and grasped the outthrust arm of the statue, and then heaved with all my might - and the statue moved. "Because it's built on a rotating plinth." I nodded. "So we turn this one till it's facing west, and that one till it's facing east."

And sure enough, as soon as the second statue clicked into position the entire facing wall of the 'dead end' alcove began to smoothly slide up into the ceiling, revealing a broad staircase leading down to a pair of golden doors. A subliminal sense of pout coming from within the Astral Prism was the Guardian's only response.

"Finally." I sighed in satisfaction. "We're not home free yet, but that's the first thing that's gone right today."

---

Author's Note: I thought Lae'zel did not have nearly enough reaction to finding out her entire life was a lie in the game, so I got to change that.

And yes, now you see the line of reasoning that led Hawke into the githyanki base in the first place, and the backup line of reasoning that kept him in it after the zaith'isk turned out to be a lie. Such a pity it didn't work but hey, that's not his fault - that's Vlaakith's.

As for why Gale was freaking out, it's because risking death is one thing but being told 'this is basically suicide if we don't get realllly lucky, but we have no other option' is another thing entirely when you've got a death-triggered nuclear bomb in your chest and you haven't told your friends about it yet.

 

[2 Hot Crown Subdues the Sinful]

"How do you make it all sound so simple?" Karlach looked at me.

"Practice."

Click to shrink...

The party experiencing the rizz of a legendary adventurer.

Hawke just styling on everyone, and their tiny brains.

 

[Prince Chrom]

The party experiencing the rizz of a legendary adventurer.

Hawke just styling on everyone, and their tiny brains.

Click to shrink...

Hawke does have the advantage of experience. He's the only one with a good Int score who has been an adventurer before I believe. I don't Gale has, and the rest of the group are all either Wis based or not mental focused at all.

 

[Matrix Dragon]

Ah, poor Lae'zel. The moment EVERYTHING changes for her, and there's nothing she can do about it.

 

[Yacov]

"But without my goddess... my home... my people..." Lae'zel whispered. "What do I do?"

Click to shrink...

Even worse than what Hawke went through after getting zapped here. At least Hawke chose to sacrifice himself for his world. Lae'zel just got sacrificed by hers.

"That would be wonderful." Shadowheart agreed. "So why are you so certain there is one?"

"Those records we found upstairs, talking about the 'most holy artifact' that this pilgrimage site was built around." I said. "It wasn't anywhere we searched upstairs. The inquisitor boasted about the treasures they took from here, but never mentioned any unique artifact - just gold and suchlike. And this was the most securely defended treasure room in the entire complex, and it's certainly not still in here." I shrugged. "Which means there's very likely a hidden section of the treasure level that the githyanki never found."

"How do you make it all sound so simple?" Karlach looked at me.

"Practice." I answered her. "Come on, let's start searching."

Click to shrink...

My Hawke utilizes the Doom method of uncovering secrets. Rubbing his face against every surface while mashing the Interact button.

As for why Gale was freaking out, it's because risking death is one thing but being told 'this is basically suicide if we don't get realllly lucky, but we have no other option' is another thing entirely when you've got a death-triggered nuclear bomb in your chest and you haven't told your friends about it yet.

Click to shrink...

Gale somehow keeping his party-relevant secret from Hawke the longest out of the whole party. And it is the biggest one.

 

[Mr.Nobody]

Almost like dealing with a Justice possessed Anders again.

Except the time bomb is a bit more literal here than Vengeance coming out.

 

[cliffc999]

Hawke does have the advantage of experience. He's the only one with a good Int score who has been an adventurer before I believe. I don't Gale has, and the rest of the group are all either Wis based or not mental focused at all.

Click to shrink...

Hey, give credit to Shadowheart. She's the one who figured out that the setting sun statue had to be part of something particular in here, because the normal liturgy of Lathander the Morninglord mentions the setting sun as little as possible, and for about the same reason that the liturgy of Shar doesn't spend any time talking about about how awesome moonlight is.

Then again she is the one in the party with the highest Religion proficiency check, for obvious reasons.

 

[TheChairIsAgainstTheWall]

Then again she is the one in the party with the highest Religion proficiency check, for obvious reasons.

Click to shrink...

Peak 5e is the superstitious barbarian rolling better on Religion than the literal Cleric of the religion in question.

 

[Kylia Quilor]

And yes, now you see the line of reasoning that led Hawke into the githyanki base in the first place, and the backup line of reasoning that kept him in it after the zaith'isk turned out to be a lie. Such a pity it didn't work but hey, that's not his fault - that's Vlaakith's.

Click to shrink...

Christ is everyone with power in BG3 quite so goddamn pointlessly prickish? This is Wildbow level shortsighted character writing

(not targeting you, just Larian for writing everyone this way)

 

[2 Hot Crown Subdues the Sinful]

 

[Velk]

Click to shrink...

Wrong thread?

 

[2 Hot Crown Subdues the Sinful]

Wrong thread?

Click to shrink...

Shadowheart = Shart

 

[cliffc999]

Christ is everyone with power in BG3 quite so goddamn pointlessly prickish? This is Wildbow level shortsighted character writing

(not targeting you, just Larian for writing everyone this way)

Click to shrink...

No, no, Vlaakith had an entirely rational reason for doing that in the game, it just hasn't been revealed yet.

 

[cliffc999]

As soon as we passed the double doors at the bottom of the staircase Gale gasped in relief. "The planar wards don't stretch down this far! We've got a clear escape route! Hawke, you did it!" he congratulated me.

"Thank the Maker." I said relievedly. "But I don't think we should leave just yet."

