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powdermelonkeg · 4 months

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Archwizard Gale lore???

Okay, SO! My personal headcanons for Gale's powers, both as archwizard and Chosen of Mystra, are based upon the following:

D&D makes a distinction between "archmage" and "archwizard," with the former being a spellcaster dedicated to the arcane arts and either: the counsel of royalty, a lich tyrant, or a reclusive hermit, all with multiple apprentices, and the latter being "an arcane spellcaster of extremely high power who successfully claimed a floating enclave," that specification coming from the time of Netheril.

Gale is NOT royal counsel, NOT pursuing lichdom, NOT a hermit (willingly), does NOT have apprentices when he first makes the claim, and does NOT have a floating enclave.

Despite these, he still claims "archwizard" as a title. This is significant, especially from Waterdeep, where the most powerful wizards in the world gather, including Laeral Silverhand (another of Mystra's Chosen, immortal to a degree, and Open Lord of Waterdeep) and Vajra Safahr (current Blackstaff and Archmage of Waterdeep).

Bonus points for his significance, he is Gale of Waterdeep. His personally chosen moniker marks him as outstanding among Waterdhavians. There might be a handful of people named Gale in Waterdeep, but there is only one Gale of Waterdeep. This is further backed up by Lorroakan recognizing him, with his only reason for Gale being lesser than someone who supposedly figured out immortality being that Gale was Mystra's discarded lapdog.

Gale is skilled in all manner of magic. This is confirmed directly in his epilogue, where you can question him about his choice teaching the School of Illusion, and he says that he wanted to teach ALL the classes there, but the staff told him no. That includes schools you wouldn't normally associate with him, like Divination and Necromancy.

Based on all of that, I've decided that "archwizard," as Gale means it, is a term referring to a wizard who's multiclassed into all their subclasses.

Does this make him overpowered? Yes. But he's an archwizard, prodigy, and Chosen, he's MEANT to be within the bounds of his own lore.

In addition, I also believe him to be an untrained Storm Sorcerer, based upon the following:

Sorcerers and wizards differ in that sorcerers know magic intrinsically, while wizards study it to use it.

When talking to Halsin as Origin Gale, you can tell him that as a baby, you summoned a whole pack of rabbits. Presumably, baby Gale was NOT reading and comprehending arcane textbooks.

Gale has an intrinsic understanding of the Weave, by his own admission, saying he could compose it rather than just control it. He was also casting third level spells like Fireball at eight years old.

Gale's theme is all about storms: his name is Gale, he occasionally says "A rough tempest I will raise" in combat, almost all his official art has him controlling lightning, and his robe is thunder purple. This continues into God!Gale's design, where he has literal glowing lightning bolts framing his eyes, and his outfit is lightning blue.

K'ha'ssji'trach'ash: On his own, the mephit is pretty self-contained; it's a magma mephit capable of revealing the true form of a True Ressurection scroll. However, the key to getting him to do this is to respond to the question "what is my name" in Ignan with the correct answer. After which, K'ha'ssji'trach'ash says "T'i n'uthrantha m'ahthra Gale." We don't know what this means, but it's clear that he's talking to us, about Gale, possibly thanking us or asking us to pass a message along. This implies that he doesn't speak Common, or else he would, because we answered correctly. Why do I bring this up? Storm Sorcerers have an innate ability called Wind Speaker, which allows them to speak Primordial (including Aquan, Auran, Ignan, and Terran). Thus, Gale can speak to/understand K'ha'ssji'trach'ash, despite his known/studied languages being Common, Celestial, Giant, and Draconic.

Because he's untrained, and rather than Storm Sorcery being just a Lv1 flavor bit that does little, I've decided that Gale has access to the class features of Storm Sorcery without access to its spell slots or Metamagic, that way it's reflective of his power without training.

With both of these conclusions, both archwizard and sorcerer, I've decided to pick and choose which class features are from which iteration of both classes, because BG3 and official D&D have a few key differences that were mostly changed for gameplay reasons. I've then taken those and added more flavor to them, based on the already-given flavor of D&D and effects of BG3, doing away with the mechanical side of things for storytelling reasons.

On top of this, because the maximum level you can reach in BG3 is Lv12, and we know that the Orb consumes "the greatest of [his] talents," I've decided that the Orb consumes any ability beyond Lv12 until its removal.

