#ship ; the barbarian and the wizard and i

[cimmeriana]

@falsesighted

It was that time again, the one day a week that Melinoe absolutely dreaded. Well, one day a week if she was lucky and didn't get covered in blood, sinew, and muck from the top of her head down. Yes, it was hair washing day.

She grimaced to herself as she stared down her reflection in the mirror, a rather pretty ornate one that was large enough she could see her entire body in it and that she'd convinced Astarion to part with. He probably just took pity on the fact that her tent was still rather plain and uninteresting. He definitely took pity on her for that, if she was honest, because she'd laid thick on that point as her way to convince him.

Her two braids looked an absolute mess, stray hairs sticking out every which way and a few pebbles lodged into twists. It wasn't cute. Not even a little bit. She always complain every wash day, and yet she had no intentions to ever cut it shorter. Wyll, bless his heart, had made that very suggestion once in such a kind way. Lae'zel suggested it the second time she had to wash, though the githyanki wasn't so... warm about the suggestion.

Luckily, the entire camp was on one of their travelling days on the road. There wasn't any real civilization in sight, so far as she knew, so they got a few blissful days without any having to save the day. Of course, she could always just decline going out and about with Rein when he asked if she wanted to tag along, but she rather enjoyed the excitement they always fell into.

Washing her exceedingly long hair was an all day thing, and usually she just went down to the closest river alone and sang to herself to pass the time. But today, she actually wanted some companionship. With a few sponges, soap, and oils tucked into her designated wash day bucket, she did a little stroll around camp to decide who might be so lucky as to get asked to spend this time with her.

The camp was surprisingly quiet, likely just because everyone was enjoying the brief moment they could just lounge. She could have asked Rein to tag along, but she figured he could use the rest more than anyone. The tiefling hummed to herself, a hand on her hip as she debated before Aljari's familiar figure caught her attention.

She certainly enjoyed his company, not to mention he was rather pleasant on the eyes and she had no complaints about the idea of getting to stare at his pretty self all day.

Filled with purpose, Melinoe sauntered her way forward, slowing down when she neared him and bending forward at the waist to playfully greet him in a sing-song tune. ❝ Good morning, my sweet scholar. Would you care to do me the absolute honor of keeping me company while I go down to the river for the day? ❞

—— ❝ Unless you're too busy. Then I suppose I'll just have to go lonely all day by myself. ❞ she allowed her voice to take on a little whine with her addition, not serious of course, but still playful.

#verse ; midst: shadow is the greatest teacher #ode ; tame the shadow and they will bend to your will #masterwork ; the horned crone #sonnet ; apex #faslesighted #ship ; the barbarian and the wizard and i

[katyobsesses]

I'm not allowed on tiktok anymore. Or YouTube shorts. Or I assume Instagram reels though I've never watched them. I will just scroll and scroll and scroll and completely lose track of time and suddenly it's 5am and I'm so dehydrated that my mouth feels like a desert

#katy liveblogs life 2023 #i had like 4 hours of sleep last night #am i weirdly more rested yhan when i get 10+? yes #am i still also exhausted? also yes #and i have evening dnd tonight uhg #but its a fun one! our noble warlock is hosting a masquerade ball... im assuming to seduce our bard #but also i only realised that was the plan because of their tiktok (which is what got me on the tiktok binge) #because i am such an oblivious aroace #so of course so is my dnd character lol #though she (and i) totally shipped the warlock with our paladin... #before the player decided he didnt want to play the paladin anymore and switched to an artificer so our paladin walked off into the sunset #trying to find himself after basically killing our dnd worlds version of zeus? #also he was taking levels in barbarian too #idk man dnd comfuses me sometimes #apparently my wizard is stupid because her intelligence is only 12... our bards is 15 #i have no idea what im doing. clearly. #but its the only time i see people other than my mother (even if its through a screen and technically my sisters friends) #anyway rambling #katy rambles in the tags

[momochanners]

When your scrawny wizard frame, Gets embraced by a muscle dame, That's Amoreeeeee~

---

So! In the last week, a new viral sensation appeared on the Twittersphere (sorry, still not calling it X); The wedding photos of Nguyễn Hồng Hạnh, featuring the muscular bride and the enamoured groom.

Naturally many artists were inspired by the amazing photos, Yours Truly included. I just felt that the couple vibe perfectly fit my Dorf Barbarian Irona and Gale ship in my 2nd Baldur’s Gate 3 playthrough, hehehe. I’ve also decided to finish up an earlier sketch of them from last year, making this art update a love story in two pictures XD

These pieces are made possible by the support of my patrons: Thank you so much!

#Baldur's Gate 3 #BG3 #Gale Dekarios #Gale of Waterdeep #Dwarf Tav #BG3 MC Irona

[yourplayersaidwhat]

We weren't too worried about fall damage

DM: Alright. So the kobold pirates have completely fucked up your airship. You're going down now. I'm actually going to have to look up fall damage rules now.  

Dragonborn Barbarian: Can we still reach them?

DM: For one round yes. After that you'll be too far down, unless you jump on their ship.

Dragonborn Barbarian: I'm going to kill these fucker that are still on our ship. 

Tiefling Artificer: I'm going to heal the wizard. 

Fairy Wizard: Thank you! I was getting way to close to death. Then I'm fireballing their ship. They have a hot air balloon right? 

DM: Alright, your taking them with you. Aren't you worried about the fall damage though?

Kalashtar Monk: Nope, I have feather fall.

Dragonborn Barbarian: I can fly for a minute. Gem Dragonborns rule. 

Tiefling Arificer: I can fly too. 

Fairy Wizard: Same. 

Halfling Rogue: Oh so I'm the only one fucked then? I can't fly.

Dragonborn Barbarian: You weigh nothing. I could lift you with my tail. Of course I'll grab you.

DM: Wait so NO ONE needs to worry about fall damage except my kobolds? That makes my life easier! They're dead.

#shit my players say #rpg #submission #shareable #dnd

[radatav]

GROMGARRRR!!! Gromgar was my Orc Barbarian who I loved playing dearly. 

Including his backstory as a read-more:

He has a Conan-like backstory; his parents were murdered by pirates and he was raised in a fighting pit. He quickly rose in the ranks through pure rage and physical violence. He remembers these traumatic experiences fondly. It’s like, they put him through hell and he loved every minute of it. But he is too expensive. He makes as much from fights as it takes to feed him. So the pirates decide to kill 2 birds with 1  stone and sell him to the highest bidder.

His adventure begins when a  naïve noble from the mainland purchases Gromgar from the pirates to win illegal underground fights.

Here's how the convo on the boat home went: 

 Noble: "You're going to win me so much gold!" 

 Gromgar: "Really!? How much gold do I get?" 

 Noble: "Haha, none, I own you!" 

 Gromgar: "Oh" 

Gromgar immediately murdered him with an axe and forced the ship to stop at the nearest port. Now he’s been inflicted upon the larger world and can pursue his hobbies: -Gold -Killing wizards -Ribs His stats rolled out in such a way that he started at level 1 with 20 str, and he has a 7 int and a 7 wis. He is level two, and kills creatures in one hit more than he doesn't. I fucking love this character. The game he was in ended, but I would love the chance to revive him someday.

#GROMGAR #D&D #D&D 5e #D&D character #Orc

[sixthsensewulf]

I see Fantasy High as this is their seasons. If that makes sense. They all work together, become close friends and best friends etc. have the entire group arc but the major character arcs vary. Let me explain. They all grow but each season I feel like some grow more than others if that makes any sense..

FRESHMEN YEAR

Kristen's journey of discovering who she is and what she worships. Was literally her entire arc during S1. Her new friends helped her out. They were there when she got kicked out of the house.

It's also Fig's story as well. Like her growth from accepting Gilear as her father. Her growth with her mother. Her finding her father.

SOPHOMORE YEAR

Yes this has character development all over the place right.

But the major ones

Fabian, Riz and Adaine pretty much.

Fabian - he did kill his father before the Prom, and then had to become his father on Leviathan. His confidence got rocked hard during this season, he ran from his friends, he took off the eye patch and his owlbears hoodie. You could tell Fabian very much cared for his friends. His panic when Riz didn't answer the phone, his hug to Gorgug when they reunited during the nightmare forest. His panic to save Riz from falling from the fight.

Riz - this was his season. Not saying Junior Year isn't his season which is amped by Murph's insane rolls right now. But learning the truth of his dad. Kalina. Baron. He ran after Kristen. He was cursed by Kalina, and Kristen saved him.

Adaine - oracle. Her break away from her parents, her kidnapping, her wanting to get her sister back. The way that she found more family in Sandra Lynn and Jawbone. Her development of I'm not a weak wizard to I'm the Elven Oracle and I'm going to kill my dad.

Junior Year.

You might be wondering why I haven't mentioned our tall green boy.

Junior Year is Gorgug's year. It's also Fig's. But its majority is Gorgug.

The fact that from Sophomore year, this quiet one of the group. the heart of the bad kids, put a working Satellite into space to being a multiclass Barbarian and Artificer.

The work that Gorgug put in, has been insane for him. Zac definitely did do something with his dice since in the last two fights. .. it's been insane Crit city. But honestly looking at it from a story point of view.. Gorgug has struggled with his relationship to rage all through Fantasy High. But honestly his rage is the best support to his friends. He can protect and now support his friends. The flash of genius has massively helped his friends so much.

He puts himself on the line to save his friends. He holds his friends close. Hence why his relationship with Rage is so different and why Porter thinks Gorgug is "weak" or can't use the "nature of destructive rage". Gorgug's rage doesn't need to be destructive, it needs to be effective.

Like he tanked the purple worm in the last standard. He held his own and the ship against, what 5 dragons??? While his friends were helping the killing and keeping the party still going.

#dimension 20 #d20 #fantasy high #fantasy high junior year #wulf ramble tag #d20 fantasy high #gorgug thistlespring

[thisisnotthenerd]

ok it's time for some level updates from the latest episode:

fig faeth:

initial level: lore bard 8, hexblade warlock 2

current level: lore bard 9, hexblade warlock 2

gorgug thistlespring:

initial level: berserker barbarian 7, alchemist artificer 3

current level: berserker barbarian 6, alchemist artificer 5

adaine abernant:

initial level: divination wizard 10

current level: divination wizard 11

fabian seacaster:

initial level: battlemaster fighter 6, swords bard 4

current level: battlemaster fighter 6, swords bard 5

kristen applebees:

initial level: twilight cleric 11

current level: twilight cleric 11

riz gukgak:

initial level: arcane trickster rogue 11

current level: arcane trickster rogue 11

not too many big changes, except for gorgug, who's shifted focus to artificer classes, with an alchemy subclass. on the barbarian side, he loses feral instinct, which grants advantage on initiative, but doesn't lose his rages or any of his current subclass features. on the artificer side he gets 2nd level spells, alchemist's supplies proficiency, and buffs in the form of experimental elixirs.

most of these choices are indicative of what the party has been doing in their classes and the fact that they just had a big battle at the mall. we've seen some discussion of fig not wanting to be a bard, of kristen having to do the leg work of being a cleric, so there may be other major changes.

by my calculations, they got enough XP in the mall fight to be just at the cusp of leveling up. literally 5 XP away for each of them, so i'd say they probably get enough from regular class activities to push them over the edge.

other mechanics-wise; this season doesn't seem like it's going to be quite like freshman year in terms of how the bad kids leveled up; they have more to do in school, as well as specific social responsibilities that prevent them from just going around town and popping off. battles are likely to be much more complicated, instead of pure hit point sinks. not that they were in the first place, but they're dealing with a lot more. they also have a lot more downtime, much like in the unsleeping city chapter ii, but they are making a bunch more rolls for what they're doing with that downtime in order to simulate the stress of the scenario.

so, i think it's going to be a major progression season, but they're only going from level 10 to ~level 13-14. they may do something like tucii and go from 10-12. we've already seen the night yorb battle and synod battle; we have yet to see the thistlespring tree (folk festival), the ship (probably fabian's house, as referenced by the cloud engine thing), or the graveyard (cravencroft, just outside of mordred manor).

i have a feeling that the stress tokens are going to be like an elevated version of what brennan did with the red tokens from neverafter; the more stress they take on from letting things slip, the harder it is for them to be emotionally stable and contain the rage of existence in junior year. maybe something that can be used to inflict disadvantage on wisdom checks for the rage stars?

anyway, that's all for this update!