"You want the artifact?" Wyll deduced. "Why?"

"Well, our first attempt to find a divine miracle cure just failed." I thought out loud. "And do you remember that comparision I made when we first saw Rosymorn Monastery, to the holy site on Thedas where they found the Ashes of Andraste? I don't know that this artifact is a purveyor of healing miracles like the Ashes were, but if we've gotten back the ability to evacuate via the travelstones at a moment's notice then we can afford to take a little time down here."

"We're probably not going to be that lucky, but you're right. We should try and find out before we leave, because we certainly won't be able to get back in here later." Shadowheart agreed.

We spent the next quarter of an hour learning that whatever enchanter had helped create the defenses around the artifact may have been a superb arcane engineer, but they did not know much about trap design. Some of the magical force fields blocking the corridor had the arcane crystals serving as their power sources located on our side of the barrier. The rest could be bypassed by simply climbing up and around through large cracks that unaccountably existed in the stone walls surrounding the passage leading to the artifact chamber. I was beginning to lose some respect for the priests of Lathander - their devotion, their vast resources, and the skills of their enchanters couldn't be questioned, but their ability to think in proper defensive terms was so lacking that half the cutpurses in Kirkwall could have easily made it through the gaps in the coverage down here.

Soon enough we came out into the main artifact chamber, which was built on a large gilded metal platform suspended over an apparently bottomless chasm in a large underground cave. Four pillars of golden arcano-mechanisms surmounted each corner of the platform, and the center was occupied by a series of circular steps leading up to a raised dias in which a large mace, its head shining with a brilliant yellow-gold light, hung suspended in an elaborate metal framework. A piece of amber the size of a clenched fist, as red as a ruby, was mounted high up in the handle of the mace just beneath the head.

"That does not look like a healing artifact." Shadowheart said, disappointedly.

"By the Weave." Gale gasped, awestruck. "That's the Blood of Lathander!" He turned to us. "Almost half a millenium ago the renegade Chosen of Mystra, Sammaster the necromancer, posed such a threat to all of Faerun that the Harpers sent an entire small army after him. But despite having turned away from the Goddess of Magic Sammaster still bore the spark of divine power that she had once gifted him with before his fall to evil, and with that power he could resist destruction by any mortal force. A high priest of Lathander amongst the Harper contingent that fought him begged for the aid of his god, and the Morninglord sent an avatar in response. Sammaster's stolen scrap of divinity could not protect him against a true god, and so he perished. But as he was empowered - however partially and wrongly - by divinity himself, Sammaster was able to wound Lathander's avatar and draw several drops of his blood. Lathander's faithful treasured those drops forever after as a most sacred artifact of their faith, preserving them in a piece of amber." He nodded up towards the glowing mace on the top of the dias. "That piece, right there."

"Andraste's Ashes." I swore softly. "But they preserved it as a weapon of their faith, not a panacea."

"Apparently so." Gale agreed.

"Well, are we taking it or not?" Karlach asked.

"On the one hand, it's not ours." I thought out loud. "On the other hand, it's rightful keepers are dead and this temple has fallen into the hands of the enemy so just leaving it here is also a bad idea. And on the third hand, I can think of several things we might really need it for." I shrugged and turned to Shadowheart. "As our resident religious expert, do you think Lathander would be mortally offended if we took that with us and used it on our quest against the Absolute, with the intent to return it to one of his temples elsewhere when we no longer had immediate need of it?"

"The nearest other temple of Lathander is in Baldur's Gate." Shadowheart said practically. "Which is where we were ultimately headed anyway. And you're a paladin - the gods tend to place more trust in the Oathbound than they would in any random adventurer. So no, I don't think we'd be risking divine retribution if we handled it. But do you see that?" She pointed at a small indentation on the bottom of the framework holding up the Blood. "That's shaped exactly like a holy symbol a priest of Lathander would wear. And it's located exactly where you would put the keyhole to unlock the mechanism that the artifact is currently encased in. It's probably waiting for someone to put in the particular holy symbol that the high priest of Rosymorn Monastery would be wearing... which is almost certainly located somewhere several stories above us in the abandoned surface levels of the monastery that we searched earlier today."

"And where we didn't find anything like that." I agreed. "But that framework looks really loose. Even without opening it, a little wiggling would probably get that mace right out of there."

"I have good news, and I have bad news." Gale said. "The good news is, I've solved the mystery of what exactly was powering that giant magical device on the roof. Answer - these four arcane accumulators right here." He pointed to the four pillars surrounding the platform. "They're batteries, having charged themselves over the years - or centuries - from the energy radiating from the divine artifact sitting in the center of this mechanism."

"For all that time? That would be a lot of power." I whistled in awe. "And the bad news is?"

"I am admittedly playing a hunch, but from the circuit pathways I can see running all around the artifact I'm almost certain that if you remove the Blood of Lathander from that socket without using the proper key first, the system is set up to destructively discharge all four of those batteries all at once." Gale finished.

"So... boom?" Karlach asked.

"Boom." Gale agreed. "Very much so. It would probably take out the entire monastery."

My eyes opened wide. "That... would solve the problem of the githyanki knowing we have the Astral Prism, and Vlaakith sending entire armies from the Astral Plane after us. Because they don't know about the travelstone network. If we touch off the explosion and then teleport away from here, all she's got to go on is a giant smoking crater where the monastery used to be - and as far as she knows, with us still in it. And while the Astral Prism is likely indestructible, the longer she spends sifting through the ashes here digging for it the longer she's not chasing us all the way to Moonrise Towers." I exhaled in relief. "I'd been wondering how we were going to deal with that particular problem."