That being said, beyond whatever spells and slots you care to give him, the powers I think Gale has pre-tadpole are:

Abjuration

Arcane Ward: When Gale casts Abjuration spells, residual magic shields him from the worst of incoming hits

Projected Ward: Gale can extend Arcane Ward to someone nearby instead of himself

Improved Abjuration: On short rest, Gale can strengthen Arcane Ward to sustain itself beyond a single hit

Evocation

Sculpt Spells: Gale can control his Evocation spells and keep them from harming allies

Potent Cantrip: Gale can force enemies that resist his cantrips to take half damage from them anyways

Empowered Evocation: Gale's Evocation spells are particularly deadly (based on +INT modifier to damage rolls)

Necromancy

Grim Harvest: Gale can harness the power released when a spell kills a creature to heal himself, UNLESS it's undead or a construct

Undead Thralls: Animate Dead: Gale can reanimate a corpse

UT: Additional Undead: Gale can efficiently harness the power it would take to reanimate one corpse to reanimate two corpses with Animate Dead

UT: Better Summons: Gale's reanimated dead can take more of a beating than others' dead

Inured to Undeath: Gale's been exposed to necromancy enough that he's resistant to necrotic damage, and his life force capacity can't be reduced (this one in particular helps with the "Netherese bile" flowing through his veins)

Conjuration

Create Water: Gale can call forth rain at will (BG3's feature over D&D's to align more with storm sorcery)

Benign Transposition: Teleport: Gale can teleport up to 30ft, and can use that to swap places with an ally

Focused Conjuration: Gale's concentration on conjuration spells can't break due to pain

Enchantment

Hypnotic Gaze: So long as Gale holds eye contact with someone, he can charm them into stopping everything they're doing and staring at him in a daze

Instinctive Charm: Reflexively, Gale can make a split-second charm attempt to redirect an attack at someone directly nearby

Split Enchantment: Gale can efficiently harness the power it would take to enchant one person and instead enchant two targets at once

Divination

Portent: Gale can focus and gain split-second glimpses into the immediate future (such as the next blow about to be thrown in a fight)

Expert Divination: Casting divination comes naturally enough to Gale that he can cast divination spells using a lower spell slot

Third Eye: Gale can increase his powers of perception and gain a very limited Darkvision/Ethereal vision at will, as well as read any language

Illusion

Improved Minor Illusion: Gale can cast illusory effects with incredible ease

See Invisibility: Gale's experience with illusions lets him detect invisibility spells at work, focus on them, and see through them

Illusory Self: Gale can create an identical double of himself reflexively to confuse opponents

Transmutation

Experimental Alchemy: Using transmutation magic, Gale can more efficiently refine potion ingredients, occasionally enough to create a second potion

Transmuter's Stone: Gale can lock some of his transmutation magic into a stone, granting whoever holds it an effect of his choice from the following: Constitution proficiency, Darkvision, extra speed, resistance to acid/cold/fire/lightning/thunder damage

Shapechanger: Gale can polymorph himself once a day without consuming a spell slot (only into beasts with a CR of 1 or less)

Storm Sorcery

Wind Speaker: Gale can speak, read, and write Primordial (Aquan, Auran, Ignan, and Terran)

Tempestuous Magic: Gale can summon gusts of wind around him immediately after casting a spell greater than a cantrip. These winds are strong enough to propel him in flight for ten feet

Heart of the Storm: Gale has resistance to lightning and thunder damage. In addition, whenever he casts a spell that deals lightning or thunder damage, the magic that erupts is stormy and more powerful than other kinds of magic at equal level

Storm Guide: Gale can subtly control the weather around him, causing rain to stop falling in a 20 foot sphere centered on him, or wind to blow in a different direction in a 100 foot sphere centered on him

Feats

These are based on what I, personally, think make the most sense for him pre-tadpole:

Ability Increase: +2 to INT score

Elemental Adept: Thunder: Spells/attacks ignore resistance to thunder, and when a spell he casts causes thunder damage, it can't critically fail

Elemental Adept: Lightning: Spells/attacks ignore resistance to lightning, and when a spell he casts causes lightning damage, it can't critically fail

Okay, so Gale's crazy powerful, right? What could he have possibly lost that's greater than all this?

Well...

Abjuration: Spell Resistance: Gale was in tune enough with the Weave that he could resist spells (as well as gaining advantage on saving throws against them)

Evocation: Overchannel: Gale could deal maximum damage on a 1-5 level spell without ill effect on first cast, but suffered unresisted necrotic damage when using it again

Necromancy: Command Undead: Gale could bring undead made by other wizards under his control

Conjuration: Durable Summons: Gale could give anything he summoned a temporary shield against damage (30 temp HP)

Enchantment: Alter Memories: Gale could make someone unaware they were charmed by him, as well as make them forget something that happened during that charmed period

Divination: Greater Portent: Gale used to be able to predict more split second decisions ahead with ease

Illusion: Illusory Reality: Gale used to be able to pull shadow magic together into illusions and make them, temporarily, real. He can still do a limited version of this, but only via concentration to keep the threads together (hence the "anatomically correct" illusory wizard in the Drow twins scene; shadow magic is NOT the same as the Shadow Weave)

Transmutation: Master Transmuter: Gale could consume magic stored in his transmuter's stone in one go, using it to transmute one object into another, remove curses, diseases, and poisons, raise the dead, or reduce a creature's apparent age by up to 30 years

Storm Sorcery: Storm's Fury: Gale could react with lightning damage when struck physically Wind Soul: Gale was immune to lightning and thunder damage, could fly at a speed of 60 feet, and could reduce his flying speed to 30 feet for 1 hour to make four additional people fly

Yeah. Ouch. And that's not even including his former Chosen abilities.