#dimension 20 #dimension 20 spoilers #dimension 20 meta #fantasy high junior year #fhjy #fhjy spoilers #the bad kids #fig faeth #gorgug thistlespring #adaine abernant #fabian seacaster #kristen applebees #riz gukgak #thisisnotthenerd's d20 stats #dimension 20 statistics #the perils of xp leveling

[zedecksiew]

What Do Ability Scores Represent?

Recently, Into The Odd and the players in my home game helped me realise something fundamental:

Ability scores represent how good you are at acting under pressure.

STR isn't strength, it's toughness;

DEX really means reflexes;

WIS is more accurately calm or willpower;

etc.

+++

It is convention in roleplaying games that your ability scores / attributes / six stats determine who your character is.

High DEX means your character is spry, capable of acrobatic flourish; a good Willpower generally means you can browbeat others / themselves / reality (if you are spellcaster) into doing what they want; etc.

There is pleasure in looking at a sheet and seeing: Oh! These are the things my character is good at.

But you do run into problems. Does my 18 DEX rogue know they are fleeter than the 17 DEX bard? What if my wizard thinks she is stronger than her 10 STR? What if I have a brilliant scheme but my barbarian only has 9 INT?

How well, in other words, does the map represent the territory?

+++

(Art by Vesha, who is an illustrator! source)

I've got three players in my home game:

Vesha plays the teenaged trader Khabar (and his buffalo friend / parent-figure, Paal);

Amanda plays the monkey warrior Boots-Ra, now going white-furred;

Aish plays Captain Phung.

Phung does not yet own a proper sea-going vessel. Perhaps he lost his previous ship? Perhaps he never had one. (He does have a magic five-person sampan, though!)

He is impulsive. He tends to make dodgy deals with hapless village-folk, pick up dangerous-looking objects, and flirt with dangerous-looking men.

+++

Mechanics-wise, here's how my interactions with Aish / Phung tend to go:

Me: Okay, make a DEX save to duck before the hunter stabs you. Aish: Damn, my DEX is only 6, guess we'll see ... Amanda: Oh, no, Phung!

In a previous session:

Me: Okay, I think I'll call for a WIL save, because the ghost in the goat skull is trying to possess you. Aish: Well, my WIL is 5, hopefully this works out ... Vesha: Oh shit, Phung!

Some sessions back:

Me: The automaton shoves you. Make a STR save? Otherwise you'll be on the ground at its mercy. Aish: Guys I have 6 STR, I may be in trouble here. Me: Wait wait wait. What are your stats again?

So it turns out that Aish had terrible rolls at chargen. STR 6 DEX 6 WIL 5. Just going by ability scores, Phung is an idiot weakling.

+++

Thing is, Phung isn't an idiot weakling.

I've got crafty players; they are pretty good at cooking up multi-part schemes. (Their go-to tactic is bamboozling rival factions to show up at the same place, then benefit from the fallout.)

Phung is generally the face for whatever racket they've got going: he's the most obvious leader (the party is generally "Captain Phung and crew"), and Aish plays him as a capable, charismatic go-getter.

Looking at the character sheet, is Aish playing Phung wrong?

Fuck that. A player cannot play their own character wrong. I reject this notion outright.

What's going on?

+++

Different rulesets try to bridge the gaps between player action, character ability, and abstract math in different ways: eliminating mental attributes; going totally skill-based; etc.

The ruleset that comes closest to "solving" this, for me, is Into The Odd.

Saves are the only kind of test player-characters make, in ITO and its derivatives. This is key.

The ruleset assumes competency on the part of characters; you only go to the dice if you need to figure out stuff that is out of your control.

How badly a straight-up fight goes; whether you can jump aside in time if you've accidentally sprung a trap; whether you can improvise a lie on the fly.

+++

Implicitly, and in practice:

The STR stat in ITO is more accurately toughness---ie: how well you can withstand a physically demanding situation you didn't prepare for.

Ditto DEX, which is an abstraction for how quickly your reflexes trigger.

Same with WIL, which is how well you stay calm under duress.

I can be sharp when I've got time and it is a subject I have experience in. But suddenly ask me to make a speech and I'm toast (low INT).

Some folks have no martial arts training but can hold their own if a brawl breaks out in a bar (high STR).

Captain Phung is a pretty cool operator when he's in control, but tends to seize up when things go off the rails (low WIL).

There's my answer to the conundrum of Captain Phung: he's a genuinely capable guy. He's just not necessarily great under stress. His reach exceeds his grasp, sometimes.

+++

Your ability scores don't represent who your character is. Your ability scores represent who your character is, when under duress.

In other words:

Ability scores are who your character is when they are not in control. Ability scores are your character's reactions.

+++

I do feel slow on the uptake, for only grokking this now.

Chris McDowall probably has a post from the mid 2010s or something where he discusses this aspect design in detail, the clever genius bastard. It is probably internalised play-culture within the ITO-and-descendants community; Emms points out that the current edition of Mothership explicitly talks about stats in this way.

Still!

Am glad to have a regular TTRPG group again, and I have them to thank for my epiphany!

(They are kickass. I ran them through Whirling Mummy a while back and it was a RIOT)

#theory #design #ttrpgs #home games #captain phung #into the odd #ability scores

[gunpowderraven]

critical role: by someone that hasn’t seen any of it

hi so we recently got into dimension 20 and our friends have been tugging us towards critical role for a very long time at this point but we still haven’t watched any of it nor do we know all that much about anything that actually happens in it. however we do intend to actually start watching soon so we decided it was the perfect opportunity to make one of those ‘all the things i know about this thing i haven’t watched’ posts, show it to our critrole friends, and then actually get into critrole and be able to look back and laugh about it later

also the images are all sourced via friend so this is all one hundred percent no wiki no google knowledge, just from tumblr and discord convos and stuff. and some cast compilation videos that were very funny

update: we are now watching cr3! liveblog tag for silly lb -> #cr3 lb

vox machina

from left to right:

- i have literally no idea who the two halflings are. i’ve never seen them before in my life. what. uh. paladin and bard? im literally just guessing. who plays these characters. what

- grog? grug? this is travis’ pc maybe. also hypothesizing hes a half-orc barbarian or something similar? ive seen like one clip of him

- percival frederick von something something de rolo i think there’s a iii in his name as well, his name is long and very german but he does not have a german accent. or a french one. at separate times i have thought this character was german and french and then i heard him talk and was like. What. anyway i know he’s taliesin’s pc and he invented guns and is also possessed sometimes by big bird demon, and he has a nifty plague doctor mask. also tragic backstory. his entire family is dead i think. no mercy percy! he has a thing with vex? also his hair did a wilbur. the gay people on tumblr love this twink. i also think i love this twink

- vax’ildan! i think i may have actually spelled that right! half-elf? vex is his twin? and he’s... liam’s pc i think. yeah that’s it. he gives me angsty boy energy tho. not as much as percy but this boy has seen some shit. also he might be a rogue or a ranger who even knows. he looks like gay jon snow

- vex’ahlia which i definitely didn’t spell right. i think the next one is marisha’s pc so this one is... uh... laura? i think she’s the ranger actually. i think she has a bear. not like a gay bear like an actual animal bear. though it could be gay too i dunno. she has a think with percy. or everyone wants her to have a thing with percy. i genuinely can’t tell. anyway get that traumatized twink girl

- keyleth... marisha’s pc. some kind of spellcaster? maybe sorcerer? wild magic? she Also has a thing with percy maybe. or vex. or both. who even knows. everyone wants that twink. one time she threw herself off a cliff and turned into a goldfish and almost died and it was hilarious

anything else i know about this:

- there are evil bitches called the briarwoods and they might be vampires

- this is the one that got a tv show and might have also been the first critrole campaign idek

- d. ragons? chromia something. dragons. i hope i haven’t been lied to about the dragons. i hope there are actually dragons in this. there’s like a chromium something with dragon symbols tho

mighty nein

from left to right:

- mollymauk! ...tealeaf? another taliesin pc. the trans people like this one. i don’t know what their pronouns are. but theyre slaying every time i see them at any time. no idea what class but maybe a spellcaster?

- ...beau? i know her exclusively through lesbian ship art so i know her name is beau something bc that’s the ship names but i don’t know if that’s short for something. monk? no clue. also no clue who plays her either. maybe marisha?

- i have seen this character but i do not know their name. or anything else about them

- oh this is the sad wizard boy caleb widogast. he’s gay for essek thelyss (or something. i didnt spell that right) who is a npc i think. yeah. sad wizard. every time i see him he’s just being a wizard and sad. the gays love him too but he’s more of a distraught otter than a sad twink. maybe he and percy should start a club tho. also i think he’s played by liam

- i KNOW this character’s name i think it starts with s but i can’t remember for the life of me. scriv? scrat? no thats the rat from ice age. possibly a menace? i think im getting them mixed up with someone else. they look cool as hell though

- jester!! laura pc i think perhaps. i want to get drunk with her and tell her about all of my problems. yeah. i dont know anything about her actually. beaujester exists tho i know that

- YASHA. CRUSH ME HOLY FUCK. sorry im normal ? her voice makes me a little crazy insane. ive seen a few clips of her. mostly gay shit with beau. uh she’s played by ashley and she could kick my ass very easily

oh my god there’s another photo

- i think there’s only one character different here and it’s caduceus clay fun fact i hated this mfer for really dumb shitty personal reasons for a while before deciding it was very stupid to blame a fictional character for interpersonal drama and now im fine with him. wait does mollymauk die or something. wait a second. no, wait, fuck—

- ALSO WHO’S THAT FUCKER IN THE BACKGROUND I JUST NOTICED THAT

anything else i know about this:

- yeah i got nothing. no idea about the lore or the plot or anything bc i pretty much exclusively see gay ship art of these pcs. love wins i support it

bells hells

from left to right, one more time:

- look my brain is just saying gertrude from dungeons & drag queens but obviously that’s incorrect. so i don’t know who this is

- or this! but she looks very pretty and i love the little... monkey... bird? pls tell me these two characters have some kind of wild opposites dynamic they look like they do

- LITTLE ROBOT GUY . fcg? fgc? i think it was the first one. uh. liam pc? ?????? i think he gets bitches

- orym...? i know one of these characters is named orym. and i think it’s this one. i also see gay fanart of him

- i don’t know who the guy underneath him is

- or the lady with the purple hair god i really don’t know shit about this campaign sorry

- ashton greymoore, taliesin pc, my friend luna loves this guy, he’s. rocks? he’s rocks. groovy.

- someone in this campaign is named like dorian or something and im guessing its this one bc idk who they are either

anything else i know about this:

- flying.......... ship?

- this is the ongoing one i think

thank you for coming to my ted talk, i can’t wait to look back at this in a few months and laugh my ass off. hope u enjoyed this mess

#jupiter.txt #thierry.txt #critical role

[dekariosclan]

Can I just say a huge THANK YOU for the BombSquad / HeatWeave content! Such an under appreciated ship but unloved watching your clips ❤️❤️

❤️ Aw thank you!! Very excited to hear from a Gale x Karlach fan! From my last count, there are…um…like a couple dozen of us total 😂 So as Gale would say—always a delight to speak with you!

For me, I always enjoy love stories with a nontraditional or unexpected pairing, and a Wizard and a Barbarian are definitely unexpected. (As Gale himself says: ‘She’s a little rough around the edges…but I suppose I can be smooth enough for two. Heh.’) But I think Gale and Karlach also have a lot of similarities and compatibility that tends to get overlooked, especially in regards to shared experiences that would deepen their understanding of one another.

They both have kind hearts, they both want to help others, they’re both unshakably loyal with their love, they’re both extremely passionate individuals, and they both have had to experience the trauma of being discarded and left to die in a ‘ticking time bomb’ scenario. In addition, their particular skill sets align and complement each other in unexpected ways. For example: what cracked me up the most when doing my Karlach origin run is that Gale’s approval of her shot up faster than it did with my original Tav—because Gale is all about avoiding violence whenever possible, and Karlach’s barbarian intimidation was PERFECT for that. So, we’d come upon a tense situation with some thugs, Karlach would scream BACK OFF at the top of her lungs to frighten them off, and Gale would stand there watching with hearts in his eyes.

And in addition, their party banter is super cute, with them teasing each other back and forth about Gale’s obsession with books and Karlach’s complete aversion to them. They also share a couple lines about drinks and ale, too, so I’m sure they would have a blast together spending time at the Yawning Portal.