"That is indeed a brilliantly extemporaneous tactical maneuver!" Gale congratulated me. "That, unfortunately, entirely won't work and will kill all of us. The buildup to that kind of uncontrolled magical catastrophe would almost certainly create enough local ethereal disruption that the travelstone attunement would be destructively interfered with."

"Damn it!" I swore. "Even without the prospect of having a powerful holy weapon for our use, clearing our backtrail behind us would have been a life-saver on its own." I sighed. "But if we can't, we can't-"

"Uh, Gale?" Karlach broke in. "You said that those four doohickeys down there are what's powering the big thingamabob up on the roof, yeah?"

"Why do you ask?" Gale replied.

"Because how's the power getting from down here to up there?" Karlach asked practically. "If somebody's run a pipe up there then they had to run it through somewhere, right? I've never seen a pipe laid yet without someone having to dig a hole for it to go through first. So even without the travelstones, maybe there's an accessway we can use or something."

"How did I miss that?" I facepalmed.

"You don't run that much arcane - or divine - power through pipes, Karlach." Gale said tolerantly. "If you didn't have a clear open pathway to transmit a beam, then the only way I could imagine it working is if you were using some type of translocational..." he trailed off. "Portal!" he finished, his eyes open wide in realization. And then he immediately leapt down off the dais and started frantically searching all around the edges of the platform. "I found it!" he called from the edge of the platform opposite the entrance, where an empty metal archway stood. "This should lead right to the roof!" He trailed off. "When it's in operation. Which right now, it's not."

"Do you think the explosion would happen immediately, or would there have to be a buildup first?" I asked.

"So you're thinking pull the mace out, run straight for the portal, and get off the roof and clear of the blast radius before the detonation completes?" Shadowheart asked me.

"And vaporize every single surviving githyanki - as well as us, as far as Vlaakith will know. And the longer that fools her, the better." I agreed.

"The system would need at least a short delay between initiation and detonation or else they'd destroy their home every time there was even a transient interruption in the circuit." Gale agreed. "Still a bit of a risk, though."

"Yes, but in addition to covering our trail, we're going to need that." I said. "Minthara told us that the only safe way to pass through the Shadow Curse was by using 'moonlanterns'. And I don't know what a moonlantern is, much less where we could possibly find one. But it's certainly some type of magical light source." I smiled. "And I'm thinking you can't get much more magical as a light source than the mystically preserved blood of a sun god." I smiled in satisfaction. "Everybody else stack up on that portal. As soon as I pull the Blood out, the sequence should start and we'll need to all run through as fast as we possibly can... because we won't have any idea how long or short the delay is."

I unstrapped my belt pouch from my belt - the one that contained the Astral Prism - and handed it to Shadowheart, and gratefully realized that it was still bonded to its original bearer well enough that it wouldn't automatically leap back to me. Well, either that or the Guardian had already figured out what I was planning, and was acting to cover his own tail.

"If I'm the one taking the mace then I have to be the last one out. This should be with the first person heading through the portal... just in case." I explained to her, and finally convinced the reluctant Shadowheart to take it.

We all got in position, them at the portal and me at the top of the dias, and I tensed to run the instant the divine artifact was clear of its containment housing. I took a deep breath, reached out, and carefully grasped the handle - twisted it just enough to get the head of the mace free of the loose retaining ring around it, and then pulled-

-and a golden energy barrier, similar to the ones we'd bypassed to get here, leapt into existence all around the base of the dais - cutting me off from the rest of the party. While it didn't go all the way to the ceiling it was at least a dozen feet high - no way I could jump over it, or climb a force-field-

"Somebody get him out of there!" Shadowheart yelled frantically.

"Go!" I yelled at them, seeing the now-active portal behind them. They had a clear escape route and the Astral Prism - I'd done the best I could. "Go now!"

A keening whine was building up all around us, fit to shake loose the teeth from our jaws. The ground rumbled, and the four battery-pillars were glowing white-hot and pulsing unevenly, unstably. And none of those idiots were moving-

"Hang on!" Gale yelled, and broke ranks from the others to sprint up to the very edge of the barrier. He frantically reached inside his pack and dug around inside "I was hanging onto this for- never mind! Catch!" With a frantic toss he sent something hurtling up in the air and over the barrier, and with my free hand I snatched it up off the ground where it had fallen several feet short of me. Some type of amulet-

"Amulet of Misty Step!" Gale yelled, barely audible over the now-shrieking arcane mechanisms as they drew closer and closer to detonation. "Just think about being over by the gate!"

And as soon as the amulet's chain passed over my head and I thought next to Shadowheart! as intently as I could, the world blurred into silver mist around me and cleared an eyeblink later. I'd teleported directly out of the barrier.

I ran back towards the dais for Gale, because I knew he was the slowest runner out of all of us. The instant I came within reach of his outstretched hand I yanked him practically off my feet and into me, then swung him up in a carry and sprinted for the portal. All six of us piled through it practically on each other's heels, to gasp in relief when we materialized exactly where we'd expected to - adjacent to the giant mechanism on the roof, which we saw was now glowing as brightly as the battery-pillars below had been, and which had swivelled so that the business end of what we could now see was a magical energy cannon was pointing straight down into the heart of the monastery-

"We're still too close!" Gale said. "Get off the roof! We can't port out until we get off the roof!"

A hastily-cast Feather Fall allowed us to leave the roof by the simple expedient of jumping directly over the side, and we went three stories down to a magically-cushioned landing directly outside the main gate. With frantic relief we felt our connection to the travelstone network reform now that we were finally far enough away from planar wards or over-charging magical energy weapon emplacements-

-and we all materialized next to the nearest travelstone, the one we'd found on the pathway a couple hundred yards away from Rosymorn Monastery, just in time to look back and see the entire building explode in a giant magical fireball.

