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reality-warp · 9 months

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Zuzana | Asmodeus Tiefling | Ranger | Chaotic Good

“I did what I had to keep us all alive. If you’re expecting an apology for that, you’ll be waiting until Avernus sprouts daffodils.”

Zuzana is probably one of my favourite DnD characters I’ve ever played as. I originally made her for a Decent into Avernus campaign, and now I can’t wait to play as her again when BG3 comes out in just a few days.

I’ve added her (slightly long) backstory summary below, partly for my own amusement, but also since everyone else on the hype train seems to be sharing too:

Pale Huntress

Zuzana (affectionately called Zana by her few friends and family) was born the elder of a set of twins, her brother Zane being born just five minutes after her to a human farmer and his tiefling wife. They grew up pretty humble, rarely going beyond the boundaries of their family’s orchards, paddocks and the surrounding forests. As a result (plus their infernal heritage) the twins didn’t have too many friends and were damned near inseparable as kids. Zane grew up to be accomplished with caring for and riding the horses their family bred, while Zana became a dab hand with a bow and arrow – learning to fend off wolves and livestock rustlers alongside her father, as well as hunt for game when harvests were bad.

The twin’s mother passed away when they were in their teens, and after a few hard winters following her death, the family began to struggle to keep food on the table. During one of these harsh winters, while out hunting the twins stumbled on a caravan of merchants passing their farm being attacked by a starving wolf pack. Between them they managed to fight the wolves off, and offered shelter at their home to the ones injured in the fight. One of the injured men — a red dragonborn called Ferrovax Ironhide — turned out to be an mercenary associated with a guild in Baldur’s Gate. After seeing the twins fight together, he told his father than he saw a lot of potential in them, and offered to take them with him — promising to sponsor and mentor them, as their potential was wasted out on a farm in the middle of nowhere.

Despite not wanting to leave their father, the twins were interested by the idea, and were eventually convinced to accept by their father — who realized that, despite not wanting to lose them, his children were being offered the chance at a better life. So hesitantly, both Zana and Zane accepted, promising to come visit as soon as they were able to. They left with Ferrovax after he had recovered fully, and made the journey to Baldur’s Gate with him. What they didn’t learn until they got there and began their training, was that while Ferrovax was indeed a mercenary associated with a guild — but the guild in question was actually an underground gladiator stable who’s participants fought in Zhentarim fighting pits. And because the twins were unable to read their “contracts” properly, they had no idea until they’d signed them that they’d been tricked into indenturing themselves to Ferrovax for the cost of their “training and upkeep”, effectively making them his property until they paid it off.

For almost three years they were made to fight in a variety of underground fighting pits, sometimes against monsters, sometimes against other gladiators, but they were always entered as a pair fighting alongside each other. They became relatively well known as a “matching set” referred to as “The Pale Twins”, but according to Ferrovax the “cost of their upkeep” just kept going up, no matter how much money they managed to make fighting in the pits. Eventually the twins realized that Ferrovax was never going to allow them to pay off their indenture as they were too valuable to him now — he’d just keep finding ways to push the debt up until they eventually died fighting in the pits. So they, along with a few other indentures in the same impossible position, planned a mass escape. WIth the help of one of the spellcasters in the stables they managed to escape their cells one night, find and destroy their contracts, then made a run for it.

Unfortunately just as they were making their way out, they were spotted and chased down. Zana managed to make it out, but Zane was caught and subdued – but not before shouting at her to keep running and save herself. With no other choice, Zana was forced to reluctantly leave her brother behind and flee.

For several long months she could only run and hide as pack after pack of bounty hunters was sent after her. She was forced to hide out in the wilds, and by the time they started to give up the hunt and she was able to sneak back into the city, she’d completely lost track of where Zane was. Only after a year after her escape did she finally hear rumors that Ferrovax had been forced to sell Zane’s indenture since he was no longer as profitable in the arena without his “matched set” sister. She spent months trying to track Ferrovax down, and when she finally did, she discovered that the loss of so many of his gladiators had cripled him financially. He’d been reduced to begging on the streets of the Outer City, and when Zana confronted him about what happened to her brother, he admitted that he had indeed sold Zane to a Zhentarim slaver in the city of Elturel…

Just a week before it fell into Avernus.

Decent Into Avernus

Desperate to rescue her brother from hell, Zana found and immediately joined up with a small group of other adventurers – a goliath barbarian called Kharv, a half-elf wild magic sorcerer called Elias, necromancy specialized wizard gnome Norman, and a half-orc cleric Syll. All of them were fixing to go to hell (pun totally intended) for their own reasons, and decided to team up so they’d have a better chance of not only surviving the trip, but also saving Elturel.

Through various shenanigans involving discovering a cult hidden under one of the Duke’s estates, the group managed to get transported into Avernus – the first layer of hell, where Elturel had been dragged – and in the process of finding their way through the hellscape of the Blood War, the party discovered that Zane had been taken along with some other Elturel survivors, and had been forcibly thrown into a meregon’s fighting pit at “training practice”.