Finally, we already know that a romanced Gale happily goes to Avernus with her (and finds it rather charming, which is just the ultimate Gale thing to do) but this line from a romanced Karlach in a Gale origin run just really solidifies why I adore these two so very much:

Gale: My future's no more certain than your own. But when I dare to imagine having one, it's always you I see beside me.

Karlach: I'm seeing you at a desk. Pile of books up to the ceiling. And me barging in with a brace of rabbits for supper. You start chopping carrots. I stoke the fire. And every night is the best night we've ever had.

#gale of waterdeep #gale dekarios #gale x karlach #karlach cliffgate #baldur's gate 3 #bg3 #bombsquad #heatweave

[spacebarbarianweird]

The Dhampirs of the Sword Coast - Chapter 2

Part 2 of Astarion's daughter adventures and consequences of releasing 7000 vampires into the Underdark.

Alethaine and Theris are rescuing Tara and returning her to Gale. Both dhampirs aren't that smart as they think they are.

Read on AO3

Link for Part 1

Thanks @queenofthespacesquids for beta-reading!

The List of Chapters

Masterlist

Headcanons

Alethaine Ancunin looks around the corner and sees the gang of smugglers playing cards. The whole room reeks of vomit, dirt, and cheap rum. The scent makes the young dhampir nauseous - cursed be her sharpened elven-vampiric senses!

“Aren’t you afraid someone will steal our possessions?” Theris whispers.

As they decided to look for the kidnapped cat, the dhampirs had to hide their traveling bags in a safe place. The tiefling didn’t have much stuff, meanwhile Alethaine felt almost naked, leaving her prized things behind.

“My sack is conjured with necrotic magic. If anyone dares touch my stuff, their pathetic hands will fall off!”

Theris gives Alethaine an accusing glance. “You could have warned me!”

Alethaine grabs their right horn.

“Did you touch anything, Theris? My books? My scrolls? The cleric’s ring I stole from the self-righteous bastard?!”

“You told me you hadn’t stolen from him! That you just insulted the poor man and were convicted for four months!”

“Yes! And after I’d been released, I got inside his place and stole the ring as compensation for my sufferings!” Alethaine lets Theris go. “Did you touch my things, devil?”

“Hey! Is someone there?” a bearded smuggler stands up from the table, spilling his bottle of rum.

“Fuck”, Theris drags Alethaine into the corner. “There are too many of them!”

“Eight. I counted.”

“Eight? It’s four times more than us!”

“Congratulations, Theris, you know the basics of math!”

Alethaines sits down behind the huge wooden crates and then checks if Theris’ horns aren’t visible to the smugglers. The room is lit with dim light but thanks to their darkvision, both the elf and the tiefling can see perfectly well.

“It’s a bad idea, Alethaine,” Theris grows serious. “The cat doesn’t cost that much! Well, unless it is a misfortunate friend who was permanently polymorphed. Or this cat owes this Gale guy money. Anyway, no one is paying a fortune for a pet! Besides, I don’t trust wizards.”

“Theris, my parents knew him in the past… He is an honest man!” Alethaine trails off. “Well, at least I was told so!”

“I am sorry, Alethaine, but WHEN did your parents know him?”

Alethaine counts the years, doing mental math. When was the Year of Three Ships Sailing? She has heard about that adventure numerous times. When her mother and father were kidnapped by mind flayers, got parasites in their brains, had to fight against the cultists, monsters, illithids and even a powerful vampire lord, her father’s master. Mother, Tiriel the Barbarian, could talk about those months for hours - recalling every small detail, every person she met back then, including her companions. As for Alethaine’s father, Astarion barely could tell anything coherent as if his mind hadn’t regained the ability to hold memories. The older Alethaine grew, the more often she noticed the dreamy look in her father's eyes when he talked about his first weeks of freedom.

Later she realized Astarion, probably, barely remembers the exact events happening to him because he was too busy falling for Tiriel. And even all those decades later her parents behave like love-struck adolescents. Alethaine used to take it for granted when she was younger but now she thinks her parents are very lucky to have each other. Be it a destiny or just a weird turn of events - doesn’t matter.

Tiriel the Barbarian and Astarion Ancunin are a perfect couple.

“Forty-five years ago”, Alethaine finally replies.

Theris curses.

“Uvuaz”

“For your information, I can speak Infernal.”

“Oh, really? Then I shouldn’t limit myself anymore. Alethaine, fourty-five years may be nothing for a fairy but it’s a hell of an amount of life for a human! I am sure the archwizard doesn’t remember knowing your parents! This cat isn’t worth the effort. I am out!”

A loud thump attracts the dhampirs’ attention.

“I swear! There is someone behind the crates!

“Shit”, Theris curses again.

A drunk bard wobbles to them, hugging his viola as if it was his dearest friend.

It probably is.

“Oh look!” Before the drunk manages to say anything else Alethaine raises her hand and whispers.

“Sleep”

The bard falls down, snoring loudly. The other smugglers pay little to no attention, too busy with drinking and playing cards.

“What are you doing?!”

Theris kneels in front of the smuggler and starts loosing the straps around his body.

“Theris, what the fuck is wrong with you?”

“A-ha!” Theris releases the viola. “What a beauty, hope this awful drunk man treated you well” He caresses the instrument, then looks at Alethaine. “And what did you think I was doing?”

Alethaine spares Theris the details of her thinking process.

“Forget it.”

“Oh, so you do have a dirty mind, after all!”

“Who said I didn’t? Can you play it?”

Instead of answering, Theris kisses the viola. “Oh, we are going to sing the lewdest and the most scandalous songs together.”

Alethaine takes his response for the yes and looks at the smugglers. Three women, two men, three people who could be both or something else.

And then Alethaine sees the cat.

The brown pet has been locked in a parrot cage in the opposite corner of the room. The cat is fast asleep on her back and for a moment Alethaine thinks the animal is dead but then she hears its heartbeat.

Alethaine doesn’t have any desire to fight the smugglers. She just needs to take the cat - and then run  from this wretched hole of a place.

“Theris, I need you to be the bard.”

“Oh, my cousin, I thought you would never ask.”

“Just … distract them! Do your worst! I'll take the cat and we’ll flee back to the city.”

“Alethaine, let’s be clear. You want me to play something merry or, you know, be the bard?” Theris takes out the viola bow and brushes along their inner thigh.

Alethaine suppresses the urge to shove the bow up to their ass.

“Just distract them! Women, men, I don’t care! Whoever you prefer.”

Theris raises the bow as if it were a sword and settles the viola on his shoulder.

“Aletaine, I am pansexual. Everyone is in danger!” With these words, Theris jumps over the crates and leaps onto the smugglers’ table, making a little dance.

The smugglers stare at him in shock, like being splashed by a bucket of water. They reach out for their weapons but before they manage to attack Theris starts playing.

It’s something cheerful like a pirate song - a strong melody that attracts the attention of all the smugglers. Theris plays the viola with their eyes closed, completely taken away by the act.

Alethaine is struck with the realization that  Theris is truly talented.

Theris’ lips are moving in time with the music. The tiefling taps his feet and his tail violently wags.

And then the dhampir sings.

Their voice is deep and strong, and he masterfully combines couplets in Common with Iluskani rhymes, weaving the song like a spell. He sings of peasants fighting with guardians, of fair maidens casting spells on men. Of the Trackless Sea and its cruel wonders, of blazing Hells and devils, of Feys and Feywild.

Alethaine has to concentrate to distract herself from the music. She is sneaking in the dim light, carefully measuring her every step, approaching the cat locked in the cage.

And the creature is anything but a cat. It opens its eyes feeling Alethaine’s presence, unfolds its bird wings and yawns demonstrating sharp fangs.

“You are a Tressym!” Alethaine gasps.

“I am very well aware of what I am,” the Tressym says. “My name is Tara. And who might you be, etriel?”

“A-Alethaine”

“Hm… An unusual name for Tel’Quessira but I can see that you are an elf to the same measure I am a cat. An understatement, am I right, etriel?”

“Your owner… sent us… sort of”

“Owner? Etriel, Gale is not my owner. Tressyms know no masters,” the Tara turns her head. “And I suppose the performer is a companion of yours? He has a talent, I must admit, etriel. But I’d suggest we don’t lose any more time. Do you have something to pick the lock?”

Alethaine takes out her Burglar's Pack from the hidden pocket of her jacket. The first lockpick breaks immediately.

And the second. And the third.

“Hurry up, etriel, I think the power of art is sobering them up.”

“Why do you keep calling me like that? I am not an elven nobility.”

“I am not aware of your social status and preferences,” Tara says.”But I assumed it would be correct to call a woman of your kind etriel.”

“Fuck, I am out of lockpicks!” Alethaine curses. “Damn”

“What is that girl doing there!” a smuggler bellows.

“I am sorry, Tara” Alethaine uses all her dhampir strength to pull the parrot cage. Both the chain and the hook break immediately. The dhampir grabs the small door and breaks it down.

Tara crawls out and settles herself in Alethaine’s arms. The Tressym is so fluffy the dhampir wants to squeeze her.

“We need to go!” Theris yells, snatching a dagger. “Thank you for listening,  my dear audience! I take cash, thank you!”

“Did you fucking see it? She broke the cell like it was made of paper!”

“She probably used some potions”

“Etriel”, Tara asks. “Any chance you know the FLY spell?:”

“Nope”

“Pity. I am afraid I won’t be able to enjoy freedom for very long.”

Alethaine looks up. The wooden ceiling is pretty high, probably ten feet above the ground. Unless there is a troll or a giant on their side…

“Theris, climb up!” Alethaine yells on top of her lungs and steps on the wall, quickly rising up to the ceiling.

The world turns upside down. Her hair brushes along her body as if having its own gravity.

“It’s a vampire! Fuck!” the smugglers scream. Theris pushes one of them aside, jumps up and Alethaine grabs his right hand, pulling the tiefling to her.

“Oh, etriel, you are a dhampir. That’s very convenient.”

The smugglers snatch their daggers and swords.

“Catch her!”

“Bring the fire!”

Alethaine sprints. She hears loud voices and steps behind her but she doesn’t pay much attention to them.

“Oh, that’s the cat!” Theris points at Tara.

“It’s a Tressym!”

An arrow switches right in front of Alethaine’s face. Then another one scratches Theris’ tail.

The elf jumps on the floor and pushes the crates to block the passage. Theris almost bumps into them, failing to predict Alethaine’s action.

The narrow hallway leads outside - Theris breaks out of the old shabby door with his leg, landing on an unfortunate sentry who has been standing right there.

“We need to part!” Alethaine yells, pushing the tiefling sideway.

“Yes, children, I shall meet you in the tower! Worry not, you are very welcome there”, Tara unfolds her bird wings and soars up.

It’s much more difficult to run along the street - the paving stones hurt their feet, she keeps bumping into the crowd, almost steps on a gnome, and has a bruise after an encounter with a half-ork’s elbow.

Cursed be her short height.

As Alethaine gets closer to the center of the city people in the crowd get more civilized and fewer in number. The elf slows down, hoping to play “a maiden in distress” in case the smuggler hasn’t lost her track.

But no one is following.

Alethaine leans on a wall. Her strength quickly recovers and she feels capable enough to run another sprint through the city, but her legs hurt and her head is dizzy.

She needs to find the archwizard. Instead of any coherent address, it simply says “The wizard’s tower” as if that was enough.

Well, the wizard towers must reek with magic.

“Detect magic” is a simple skill, even non-mages can do it. But it requires concentration which has never been Alethaine’s strong side.

And besides, Waterdeep has many magical places.

Alethaine wanders around a bit, trying to sense the presence of magic. Once or twice she catches the trail like a cat looking for food but she quickly loses it.

A strong tap on a shoulder startles her so much she snatches the dagger out of her boot, ready to gouge out an eye of whoever is behind her.

“Fuck!” Theris takes Alethaine by her wrist. “I have only two eyes, you know? And I value them both!”

“Nine hells! Theris, I have weak nerves, but I'm good with daggers! Next time, you'll be left with either no tail or no eye.Or both!”

“And what about asking ‘who is there’? What if it’s your favorite cousin!”

“It’s much safer to slice a throat than ask what they want.”

“You are a dangerous woman.”

“I am!”

Theris contemplates a bit and then asks. “So… What are you waiting for?”

“What do you mean?”

“I am flattered you waited for me but I was sure you would go get your reward”

“I haven’t found the tower”

Theris looks at her dead serious and then bursts out laughing.