When the spots cleared from our eyes we saw that the only thing left standing were scattered section of the four exterior walls. The roof was gone, the magical cannon on the roof was definitely gone, the interior was gone, and smoke was roiling up from a giant sinkhole in the ground that, when we drew near enough to look down into it, still had dully-glowing magma at the bottom. Rosymorn Monastery barely had enough rubble left up on top to show where a giant building had once stood, and all the sublevels - including the entire githyanki creche and everyone inside of it - were utterly obliterated.

I breathed out, feeling the weight of my decisions today - both right ones and wrong ones. I felt no triumph over all the githyanki that I'd just killed, or the undying god-queen that I'd just outwitted. All this death, all the times we'd almost died, and with the possible exception of one divinely-inspired weapon the only thing that had been achieved was for me to almost get us back to where we'd started. Behind me stood five silent shadows, also awestruck by the sheer devastation we'd just enabled... as well as exhausted by the multiple near-death experiences and world-shaking revelations we'd crammed into the last twelve hours.

"Let's get the hell out of here." I finally said.

---

We used the travelstones to head back to the beach we'd originally crashed on. There was still a possibility that Vlaakith could track us somehow - who could say what exactly a god could or couldn't do, even one that was also quasi-mortal like her? And so we resolved to spend the next twenty-four hours in the same ruins that Shadowheart, Gale and I had camped in the very first night after we'd crashed - the one we'd met Withers in. It was underground, easily defensible, very conveniently close to a travelstone - and didn't have any innocents living there who'd get hurt if Vlaakith somehow found us anyway. If she or her hunter teams didn't locate us here by tomorrow, then we'd presume the trail was cold enough we could safely go to the Grove.

"Gale." I said to him passionately, as I handed him back his magical amulet. "I didn't have the chance earlier, so- thank you. Thank you for saving my life."

"Are you sure about that?" he asked me worriedly, his face still pale in the light of our campfire. "Because-" He pulled away from me and sat down heavily. "Everyone, please listen. I have to tell you something. Something that you had every right to know, that I should have told you days ago. And-"

"I'm not blown to vapor by my own bright idea right now, and that's all thanks to you." I told him. "Whatever transgression you think you've committed, there's very little you could say right now that I wouldn't be prepared to forgive."

"There is still a nontrivial difference between 'very little' and 'naught'." Gale said didactically. "And never more so than in my case." He sighed. "I've been telling myself for days that I didn't dare bring this up because it would alarm you unduly - you particularly, Hawke, given your homeworld's troubled history with magic as well as the tragic fate of your friend Anders." He shook his head. "But those were merely rationalizations, and transparent ones. You've accepted Shadowheart and Wyll without a qualm despite the sources of their magic, and you still sorrow over Anders' fate despite his having lied to you for years about the true scope of his condition and I've only been hiding mine for a few days. And yet even after learning that were honorable enough to spontaneously self-initiate as a paladin, after seeing the lengths I saw you go through to resurrect an innocent boy you didn't even know, or the compassion you showed a murdered githyanki youngling-" He broke off and looked up at me sadly. "If I couldn't trust you after all that, then who could I trust? And yet I still kept my silence. Not just because I was afraid, but because I was ashamed." He looked over at the still-subdued Lae'zel. "It might surprise you to find out that you are not the only member of our company who has been cast out, declared anathema, by the goddess that they've devoted their entire life to serving." He sighed again, with a sorrow as large as the world. "Only unlike you, in my case it was well-deserved."

"But you still have your magic!" Shadowheart said confusedly. "If you're under Mystra's Ban then how is that possible? You're no Shadow Weave user - I'm a priestess of Shar, I would have sensed that!"

"No, not the Shadow Weave." He sighed. "But I am a walking shadow of the promise I once held. We've all temporarily lost the full measure of our abilities, our skills, when we were infected, just as we've all slowly been gaining it back as we acclimate. But I wasn't just an experienced wizard before my parasite was implanted. I had been an archmage. And not just any archmage, but a prodigy even amongst that august company. I could not merely control the Weave but also compose it, as if it were music, were poetry." He trailed off wonderingly. "Such was my skill that it earned me not just the favor but the attention of the mother of magic herself. The Lady of Mysteries, the goddess Mystra. She revealed herself to me, and visiited me often. She was my mentor, my muse..." He trailed off, his expression a strange mixture of embarassment and pride. "And in the fullness of time, even my lover."

"You made love to a goddess." I said dazdly. "Which admittedly has precedent in Thedas, as I already mentioned with Maferath and Andraste-" I suddenly paused. "Gale, tell me you didn't."

"Not... quite?" he volunteered diffidently. "I felt no malice, no envy, such as the Maferath you spoke of once. But ambition?" He shook his head knowingly. "That, him and I certainly had in common."

The silence fell, and Gale eventually resumed filling it. "Her company was glorious - I certainly desired no other woman. But no matter how powerful a wizard we mortals become, we still can never scratch more than the surface of the Weave. Mystra keeps us in check, maintains boundaries she never lets us cross. Yet every time I worked magic with her I could see what I was missing - as if I were standing on a precipice, staring into the wonders of the beyond that I was forever denied save at second-hand."

"Respectfully, that sounds a bit like envy to me." I contributed.

