been thinking about it lately and Ascended Astarion = Dead Dove content and I'm not sure that's really understood, even by the writers. when I finally got around to the character I decided to ascend him with, I was SUPREMELY disappointed by the conversations options following it. it seemed like the dialogue choices were trying to push the narrative on my character that they made this choice w/o considering the consequences and they are bound to regret it. the closest I could get to answering his question of "why did u let me go thru w it?" was "I wanted u to be powerful".
but with that character? my accept Bhaal durge? that isn't the reasoning. at all. (related: "what do u want as a reward?" "ur body" was the closest answer my character could give. otherwise I'd've answered "murder :))")
for context, this run was born of a conversation w my friend discussing supposed content no one had seen bc "no one's that evil". we thought, what's more evil than killing literally every npc? I failed the conceit of the challenge immediately bc I can't handle senseless animal cruelty in my games. killing children? fine (u need a mod to do this in BG3, but I am thankfully plenty delighted to use mods), killing a neutral animal npc? no can do.
so I started this durge (they are the only character that can come close to "killing" Gale with that first interaction) run with the intention of killing everyone except Shadowheart (only a cleric of Shar can truly kill Aylin) and Astarion (bc I need to smooch him). (and there is a mod for playing an origin character as durge, which would have meant playing as Shadowheart, but I MUST smooch Astarion and I don't tend to do het or female romances, unless I'm forced to (*sighs dreamily* oh, Garrus Vakarian). I'm just not interested in that set of equipment in that way, so may as well just make a durge dude.) somehow something went wonky and Halsin ended up joining us and I was so perplexed I just allowed him to stay. (he's meant to attack if u destroy the grove but free him anyway, but instead he just showed up that night and went straight into his Moonrise spiel. is it bc the wolf Silver never aggro'd me and thus survived???) so I fixed the Shadow Curse all while killing every single humanoid and hostile animal in acts 1 & 2. including Thaniel, which makes Halsin's talks later in act 3 of getting news from Thaniel and the Grove hysterical. idk what I did but I sure as hell broke this poor man.
(on a related note, Halsin will give out to u when u accept Bhaal, but will still give u the "u have exceeding my expectations, also we should bang" in the same conversation. I DON'T KNOW WHAT I DID BUT IT'S DARKLY FUNNY.)
in the conversation when Astarion is expressing surprise that u let him go thru w it, my durge is just like, yes my motivation is that I like to kill ppl :))). it's not a sex thing for him (that is separate from the murder!), but he's still fine w the outcome. yes, Astarion looks down on him, but that's fine! he's allowed to be wrong about that, durge doesn't care. so long as Astarion lets him kill ppl he genuinely just does not give a shit.
(I actually had the idea that if Halsin were to ever rediscover his morals and tried to leave he'd ask Astarion to turn him so Halsin would not have a choice. as I said, this durge *does not fucking care*.)
this is probably the only character I will play that would let Astarion ascend bc I enjoy dead dove SOMETIMES, but not always or in large doses, but I get so few dialogue options that convey that in an rp sense! I don't think the writers/devs REALLY took that into consideration, sometimes. like, yeah, there are going to be ppl making fucked up choices but surely no one would go THIS far! for THIS reason! honey, u need to look up the Dead Dove tag on AO3, there are absolutely ppl making choices for those fucked up reasons.
(and I understand the whole "this confirms to Astarion about sex yadda yadda". even if that's not Tav/Durge motivation, that's how ASTARION would *interpret* it.)
(oh yes, and also, don't let Orin abduct Yenna. it doesn't matter whether u find out in camp or the sewers, Grub will not survive. I was devastated. if I'd known, I would have made sure Halsin was available for her, but she won't abduct a party member or someone ur romancing.)
long story short, I want to play a durge that even ascended Astarion finds unsettling. that's the dream.
Hello there, duck!
Your run sounds delightfully evil! I wish I could play one of those, haha, but I'm too soft hearted. My one evil run with my durge Salira was ended before even entering the grove because I felt horrible after getting rid of Gales hand! Seriously, I can barely take killing the squirrel as durge, and I always save Alfira because I feel horrendous otherwise!
(Fun fact, on all five runs I've done Yenna just vanished at some point and grubs was left standing in my camp, which was like...eh?)
And yes, Halsin is always somewhat of an issue, isn't he? He's just running around, causing mayhem in peoples games because he seems slightly bugged out, haha. I had one run, where he wouldn't go to the spot where we save Thaniel because he joined the fight against Marcus at Last Light and somehow got stuck, for some reason. Same run, none of his vocals would play, which was also very interesting. Everybody would make noise when they climbed or got hurt but Halsin was always silent and just there! And in another run the dude really straight up hated me - he was so mean and snappy, I swear to god he wanted my Durge dead - and then he suddenly went: "Hey you're super cool and strong and I just want to gently fuck you beneath the moonlight if you'll let me" and I was like: Say what.
Regarding the dead Dove: I've talked to people of Discord before, and some of them mentioned something similar a couple of times, but personally, I do think the writers actually knew what they were doing here!
Of course, I do agree that it relies heavily on the regret notion and that it somewhat shoehorns you into a certain narrative corner, I noticed that too when I was ascending him for research - I hated doing that, but all for the asks, haha - but I thought it was really fitting for what it is!
The bad ending, that is. I know we all somewhat forget that because of how people view him as a character, but ascension is the bad ending. Even on an evil run, where your character may have considered all options, it is very likely that Tav hasn't accounted for one very important part of being a true vampire.
The obsession.
It's still somewhat mild in the game, though definitely there, but it will only get stronger as time goes on, and it will probably get to the point that the only escape is death. Either his or Tav's. So, in the end, ascension will come with an armload of regret and the writers were making sure we know that.
And, on top of that, even if we let him ascend in a pursuit for power - or in in your durge's special case: murder :) - we still cast spawn Astarion aside because he doesn't fit our needs, thus making it very clear to him that who he is isn't enough and his behaviour is the price we now pay.
It's pretty much the same with all the other companions as well - justiciar Shadowheart and ascended Lae'zel, for example. However, it doesn't bother us as much, because we have different expectations towards ascended Astarion than, for example, dark justiciar Shadowheart. We don't expect a positive narrative here, a narrative where becoming shady-shar's loyal subject isn't an objectively dumb decision to make, so we don't mind the dead dove as much. It's exactly what we've been expecting - and Aylin even warned us how Shadowheart would change upon becoming a dark justiciar - so yepp. This went exactly how we thought it would and this is what we wanted.
Astarion, however, is a somewhat special case, because his bad ending is, by far, the one that gets the most romanticised. He's so heavily romanticised by so many, that the bad parts nearly start to fade, even with those who don't like the ascended ending. It becomes just 'the other ending', if you will.
And yet, it's still the bad ending.
Ascension is the bad ending for a character that we've somewhat given up on. That we misunderstood so deeply, mayhaps, that we traded his entire being for power and, quite frankly, beauty. We showed him that he isn't enough, we let the boy run and hide the only way he knew how and now we're faced with the consequences and yes, it's really dead dove but...what did we expect?
