#jon irenicus

[scarila]

The exiles

#baldur's gate 2 #jon irenicus #bodhi #bg2 #dnd #dungeons and dragons #my art

[incorrect-bhaalspawn-quotes]

"Me and the guy I've locked in a cage and am poking with a sharp stick are both behaving poorly. We both have bad attitudes. I'm brave enough to admit that."

-Irenicus, probably

#source: twitter #baldur's gate #incorrect bhaalspawn quotes #bg2 #jon irenicus

[ask-baldurs-gate]

So. Irenicus. How’s the abyss? Horrible, I hope.

(There is no answer, but muffled screams can be heard from beneath the lava as a hand bursts out and grabs around ineffectually several times before sinking back into the molten rock)

#ask baldur's gate #baldur's gate #baldur's gate 2 #bg2 #jon irenicus

[daemon-in-my-head]

ALSO, Irenicus, at least for those that like elves, is a very neat character study and tells you a lot about their lore. And that man was BITTER. Also low-key seems like inspiration for the elf and half elf. Though tbf Bodhi seems to be a massive inspiration for Astarion. The whole vampirism to forcefully prolong your own life bit.

Anyway, here's his story in a nutshell; tried to become as powerful as the Seldarine (elven gods) fucked up and was subsequently cast out of what's essentially the entire race. Most powerful elven spellcaster turned exile cuz he tried to fuck with the source of the elves' life essence.

Now, cursed with a regular mortals life span and what is referred to as senility (his mind was essentially wiped) he and his 'sister' and Co conspirator went absolutely batshit insane trying to somehow 'fix' their mess and still attain godhood. Bodhi essentially became an extra mad vampire spawn and Irenicus (successfully) became a fake Bhaalspawn by stealing a bunch of Bhaalspawn's essences. Also torturing them cuz yay fun.

Of course, like all good villains, he too was married at some point. Until a sorceress just about as mad as he himself killed his wife and waited for him to love her instead. Some things he fucked up but other things people fucked up for him. Balanced.

Well at least until he was killed in an all out war (he allied with a dragon too btw), his essence was transported to Bhaals realm, he fought with Abdel and managed to turn into the Slayer himself, but was eventually defeated with whatever was left of him cast to a different plane where fiends made snacktime of him.

To quote one of the most bitter men in Faerûn history; "I have tried to recreate it, tried to spark it anew in my memory, but it is gone...a hollow, dead thing. For years I clung to the memory of it. Then the memory of the memory. And then nothing–the Seldarine took that from me too."

Elves are wildly fucked up, btw. At least in FR lore, they're not the elegant benevolent beings they're often viewed as. They're majorly fucked up and the reason for multiple apocalyptic events. I love elves. (Also the Starym house which name I borrowed was fucked up as well. They own a magic sword that turns people irrevocably mad.)

#he may have been an inspiration for me too #this is also why i cant take gortash serious #'scary villain horrible tyrant' #bby do you have any idea how harmless you actually are? #ppl out here sparking an apocalypse every 10 years #meanwhile my guys worst bit is mass murder and slavery #sweety #real villains consider that a normal monday #bg #baldurs gate #dnd #faerun #jon irenicus #my beloved #bg spoilers

[catthattalks]

Part of what makes SoD so much fun, is the knowledge how BG2 starts. Knowing what's going to happen, but unable to do anything, because the characters don't know what's going to happen.

(This note has been carefully folded into a perfect square. The letter has neither a greeting nor a signature.) Eri's travels provide an opportunity to carry out one of the tests I had in mind. Hire a band of mercenaries and pit them against her. Your hirelings will likely perish in the attempt, but you seem to have ann uncanny aptitude for cheating death. Assess the Bhaalspawn's strengths and weaknesses carefully and send your report in care of my contact in Athkatla. Do not disappoint me again, my shadowed minion. You know the price of failure.

:)) gOSH I sure hope that's not foreshadowing

Hooded Man: You will escape this place. We will meet again. Fear that meeting, child of Bhaal. We have so far to go together.

The feeling of knowing what's going to happen but unable to do anything is so good in this line. Such a sinister line!

#bg1 #oc: eri #gorion's ward #jon irenicus #.catthatplays

[ryunumber]

irenicus from baldurs gate 2

Jon Irenicus has a Ryu Number of 2.