"I would rather say 'inadequacy'. To have a goddess' regard is a privilege beyond any other, but if you continually confront the differences between her scale of existence and yours, it makes you feel... pitied?" Gale tried to articulate. "I didn't want to usurp her, or even to rival her. I just wanted to do something." he finally said. "To do anything that she would acknowledge as being more than just-" He broke off. "And so I resolved to seek beyond the boundaries she set." He shook his head. "I tried to convince her, at first. I persuaded, I pleaded... I pouted..." He shrugged briefly. "But she did nothing but smile and tell me to be content. But rather than take her advice, I sought to prove myself worthy of being given more." He paused. "We now come to the crux of my folly. Shall I share the story behind it, or would you rather we proceed straight to the sordid finale?"

"I'm thinking this is definitely the sort of thing that needs a fuller context." Shadowheart contributed encouragingly.

"Agreed." Wyll said. "An opportunity for confession is a privilege that Mizora takes spiteful pleasure in denying me - you should not deny yourself."

"... I too confess interest." Lae'zel said softly. "To know a goddess intimately and then survive her rejection - that is a unique tale indeed."

"Very well." Gale took a deep breath. "Once upon a very long time ago a mighty wizard lived in a tower. A flying tower, to be precise. I'll save the full history of Karsus the Archwizard for another time, but the gist of it was that he sought to usurp the goddess of magic so he could become a god himself. And as he was perhaps the greatest archwizard in mortal history, he almost managed!" Gale said surprisingly. "But not quite, and his entire empire - ancient Netheril, of myth and legend - came crashing down around him as he destroyed himself. The magic that was unleashed that day was phenomenal, perhaps rivaling the primal chaos that predates creation. Even the Weave itself could not withstand the onslaught. It fractured, it shattered, and a cataclysm shook the very fabric of creation and would have destroyed all. Mystryl, first goddess of magic, sacrificed her own existence to stop the destruction the only way she could - with her own death, and with that death the end of all magic. But the magic returned, as she had known it would, when her replacement Mystra ascended to the heavens and restored the Weave." He paused. "If not quite the same Weave that it had been before. Because that is why Mystra sets such restrictions on magics, allows mortal mages to progress so far and no further. Because Mystryl had not. In her innocence she sought to see any wizard rise to any height they were capable of so doing, with nothing held back."

"And that is how Karsus could almost do what he did, and bring so much crashing down with him when he failed." I reasoned. "The higher the climb, the greater the potential fall." I looked at Gale. "And you disagreed?"

"No." he shook his head. "My ambition was different. When Mystra originally restored the Weave from its scattered shards, there was one piece that she'd missed. A tiny portion, one that Karsus had preserved for study, sealed away in an ancient tome and hidden in a pocket realm. One that had gone unregarded for centuries, until I'd happened across a clue to it in my studies. And so I asked myself 'What if I brought this back? What if I could restore a long-lost part of herself to my goddess? What regard could I earn from her, what pride would she look upon me with, if I brought her a gift that no other supplicant ever had or would?"

"That... actually makes sense." I conceded. "I mean, I can't even see how that's wrong - you weren't trying to redo Karsus' madness, you were just trying to help undo the damage he'd done! So why did she outcast you?"

"Give me your hand." Gale said gravely. "And let me show you."

I held forth my hand and Gale gently took me by the wrist, bringing the palm of my hand over his heart. His eyes made contact with mine and our tadpoles shivered, as Gale concentrated on enabling the mental connection, allowing me in.

I saw through Gale's eyes, staring down the corridors of dreadful memory. An ancient tome located - a scholar's curiosity compelling him to open it - but inside there were no pages, just a swirling mass of twisted reality that pounced- leaping inside, unstoppable as it tore into and through my very being- and gods, it was so hungry-

Gale let go of me and I fell away, gasping. "How in the Maker's name are you still alive?"

He stared at me somberly. "The moment I absorbed the fragment wasn't enough to kill me outright. No, my death was only beginning." He shook his head frustratedly. "This Netherese blight, this... orb, for a lack of a better word... is balled up inside of me. And it needs to be fed. As long as I continue to absorb traces of the true Weave from potent enough sources, it remains quiescent. But the process never stops - the feedings are a palliative, not a cure."

"Feed it what?" I asked him.

"Magic. And not spells - oh, if this were only as simple as my remembering to cast a few minor spells on myself every day." he chuckled sardonically. "Permanent constructs of Weave are required. Magic items. That's why I've always been asking for the ones we've found as my share of the treasure and letting the rest of you keep most of the gold, including that Amulet of Misty Step we found in the goblins' lair. I've needed to drain the magic of an item every couple of days just to keep my condition manageable." He laughed, bitterly. "That amulet I saved your life with? You're lucky I hadn't eaten that yet. As is, I'm just about due for another."

"And if you don't find enough magic items regularly enough, you die?" Karlach asked, shocked.

"Not merely die." Gale said worriedly. "I would erupt. If the Netherese orb fully destabilized, all the magic contained within would burst forth in an uncontrolled flare of wild magic that would make what happened to Rosymorn Monastery look like a cantrip. It would flatten a city the size of Waterdeep."

"Gale!" Shadowheart burst out. "That- that- that makes these damned tadpoles in our heads the second-greatest threat to our lives! How could-?"

I held up a hand, asking for peace. "Gale, I'm assuming that you were busy trying to deal with your situation in a safe and manageable way when you were abducted by mind flayers, so you can't fairly be blamed for being out and about in your condition now. But she does touch upon a valid point. What on Toril are we to do if you get killed?"