“What? I’ve never been to Waterdeep before!”

“Which part of the freaking-highest-wizard-tower-in-the-whole-city part you didn’t understand?” Theris finally blurts out.

Alethaine turns her head where Theris points.

The wizard’s tower is on the other side of the street.

“You are going to die without me, Alethaine,” Theris says.

“I’ve been doing fine. Relatively.”

They cross the road. The wizard’s tower doesn’t look particularly intimidating - just a tower. It could belong to a local guild or a lower nobility.

The Tressym is nowhere to be seen.

“Is it dumb to get there empty-handed? Of course, it is,” Theris contemplates the closed door. He knocks a few times but even their dhampiric hearing doesn’t catch any sound. “I suppose no one is home. We needed to tie that cat up. Now we won’t be able to prove we’ve saved her in the first place!”

Alethaine looks around, hoping no one sees her and steps on the wall using her Spider Climb.

“What are you doing? There are so many protective runes that we could be turned into dust! Feydust, I hope, but still.”

“Come on! I see the open window!”

“Alethaine! I am not feeling comfortable breaking into the wizard’s tower!”

“Good! More money left for me!” Alethaine sits down at the windowsill.

She looks inside and see a huge hall with the floor somewhere far beneath

A library.

She can see thousands of colorful volumes. They stand in neat rows begging to be taken and read.

And there is so much magic in them Alethaine doesn’t need to concentrate to feel it.

The young dhampir has never seen so many books in one place. Moreover, she has never seen so many enchanted folios.

Something inside her stirs. Knowledge. Wisdom.

Alethaine has never truly learned using skills. She was born like this with skills for necromancy and just a bit of fey magic thanks to her ancestry. It all comes to her naturally without needing much thought.

But as with any magic, her potential craves to develop, to grow.

It’s a literal hunger.

Alethaine steps on the walls and goes up to the ceiling. The library is empty but she senses a few protective spells mostly on shelves. Pity. Whatever a person Gale Dekarios is, he will hardly allow her to touch any of his priceless books.

With loud panting, Theris gets inside the library.

“Oh great. The magic library. Every book must be cursed. If this blasted cat doesn’t show up, I am out!”

"It's a Tressym."

"I don't fucking care! I don't want to be turned into a sheep!"

A soft cough from beneath attracts their attention.

An old man in a violet robe goes inside the library with the sleeping tresuum in his hands. The wizard has a short white beard and shoulder length hair. He has neither a wizard hat nor a staff to turn the intruders into sheep.

"Young people, I would terribly appreciate it if you climbed down from my ceiling so we could talk like civilized people. My name is Gale Dekarios” he waves. “And whom do I have the honor of meeting?"

--

Tag list

@tugoslovenka @marcynomercy @wintersire @vixstarria @not-so-lost-after-all @ashiro20 @theearthsfinalconfession @herstxrgirl @starlight-ipomoea @micropoe10 @astarion-imagine-archive @veillsar @elora-the-slutty-songstress @fayeriess @lumienyx @tallymonster @caitlincat-95 @tragedybunny @valeprati @lynnlovesthestars @marina-and-the-memes @waking-electric @ayselluna @connorsui @asterordinary @darkarchangel96 @locallegume @brainfullofhotsauce @coffeeanddonutscafe @my-queen-rhaenyra-targaryen

#astarion #baldur's gate 3 #bg3 #bg3 astarion #astarion bg3 #dadstarion #aletha #alethaine ancunin #dhampir #waterdeep #dhampirs of the sword's coast #meet the dhampirs #baldur's gate post game #dungeons and dragons #forgotten realms #necromancy #dhampirs of the swords coast

[dapper-lil-arts]

look i'm a mlm but the way you draw rarijack makes me giggle and kick my feet in the air like a school girl. thank you for my life i need these women WED!!!

THATS WHAT IM SAYIIIIING these two are the hydrogen bomb of shipping the opposites attract + incredible chemistry goes hard as hell, and i love my designs of them on the anthro side, its some of my best work; and if you saw the other sketches i have of them on the backlog and my other ideas you'd explode lmao (i know i have) Applejacks GOTTA be shaped like a truck and Rarity has gotta be gorgeous and hold that girl. you couldn't pry them from eachother with a crowbar imma put some of the ideas i have + WIPS for rarijack stuff under the cut cause it might be a bit much lmao. Some of it is adorable, some of it might be too horny

Like. y'know that scene on indiana jones 1 where Indy and marion kiss for the first time after he just points the booboos and she kisses them? that but with AJ and rarity would be incredible lmao. i might not even do the anthros tho, just the pony versions would be cute. (also unlike marion rarity would flip if she was slept on lmao) I had this funny idea where Rarity invites AJ to a party but forgets to tell her its a party so applejack shows up with a sexy mechanic routine that they clearly have done before and embarasses herself and rarity when twilight opens the door and is like "um i need help reacting to something" I had this idea of D&D classes with an barbarian AJ and princess rarity where the group needs to escort the princess and well. This super pompous royal woman is getting a bit too into her big sweaty barbarian bodyguard lol. (and for the record twilight=wizard, Sunset=dark palladin, Rainbow=rogue, Fluttershy=druid, Pinkie=Bard) I literaly have a sketch with anthros of rarity in lingerie holding Applejack, who is kneeling, on a leash. i did a very very homoerotic sketch of vampire queen rarity and Applejack holding a stake to her. and shes letting. pinned on the floor. it's already on patreon (and what the horniest thing ive ever conceived is rarity licking AJs wounds while not being allowed bite her. damn.) Also absolutely will make a small comic of this part of the fanfic i wrote (havent posted yet tho im drawing chapter covers)

generaly just drawing cute pony stuff would be fun to do. This ship is unmatched in potential and i love them to bits lmao

#rarijack #i think my backlog is a bit full lmao

[xalygatorx]

Unbound | Chapter 17, "Get Up"

Áine Ts'sambra—a wayward half-drow bard with a painful past—has her world upended when she's snatched up by a Nautiloid ship and furnished with a tadpole to the brain. In her journey to remove the infestation before it can turn her and her newfound companions illithid, she not only finds that their solution has more layers to parse through than she can count, but that a particular vampire in her party does as well.

Unbound is an ongoing generally SFW medium-burn romance based in the world of Baldur's Gate 3 between Astarion and a female OC. Any NSFW content will be marked in the Warnings section. Contains angst, fluff, explorations of trauma, spice, graphic fantasy violence, and a guaranteed happy ending.

For anything additional on what to expect (and not expect), check the preface post.

Summary: Already weakened from their fight with the duergar and subsequently Glut as well to protect Spaw’s circle, the party encounters their most monstrous enemy yet in the Underdark while they seek a place to rest. On their last legs and fighting for their lives, Áine reawakens an old power within herself to save them all at a cost. Astarion, mortally wounded and terrified for Áine, scraps with his allies as they try to help him. The group finds a safe spot to make camp and focus on recovering. An old acquaintance returns to Áine.

Pairing: Astarion x Fem!OC

Warnings: Graphic fantasy violence (appropriate for canon, but described in detail); blood; descriptions of pain and injury (seeing it on others and feeling it); grief; trauma and descriptions of trauma, panic, and anxiety responses; angst; comfort/hurt; close calls for canon characters; no one dies but I do love to toe that line, besties; suggestive dialogue and content; lightly proofread

Word Count: 9.3k

Listening to: Destroyer - Of Monsters and Men

“I knew that fucking mushroom was going to be trouble!”

“Seemed like a fun guy at first.”

“Karlach,” Wyll warned through a snicker at Gale’s joke, “he didn’t mean it.” More likely it was Wyll who didn’t mean what he was saying because Gale had gone all-in on that one.

Karlach was halfway between laughing and barbecuing their wizard. “Gods, I hate you both,” she seethed, her flames calming in time with her chuckling. “Affectionately.”

“Chk,” Lae’zel grumbled. “There is no overlap in love and rage.”

“There is when it comes to dealing with their puns, Lae,” Karlach noted, adjusting the straps of her pack. “Gods, I need a nap and away from these two… Áine!” Up ahead, the bard paused and glanced over her shoulder at the tiefling barbarian. “How long until we camp?!”

“Soon,” Áine called back, taking stock of their party while she was half-turned. They were all tired and battered—the duergar had proven a tough fight, especially when their plan to take them by surprise had failed and one of the slavers had raised a small army of zombified corpses to fight on their behalf. Gale had helped to minimize the damage by destroying the rope ladders connecting the wooden platforms and funneling them into a singular nearby path, but they’d still taken a beating. 

And then there was Glut. They’d no sooner finished one fight before another was started and they’d had to kill the clanless myconid, who’d attacked them as soon as Áine refused to betray Spaw’s confidence.

They’d meant to take a more straightforward path back to Spaw’s circle, but the path had led them in a more roundabout route than intended and they were now more fatigued than ever. At least the path forward was clear—the Selûnite outpost was just up ahead and with a couple of short climbs, they’d be back near its crumbling walls and able to retrace their familiar path from its gates, back to their old camp.

“What do we think?” Áine asked no one in particular. “Keep going until we’re back to the circle?”

“The outpost is just there,” Shadowheart pointed out, unable to keep the wrinkle from her nose when she gazed upon the outpost again. Áine resisted rolling her eyes. “I don’t recall the circle being too far from where we ran into those minotaurs, do you?”

Áine shook her head. “Not too far, no. And we are likely the safest there while we recover.”

“It sounds as though our best option is to make our way back in full,” Halsin supplied, supportive of their conjectures in his reaffirming way. He cast a glance across the others, his features a little grave as he took in the smattering of split lips, bruises, and limps. “Anyone opposed?”

Silence stretched and Áine drew in a deep breath and nodded to herself. She looked to her side, meeting Astarion’s eyes as she said, “We keep moving then.” He nodded once, equally roughed up but ready to settle down somewhere he felt safe enough to meditate and heal. He walked along just behind Áine as she approached a rocky incline and said, “If anyone starts to feel otherwise, please say something, alright?”

There was a collective murmur of agreement as the group fell into step behind her. Áine set her jaw and prepared for her body to protest as she scaled the craggy outcrop. It echoed its ongoing soreness with renewed fervor, but she made it to the top just fine. Her shoulder was even cooperating for once and it made her a little more optimistic about their journey back.

She was so focused on assessing her condition that she didn’t notice the statue she’d risen beside until it nearly scared her out of her skin. Áine hopped back, prepared for a fight until she realized it was merely stone. On closer inspection, she saw that it was a life-sized statue of a drow in mercenary garb. 

On even closer inspection, she realized it had once been a drow. It wasn’t stone-carved, it was a petrified elf. “What in the Hells…,” she murmured, her fingertips tracing along its arm.

“A statue?” Gale asked, stepping to the other side of the petrified drow and lightly knocking against its shoulder. 

“Not always, I don’t think,” Áine murmured, her eyes shifting further down the path and seeing more of the same. She raised her voice slightly as she ordered the party, “On your guard.”

“Always,” Lae’zel murmured in confirmation, her hand resting against the hilt of her sword as her reptilian eyes traced the eerie plateau.

Áine neared another of the petrified drow mercenaries, noting that this one was unmasked. The look of unbridled terror on his face, frozen into eternity, sent a chill down her spine. There was no telling when this had happened exactly, but every survival instinct she had urged her not to linger. “Let’s hurry up t—”

She was cut off by an unnatural rumble through the ground beneath her feet. Áine steadied herself, glancing toward her friends also struggling to keep their footing. “Another bulette?” Wyll wondered aloud. It did seem the most likely based on their experiences so far, but Áine’s urge to hasten away intensified nonetheless.

“I don’t want to find out, let’s go,” Áine said, turning around to step back down to the plateau and get to the break in the outpost wall. She didn’t manage more than the turn before she looked up and saw precisely what had created this purgatorial statue garden they stood amongst.

Spines rippling with every undulation of its ghastly tentacles, the monster that had upset the earth in its uprising lifted into the air and opened its singular, enormous yellow eye. Its pupil spasmed and adjusted, skittering between them for just seconds until its mouth opened on a scream, the expression splitting its nightmarish face in twain.

“RUN!” Karlach shouted, jarring them all from their varied states of panicked freezing. 

Bolts of light shot from the ends of the spectator’s appendages, barely missing Áine and Gale, but hitting Shadowheart and Halsin. The bolts paralyzed them, rooting them in place with only their eyes able to move. Any plan to retreat was shelved then and those still able to move turned to fight.