Gale's Chosen abilities

Silver Fire: Gale could command pure energy of the Weave in the form of silver-white flame, which, at his command, could destroy anything in its path, banish dead magic areas, restore torn Weave, purge external magic and psionic effects from his own body, teleport without error to the last location he used the ability at, or cast spells without verbal, somatic, or material components

Mantle: Gale could cast the dangerous Mantle spell without suffering any ill effects, while other wizards casting the spell would suffer a drain of life force as long as it persisted

Weave Detection: Gale could detect magic's presence without the use of a spell

Weave Tapping: Gale could cast high level spells repeatedly without losing a spell slot, although this was discouraged by Mystra

On the page for Mystra's Chosen abilities, it says that sometimes her Chosen gained an immunity to magic, as well as disease and poison. I don't think Gale was so lucky, however; in the House of Healing, he mentions that he once turned himself in to a hospice in Waterdeep for a "bout of ruddy pox." Him having turned himself in implies he was an adult at the time, and should, therefore, already be Mystra's Chosen.

All that to say: behold, Gale of Waterdeep, in his original splendor. How the mighty have fallen.

#bg3 #gale dekarios #gale of waterdeep #long post #ask bee #the neat thing about the storm sorcery stuff is that it's JUST close enough in proximity to what gale's already capable of #that he probably didn't even give it a second thought #he can fly at lv18? he could fly at 8yo. doesn't matter #lightning and thunder immunity? well mystra's chosen get magical immunity sometimes. must be that!#his lightning/thunder spells are stronger? they're his specialties! he studied those!#i love it

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lets-try-some-writing · 11 months

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So for teacher Optimus would there be rumors of him being a cryptid?

Absolutely. Previous part here.

Mr. Pax

The history teacher of Jasper Nevada Memorial High School always was an odd one in the eyes of just about everyone. He always turned up early to the point of it being a little concerning when he arrived before the doors were even unlocked. His classes were always so outlandish yet effective when combined with his homebrewed teaching methods. His mannerisms were strange and he always stayed late to help with clean up. Not to mention he was far more attached to his students than most thought possible.

There were many things about Mr. Pax that were brow raising, but a few key ones stuck out more than most.

He didn't eat, ever. His students watched and watched, looking for any sign that he might consume any sort of sustenance. But no, he never brought lunch, didn't go to the cafeteria, or otherwise consume anything. He didn't take any pills or even drink water for heavens sake! Even on the hottest of days he didn't stop to quench his thirst at all. Not only that but he never looked exhausted physically. He could run a mile and not break a sweat and that was startling.

Students did try to see if they could trick him into eating or just offer him food, but when they did they were greeted with one of two responses. The first was that Mr. Pax would accept the offered food with a kind fatherly smile and return the next day with something even better that was then offered to the student in question. The second response was that he would instead pass the food off to any student or teacher who looked hungry. He never took anything for himself, or at least he didn't eat anything in plain sight.

Of course that was not all. Mr. Pax always looked impeccable. Nothing was ever out of place on him unless he specifically worked to make it so. His clothing never changed much from his long-sleeved turtle neck and jeans with his signature belt. His multicolored hair was always perfectly styled and nothing ever seemed to really upset the peaceful and wise aura that surrounded him at all times. HIs eyes also seemed to have this glow to them that spoke of something more, something ancient.

He also just appeared at times. It was startling. One moment he could be in the staff room and the moment students began to get rowdy he could be in the doorway looking disappointed enough to make even the most aggressive student feel shame. Nothing escaped Mr. Pax when it came to his classes and students. He just knew things about students that shouldn't really be possible simply by looking at them.

It felt like he knew every single one of them personally, which was a tad odd despite how closely they worked with him and adored him. He always knew when the mood in the classroom was somber, and on such days he would sing. It was always a magical thing. His voice echoed and rang out in tones that shouldn't have been possible as he uttered an ancient song in a language long forgotten. Even Rafael could only parse out bits and pieces of the words Mr. Pax sang on those days. But whatever it was he sang, it never ceased to soothe the sorrowful hearts of struggling students.