"Get Withers to resurrect me as fast as possible." Gale said. "From my computations, you'd have at least a day - maybe two - before my death destabilized things sufficiently." He sighed. "That's why I was so terrified in the creche. We were all trapped, and the risk of death was far too high. There would have been no resurrection for me if I had fallen, and- well, that was before we knew we'd actually want to destroy the entirety of Creche Y'llek in a giant magical explosion."

"So we're not actually in any danger that we weren't in already." I said relievedly. "And we know what to do to recover things if the worst-case scenario happens."

"Unfortunately, no." Gale said. "Because the last thing you need to know is that the 'feedings' have been getting less and less effective over time. I used to need to drain the Weave of an item only once every week or so. But the period of time has been growing more and more frequent... and the effects of each feeding are less and less." He sighed. "I've had this orb in me for almost a year. I've spent all that time frantically searching for a cure and finding nothing. But even without the tadpole in play, I was starting to fear that I would eventually run out of time. As I may yet still, in the near future."

"What will you do if that happens?" Shadowheart asked him softly.

"Find the remotest place I can on the surface of Faerun, or travel deep into the depths of the Underdark." Gale said. "And die well away from any innocent people. Perhaps on top of a mind flayer colony, if I could find one. A final revenge, however inadequate." He looked up at us all, his eyes red with unshed tears. "This must seem like a terrible betrayal to you all. Say the word, and we shall part ways."

"No." I said, without even stopping to ponder it. "I owe you my life, and your knowledge and magic have greatly helped us more than once. To take all that and then discard you? Not happening."

"Hell yeah!" Karlach said. "If we're going to be going around tossing out everyone who had an unstable magical weapon shoved in their chest without so much as a by-your-leave, I'd have to go with him!"

"I knowingly pacted with a courtier of Zariel." Wyll said. "All you did was attempt a good deed and have it backfire due to circumstances beyond your control. If they're letting me stay, they can hardly reject you."

"A h'sharlak like me cannot judge anyone." Lae'zel said, which alarmed me until I realized she'd actually been trying to make a joke. "Stay."

"Speaking as the only person here who isn't an outcast or castaway, and as a priestess in good standing with her goddess, I condemn you." Shadowheart shocked us all. "I condemn you... to having to remain here in this band of misfits, taking every mad chance and foolish risk alongside the rest of us." she finished with an impish smile.

"Thank you!" Gale burst out laughing with relief. "You truly are a group of worthy souls, that reinvigorates my own. I promise that I won't let you down."

We dipped into our packs for a bit of wine from our travel rations, because a conversation like the one we'd just had was certainly a thing that left a man in need of a few stiff drinks. The day's weariness soon enough caught up to us, and we set our nightwatch and slept. By the time morning arrived we were confident that we'd shaken Vlaakith's pursuit, and so it was time to resume our journey.

A confidence that shattered like glass when we emerged from the ruins to be confronted by a githyanki knight in silver and gold, an elaborate ruby-crowned diadem on his head and his face weathered with much experience - oh, and also the minor problem of the enormous red dragon he'd ridden to get here standing confidently behind him! He held his still-sheathed sword out in front of him at arm's length, gripping it not by the pommel but with his hand six inches below the hilt, with only the scabbard protecting his fingers from the sword's edges.

"Ska'kek kir Gith shabell'eth." he intoned formally, shocking us by going down to one knee and laying his sword before him on the ground before placing both hands behind his back. "My blade rests. Mother Gith compels you to listen."

"A parley?" Lae'zel said, confusedly. "I am h'sharlak, lower even than istik, and condemned to death by the Undying Queen's command! Why does your blade not sing for my death? Why does your noble steed not consume us in dragonfire?"

"I am not here on Vlaakith's behalf, Lae'zel." the knight surprised us. "And I do not seek your lives. Qudenos! Withdraw until I call!"

The red dragon bowed to its rider's command and leapt into the air with a mighty flap of its wings, circling away to land amongst the nearby nautiloid crash site. The githyanki knight rose back to his feet, his hands still behind him in a formal parade-rest, and his sword still on the ground at his feet.

"Well met." I said. "I am Hawke, and I lead this party. But given the events of yesterday, I can't possibly imagine why you seek this parley."

"I am Kith'rak Voss." he introduced himself, and I heard Lae'zel swallow her tongue.

"Voss!" she cried, backing away from him in terror. "Supreme Kith'rak - Queen's Hand - the Sword of Vlaakith! And you claim to not speak on her behalf?!?"

"If more politely, I'm asking the same question." I immediately followed her words. Because if this were the right-hand man of Vlaakith herself, the Ser Cauthrien to her Teryn Loghain as it were, then I entirely understood Lae'zel's alarm.

Voss actually smiled at my last remark, and took a polite step backwards so that Lae'zel would stop frantically clutching at her sword-hilt. I thanked the Maker that her training had been strict enough that even in her terror she hadn't actually tried to draw it, Voss having invoked a githyanki formal parley rite and all.

"How did you find us?" I tried to lower the tension.

"Unlike the vast majority of my fellow warriors, I am old enough to remember Netherese travelstones." Voss replied. "Your wizard was not reported capable of the sort of magic that would have let him teleport all you out of there, but if you did not die in Creche Y'llek then teleportation was the only way you could reasonably have escaped. So I simply checked every travelstone location between the former site of Y'llek and the Emerald Grove, and here you were."

"Well reasoned and well executed." Wyll complimented him. "But Hawke's right - we really can't imagine what you and our party have to parley about. If your queen briefed you, then you already know that we can't give up the Astral Prism without condemning ourselves to a fate worse than death."