#jon irenicus #irenicus #baldurs gate 2 #bg2 #baldurs gate #bg #ryu number

[nightingaletrash]

Irenicus was nips out this whole time?! And tf is with his dumb hood?!

#bg2 #jon irenicus #who tf let this man dress himself???

[claireqi307]

#baldur's gate: shadows of amn #jon irenicus #Ellesime #baldur's gate

[schmooplesthesecond]

after watching the one-shot with the BG3 cast my BG2 loving ass wants a whole DLC in Athkatla PLEASE

also please more self indulgent cameos. i want drizzt IN game and fuckable, larian

#bg3 #high roller spoilers #bg3 cast plays dnd #also i just wanna make jon irenicus die again #also BODHI that bad ass bitch

[ajourneymansjourney]

Reblogs the dnd class post about wanting to be a necromancer: immediately reblogs a post about whether you're a necromancer or a swords person and chooses swords person.

I cannot be contained

#please read that last line in Jon Irenicus voice #if you already did then im kissing you with tongue

[scarila]

kicked out of town for acts of unspeakable hubris :/

#baldur's gate 2 #bg2 #jon irenicus #bodhi #dnd #dungeons and dragons #my art

[lily-orchard]

#baldur's gate #warcraft #arthas menethil #jon irenicus

[incorrect-bhaalspawn-quotes]

Imoen: Yum, thanks!

Irenicus, putting more tape over Imoen's mouth: I said stop eating it!

#source: incorrect quotes generator #incorrect bhaalspawn quotes #baldur's gate #bg2 #imoen #jon irenicus #out of character but funny

[felassan]

Article: 'If Anthem is the "anti-BioWare game", then James Ohlen is correcting the balance'

Text [quote]:

"The hugely influential design director talks Baldur’s Gate, his next RPG, and the abandonment of the BioWare model.

“Baldur’s Gate II set the model, and I obviously loved that model,” says James Ohlen. “But there were a ton of people at BioWare who didn’t like it.” During leadership meetings over the course of the Canadian designer’s 22 years at the RPG studio, he’d sometimes feel totally outnumbered when talking about the importance of story. “Game developers don’t get into the industry to create stories, they get into the industry to create games,” he says. “And so there’s this conflict between game developers and story - my entire career it's been a constant fight.”

Ohlen picked his side early. He was telling BioWare stories even before he joined the company. The meeting of Minsc and Boo, one of the most enduring partnerships in PC gaming, came about in a tabletop Dungeons & Dragons game he ran as a teenager. Then a comic book store manager, he took advantage of his premises to guide no fewer than three concurrent D&D groups through their campaigns. “I didn’t really have much of a life outside of Dungeons & Dragons,” he says.

BioWare programmer Cam Tofer played Minsc in one of those campaigns, “as a guy who’s basically been knocked on the head too many times in fights”. A merchant NPC of Ohlen’s invention sold him Boo, the miniature giant space hamster, in an apparent scam. Tofer ran with it, declaring that Boo would be Minsc’s animal companion, and holding one-sided conversations with the confidant that lived in his pocket. “In my campaign he was just a hamster,” Ohlen says. “I always thought of him as just a hamster.”

Back then, in the early 90s, there were no game design degrees, but Ohlen had dedicated himself to the next best thing. DMing proved to be an intensive training course in giving players agency and immersing them in another world - and his local reputation as a story wrangler landed him a job working on Baldur’s Gate. It’s a similar origin story to that of David Gaider, another D&D head who was plucked from the hotel industry to tell tales about vampires and druid groves.

“Have you ever read Malcolm Gladwell on the 10,000 hour rule? I think by the time I got hired by BioWare, I had done 20,000 hours of dungeon mastering,” Ohlen says. “It was ridiculous. I owe a lot to D&D. My friendships, my career, my mental stability.”

BioWare co-founder Ray Muzyka encouraged Ohlen to dig into the huge binders that contained the details of all the player characters and NPCs in his campaigns, and to let them spill out into the world of Baldur’s Gate. “I hadn’t intended to do that,” Ohlen says. “It seemed narcissistic. But he was right. Once I started using them, I started getting things done real fast. All the characters had personalities that I already knew.”

Those tabletop campaigns turned out to be accidental writers’ rooms - producing distinct personalities that reflected the voices of their individual players. From the binders came some of Baldur’s Gate’s most beloved companions, like Minsc and the egotistical conjurer Edwin, as well as its villains - leading all the way up to the sequel’s Hannibal Lector-esque antagonist, Jon Irenicus.