Gale was the quickest to react, unleashing a fireball at the creature and hitting it squarely in the eye. It screeched and flung an appendage at him, sending him sprawling against a nearby outcrop. He clutched his side, rivulets of blood weaving from beneath his hair and across his temple as he shot more fire at the creature. “Ardē!”

Arrows sliced the air from Astarion’s bow, finding purchase in the creature’s leathery skin and the jelly of its eye. Lae’zel surged forward, sword in hand, only pausing along the way to free Shadowheart from her paralysis. The cleric looked jarred but nodded to the githyanki in thanks as she quickly dredged up what healing magic she had left, spreading it across the group. 

After Halsin was also cured of his paralysis, Wyll concentrated his final dregs of power to unleash bolts of red eldrich energy upon the beast, unsheathing his rapier when he felt his strength draining from the effort to little avail. Nearby, Karlach screamed wrath into her veins, aflame as she took her battleaxe into the fray and hacked at one of the spectator’s tentacles.

Their confidence was momentary. Fleeting, even, as their preexisting injuries screamed back to life, worsened or accompanied by new ones with every bite, every hit, and every bolt the monster threw their way. They were reminded that they’d meant to retreat, only fighting out of necessity, when the spectator took a chunk from Halsin’s broad, blackened shoulder with its needly teeth and flung him into the dirt near Gale. 

The appendages ignited anew with bolts of what they first thought would be another paralysis spell but instead found purchase on the petrified drow. Reinvigorated from stasis, the mercenaries were propelled into the spectator’s defense and caught the party’s blades with their own. 

Astarion’s attention diverted to sinking arrows into the resurrected drow, finding his shots counting for more against the smaller enemies descending upon their companions. He was unloading an ice-imbued arrow into a mercenary nearing Áine’s flank when the spectator unleashed a new wave of paralysis that caught him in its turning tide. The arrow had found its target, loosed just before the light struck him. 

His crimson eyes froze wide as the spectator descended upon him, shredding his torso and right arm with its teeth. He was left unable to scream his agony as his blood poured from the gaping wounds, his undead body barred from beginning any sort of healing process until he could move again. 

Cold blood waterfalled from his slashes as the spectator ravaged their frozen, bloodied friends, only Karlach, Lae’zel, and Áine left mobile. He felt his body growing colder, his mind growing fuzzier and number, sending him back in time to when this was his normal state of mind, bloodless and barely alive. If he could have shuddered, his body would’ve made him. Instead, he remained frozen in time, his struggle against the enchantment rooting him in place weakening with every second he continued to bleed.

It occurred to him that only seconds had gone by, seconds that felt like eons, when he heard Áine scream his name. With effort, he focused on her. Unfortunately, so did their foe. As the creature turned on her, suddenly bleeding out in his paralysis wasn’t his worst fate. 

Watching this thing kill the woman he adored and being unable to save her was.

Áine had been working off adrenaline and horror ever since the monstrosity hovering over them had hurled Gale to the ground. Each time one of them was paralyzed, it was a race with just her battered legs and her swords to fend it off one of her defenseless friends before it killed them in their stasis. Suddenly it was just herself, Lae’zel, and Karlach left moving. The drow were all dispatched save two. Áine had rushed to help when she saw Karlach roll with one of the resurrected elves over the edge of their plateau and disappear, only stumbling to a stop when the one Lae’zel had been fighting threw the injured gith against a rock and came at her instead.

An arrow had sliced the air and punctured his side, a sweep of ice blossoming beneath the drow’s feet that immediately sent him down on his face. Áine’s mistake had been to assume that was enough in her desperation to get her blades back into the monster assaulting her friends, her vision tunneled into protecting her loved ones as she’d slid on the ice herself and fallen on the drow’s upturned blade. 

The possessed mercenary thrust up into her when she slipped and Áine gasped, muffling a low whine of pain as she stabbed her scimitar into his neck, effectively finishing him off. She looked down at the long, spindly dagger he’d plunged into her stomach and her fingers twitched, aching to pull it out despite knowing she shouldn’t. She felt a familiar tickle of drow poison spreading through her, but her resistance was such that pulling the dagger out and letting her wound bleed more freely was the larger danger. 

The keening of stripping metal and tearing of flesh broke her bemusement and she whirled, tracing the spectator and seeing amongst its multitudes of teeth—

“Astarion!”

Gods above, there was so much blood. All around her, but leaking without pause from his pale body, his armor shredded where he spurted red. This can’t be the end…

Her vision shifted as her wounds and her panic at seeing her lover and her friends so horrifically mangled sank into her mind. She didn’t see the spectator change course. She wasn’t even sure she would have cared if she had. Perhaps she would have felt relief that it turned its attention away from Astarion onto her. Maybe he could get away.

Áine’s eyes rose to meet the spectator’s gaze, her features taut with defiance as she stabbed both her scimitars into its dripping, lacerated sclera. It responded with an unearthly shriek and a hurl of its tentacles that slammed her like a ragdoll into a nearby stalagmite with a hard crack.

The scream in Astarion’s throat was half-loosed when the paralysis finally wore off, but the condition’s fade sent him immediately tumbling to the ground, into puddles of his own blood. Shaking, he raised himself on his elbows, his nails digging and scraping against the plateau gravel as he tried to drag himself forward. The sensation brutalized his mind with intrusive flashbacks—the scratching and clawing against a stone crypt lid, painstakingly picking dirt out of the ridges after seizing against the dungeon floor for hours after being whipped, beaten, and carved into. He ignored them, unwilling to let his last thoughts be those long wretched years. If anything would be his and his alone, it would be his death.

“No, you can’t die,” he gritted out, his voice barely managing above a murmur as he clawed the dirt in a daze, desperately trying to get to Áine. What would he even do when he got there? 

She was slumped in a heap on the ground next to the rock she’d hit, her shiny pearl locks bathed red and pooled around her face. A dagger he hadn’t even seen pierce her stomach was buried to the hilt and poked past her arm folded beside her. The spectator made a breathy noise that almost sounded like a laugh and the odious air flowing from its jaws stirred Áine’s hair. It was the only movement Astarion saw from her. 

He snarled, one of his palms slipping in blood and sending him to the ground again. “Get up, damn you!” he growled, but his voice cracked in desperation.

Áine, barely lucid, slowly tilted her head, looking through hair stained red at Astarion. Around them, the paralysis was slowly wearing off the few it affected, Shadowheart included, but the damage was so great and the situation so hopeless that the freed immediately collapsed beneath both. Áine’s vision blurred and she heard Astarion plead with her as if through a long, narrow hallway, his words clear but far away.

Subconsciously, she extended her arm, reaching for him despite knowing neither of them could make the crawl. She winced at the simple movement, her body rending around every injury. She could feel her pulse, an irregular burning around the dagger buried in her belly. Get up, she growled inwardly, her mind’s voice sounding a mix of hers, Astarion’s, and voices from her past, not all of them fond. 

Shaking, she withdrew her outstretched hand and planted it against the ground, her bicep straining as she tried to do as he asked. The hilt of the dagger clacked against the dirt, sending a new shock of pain through her body and she shuddered, a hiss escaping between clenched teeth. Áine managed to push herself up just enough to turn towards the lingering spectator, her body vibrating with the effort while her legs remained buckled beneath her. A cough wracked her body and a spatter of blood projected from her parted lips.

The spectator blinked slowly, its lids hitting the hilts of her blades still sheathed in its eye. It seemed undeterred, its gigantic, slobbering tongue slipping over the surface of its teeth as it stared at her and then began to advance again.

She heard her name croaked again from the vampire lying nearby, too weak to even sit up despite trying desperately to. She could hear his hands splashing against the gore he crawled through, too drained to find purchase on the slickened cave floor. 

Áine’s mind remained addled with her own urgent demands to her body, her memories surfacing in a mingling of voices. Astarion’s, Shadowheart’s, the illithids’, even her father’s. Was this what people meant when they spoke of one’s life flashing before their eyes? Was she dying? 

No. No, she wouldn’t die. None of them would. An old voice resonated in her, reminding her, and her mind traced the contours of that voice with recognition, finding within it a buried ancient power she’d long refused, ignored until it faded into ether and the bearer of that voice left her too. Áine, for the sake of her new family, would embrace them both now.

She shoved herself up once more on one shaking, bleeding arm and with the last of her might extended her other hand toward the looming creature, its bared teeth littered with scraps of their flesh and smears of their blood. Its maw split open, still hungry, still eager to strip every scrap of her skin, every ounce of her defiance off her bones. 

A deadly silence fell over them all until all that could be heard was the crackle of building power around Áine’s hand, a building flush of emerald light blaring from her fingertips and the slits of her half-hooded eyes as, in the quiet that also extinguished the vocal clamor in her mind, one final word caressed her conscience with a tone of recognition. 

“Oathbreaker.”

The crack that split the air was deafening and, for a second, scattered conscious members of the party feared that Gale’s orb had detonated. A blinding, sickly green light erupted from Áine’s hand. When the light cleared, the spectator lay in steaming slices of viscera across the cavern floor. 

When the ringing in Astarion’s ears faded, he heard Áine collapse, unmoving against the rocks. No, was the only word he could think with any clarity and it grew repetitious and feral as his terror and fading condition mingled. No no no no no no no no no no no—

Something touched him and he snarled, swiping backward with one blood-covered hand. He heard Shadowheart mutter at him to stop moving as she dodged around him and turned him over to assess his damage while looking half-dead herself. 

“Don’t touch me!” Astarion hissed, attempting to shove her hands away from his destroyed armor but finding himself too weak to win the battle of wills. The realization just made him further lose his composure.

“Hold still!” she snapped, prying apart what she could of his scrapped armor to get at the deep wounds beneath. Shadowheart caught Astarion’s wrists, drawing another angry snarl from the vampire spawn fighting against her aid. “Wyll, help me!”

Wyll’s face appeared in Astarion’s vision and the Blade took hold of his wrists from Shadowheart, pinning his arms above his head and away from her work. Astarion’s anger bordered on panic. There were too many hands on him and he was too weak to rid himself of any of them. He hissed and growled, still struggling despite knowing somewhere in the back of his mind that they were trying to help him. All he could think of was getting them off him and Ái—

“Go help her,” Astarion gritted, snapping at Wyll’s arm when it came within reach. The Blade held fast, avoiding his fangs and maintaining his bruising hold on the vampire’s arms. Seething, Astarion shouted at Shadowheart, “Go to Áine and get off me!”

“You are dying, Astarion,” Shadowheart finally snapped, near-black bruises under her eyes as she forced her remaining magic through her fingertips as they pressed into his torso. 

“So is she,” he tried to snarl back, but the words came out with a panicked whine. He twisted desperately to try and see past Wyll to where Áine had collapsed. He got a vantage point just as Halsin and Lae’zel stooped to peel her limp body off the floor. “Bleeding Hells, Áine!”

“Halsin will help her until I can, but you’re in more dire shape than she is and she will never forgive either of us if you die,” Shadowheart gritted, finding Astarion even harder to hold in place now that he’d seen Áine. 

“I don’t care!” Astarion spat, his eyes rolling back in his head as his vision blurred sideways again. “I don’t care, just help her—please—”

Shadowheart felt panic lance through her as Astarion started to lose his focus. At least when he was fighting her, she knew he was lucid, but he was drifting again and she could only assume the worst. “Shit,” she snapped, holding his face as his head started to roll sideways. “Stay with me. Astarion!”

Wyll looked at her, panic in his eyes that only flared further when she pulled one of Astarion’s daggers from his belt. “What are you doing?”

“He needs blood,” Shadowheart said under her breath, her features contorted in pain from her own injuries. 

“Let me,” Wyll quickly said, holding out his hand. Astarion was half-conscious and had stilled his struggle in his delirium. “I’m in more of a condition to do so.”

Shadowheart hesitated, but he was right and they both knew it. She hesitated, handing him the dagger and switching her hands down to Astarion’s wrists. Wyll sliced his palm with a quick wince and held his dripping hand over Astarion’s mouth, squeezing the wound. There was a moment of uneasy stillness before Astarion’s entire body seized, almost succeeding in bucking Shadowheart off him as he lunged up toward the source of the blood. Wyll jolted but held his ground as Shadowheart wrestled the drained vampire back down onto his back. 

“That’s enough,” Shadowheart said as she saw Astarion’s pupils begin to react more normally when shadows passed over them. “That will help and we’ll still be able to cart him to wherever we set up if he fusses again.”