"I do know that." Voss agreed reasonably. "And unlike you, I also know why that is true. The Astral Prism is not just an artifact, but a container. It leads to a pocket realm in the Silver Void, one that only it can access, and in that realm there is a prisoner. That one has chosen you as an ally, protects you with their power. That very power will set our people truly free, and not merely the sham of freedom we live under now. That power must be let loose."

"You, eldest and first of all kith'rak, are entreating us on behalf of a ghaik?!?" Lae'zel shrieked in outrage.

"What in Limbo's madness are you raving about, child?!?" Voss shouted back, offended to his marrow.

The sound of my forehead hitting my palm echoed off the nearby walls like the sound of a giant's slap. "Idiot!" I cursed myself. "How did you not see it the instant Vlaakith said-" I looked at them both in turn as I angrily held up the Astral Prism. "There must be two people in here!"

"You met a ghaik... INSIDE THE PRISM?!?" Voss gasped, one hand clutching to his chest. "Mother Gith preserve us-! No, no, I can still feel the protective force radiating even now... he is still alive." The knight calmed himself, his eyes resuming their focus and resolve from what had briefly been the face of a man watching his very god be murdered painfully in front of him. "Tell me everything!"

"If you know any mind-shielding spells, cast them on the Prism first." I said urgently. "He hasn't reacted yet-"

Voss immediately moved both hands in a complex motion, chanting hurriedly. The Prism glowed once, briefly, and was silent. "That should constrain the ghaik temporarily, and without any echoes that would betray the silence - not unless he were already listening at this moment."

"Let's hope he wasn't." I agreed, and then I hurriedly brought Voss up to speed about the 'Guardian' and what he'd said, and what our predicament truly was.

"Entirely unanticipated. And... unfortunate." Voss finished with massive understatement. "Even before knowing this I had already resolved that you must continue to bear the Prism - I dare not claim it for myself, because if Vlaakith suspected me for an instant then I would only deliver it back into her hands... the absolute last place I wish for that to go." he pointed at the Prism. "The entity who is the Prism's true tenant, and not the false ghaik, is- no, I should not speak their name at this juncture. You do not need to know it, and what you do not know cannot be plucked from your mind by any of my kindred." He waved away my objection before I could make it. "Yes, if you are caught and interrogated then this conversation would be revealed anyway. But a single word does not need an interrogation to be revealed. It can be overheard by chance, or at a distance, and that word alone would be enough to bring doom. So for now, merely call them 'the prisoner', as you have named this filthy ghaik 'the Guardian'.'

"All right." I said. "And you need this prisoner because...?"

Voss looked at Lae'zel, tensing himself for her reaction. "Because if they can be set free, then they will be the undoing of my life's single greatest mistake, my single worst and most regretful choice. They will cast down Vlaakith from her throne."

"You're still alive, so obviously she doesn't know you're plotting treason." I thought out loud. "But just from my brief acquaintance with her I got the impression she's the sort of tyrant who trusts literally no one. And she has the power of a goddess to boot. How have you not yet been caught?"

"Vlaakith is no goddess." Voss said. "She never was. She wishes to be one, she seeks divine ascension with an obsession greater than any other, but she is merely a lich - an undead archmage, their soul preserved eternally in an animated corpse." He looked at Lae'zel, who was barely restraining herself from another outburst. "This is why the study of necromancy is banned for githyanki arcanists, save for the absolute minimum necessary to make a show of combatting lesser undead - to prevent any of our scholars from recognizing Vlaakith for what she truly is." He looked at me. "Have you ever sworn your sword to a liege lord, wishing nothing more in life than to serve them in honor, and then discovered too late that you had only killed in the name of betrayal?"

"I have." I agreed with him somberly. "At a place called Ostagar. My king died there, and I was left a penniless refugee, frantically trying to get a family out of a kingdom that could no longer be my home-" I shook my head. "It ended badly, as such tales do. Let us leave it at that."

"Then you understand at least a little of what I have known." Voss nodded to me. "I am fully as old as the legends tell me of me, Lae'zel. The timeless astral has preserved me well beyond what mortal flesh is normally granted. The many years blur together for me sometimes, but I still remember our freedom from illithid slavery. Our rebellion - our deliverance - our Mother Gith..." He stared up into the sky, searching for ghosts long dead. "And the first Vlaakith, distant ancestor of the current, who presented herself as Gith's heir when Mother Gith was lost in the lower planes. And I believed her." he trailed off, softly. "For far too long, I believed her. And her daughters."

"And the prisoner?" I asked him.

"If I tell you their tale, then I tell you their name." Voss said. "Suffice it to say that Vlaakith fears them like she fears no other entity in the multiverse, for they too know the lie that her eternal rule is built upon - and unlike me, they can prove it. My head remains on top of my neck only because Vlaakith does not know that I know. If I tried to testify to this knowledge, I would die that very same day and be remembered merely be a traitor and a madman. One flash of a blade and my tongue forever stilled, and Vlaakith's rule forever secured. But if they could step forth and be seen, be heard..." He smiled briefly. "Things would be very different."

"Why didn't Vlaakith just kill them?" I asked practically.

"Oh, she wishes she could. How desperately she wishes!" Voss laughed sardonically. "But she cannot! The power she claims, the ability to protect the children of Gith from the agents of the Grand Design as no other can - that power is not truly hers but the Astral Prism's. And the Prism has that power only because it is the unique gift of the prisoner. And so you see the dilemma Vlaakith is perched upon. If the prisoner but has a chance to speak to any other gith, to show them the truth mind to mind, that gith is lost to Vlaakith. But the prisoner can never die, or else Vlaakith loses the protection of the myth she has borrowed. And so, the prison." He nodded at where I had put the Astral Prism away in the belt pouch.

