I hope everyone is having a very happy veilguard day
I have mandatory overtime for the next four weeks so my time playing will probably be very sporadic bUT I WANNA SEE ALL THE ROOKS. TELL ME ABOUT YOUR BABIES
I'll share mine when I have a really solid chunk of time to do a good character creation (though I have some stuff built up in my head already and played around with it a little tonight).
Im still not sure if I consider dark urge!Brin to be canon or not. It changes so much of a backstory (obviously). I’m leaning towards it not being part of her canon.
This is so rambly, but now I’m thinking about Brin with and without dark urge & her backstory.
With dark urge:
Brin started feeling the urges in what humans would consider their late teens. She resisted at first but her mother could see the change in her demeanor, could see her daughter disappearing. In a dark urge run, Brin’s mother admits who her father is and leaves the wood later that night to search for other Bhaalspawn who may have resisted or cured themselves. She still leaves Brin a letter: You are still my daughter. You were never his & you don’t have to be. I will fix this. I love you.
Brin is exiled from the wood after she wakes with someone’s blood on her hands and no memory of what happened. She travels, taking bounties and satisfying urges through these bounties where she can. But time passes and it feels like her mother left to try to help her and more like abandonment. And, well, it’s much harder to fight when you feel like you don’t have anyone in your corner…much less yourself.
So she finds other Bhaalspawn. She finds Orin, who introduces her to Gortash. And before she knows it, she’s Bhaal’s Chosen and suddenly she feels less alone. Suddenly she feels where she belongs and there’s no judgement, no fear, and no exile. I think Orin sees Gortash and Brin getting closer through their plans of the Absolute, sees Brin’s rise among the followers of Bhaal. And she sees the opportunity.
Brin wakes from the Nautiloid with no memories but finds her mother’s note in her pocket. And she doesn’t know what it means, doesn’t know who she was trying to shield her from…but it’s definitely something she wants to find out during this journey. She fights the urge as much as possible. When Alfira dies, she’s inconsolable. She doesn’t try to hide the body and is honest about the urges and not knowing what happened that led to her dying. She doesn’t understand what’s happening and asks a party member to take turns keeping watch each night.
She is mostly open with Astarion about what’s going on with her, not just because of her growing feelings towards him, but because she feels the least amount of judgement (if any) from him. He also allows her to tag along when he wants to hunt, just to talk (and keep an eye on her).
Eventually, she does find her mother in the Iron Throne and is absolutely horrified that she doesn’t even recognize her own mother. At camp, her mother becomes a bit of a fixture and explains all the information she’s found. Then, obviously Brin defeats Orin and refuses Bhaal, then is brought back by Withers…cured of the Urge.
Without the Urge:
- Brin has a pretty happy childhood with her mother in the wood. She loves the community she grows up in, excels in hunting.
-The most information Brin is given about her father is that he is a noble with the last name Haywood. Her mother gives her no other information. Her mother refuses to speak much about it.
- Brin’s mother leaves to go back adventuring and Brin eventually leaves the wood to do the same. Similar to the dark urge run, she does join a small group of bounty hunters and she becomes successful enough that people request her by name. She also procures certain items for noble families if offered enough coin. Part of her accepts these contracts in hope of finding a House of Haywood. (She hears rumors of a family in Baldur’s Gate, but not much more than that.)
- Eventually she does wonder about her mother and does begin to search for her…but the search is, as i mentioned in the other post, halted when she’s abducted and onboard the nautiloid.
- If Brin had a companion/personal quest of her own, it’d involve tracking down her mother (who is still someone taken aboard the Iron Throne) and eventually learning about her father. Brin learns he did have a home in Baldur’s Gate but it has been supposedly empty for the last few years, mind for a few servants and groundskeepers. She searches it, finding a groundskeeper who indicates that Calum Haywood hasn’t shown his face in ages. The groundskeeper tells Brin the rumor is that he fell in love with someone his family his family didn’t want him to marry— an elf well versed in divination. The elf was told by other members of the Haywood family to stay away…so she did. And Calum Haywood never took a wife. The other Haywoods in the family eventually either died, left, or Calum kicked them out.
