party planner withers

bg3 sideblog. 18+.

[firstofficerkittycat]

au where eberytjings the same but they have to go to five guyd

[visenyaism]

i’m sorry

[browneyesbloodyknuckles]

The Anatomist

[visenyaism]

i should finish bg3. but why do the six randomest people with vastly different lifestyles my bard only ever met because we all have tadpoles in our brains and ALL happen to have like insane planet-leveling beef with at least one minor deity i gotta take care of

[visenyaism]

act one: yeowch!🫨there’s a wormie in my head and i need to get it out or i’ll turn into a big scary monster😳but the only person who might know how to fix it is in a cave surrounded by goblins?🫣 how are we ever going to get out of this one…🤔

act three: good morning traveling companions. so halsin got kidnapped by the avatar of the god of murder unprovoked we gotta pick him up from murder practice. i think i am implicated in an astral-plane level illithid civil war because of the male manipulator squid from my dreams but i havent checked. gale is either trying to kill himself or become god. karlach you have nothing to do because you already decided you’re dying next week. i gotta jump astarion’s evil old master while keeping HIM from trying to become god. no we are not ascending get DOWN from there or so help me. are we going after mystra with a tire iron yet. i have to break into the devil’s house and steal his shit and then murder him so i can use the stolen shit to free an ancient gith demigod from mind prison so he and laezel can kill a DIFFERENT gith deity at some point but first we gotta go shar’s house and beat the brakes off of her i think. mizora is here. i guess. wormie? not a problem anymore because i am now permanently biologically half squid. also there’s a serial killer loose in the city and on an unrelated note the apocalypse is happening tomorrow due to the giant fucking brain floating around. does anyone want to go to the circus with me we can paint our faces like clowns

[galedekarios]

this is prob nitpicky so don't mind me

minth*ra b*enre of menz*berranzan using "alurlssrin" as the word to describe her bond with the protag when she's been a staunch lolthian, before falling in with the absolute.

"alurlssrin", a word exclusive to eilistraee and her followers.

it's exactly the sort of care that l*rian puts into the lore for the game. 🙃

[galedekarios]

i decided that you know what? no. it's not nitpicky to expect people to do more than a shallow as a puddle cursory google search when they write for a game that costs 60 - 70 bucks.

[partyplannerwithers]

Disclaimer: I realize that in-game there is a narrative boundary loosely drawn between combat and story, and the mechanical actions taken in combat can't necessarily be interpreted as informing characterization.

THAT DISCLAIMER IN PLACE it's still pretty funny to me that Halsin's whole deal has so much to do with kindness to children when, depending on the dice rolls and AI decision making you get, one of the first things a good chunk of players will see him do on-screen is fucking murk a goblin kid.

('But they were throwing rocks at him!' If you see children being taught to throw rocks at trapped druids in bear form I think there are several appropriate responses that can come before 'rip their tiny arms from their tiny bodies'. For example: almost anything else.)

It's just a very funny game design decision in general. Why even have goblin kids there. Why go to the trouble of making little goblin kid character models if all the goblin kids can be killed with zero differentiation from the adult goblins. Why set things up so your first impression of a character clearly meant to be understood as reasonable and compassionate can so easily be 'holy shit he just straight up eviscerated that kid'. The fact you can't react to it and Halsin never mentions it makes it even clearer we're not supposed to consider that something that happened in the 'story' side of the game so it's really just a baffling choice I'll continue to be entertained by. What the fuck.

Halsin: he saves children, but not the goblin children.

[drunkcleric]

Trying to figure out ways a cleric durge would work and this is all I got

[jeeaark]

They said there was no turning back after you enter the mindflayer colony, but little did they know that Greygold actually knows how to use the goshdarn rope they have in the inventory. But seriously, this is more a comic to lament the fact that I explored everything and found mizora LAST. How could I not have Wyll miss out on that sight? reloaded. Got Wyll. Explored everything again. Opened the pods. Lae'zel disapproved.........BABE, WHY.

[baejax-the-great]

Everyone talks about what a nice guy Wyll is, but if you dare to play the lyre around him "poorly," he will threaten to stab you

[baejax-the-great]

Pardon me for trying to lighten the mood around here

[baejax-the-great]

Wyll confirmed hater

[neenarchive]

omg imagine being born and you are on a spaceship and everyone aboard is sooo so mad at you just because you burst out of some guy's chest to be born. like um sorry i've not been alive before i didn't even know that's not allowed please be nice to me um the spaceship floor is cold is no one going to knit me some little booties i am calling child protective services

[aleisters]

"bhaalspawn are tragic" yeah but they're also extremely funny

[partyplannerwithers]

I love you Kagha, woman who basically seems to do whatever the latest random person who shows up out of nowhere tells her to do.

Mysterious sourceless letter tells her to follow the Shadow Druids? On it, boss.