That said, inspiration for Baldur’s Gate II’s much deeper companion stories came from an unlikely source. During a freezing winter smoke break in Edmonton, an Interplay producer named Dermot Clarke mentioned that Baldur’s Gate’s characters weren’t nearly as developed as those in Final Fantasy VII.

“I’m very competitive,” Ohlen says. “I went and played Final Fantasy VII and was like, ‘Oh my good god, these characters make ours look like a bunch of cardboard cutouts. This is terrible.’” The disparity convinced BioWare to up their game, leading to the complex journeys of companions like Jaheira - the grieving wife and activist, whose sense of duty has been shaken by so much loss. Despite Ohlen’s distaste for the way SquareSoft’s RPGs played, he continued to be influenced by their character work - all the way up to Knights Of The Old Republic, which was partly inspired by the twist-laden Chrono Cross. That and Star Wars, of course.

“I actually totally, entirely ripped off The Empire Strikes Back in such blatant fashion,” Ohlen says. “You basically go to face the dark lord by yourself, and then you get into a lightsaber fight with him, and he kicks your ass. And then, after kicking your ass, he does the big twist. Then you don’t die because you’re rescued by your friends on the Millennium Falcon - I mean, the Ebon Hawk. It’s beat by beat the same thing.”

Of course, KOTOR’s plot twist didn’t feel familiar to players because it impacted not Luke Skywalker but them personally. For those who don’t know - and spoiler warning, if so - it revealed that your character was in fact a former Sith Lord, their memory wiped by the Jedi Council. In an RPG genre rooted by knowing your avatar down to their last stat, having your identity ripped out from under you felt genuinely radical. BioWare had succeeded in making its biggest setpiece not a battle, but a revelation. And in the process, it proved that BioWare storytelling was packed with the kind of explosive potential a publisher could bank on.

After the sale of the company to EA in 2007, Ohlen was put in charge of creative development on a Star Wars MMO, The Old Republic. It was BioWare’s next great hope, and an enormous undertaking - involving the founding of a brand new studio in Austin, Texas. At launch, it featured eight story campaigns which unfolded across 19 planets. In 2011, executive producer Rich Vogel told Fast Company that The Old Republic hosted “the most content in a video game ever”. Looking back, Ohlen views that as a fundamental problem.

“If open-world is the enemy of storytelling, multiplayer is the arch-villain,” Ohlen says. “If I was to go back in time to give my 2006 self some advice it would be, ‘Don’t try to make the game so long that you can fill up 200 hours. Instead, keep it shorter.’” With less ground to cover, the Austin team could have committed more resources to its Flashpoints - story-heavy missions which forefronted the difficult decision-making and tight encounter design that had elevated previous BioWare games. “Everyone wanted Knights of the Old Republic Online, and it felt more like World Of Warcraft with Star Wars spray-painted on it and some BioWare juice thrown in,” Ohlen says. “Even though the Metacritic was pretty good, it wasn’t new enough to really take off.”

At this point, a Knights Of The Old Republic 3 directed by Ohlen would be “not great”, he says. “Because I’m all Star Wars’d out. I have nothing else to say about Star Wars. But if a whole new studio does KOTOR 3 that loved KOTOR, that could be an amazing game. So hopefully Disney makes that happen. But probably not, because executives around there are all probably going, ‘It’s too hardcore.’” Ohlen still remembers the efforts he made to convince EA boss John Riccitiello that fantasy was a genre that could sell. “I had this whole PowerPoint presentation,” he says. “We have Lord Of The Rings! We have World Of Warcraft! We have Diablo!”

The year after The Old Republic’s launch, with the arch-villain of multiplayer still undefeated, development of Anthem began - and BioWare fought that increasingly costly battle for the better part of a decade. Those at the studio tired of the Baldur’s Gate model had the backing of EA, since a live service looter-shooter in the mode of Destiny could unlock years of long-term revenue beyond the reach of a single-player RPG. Or so the theory went. “It was always chasing the gigantic successes instead of leaning into what BioWare was good at,” Ohlen says. “It wasn’t just EA leaning on BioWare - there were lots of people in BioWare who wanted to do something different.”