Brin basically does an only child Parent Trap to try to get them back together. Karlach *loves* this idea and is very very keen on wanting to help. Astarion fully makes Brin aware he thinks it’s a terrible idea but knows how much Brin adores romance and what this means to her, what it could mean to her mother that he has now gotten to know in camp for some time. Shadowheart loves Brin’s mother so it’s very easy for her to volunteer help.
so I have two playthroughs in progress with Brin and I can’t tell which I consider to be canon~ yet. One is a dark urge run and the other is my original
What I’ve decided so far:
Brinniel Haywood
- Half-elf (wood)
- Ranger that prefers archery (mainly uses a crossbow) but doesn’t mind giving the ole “dagger dagger” if she needs to get close and dirty
- Sub class: Beast Master. She summons a bear that she calls Ruby quite often and not always during battle. More often than not, especially at the beginning of the journey you could find her away from everyone and resting against her bear in camp. Especially as nightmares started, I think she found the big loaf to be such a comfort.
Her mother is a wood elf that originally traveled/adventured Faerûn as a seer and druid. Sometimes to earn quick coin, her mother would perform in circuses with her magic. She used to be well known for reading her tarot cards that she hand painted.
After having Brin, she returns to the wood so Brin can be raised like she was. She claims Brin’s father is a human noble with the last name Haywood, though Brin doesn’t know if this is true or not until later in her journey (in the durge playthrough, it is obvious this was a lie though i think there was a lot of manipulation involved as far as Brin’s mother and the pregnancy).
A few years prior to the start of game’s events, Brin’s mother leaves the wood and Brin with nothing but a letter. Brin refuses to share the contents the letter for quite some time. It’s nothing shocking in any way, but it simply says she is still her mother but she missed adventuring and that she wanted Brin to explore more than just the woods. That there are so many different types of people and walks of life and she should experience as much as possible, fall in love, and find happiness even if it was outside of the wood. To which Brin did for a year or two (mainly bounty hunting and just exploring) before deciding to try to track her mother down.
Brin was actually looking for her mother when she was taken aboard the Nautiloid. In her journey, she often finds a tarot card from her mother’s deck in random places, like little breadcrumbs. Eventually she finds clues that her mother was briefly part of the Circus of Last Days. From there, Brin finds her badly injured in a cell in the Iron Throne. She refuses to leave without her, and her mother joins their camp for some time.
Brin will keep and collect any love letter she finds. In rare occasions, she’s found the person a letter was meant for all by chance and gives it to them. Mostly she keeps them in her bag, at first just bound together with string. Sometimes she’ll re-read them to solace in the words, because they’re the closest thing to proof that romance and love exists.
She romances Astarion (obviously). She catches onto his plan a bit earlier than he reveals it to her, but says nothing to him about it. She’s not hurt by it, mostly because I think she understands it and knows in time he’ll share when he wants and is ready to.
She falls for him far before he does (or at least far before he really realizes and admits he’s actually fallen for her). It happens in little moments— him sharing wine he found in a cellar they raided. Silly jokes. Him helping her patch up her bear (he 100% joked about it and pretended to be miserable helping, but Brin could tell that he saw how upset she was at seeing Ruby injured and wanted to do what he could to help her remedy it.
She fell deeper the more he revealed his past, told in such honesty that Brin knew was very new for Astarion. (In my durge run, I’d like to think he is really the first party member she opens up to about her nightmares and the invasive thoughts and he never judged her.)
The moment that truly sealed the deal, though, is when he finds a book of poems that has a love letter written in the cover. He gifts to her and is very nonchalant about it, acts like it’s not That Deep, but it’s something where Brin feels a shift of sorts. She begins to save all the love letters she’s found so far in the pages of the book. I’d like to think that by end of game, Astarion and her are in a place where he has penned a small letter of his own in the book specifically for her.
In the entire party, I think she is probably closest to Shadowheart. It does not initially seem that way, but I think she sees that, to a point, she sees herself a teensy bit in both Shadowheart and Astarion. She kind of sees the three of them as skittish stray cats that take their time to really warm up to people. Brin very much sees Shadowheart as a sister she never had.
Karlach becomes someone Brin admires very deeply. While Brin likes to think she’s mostly good at heart, she doesn’t always make the “good” decisions and when Karlach disapproves of something Brin’s done…Brin takes it heart and wants to do better. Also she would move mountains to make sure Karlach is happy. I would say that she wants to be a person that Karlach is proud of and rise to the hero Karlach thinks she can be. This is particularly true in my durge playthrough.
Prior to Brin finding her mother, Jaheira absolutely fills a sort of temporary mother-shaped hole and really takes a shine to her. (Especially in a durge run, because she has so much prior experience and knowledge of Bhaalspawn.)
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