Shadow Druids show up and tell her to be tiefling-racist and also give them all of the Grove's shit? Absolutely, no problem.

Some person crashes out of the literal sky in a mind flayer ship, rummages through her possessions, tracks down her secret correspondence she inexplicably keeps in a tree surrounded by monsters halfway across the map, and comes back to tell her to 1. knock that shit off 2. stop being tiefling-racist? Two persuasion checks later and she's ready to literally murder the Shadow Druid she was calling 'mistress' thirty seconds ago.

(Not even mentioning how easy it is to talk her from 'I AM PUTTING THIS CHILD IN THE SNAKE DUNGEON!!' to 'okay nvm free to go kid'. Weathervane personality.)

This does not reflect well on anyone else at the Grove. Rath how are you fumbling this so bad. Kagha has all the staunch ideological integrity of a wet paper napkin. I've been here for five minutes and I'm pretty sure I could talk her into giving me the Grove if I had five more.

[partyplannerwithers]

I forgot you can find a note referencing Gortash at the Zhentarim hideout and god. The comedy of that for the Dark Urge. The build up of the villains over time while your little clueless Dark Urge is unaware they're:

- Their disgruntled former coworker several decades past retirement age

- Their edgy baby sister in Bhaal, nepo hire (the Dark Urge is also a nepo hire)

- Their forbidden workplace situationship

The Dark Urge is actually the urge to create a workplace full of nonstop drama. This is what happens when you learn HR best practices from a Banite.

[partyplannerwithers]

Sequence of the last three nights for ol' Dark Urge:

Night 1: brutally murdered innocent dragonborn bard and stood next to the body like :< coated in blood. Lae'zel framed the parasite on my behalf. Thank goodness everyone blew off me walking around camp going "hey does anyone else crave violence and killing uncontrollably".

Night 2: Butler present!! At least one person believes in my potential.

Night 3: Astarion tries to bite me. Incredible behaviour. 'Yeah I think the one I try to treat like shredded cheese in the bag at 3 am is the known night-slaughterer who visibly vibrates at the possibility of violence.' I mean it paid off but still.

Then again the other options at this point were:

Gale: wizard with poison blood

Wyll: monster hunter

Shadowheart: goth cleric with Turn Undead

Lae'zel: Lae'zel

Withers: dessicated

So fair enough I suppose.

[partyplannerwithers]

For curiosity + achievement hunting on my second Dark Urge run I used the 'knock out Alfira' exploit and oh, Larian really went out of their way to make the replacement bard make you still feel bad about your actions

But at the same time her saying "my whole life is ahead of me I'm gonna publish my love songs and find love myself after running away from my restrictive culture yay!" is so. I am looking at the camera Jim from the Office style. Sorry about your hopes and dreams girl I want that tiefling achievement.

Also justice for her throat singing! I liked it! Why were my only options to be a dick! What kind of Taylor Swift pop girlie is Bhaal that I have no goddamn taste?

[crawfishcomic]

Hint

[partyplannerwithers]

Ever since they included it as a thing you could say in the first draft epilogue pre-patch 5 the concept of Astarion going to help with the vampire spawn in the Underdark has struck me as terribly funny, and I'm pleased that in the expanded epilogue he does not do that indepedently - he goes off to become a roving adventurer if unromanced as spawn.

The reason it's funny is because: fucking look at him. With affection, I would not trust Astarion to organize a trip to a Cheesecake Factory alone.

I don't know if this was a bug or what but in my first run as Dark Urge, I made it to the ending after rejecting Bhaal and helping off Cazador without letting Astarion ascend. We'd had some chats about how power corrupts and destroys. There had been growth. And to my absolute delight, right at the brain, just before I pulled the final toggle to destroy or control it, Astarion leaned in to say "okay fantastic LET'S CONTROL IT AND TAKE OVER THE CULT >:3" and I was entranced. Everything wrong with him. Yeah the last two mad grabs for power we were involved in went tits up but this time we're doing something even more disastrous so it'll definitely work out. Astarion once more actively accidentally lobbying for the worst case scenario for him personally, by mistake, because one of his primary qualities is planning in the "Step 1: drastic decision > Step 2: ??? > Step 3: victory party!!" format.

Man walked into Baldur's Gate to kill a master vampire with the plan of 'find a backdoor to my own house, where I have lived for 200 years, and kill the vampire'. That's not a plan. That's an intent. Great intent and happy to help but all actual planning was conducted by Tav/Dark Urge/other Origin character.

Astarion is not providing structure down there in the Underdark. Astarion is filling the vital community role of being a jaded flaneur dispensing advice that straddles 'unexpectedly thoughtful', 'worst idea you've ever heard', and 'just straight up nightmare toxicity' at random intervals. He is giving the small vampire children knives. He is getting annoyed at the whole thing and fucking off to sulk for hours. Every society needs this service and it's very important, but whoever convinced him to show up there is the one in the admin position. As it should be.