Ohlen understood why others at the company would want to get away from a formula that empowered old hands like him and Gaider, and embrace one that empowered them instead. And he knew first-hand that freedom to experiment was what had set BioWare on the path to success decades before. Yet this new direction felt like an abandonment of the studio’s strengths. “Anthem was the ultimate expression of that,” Ohlen says. “It got away from everything. It’s kind of like the anti-BioWare game.”

Ohlen left in 2018, intending to retire from videogames altogether. “The big games have a formula and they don’t adjust it too much,” he says. “It’s very production driven, and I was like, ‘I’m not gonna get to make a game that I want to make at EA.’” He returned to the tabletop, putting together a new Baldur’s Gate adventure book featuring Minsc and the gang. But then Wizards Of The Coast called and flew him up to Seattle to discuss starting a new studio. Ohlen didn’t need or necessarily want a videogame development team under his wing - and that proved to be a perfect negotiating position.

“My demands were, ‘I only do this if I get to start my own studio in Austin, I get to choose who I hire, I get to choose exactly the kind of IP I want to make, no one’s gonna tell me anything about how to make the game.” At this point, Ohlen adopts a megalomaniacal tone, as if he were Baldur’s Gate baddy Sarevok, ascending to the throne of the dead god Bhaal. “I want control over absolutely everything! I want all the power!”

To his surprise, Wizards said yes, and Ohlen has been happily presiding over Archetype Entertainment ever since, building a new sci-fi RPG world without interference. “If you’ve seen the games I like to build, it’s that style of game,” he says. “But then it leans into the people and technology that I have available.” Ohlen won’t elaborate on what’s in his toybox, for fear of spilling secrets - but it’s worth noting that Mass Effect legend Drew Karpyshyn joined Archetype in 2020 as lead writer. “The feel in the studio reminds me of my early days at BioWare,” wrote Karpyshyn on his blog at the time. “I can feel the magic in the air.”

Magic and Wizards and science fiction - it’s the kind of atmosphere in which you could believe a hamster isn’t just a hamster, but something altogether sillier and more exciting. An act of collective imagination is happening, the binders are filled to bursting, and all we have to do is wait."

[source]

#bioware #sw:tor #long post #longpost #anthem #mass effect #smoking mention

[mightymizora]

Monster, mine

There is a beast haunting the city, and there is a tentative reaching of hands across the table. 7k, The Dark Urge/Enver Gortash, CW violence, sexual content, mentions of slavery

From The Histories of the Bhaalian Temple, attrib. Korimand Grey

There are many forms of Bhaal, and all of them inspire dread, from the shape-shifting unknowable to the giant form of the ravaging vengeance, but his greatest gift and greatest curse is that which he grants to his most esteemed and loved, for that is the form of true death itself.

____

There is a beast haunting the city. It is not the first; indeed there have been many creatures that have been subject to this rumour spreading across the fishwives and the sailors through the common folk to the gentry. The Beast of Rivington Hill was merely a shifted Druid, the simple folk of the small town too sheltered to know the difference. Others were sea creatures disturbed from their nest that required simply the right huntsman, or conjured devilkin escaped through portals direct to the hells (he knew them well) or other such monsters brought to this plane by magic. This beast, however, is truly something special.

It has been over a decade since a Slayer has burst through the flesh of a man within the walls of Baldur’s Gate on Returning Day. He was not a direct witness to it sadly, but the panic it wrought held a special place in his heart, tearing open a gash in the side of the Patriars that he could stick his fingers into with ease. It marked the moment of ascent from mere man of the city to something more, the moment of change, of power granted to him via the mantle of Lord, and now it had returned, well. He was not perhaps a superstitious man, but it feels like a promising omen.

The Slayer is a form holy to Bhaal, this much he knows. It is documented in the downfall of Jon Irenicus over a century prior, in texts imported from Amn into the great libraries of the city. He had sought to steal its form, to claim its power for his own, and there are notes on his work, on his methods, that he has annotated as part of his studies for years. It is not so dissimilar, not so removed from the documents he has sifted through at Moonrise, or the book that was sent to him with regards from Balthazar.

That is to say, there is great promise in the form of a tame monster.

Read it on Ao3

#enver gortash #the dark urge #manva warhelm #hello I lost my entire fucking mind #this was supposed to be a SHORT DISTRACTION #this was supposed to be an opportunity to write a little cute thing

[markrosewater]

If or when: a keyword for "Can't be sacrificed" like on Jon Irenicus and Hithlain Rope?

If. It’s not something I expect us to use often enough.