Wyll retracted his hand, starting to scout a makeshift bandage when he felt Shadowheart’s fingertips against his, a gentle light cascading from the touch to knit his cut closed. Wyll looked up, meeting Shadowheart’s tired but grateful gaze. “Thank you.”

Realizing they were lingering, the two quickly retracted their hands and set back to work on getting Astarion into a stable enough state to move him. Astarion had grown slightly more aware with some fresh blood returned to his system, but he felt dissociated from himself. When his eyes did wander, they tried to follow Halsin’s hulking form as he struggled to find Áine again. 

He couldn’t stop thinking about the way her head had lolled on her neck when they’d picked her up, not an ounce of fight left in her. Furthest from his mind at that moment was what she’d done to save them all. He didn’t care as long as it meant she’d saved herself, too.

It made very little sense to Áine, when she awoke, that she was still alive. It simply didn’t add up. Not the way she felt her eyes open in such a familiar corporeal sense, not the warm hands she felt resting against her stomach, and not the way her persistent, stubborn heart still thudded in her chest. 

But her eyes did open. So who was she to argue?

Past the fringe of her lashes, she saw a blur of dancing blue light, a shimmer of iridescent motes. When her amber eyes focused, she saw the bioluminescent spores for what they were, aglow as they wove in through the flap of her tent from outside. Their song thrummed gently against her aching head and seemed to settle among her bruises and cuts, their faint warmth second to the touch against her waist.

Gingerly, Áine turned her head to regard the cleric hunched over her. Shadowheart’s focus was solely on the wound she was pulling together in Áine’s gut, the dagger that had made it set aside near her medical pouch. The pouch was dotted with blood as if the dagger, coated in the substance, had been thrown down in a hurry. The shadows under the cleric’s eyes were nearly black against her ashen skin and while her hands appeared still against Áine’s flesh, she could feel the faint tremble in them through the wound they covered.

Áine tried to speak but found her throat dry as a bone. Shadowheart heard the little sound she made at least and her eyes flickered to the bard under her care. “Welcome back,” Shadowheart murmured, an attempt at humor.

“Did you have to revive me?” Áine asked, managing to find her voice this time but just barely.

“No,” Shadowheart said, the glow fading from her palms as she removed her hands to reveal a fresh scar where the drow’s dagger had run Áine through. “But it was close. Not just for you.”

“Is everyone—?”

“Don’t stress yourself and undo my work,” Shadowheart scolded Áine as she tried to sit up too quickly. “Everyone is alive. We’re back in the circle. We’re safe…” She gave Áine a peculiar look. “Thanks to you.”

Áine let out a shaky sigh of relief to hear the others were all alright. She parsed back through what she could remember before blacking out, but it was scattered. More vividly than what she’d done specifically, she remembered that whisper in her mind, the familiar gravelly voice as vivid in memory as in life. “Oathbreaker.” 

At least it had worked.

Áine glanced at Shadowheart’s imploring eyes, feeling bare under the other woman’s scrutiny. She focused on the shadows beneath her eyes again and the bruises and cuts she could see scattered across her uncovered skin. “You should rest, too,” she informed the cleric. When Shadowheart grimaced, Áine insisted, “Seriously. You’ve done more than enough. Take care of yourself for a while. Please?”

“Fine, fine,” Shadowheart mumbled, waving Áine off as she gathered her things back into her pouch. She plucked up the bloodied dagger with a sneer of resentment. “I’m going to rid us of this unless you want it for some reason.”

“I’ve had enough of it, thanks,” Áine murmured.

Shadowheart nodded but didn’t yet budge from Áine’s side. She broke her troubled silence just as Áine was about to insist again that she go get some rest. “You know… Whatever you were before we met, before you were a bard, it’s okay,” she said, catching Áine off-guard. “It won’t change anything, even if you feel it might.”

Áine frowned. “I’m not so sure.”

Shadowheart nodded, meeting Áine’s eyes. “I understand. And I can’t speak for everyone, of course. But I can relate in a way. I felt the same fear when I hadn’t yet told you I was a Sharran. And, for whatever that’s worth in relation to what you’re dealing with, that ended up okay.”

“It’s different. You’re not riddled with shame for it,” Áine said, trying to gentle her curt tone. “But I understand your meaning. And I’ll take it to heart.”

“That’s all I ask,” Shadowheart said, patting Áine’s hand. “That and for you to check on Astarion when you feel ready to get up and around again. Not that you wouldn’t regardless, but—”

“Is he alright?” Áine asked with renewed urgency. Memories of his torso slashed apart, his panicked frozen eyes, and how he’d tried to drag himself to her flashed through her mind.

“He is,” Shadowheart hastened to reassure her. “He wouldn’t be if you hadn’t done what you did. None of us would be, I don’t think. But he made it very difficult to save him and I’m worried I didn’t find all his injuries before he ran me off.”

“Ran you off?” Áine repeated.

“It took me and Wyll to stabilize him on that cliff so we could move him,” Shadowheart told her. “He was fighting us nearly the entire time and telling us not to touch him.” Áine’s heart stung. “And yelling at us to go help you instead. Then when we finally got back and I took you over from Halsin, we had to all but cram him into his tent for him to leave your side and actually rest. Succeeding that, he wouldn’t let anyone in to finish cleaning up his wounds and—”

Shadowheart was becoming more and more impassioned and blustering as she recounted it, only pausing when Áine rested her hand against the cleric’s arm. “I’ll go.” Shadowheart was frustrated and Áine could see it, but she only got this flustered when she was also worried.

“Right. Thank you,” Shadowheart said breathily through a sigh as she ran a hand across her forehead. Her palms and fingertips were speckled with blood she’d missed between patients and her nails were crusted with dirt and grime. She looked like she could pass out at any moment and it was finally that fatigue hitting that encouraged her to follow Áine’s advice. “I think I’ve said it before,” she said as she turned to leave, “but I can’t remember in my current headspace if I’ve said it aloud to you… I was wrong about him.”

Áine adjusted to her side so she could push herself into a seated position. “How so?”

“I told you a while back that I doubted his intentions with you,” Shadowheart explained. “And I still sort of did, even after he asked me about your shoulder. But I was wrong. He loves you. Dearly.”

Áine blushed and the color got mixed in with the bruises splotching her skin. “I wouldn’t go that far, but—”

“Oh, I would,” Shadowheart insisted. “You should see the way he looks at you, especially when he thinks no one’s paying him any mind. Then you wouldn’t be able to argue with me.”

“I’m sure I’d still find a way,” Áine mused, gathering her hair into a low side-ponytail and noting with some alarm how streaked with blood her hair was. She wasn’t sure what she expected, but she supposed she’d just forgotten both how much she’d bled and how much blood she’d fallen into in general during the fight.

“Hm. Probably,” Shadowheart hummed. “Take it easy tonight.”

“I will,” Áine assured her, watching her leave before slowly staggering to her feet. She ducked through her tent door as well, her eyes finding the cleric and watching her progress back to her tent. 

Shadowheart started to deviate toward Halsin, who was working on closing a wound on Gale’s scalp. She hesitated and glanced furtively back as she felt Áine’s eyes on her. Áine gave her a scolding look that put Shadowheart back on a path to her tent, not satisfied until the cleric was in her tent with the bit of canvas falling back into place behind her. 

Satisfied, Áine scoped out the camp, noting Halsin and Gale again but not resting until she also scoped out Wyll, Karlach, and Lae’zel. The last she’d seen of Karlach, the tiefling had been scrapping with one of the drow mercenaries and it had taken both of them over a ledge, but at a glance, she seemed the most intact of all of them. 

Wyll looked more or less just a bit bruised with a few treated cuts to his name and he was assisting Karlach in checking a wound on Lae’zel’s head. Lae’zel had only agreed to Karlach evaluating her wounds, as she saw a sister-in-arms in the tiefling and felt less scrutinized by a fellow warrior. However, Karlach couldn’t touch Lae’zel without setting the young githyanki ablaze, so Wyll was permitted to be Karlach’s hands, carefully moving Lae’zel’s bloodied hair so they could check the damage.

From Áine’s vantage point, they looked like they were doing well to take care of each other, which meant she could feel zero qualms about going to see Astarion and likely staying there for the rest of the night thereafter if he let her. They’d been cohabitating since he’d confided in her just a couple of nights back, but she’d never seen him in such a state of injury and figured there was a chance he preferred to weather those conditions alone. 

Meeting her comrades’ gazes as she passed them to get to his tent door, she exchanged smiles and reassuring looks with each, her heart full and her head light with relief that everyone, somehow against their odds, had survived another night. As put-together as she seemed on the surface though, her mind hadn’t stopped racing along with her heart since she remembered how badly wounded Astarion was before she fainted. Neither slowed until she was able to peek through the door of his tent and confirm he was inside, alive and in a deep reverie.

Áine held a hand against her aching heart, a sigh easing from her chest and relaxing her frame. He was okay.

Astarion lay on his bedroll, his fingers curled into small circles for his meditation and his skin littered with cuts and bruises. Shadows bloomed as dark as Shadowheart’s under his closed eyes, standing out against his porcelain pallor, dark petals against snow. He was without a shirt, either of his choosing or something Shadowheart and Wyll had managed to do when they’d fought to stabilize him. His pants remained but they were tattered from the battle, slashed through in several places. 

To Áine’s relief, the wounds she remembered pouring blood to stone looked well on their way to healing. His chest rose and fell with even breaths despite not needing to breathe. She was glad he did anyway—it reassured her in times like this.

Her gaze shifted down to a small bowl of water and a cloth near the bedroll, the bowl half spilled across the dirt beside it. A relic of Shadowheart’s scrap with him, she supposed. Áine shook her head as she carefully sank to her knees beside him and submerged the cloth in the lukewarm water, wringing it over the basin. Didn’t he understand that whatever vigil he may have kept in or outside her tent would have done her no good at all if it hindered his healing? 

She smirked softly as she supposed he probably hadn’t thought that far at all. He rarely could think more than two steps ahead into a plan at any given time.

Áine started with his arms, carefully wiping away the remnants of blood Shadowheart had been unable to get to and Astarion had likely left in favor of tending to his pain and exhaustion. She took her time to be thorough, humming the melody to “Lilac & Gooseberries” under her breath while she worked, musing over how she could change more of the lyrics to suit his fine qualities. When she felt a sliver of her bardic abilities touch upon the tune, she allowed them to flow in, giving the strokes she made with the cloth a touch of magic to help along his recovery.  

She sighed again, soft and more sad this time. My poor boy, she thought, locating his essential oils near one of the pillows she’d brought from her tent and adding a couple of drops to the basin before she began cleaning the blood from his chest and neck. He was okay and she knew that. He’d go hunt and be better in a day’s time and he was already most assuredly more healed up than she was. She just kept thinking back to the look on his face after she’d gone down, and kept hearing that crack in his voice as he’d begged her to get back up. 

It was possible, she thought while she featherlight cleansed his neck, face, and ears, that she may not have found it within herself to reawaken that old, unexplored power had she not felt compelled to push through for him. She was giving up before hearing his voice. She’d felt herself buckle, delirious with pain and fatigue, and flood with despair at seeing her friends so broken. At seeing him so broken, too. She’d started to lose hope.

A star in the Underdark, indeed, she thought, thinking she was perhaps still a little delirious with pain when she noted the sappiness of her own musings. She felt herself smile even though it aggravated the split in her lip. Áine drew her lower lip between her teeth, fidgeting with the healing cut while she moved on to Astarion’s hair, meticulously smoothing the red tints from his silver strands.

She didn’t notice he was conscious until a few minutes after he first opened his eyes, too focused on tending to his curls. When her eyes met his, she found them already on her bearing a mix of emotions, some of which she couldn’t quite translate. One almost looked like anger.

Áine’s lips curled in the beginnings of a smile that fell away when he suddenly bolted upright. They stared at each other—Astarion agitated and Áine bewildered—until Áine’s gaze once more traced the dark shadows beneath his scarlet eyes and held out her wrist. Astarion looked between her confused expression and the vein she offered him before scowling as if insulted and swatting her arm away. 

More flummoxed than before, Áine’s eyes narrowed and she parted her lips to speak, but he lunged forward and swallowed her words, his hand catching around the back of her neck as he angled her head and kissed her hard. She made a small noise of complaint against his lips, bracing her hands against his chest when he crowded her with his body. 