His voice didn't just have an affect on his songs, no, it also gave him a way with words that could lull a student to sleep or demand attention at the drop of a hat. His way of speech was formal yet so very familiar. How he managed to put so much emotion into his manner of speech was beyond the students he taught. How could any human manage to convey so much in a few simple words? How could Mr. Pax show so much of himself yet also be so very inspiriting at the same time? It was something the students couldn't figure out even if they tried. Mr. Pax had a gift, or more likely some sort of divine gift.

It certainly didn't help their growing suspicions that he spoke of his family in a near mythological sense. He told tales of the old civilization he studied with great love and sorrow, almost like he was there. But that same way of story telling also applied to the rare instances where he spoke of his family. He never gave names, merely titles and spun stories instead of saying things in a straight forward manner. He spoke of his 'little warrior', a young man who was Mr. Pax's son based on what they gathered. The little warrior was told to have been harmed by an enemy cruelly long ago, rendering him songless, or mute based upon what the students could put together. There was also an 'old friend' who was just that, a companion of Mr. Pax who stood by his side even 'when the world burned and we were left to ponder extinction'.

There were others, the 'wrecker' who seemed to be some kind of old war buddy, and 'bluejay' who appeared to be another friend from Mr. Pax's past. They all had their own almost mythical stories so vast and long the students often wondered if these people were but figments of Mr. Pax's imagination up until he brought in something from one of them.

It was all so very mysterious. Thus the more curious students began to ponder and think, quickly coming up with only two possible reasons for Mr. Pax's nature.

He had to either be some fae from another realm walking among them for whatever purpose he had, or he was an Elder One, some sort of god-like entity from a time long gone. Either option would explain his knowledge and his nature. Both would also make his abilities and seeming untouchableness understandable. It made perfect sense, but they needed to prove it. As such the students gathered to try and make sense of their teacher.

There were three groups of students in the Mr. Pax mystery club, along with one teacher who was curious to see what would be discussed. The first group was given one mission, that being to dig into who these family members of Mr. Pax were and try to meet them through whatever means necessary to prove they existed. The second was to attempt to question Mr. Pax and draw more information out of him while testing out different things associated with the fae on him, including the concept of offering names. And the last group was obliged to locate where Mr. Pax lived and then try to figure out if he had powers to see if he was an elder god or something along those lines.

To the students, it was foolproof.

Thus the first group set off with their intent set in stone. They tried hard to convince Mr. Pax to let them meet his family, and to the surprise of the entire club, he let them. He just brought his entire family to school one day for show and tell and had them tell the class stories. It left the class flabbergasted when the 'old friend' came in looking like he should be a model with orange and white hair all while decked up in medical equipment. He did not look pleased to be there, and possibly due to being another fae, he too did the same things that Mr. Pax did. The 'little warrior' was even more fascinating in that he didn't speak at all and instead signed. He had the same mannerisms and was similarly brightly colored in black and yellow. The 'wrecker' and 'bluejay' did not come, but just seeing two of the four was enough to convince the class that Mr. Pax was either the ruler of a court of fairies with how respectfully his companions treated him, or he was an elder god and these were his lesser wards.

The second group were left similarly shocked when Mr. Pax didn't shy away from their questions and answered honestly, if a little poetically. He spoke of where he came from as if it were a place of magic. Great technological advancement at the cost of civil unrest, corruption greater than any other, slavery, abuse, discrimination. The dots connected rather quickly for the club after meeting Mr. Pax's family. They rapidly came to the conclusion that he must be some sort of deity or survivor of the old civilization he spoke of often. They hypothesized that the 'old friend' and 'little warrior' must be fellow survivors/gods, or were Mr. Pax's offspring gifted with long life. It was the only real explanation they could come up with, especially when team three set off.

Team three tried hard to follow Mr. Pax home every single day for almost a year but to no avail. A yellow sports car or a big red and blue truck would always be waiting to pick him up after school and then would disappear around a corner as if they were never there. When Mr. Pax walked the same thing happened. He would just vanish like air the moment he was out of sight. No matter how fast team three tried to go, Mr. Pax somehow managed to stay ahead and even smiled back at them at times before vanishing. It drove them up the wall with irritation, but in the end they reported back and the club came to a consensus.

Mr. Pax and his family were obviously some sort of mythical beings and they were to be respected. Best not to dig too deep into it.

#maccadam #transformers #transformers prime #optimus prime #ratchet #bumblebee #teacher au #Optimus 100% knows his students are doing this but does nothing #he's just proud they are making efforts to study him like good little archivists #ratchet is less than pleased but lets Optimus have his fun because his prime hardly ever smiles #Bee is likely just there watching it all with metaphorical popcorn

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