"But if she didn't want the prisoner dead, why did she send us in there to kill them?" I said.

"Either she was referring to the ghaik when she said the Prism was 'corrupted', or else the artifact's escaping her custody for the first time in gods only know how long has frightened her to the point she's now willing to cut her losses and risk the aftermath." Voss thought out loud. "I do not know which. But you have by now deduced why she sent you in rather than the inquisitor and his team."

"We were all already infected by mind flayer parasites and would have to be killed anyway, and most of us were istik besides." I agreed. "Much better to try and have us do it rather than risk the prisoner talking to the inquisitor or anyone else, because from what you've said this is a clear-cut 'Kill everybody they might have spoken to' situation."

"Indeed it is." Voss agreed. "Time grows short, and Vlaakith cannot even suspect this meeting, so I will cut to the chase. You already need to keep the prisoner safe and yourselves out of githyanki custody, merely for the sake of your own lives, so I can certainly trust you with that task as well. For millenia Vlaakith did not let anyone, not even me, know where the Prism was kept, so I could make no progress on freeing the prisoner myself." He turned to Shadowheart. "I have no idea how you and your fellow priests of Shar ever located the Astral Prism, let alone successfully liberated it from where Vlaakith had it kept, but I thank you all from the bottom of my heart. It is only what you have achieved that has given me this opportunity at all." He paused briefly. "Would you mind telling me what your superiors intended with it? Perhaps there is a common goal we are working towards."

"That would be ideal, but I wouldn't know if you were." Shadowheart shrugged. "I only know what I was ordered to do, and nothing more. But on behalf of all my fallen comrades, thank you for your gratitude."

Voss nodded to her respectfully and continued. "So that is what I need you to do - to continue to keep the Astral Prism safe, and to bring it to me in Baldur's Gate. The prisoner needs a unique key to be freed from the Astral Prism. I have been tracking that key for centuries, and I believe I know where to find it. Meet me in the tavern called Sharess' Caress, in the Wyrm's Crossing district of the city. Gith willing, I shall have the key by the time you arrive... and when the prisoner is set free, your own protection from the Absolute will no longer be held hostage by that filthy ghaik." Voss sighed. "Who regretfully I cannot help you kill now, because he has clearly interwoven his own control mechanisms at least partially into the original restrictions, and may very well have dead-man precautions besides. The prisoner would need to be freed with the key before that potential threat to the prisoner's life would be safely defused."

"That's what I was going to ask next." I said disappointedly. "Still, if we can't, then we can't. So the rendezvous is Sharess' Caress, Wyrm's Crossing. I'm assuming you know where that is?" I turned to our party's native Baldurians, and all three of them nodded.

"One last thing." I hurriedly said. "For as long as the ghaik could hear everything we say, and monitor our surface thoughts, we couldn't hope to plot against him. How long will your shielding last?"

Voss nodded and cast his spell again, reinforcing it. "That should give you more time. As I know little about the ghaik's exact strength I can't judge exactly how long you will have, but it will be more than several days... if you are fortunate, several weeks. How soon can you reach Baldur's Gate?"

"With the Shadow-Cursed Lands and Moonrise Towers between here and there?" I said. "Rough guess, a couple of weeks."

"And I cannot help you travel faster, lest Vlaakith' gaze possibly find you again." Voss said. "Very well, are we agreed?"

"We are." I committed us.

"A question, kith'rak." Lae'zel asked respectfully. "Does the zaith'isk truly kill rather than cleanse?"

"Yes." he said flatly. "Yet another one of the tyrant queen's lies, yet another thread in her web of control and naught more."

"Then good fortune to you, silver knight, and may we meet again." Lae'zel bowed to him.

"And may Mother Gith watch over you all." Voss bowed back to us respectfully. He bent down and recovered his sword and then summoned his mount with a single sharp whistle. The dragon landed nearby and he leapt upon its back and into the saddle, and with another mighty flap of Qudenos' wings they were gone.

---

Author's Note: I seem to have a pattern of people frustratedly asking questions right before the chapter where I'd already scheduled the reveal anyway. I'm not sure if this means my timing is the best or the worst. *g*

And so we get both the Gale reveal - which is fairly standard to how it goes in the game, if with more people talking - and the Kith'rak Voss reveal, which went well off-script from the game's original. Largely because the game's original took obnoxious advantage of the Poor Communication Kills trope and had him be so vague that the player is left thinking the man was talking about the Emperor, when he was actually talking about the other guy. Fortunately, in this story talking is a free action and so the misunderstanding is cleared up right fucking then, allowing for a much deeper and sincere convo. Plus, of course, Hawke's advanced Persuasion build. Also there's no explanation for how Voss finds you wherever you camp, he just does. I'm happy when I can come up with a good rationalization for things they didn't.

Oh, and if people are wondering where the hell Elminster is, the answer is that the mountain pass is not his only possible spawn location ever since recent updates. So, they'll meet him when it's time. And seriously, this chapter was crammed so full as is - hell, there was an entire in-party convo about the Blood of Lathander I had to cut! I'll need to work that one in soon.

Speaking of the Blood of Lathander, in-game its light gives no special protection from the Shadow Curse. I consider that puree of bullshit because it's the fucking power of the sun god himself, for pete's sake. And thus, in this story, that's how it's gonna work.

Updates have gone pretty quickly for the last several chapters because they were all the one creche sequence, but now they're going to slow down a bit because I have to start playing the game again and leapfrog forward enough to research the next sequence. But they should still be well enough - I mean, we haven't even done the Underdark yet, Act One is far from over.