The party arrived at the devil’s arena just in time to save Zane from being killed, reuniting the twins for the first time in over a year of being separated. (Zana’s first words upon hugging her brother again were “Don’t ever try and sacrifice yourself for me again, you absolute prick” through a shed load of tears.) After rescuing and being reunited with her twin, Zana and Zane join the rest of the party on the months long mission to bring Elturel back to the material plane.

After managing to return to Faerun, returning Elturel back to its original position on the map, and recovering for a few months, Zane and Zana – plus Zane’s new boyfriend, Elias, who’d started growing close during the trip across Avernus – decide it’s time to make the journey back to their family home to reunite with their father. By then it had been almost five years, and the two of them had been through so much, neither were sure how on earth they were going to explain to their father what had happened to them. Between the twins, they made the decision not to tell him, worried that the guilt of sending them away to such a fate would crush him.

So the twins returned to their childhood home to the delighted shock of their father, who was beyond overjoyed to have his beloved children home once again.

No Longer Who We Once Were

For five years the twins remained home again. In their time away their father had managed to build the farm back up again after the difficult times, but he was getting old and weary, so Zane and Zana took over a lot of the workloads. Zane and Elias become engaged, their old adventuring friends sometimes visiting, and despite the peace and joy of being reunited the twin’s father became more and more frail. The weight of hard years tending the farm alone, and missing his wife and children had weighed heavy on him, and eventually he passed peacefully one winter with Zane and Zana both there with him.

With their father gone and no longer in a position to keep the secret of what happened to them, Zane and Zana decide that what they experienced in Baldur’s Gate and Avernus had left too many scars on them to lead a quiet life as farmers. Not without their father there as an anchor. They scatter their fathers ashes in the same woods where they scattered their mothers, and began preparations to sell the farm and set off to find what they’re meant to do next.

Zana expressed her wishes to return to Baldur’s Gate and try to track down some of her old friends from the Avernus mission (who had all gone their separate ways after returning to Faerun). Zane and Elias agreed, but also wanted to go and visit Elias’ family in Waterdeep first to tell them about the engagement in person. The twins realize that they can’t realistically be joined at the hip for the rest of their lives, so they agree to willingly split up for the first time, albeit temporarily. The plan was for Zane to go with Elias to Waterdeep while Zana would head to Baldur’s Gate to pick up their old companion’s trails ahead of them – all of them planning to meet up in Baldur’s Gate in a few months time.

The twins exchanged Sending Stones made by Elias so that they used to keep in daily contact, speaking every night at the same time after heading out in their separate directions.

Only when Zana stops responding the day after she arrived back in Baldur’s Gate does Zane realise something is very wrong, both him and Elias immediately setting out to go find out what the hell has happened to her.

What they find when they get there, I suppose we’ll find out soon enough…

Extra character notes:

Zana and Zane were both about 20 when they left home with Ferrovax. By the start of BG3 they're around 30.

Both twins are both very pale grey, even for tieflings, with white hair, bone grey horns and yellow eyes. They also look so similar that at a distance it’s difficult to tell them apart. They’re even the exact same height and have almost the same horn shape too.

When they were being trained in the gladiator stables, Zana (who was already good with a bow) was made to be a ranged specialist, while Zane was trained as a close-combat fighter. Class-wise, Zana is a combo of Hunter Ranger and a little bit of Rogue, while Zane is a Battle Master Fighter who’s preferred weapon is a glaive.

Neither twin learned to read or write as a child. When they were living in the gladiator stables, one of the other indentures (a former scholar of Candle Keep) helped them to learn the bare basics. Zana was a little better at it than Zane, but she’s still not great and is very sensitive about how slowly she is to write and read.

Zana keeps sketch journals as a way of managing stress. She draws people she meets, places she sees, and presses flowers and herbs between the pages to keep for later. After escaping the nautiloid, she buys and starts keeping a new journal as a way of taking her mind off things – and just in case she dosen’t survive, Zane will have something of hers to find out what happened to her.

I like to imagine she’s by far the best cook in the entire camp, barring maybe Halsin and Jaheira. The girl has been cooking food she’s hunted over a campfire since she was a child, and has had to figure out ways of making palatable meals out of scraps for half of her life. Astarion still likes to complain that there’s never enough seasoning in her food though. (Z: "Eat your desiccated fruit rations and be grateful, you prissy git. It's miles better than anything you could make, and you know it.")

While she was somewhat well known in Baldur’s Gate’s underground as a gladiator for a time, it was only in combination with her brother as a “matching set”. Without him, and all this time later, she’s not really recognised as much, and far prefers it that way. (In our Decent into Avernus campaign one of the Flaming Fist recognised her and asked her if she’d sign one of his shoulderguards, much to her mortification.)

I’m specing her as a Hunter subclass, but depending on how her story run goes I may take the Gloom Stalker subclass instead. I headcanon that the insertion of the tadpole has messed with her focus and combat reflexes, hence why she’s back at Level 1 despite originally reaching Level 8 during Decent into Avernus.

In my mind, Zana wore her Sending Stone on a cord around her neck, and when she was teleported onto the nautiloid, no magic items could come with her. Her Sending Stone is likely still lying in a gutter somewhere in the Lower City.

#bg3 tav #bg3 oc #zuzana #character moodboard #character moodboards #mine #a lot of big sister energy from this girl

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