Regardless of his reasoning, Áine was uncomfortable and her wounds were aching as he pulled her closer and she slapped his cheek with as much force as he’d swatted her wrist away. It was enough to jar him and he withdrew, looking at her with shock that had mirrored hers just moments ago. 

“Cut it out,” Áine mumbled once her mouth was free, the split on her lower lip feeling like it might bleed again. “Astarion, stop,” she said emphatically when he yanked her closer by her belt, slapping his hands away from the buckle.

His eyes, somehow far away and yet present enough to react, flashed with hurt. “I…,” he faltered, his empty hands hovering with nothing to touch as he tried to reroute his reactions. “Darling, I’m sorry, I just need to be close to you.”

“Then come here and be close to me, my love,” Áine suggested simply and with a patience beyond her years. She guided him to her and folded him in her arms, one of her hands moving to cradle his face as he buried his head against her chest. “Is this better?”

“Yes,” he murmured almost too softly for her to hear. She felt his tears trickle over her hand before she heard them in his voice. “I thought I’d lost you.”

Áine felt her faint frustration with him melt away along with the presentation of his poor coping mechanisms that had caused it in the first place. “You didn’t.”

Astarion craned his head back to look at her, his ear still pressed to her heart. His eyes were rimmed in red. “But I almost did,” he argued in a whisper, a quiet crack in his voice.

“And I almost lost you,” Áine murmured, sniffing against her own tears that threatened to come. “But I didn’t. We didn’t. We’re both alive and on the mend.”

“I don’t think you understand, dearheart,” he said, clearly very shaken. “I can never feel like that again.”

Áine frowned, smoothing her thumb against his tear-dappled cheekbone. “We will,” she told him honestly, not liking it any more than he did. “Probably several times before this is over.”

“Well, that’s…,” he paused, drawing a shaking breath. “That’s shit.”

The bard offered him a smile dipped in nothing but understanding and sympathy. “That’s life.”

Astarion scoffed. “There has to be something I can do,” he seemed to muse exclusively to himself. “If at the source of the tadpoles’ creation, we can sort what controls the cult, the parasites, even the Absolute, too, then—”

“Astarion,” Áine admonished him, her tone flat and unyielding. He stopped and looked at her, his expression pleading. “Power doesn’t make you safe. In fact, it often does the opposite.”

“Darling, I need the means to protect you,” he murmured through clenched teeth as he sat up from her arms, his hands moving to cradle her face. “To protect myself, to protect both of us.”

“I don’t need protecting,” she told him, her hands resting over his and holding them to her cheeks. Áine turned her head just enough to kiss the inside of his wrist. “This is the risk we take in—,” she sighed, kicking her anxiety aside, “in loving each other. Especially in our present circumstances.”

“Well, I hate it,” he snapped, his tone severe even as he stroked her face as carefully as if she were made of glass. 

Áine raised a brow at him. A mostly teasing challenge. “You want out?”

“No!” Astarion muttered, tensing with embarrassment at how quickly he’d shot down the notion.

Áine tried to contain her smile but failed utterly. “Good. I don’t either.”

Astarion finally smiled a little and the sight eased the tightness in Áine’s chest. “Good,” he echoed. “May I kiss you now?”

“Depends why you want to,” Áine said. “Is it still old motions?”

“No,” he assured her, still occasionally blown away by how much of him she truly saw. It was becoming less jarring every time. “I just want to kiss you.”

“Then please do,” Áine said with a smile, giggling when her face was immediately peppered with kisses. He relished the sound of her delight before pressing his lips to hers again, his fearful urgency gone and replaced with a gentle savoring that did perfectly well to coax them both back into their bed for the remainder of their rest. 

Áine fell asleep in Astarion’s arms, a thing that was now common practice for them but felt much more significant and rare when they’d even for a moment questioned the possibility that they’d ever have this again. 

She woke to a faint tugging on her ponytail and when her eyes fluttered open, she saw the cloth she’d been using to clean the blood off Astarion being used to gently wipe down her hair. Áine watched him work for a moment, admiring his hands, before she traced the line of his arm up to his face. He briefly met her eyes to smile at her before he focused back on his task of painstakingly smoothing every reddened layer from her white locks. 

“Good ‘morning’,” he said, using the term loosely as it was just as dark outside as when they’d finally settled in. 

“Hello, love,” Áine mumbled, leaning her cheek against his shoulder. She noticed the water in the basin had darkened, which told her he’d managed to sort through more of her hair than she first realized. “How did you manage to do all this without waking me sooner?”

Astarion smirked. “Roguish stealth and dexterity, my dear,” he answered simply. “I’m afraid though that because of the oils you added to the basin last night, you’ll smell like me now.”

Áine laughed. “I probably already did.”

“Because you’re mine,” he grumbled as he leaned in to kiss her temple, reaching over her to wet the cloth again and wring it out. 

The bard smirked. “Am I now? And what am I to you exactly?”

She’d never seen Astarion get so immediately flustered. His hand froze against the basin and nearly caught the edge and knocked it sideways until he steadied himself. He cleared his throat so hard he had to turn into his sleeve to cough. Were he not low on blood, she was sure he’d be a cherry red. “Well, I…,” he mumbled, realizing she was waiting for an answer. Astarion made an impatient noise in his throat, “Oh I don’t know! But isn’t it nice? Not to know?”

Áine snorted. “Is it?” She hadn’t expected this response, but it was an interesting one.

Astarion groaned and gestured vaguely when words didn’t immediately come to him. “Well, you’re not a victim. Not a target. Not just one-night-it’s-better-to-forget,” he listed off, seeming to find it difficult to look her in the eyes lest she see the vulnerability there. As if she hadn’t seen it before. “But then… Whatever in the world could you be?”

“Is this a test?” Áine asked, raising an eyebrow.

He sighed loudly as he brought the cloth back to her hair, working on the last few streaks so he could have a secondary reason to not look at her expression. “Well, what would you call this?”

“You mean what would I call us?” Áine bartered.

Astarion bit down a small, schoolboyish smile. “I do still like the sound of that,” he mumbled. Áine melted a little. What a silly man this was. She leaned up and kissed him, a smile curling her lips as she felt him melt into her. When they parted, he tenderly added, “And I do rather like that, you know.”

Áine smiled. “I know,” she murmured, nuzzling his cheek. “I do, too.”

He hummed, ducking his head to brush noses with her. “Thank you, by the way,” he murmured. Before she could ask what for, he bridged the gap and told her, “For snapping me out of my habits. For not taking advantage. For being patient with me.”

Áine’s gaze softened. “No need to thank me,” she told him, her voice a gentle lull. “Thank you for telling me what you needed and letting me help.”

Astarion’s stare became unfathomable and it was mesmerizing for Áine to simply watch the way his features shifted. He swallowed, but the motion looked difficult. “No need to thank me, dearest,” he murmured finally, nodding a little to himself after as he reaffirmed that this was something he could do, something reasonably expected. Something healthy. Something real.

“I would call us partners, for what it’s worth,” Áine answered him at last as he set the cloth back in its bowl. “And I’d also call us late to breakfast based on that aroma coming in.”

Astarion smirked. “You’re late to breakfast, dear,” he corrected her as he rolled the word “partners” around in his mind, testing it against his tongue without moving his mouth. Equal standing, level field, two halves of a whole. He snorted softly as Áine got up to get ready to leave their tent. Cute. He wasn’t entirely sure whether the word crossed his mind in response to her answer or to just watching her get up and around, but he supposed either could’ve been the case.

The couple ducked out of their tent and Áine’s eyes went straight for the campfire, smiling when she saw their friends gathering around to eat yet another hearty meal Gale had somehow scraped together from their supply bags. She was about to apologize for their tardiness when she heard Astarion ask over her shoulder, “Who is that?”

Áine faltered and looked up at him, following his gaze toward where Withers was set up. Her stomach dropped, but she also wasn’t sure why she was surprised. She’d reawakened the dormant powers of her broken oath, why wouldn’t he show up again?

Standing adjacent to Withers was an ornate phantasm of a knight, fully ensconced in spotless bronze armor cloaked in blackened patina. Fierce, fiery eyes of vibrant orange glowed through the slits in the helmet, plumes of necrotic energy flaking from the orange aura to lick at his plating as he leaned against his enormous greatsword. His angry eyes were already resting on Áine by the time she registered his presence.

Astarion expected her to gawk at least, as he was. Or be perturbed by the intruder in their camp space, even if Withers for whatever reason didn’t seem to be. What he didn’t expect was what she actually said. 

“An old friend, I suppose,” Áine said, sounding more exasperated than appropriately horrified. It reminded him of how she’d reacted to Withers showing up in their camp as well, excluding when he’d intentionally or unintentionally jumpscared her of course. “I’ll be back in a moment or two.”

Her tone told him well enough that she wanted to speak to him alone, but he felt the urge to insist he accompany her as that innate protectiveness swelled in his chest. Ah how the tables have turned from the original “plan,” he mused, glancing down at her as she walked toward the knight. She was half the strange apparition’s size and yet strode with all the confidence of someone who towered three feet above him. Not for the first time, Astarion found his nerves easing a little at the sight and thinking, That’s my girl.

Áine drew in a deep breath as she crossed the thatch in the myconids’ circle, offering the knight a half-smile as she stopped in front of him. “Hello again,” she greeted him almost sheepishly.

“I have been waiting for you,” the knight informed her, the familiar voice stirring memories that brought her both pain and comfort. Gravelly and thickly accented, but shockingly kind. In more than a few ways, the strange soul who’d saved her in that first year of freedom. Until he’d realized she wanted nothing to do with the power her broken oath granted her and needed to make his way elsewhere to souls who needed his guidance more. At least, that’s what she’d assumed when one day she’d found him gone. “I felt your call rise again. Your broken chains echoed as they shuddered.”

She nodded slowly, still hesitant to accept this part of herself. It felt like a trap, retaining any remnant of her past and the creed that bound it. Even the shattered pieces. “I have people to protect now. I did it for them,” she said softly.

“A noble cause,” he acknowledged. “Just like the first time. I trust you still remember why you abandoned your oath?”

“Every moment of every hour,” Áine said, her throat tightening as her mind shoved the memories back down where she always held them fast. “I… I’ll never forget.”

“Good,” the knight decreed. “To know the reason for your fall, to remember it, is to know the shape of things to come. Your undoing should remain a source of comfort. For all oathbroken who have realized they are far better to choose their own path…but especially for you, Áine Ts’sambra.”

“Forgo my bloodname,” she ordered on a shaken breath. “My kin lie with my oath.”

“Your kin are alive and continue to spread their ill at Moonrise Towers under order of their master,” the knight said. “But you already suspected that.”

Áine’s blood ran cold. She had, but it was something different to hear it. She felt bile burn her throat as she asked with a forced even tone, “And my father?”

“Aye,” the knight confirmed, inclining his incorporeal armored head. “No less would be expected.”

She gave a flippant shrug of one shoulder. “I dunno. Rather hoped he might’ve died, I suppose.”

“Are you sure?” he challenged her.

“Are you suggesting I miss him?” she hissed in an effort to keep her voice low. “That I would ever forgive him?”

“No such thing,” the knight said. “But even now, the shadows gather around you. They have been with you since you ran. They sense the cracks in your armor and they yearn to be used. To be inflicted. Your power reawakens reborn. It is your path to pave, lass.”

Áine pursed her lips and glanced toward her feet. She knew what he implied. And he wasn’t wrong. While her fractured heart and broken mind reeled in terror at returning to those sickly lands knowing that the ones she’d fled still lived, some part of her looked upon this and saw opportunity. Closure. She’d always sworn to kill him, any of them, if they came after her, and some dark part of her welcomed that possibility as it drew ever closer.

“Will you be with us again now?” she asked, turning her gaze back up to his flame-made eyes. “Or is this just my ‘welcome back’ party?”

“You were not ready when first we met,” the knight said, his tone almost gentle. “You accepted this power out of fear of your family, out of fear of your weakness. You now know your way, but we reunite so I may show you how you might reach it if you have need of my teachings.”

Áine nodded. “Well, you are welcome in our camp, if you care for my permission,” she said, drawing a breath. “And I feel as if I owe you an apology. Not for resisting my power, but for how I treated you for most of our time together. I wasn’t myself.”

The knight actually chuckled. “You were young. Tortured. And too kind for your own good. Still seem to be.”

Áine smirked, a guilty press to her lips. “I suppose that’s something I’ll never shake.”

“See that you don’t,” the knight advised. “It is a rare thing and you possess the strength to protect that kindness rather than be taken advantage of for it.”

“Thanks for the pep talk,” Áine said, adjusting her ponytail and tracing her fingertips over the wet strands Astarion had cleansed the blood from just earlier. She glanced at Withers. “Hope you don’t mind a roommate.”

“Thou art as ever far too keen to seem amusing,” Withers informed her.

“Did you just say I’m not funny?” Áine balked. “You know what, nevermind. I’m done with both of you for a while.” When she turned to walk to the fire, the two strange figures exchanged a glance behind her back.

Áine joined Astarion’s side and served herself a bowl of porridge from the pot hanging over the fire, plunking a dab of honey into it from a jar nearby. She was surprised there was any left given how fond Halsin was of the stuff. As she stirred the honey into her breakfast, she cast another glance back at the stalwart knight. It was so strange to see him again, but also strangely reassuring. As frightening as it was for aspects of her past to be coming full circle, it felt overdue. She only hoped she proved herself in the end.

“Áine, did you hear me?”

“Hm? What?” she piped up, following the source of the voice back to Gale. “Sorry.”

“No need!” he hastened to say. “I was just curious about our, uh, new guest.”

“Do you know them? Or it?” Wyll pressed warily.

Áine deliberated for a moment before she shrugged and went back to eating her food, relaxing when she felt Astarion’s hand trace up her back. He was starting to get a little too attuned to when she was stressed. Or perhaps that was okay. Perhaps that was something she needed like he needed certain things from her. 

“Just another member of the ‘Undead Peepaw Corner’,” she said, speaking a little more loudly so she could be sure Withers would hear her. “He’s fine.”

The group shared glances, save for Karlach who was fully focused on shoveling her breakfast into her mouth. Lae’zel also seemed generally unbothered, her trust in Áine enough for her to not push further.

“There has to be more to it than that,” Wyll asserted, earning surprised glances from Shadowheart and Gale for the suspicion in his tone. 

Áine glanced at Wyll and set her spoon in her bowl to scratch the owlbear cub’s head when it ambled over to her side. “I mean, you’re welcome to go ask him yourself.”

Wyll glanced toward Withers and the knight before pulling a face and thinking better of striking up that particular conversation.

Next chapter: Chapter 18, "Bard Dance"

#angst with a happy ending #astarion x oc #astarion x female oc #astarion fanfic #astarion fluff #bg3 #bg3 fanfic #bg3 fanfiction #bg3 astarion #astarion bg3 #astarion ancunin #astarion #baldurs gate 3 #baldurs gate #tav #astarion acunin #astarion x tav #tav x astarion #astarion romance #baldur's gate 3 #baldurs gate 3 astarion #baldur's gate iii #baldurs gate astarion #baldurs gate tav #baldur's gate #baldurs gate iii #bg3 tav #tavstarion #unbound fic #spawn astarion

[yourplayersaidwhat]

We wonder why our DM hates this campaign.

DM: Alright, you recruited another NPC to your pirate crew. 

Barbarian: Excellent! We’ll I’m the captain and my thing is that I keep trying to steal shit and because I’m not sneaky enough I keep getting arrested, and then breaking out of jail using as much brute force as possible. 

*Points to Paladin* Over there is the big guns, she is all about fighting so if you need to train some ask her. She’s really good at sparring and she’ll get you trained up or you’ll die to a mop. Super helpful to have during jail breaks cause she decimates the guards. 

*Points to wizard* He’s super smart and really loves fireball and firebolt. You cold? Go to him he’ll keep you warm. 

DM: The NPC asks if [Artificer] is then the reasonable one. 

Barbarian: HA! As if! He’s super smart with potions and healing but don’t ask too many questions–

Artificer: DID HE ASK QUESTIONS!? I throw a potion at him. 

DM: *Sighs* roll to hit and what it is.

Artificer: Ok. 16 hit? Sweet. That’s number 64 and now his hair is three times as long. 

DM: … If he’s bald does nothing happen? Wait I get to pick that, he now has hair. 

Paladin: Damn it I wanted it to be fingers fall off for a few hours one again. 

Wizard: All in due time. 

DM: So the NPC, now with fresh locks asks the [Barbarian] is there are any reasonable people on the ship. 

Barbarian: Oh you done it now. 

Artificer: HE’S ASKING QUESTIONS! And another potion. 12 hit? No, whelp the floor now has number  2 on it, which it’s grease the spell. 

Wizard: GREASE! I CAST FIREBOLT!

Artificer: I’m going to need to repair the ship again aren’t I.

#shit my players say #dnd #rpg #submission #shareable #why npcs hate pcs

[niqhtlord01]

Humans are weird: D&D Part 6

( Please come see me on my new patreon and support me for early access to stories and personal story requests :D https://www.patreon.com/NiqhtLord Every bit helps)    

Alien Wizard: I’m all out of spells, someone defend me! Human Barbarian: You still have your staff, right? Alien Wizard: I do but it’s useless! Human Barbarian: *Walks over, grabs staff, uses it to bludgeon an approaching goblin to death* Human Barbarian: *Hands staff back* Plus 8 intelligence my ass. ---------------- Alien DM: You can’t all be bards. Human Bard 1: Why not? Alien DM: You all are basically the same character with same skills. Human Bard 2: Not true, we each practice a different form of music. Human Bard 1: I do smooth jazz. Human Bard 2: I do rock and roll. Human Bard 3: I do classical. Human Bard 4: And I do death metal. ----------------

Alien Priest: I am curious which demon you sold your soul to for power. Human Warlock: I currently have it leased to several demons for multiple powers. Alien Priest: How is that possible? Alien Priest: What demon would agree to such an offer? Human Warlock: I time shared the hell out of it to each of them. Human Warlock: *Pulls out notepad, flips through it* This month my soul is currently in the possession of Yar’fenar, lord of the seventh ring in the dark lands. ------------------- Human Druid: *Brutally disembowels a troll by bringing a tree to life and then having it stab it repeatedly with its branches* Alien Warrior: While I am happy to see you are capable of defending yourself, I am a bit confused. Alien Paladin: Agreed. I thought Druid’s were meant to be at peace when communing with nature. Human Druid: This is pretty normal when you speak to trees all day. Alien Warrior: What do you mean? Human Druid: *leans in close and whispers* You have no idea how blood thirsty they are. Human Druid: They make blood hunters look like try hards at the gym. ---------------------- *party fighting a vampire lord on a boat* Alien Barbarian: They’re too powerful and we don’t have any holy weapons!” Human Priest: Throw them into the water! Alien Barbarian: *Shoulder rushes vampire lord and knocks them off into the water* Alien Paladin: Now what? Human Priest: *Holds up icon of faith and speaks holy words* Alien Barbarian: What did you do? Human Priest: I just blessed the entire ocean. Alien Paladin: You can do that? Human Priest: *shrugs* Let’s check. *Party looks over railing of ship to see vampire lord burning to ash in water* Alien Barbarian: Well damn, I guess he can. --------------------------- Alien Priest: I don’t think a bard can dual class as a warlock. Human Bard: Not true. Human bard: When I do my spells I sing with a mix of death metal and Latin. Alien Priest: How does that make you a warlock? Human Bard: It has the odd side effect of summoning demons who do my bidding in exchange for favors. -------------------------- *Shop door rings and customer enters* Human Artificer: What can I do for you? Alien Warrior: I wish to return my blade and get a refund. Human Artificer: Well that’s strange, may I see the blade? *Hands over the blade* Human Artificer: *Examining the blade* I can’t see any fault with the weapon; why do you wish to return it? Alien Warrior: You would not believe me if I told you. Human Artificer: Try me. Alien Warrior: Last week it started talking to me. Alien Warrior: It started off fine and cute, but after a while it started asking for the blood of my enemies. Alien Warrior: *Leans in* I think it is possessed. Human Artificer: *Hands back weapon* I’m sorry but that is a built in feature so I can’t refund you. Alien Warrior: Built in? Human Artificer: See, I always figured warriors get lonely on the road and could use someone to talk to so I carved special runes into each blade that activate when they have spilt blood. Human Artificer: The blade then becomes sentient and will talk to keep the warrior company on the road. Alien Warrior” Have you not considered how dangerous that would be? Human Artificer: Dangerous how? Alien Warrior: *Opens window to reveal angry mob outside all holding swords* Angry Mob: BLOOD FOR THE SWORD GOD! LET THEIR WILL BE HEARD! Human Artificer: Welp, mistakes were made. ------------------------------ Alien DM: You have defeated the band of rogues only to find many of them are in fact children. Alien DM: The harsh laws of the kingdom drove them into the arms of a lawless lifestyle. Alien DM: Their fate is for you to decide. *Party nervously looks at Lawful Paladin* Alien Wizard: Now let’s not be too hasty here. Alien Rogue: They are just kids after all. Human Paladin: In the eyes of the law all are equal. Human Paladin: *Slowly draws swords* and as its instrument I must see its will done unto all the wicked souls of this world.

#HUMANS ARE WEIRD #humans are insane #humans are space orcs #humans are space oddities #dungeons and dragons #dnd #d&d #funny

[degusart]

So I colored that image (and added a couple of characters that were missing). Anyway, it's the full lineup of BFFs. I feel so normal about these blorbos. Thank you to @viridiandruid for running such a fun game with great characters!

[characer names credits and other info under the cut]

A)ale! my PC and the loml. Massuraman Binder. They have a minimum of three souls in their body at one time and a maximum of five. they're doing so okay right now; don't worry about it

B) Devin, an eagle ale can summon him through their armor as an ally.

C)Cpt. James Hawkins. played by @theboombardbox, spellsword/barbarian. he's missing half of his soul <3, the Hat Man is following him, and he has worms.

D) Sash played by @halfandhalfling our wich/werewolf bestie. Apparently, she's a princess of the moon, but we don't have time to unpack all of that. Also, her (adoptive) mom fucked James.

E) Fig! Sash's familear

F) Orsa, Kiri's animal companion

G) Revazi, once played by @werepaladin. a barbarian whose "grandfather" Grandfather, a red greatwyrm, has been the patron of the party since like session five.

H) Chosen, in a human-only setting, she's an elf child! She's the reincarnation of ale's greatest enemy from both of their past lives, and they're apparently destined to end each other. But for right now they're buds, and she's the adoptive daughter of Kiri.

I) Kiri, @recoveringrevenant's PC, a Spirit Shaman. The newest Pc of the BFFs, our very chaotic party's grounding force, she can see a lot of stuff going on that no one else can see, both literally and figuratively.

J) Beren, a strange teenager our party was charged with keeping safe, then promptly lost (we're working on it). The person who charged us with keeping him safe may or may not be an abloeth, allied with the red dragon previously mentioned.

K) Cloves, the horse we bought in session two or three, that was then awakened by a random druid. He was one of the oldest members of the BFFs until... recently...

L) Erina, @recoveringrevenant 's retired PC, lets us crash at her place most nights, and she was a founding member of the BFFs, so even though she's not adventuring with us anymore, she's still one of us.

M) Agamemnon, our ship's AI, he's an orb that likes to dress up as a wizard :>

N) Ajatus, a guy we threatened to get to help us, but somehow became fully one of the crew. also, we need him to drive the boat, so, a BFF it is.

O) Father Lagi, a priest whose church collapsed into a skink hole after we visited it. We offered him a job in recompense, though by some of the conversations we've had, he's pitty chill in general. Also he embezzled like all of the church's coffers, so that's funny

P) Dahlver-Nar, one of the many souls that take up residence inside of ale's body. Though he's a bit more permanent. He helps out and gives advice alongside some skick-ass powers.

Q) Naz, this is the character I forgot in the first render of this piece. she's functionally dead atm (permanently trapped inside an amber tree), but you know how it is. a character once played by @recoveringrevenant as well

R) Cousin Chet! the half-dragon half ???? freak. we love him though

S) Bailey Wick, a once stow-away, now rogue-for-hire she has the sticky fingers and high dex our party lacks. So whenever we need to infiltrate a place, we send her on those missions. Though we've recently found out she's like 19, which is horrifying lmao. She also is one of the most competent members of the BFFs only because she's the only character that consistently rolls above a 10 (like genuinely)

T) Tansu, Revazi's twin sister. Our most recent true member of the BFFs, she's.... gone through it

#illustration #artists on tumblr #dnd #drawing #dungeons and dragons #player character #oc #dungons and dragons #artist on tumblr #pc #please rb