#mindflayer tav

[highlyuncertain]

Still the same person, deep down.

Mindflayer!Tav doesn’t get enough attention 💔💔

[bee-pyromancer]

Realised I didn't post this! Tavflayer and the Emperor have a love beyond what the Mind can comprehend <3

Uncropped + extra render here

[winter-wise]

the mind flayer!Tav romanced!Gale ending when Gale flirts at the afterparty with the easy confidence of a man who has had tentacles in places tentacles have never been before

[shiranui7]

So... I reached the epilogue party and I have STRONG opinions about what happened in the end. I sacrificed myself turning into a Mind Flyer and destroyed the Absolute. I gave my friends the best endings possible: Wyll, at peace with his father and freed from Mizora, went to Avernus with Karlach, who didn't die and found a way to fix the engine. Gale was freed from the orb, Lae'zel and Orpheus went on their journey to save their people, Astarion got rid of Cazador, Halsin got my help to remove the shadow curse and Shadowheart found out about her true self, rejecting Shar. Everyone I helped during the game wrote me letters to thank me and that was cute. But what did I actually got from all of them?

Astarion: said that he needed time to metabolize the transformation and friendzoned me. Well, ok, let's wait like I did with him. At the party, he asked me if I was still myself. Wtf!? He wasn't rude then and was sorry for what happened to me but..No hugs were offered, despite being my romanced character and he seemed to have decided that I was no longer "lover material". I was distraught as hell.

Lae'zel and Orpheus: weren't physically there but thanked me and swore to remember my deeds. Nice, I can forgive the no hug option.

Wyll: no hug option, just a dialogue about how he's faring in Avernus with Karlach. Meh.

Karlach: happy to see me but immediately commented on my appearance. I can let it slide. Hug option but only if you don't ask her other things. Meh.

Gale: kept making jokes about mind flayers and commented how he was happy to be still himself instead of a damn brain sucker.....pretty insensitive, even though he apologised.

Shadowheart and Halsin: They commented on how much they missed me and offered hugs with no limits. Halsin made me a wooden duck. I hugged them like 4 times each. Best reactions.

Owlbear and Scratch: they recognised me and showed no changes in their demeanour despite my appearance. As always, animals are better than people.

So during our adventure I accepted a blood sucker, two time bombs, a religious fanatic, a brainwashed warrior, a man linked to a Devil and a horny bear dude, but they can't accept ME with a Squid-face? If I were there as my real life self, I would have probably burst into tears and walked away from that farce of a party.

I ended up putting everyone's happiness before mine and what I got in return was getting ostracized. Even in a video game, I still make my real life mistakes. That hurts.😔

[neleothesze]

Three Renegades and a Bad Kitty

Omeluum, the Emperor, Tav, and Us. The Good, the Bad, the Odd, and the Adorable. (,,> ᴗ <,,)

The armors aren't 100% accurate, I know, I know. Tav has their old gear just because. Also, did you notice how 80% of illithids drop gems? Do they have a fondness for sparkly things?

[lunarreverb]

Just finished the silliest BG3 run that was.... not really a speedrun, but a mess-around solo run to see what happens if you effectively skip Act 1 and 2 (to the extent possible) and recruit nobody. Here's Bunnie the gnome; she's quick like a bunny!

Some of the most interesting things I found under the cut!

If you immediately jog over from the Nautiloid to the mountain pass area, Shadowheart will catch up to you and try to party up.

You can reject her company, of course; if you do, the artefact just appears in your inventory later after this brief cutscene saying ''you got the plot device.' The Emperor never addresses this at all but I have to assume it just looked at the both of you liked your main character energy better.

(For her part, Shadowheart will hang out indefinitely in front of the path to the mountain pass, insisting that you need her to come with you. She never seems to realize that the artefact ditched her, but seems to have the 'shielded' effect on her for as long as you can still go back to that area to check on her, so idk. I assume she dies/ceremorphosizes at some point after you leave the shadow cursed lands.)

If you leave for the mountain pass without encountering Raphael, he just shows up in your camp, and you do NOT have a choice to go to bed without speaking to him, lol.

What happens to Lae'zel is SUPER interesting. If you don't encounter her in the cage outside of the grove, the game gives you a second chance by setting her outside of the monastery, wandering around.

If you don't join her there, either, you will find her at the entrance of the Shadow-Cursed lands, extremely dead. I imagine this is just the game's way of making sure you see she's dead, but I would have assumed for sure that without player intervention she would've died in the zaith'isk? I wonder what sequence of events is implied by this? Maybe she broke out of the zaith'isk on her own, escaped the creche, but had nobody to warn her that she needed a torch in the Shadow-Cursed lands? Maybe the gith sent her on an errand before they let her have a turn in the cleansing machine? Unclear!

Your dream guardian comments that it's impressed by your efficiency by skipping over the grove entirely:

This is different from what it says if you actively durge the grove, where it insinuates that you did what you did to infiltrate the cult and asks whether or not you have regrets about that.

If you don't go to Last Light Inn at all, you can meet Jaheira for the first time at the bridge to Moonrise tower. She does NOT react well if you answer her question by saying "I'm busy, get out of the way"; this will aggro the Harpers (understandably). I ultimately decided to sneak around the back and I didn't canonically meet her for the first time until after defeating Ketheric. She will automatically join your camp for the one night on the way to Baldur's Gate, but she will leave forever (leaving you a letter saying "bye") once you get to the Lower City if you tell her at Moonrise you don't want her in your party.

She does not survive the events of the game if you do not let her join your party, it seems. (I did not pursue the Minsc storyline and I do not know if it's possible to prevent this outcome that way.)

This next bit is REALLY wild; in all of my other playthroughs, I don't think I ever tried defeating Gortash before I disabled the Steel Watch. You can defeat Gortash at his inauguration, and the Absolute will immediately be your bestie about it and will helpfully murder any of the witnesses (including Ulder Ravengard, I think; I took care not to kill him but he vanished anyway.)

The next thing that happens doesn't actually make sense but is interesting nevertheless. Once Gortash is dead, the Steel Foundry is automatically blown up, and the Absolute speaks encouragingly to the player through the Steel Watchers:

I'm actually stumped about how the Absolute can control the Steel Watchers without the corresponding tadpoled brains in the Foundry (which I have to assume got crushed in the rubble?) Oh well. In any case, the Steel Watchers are friendly and will even be allied with you if you get into any scuffles with the Fist, until you kill Orin. After you kill Orin, every Steel Watcher is immediately hostile AND will sic the Fist on you, too.

(Funny story, I actually managed to down one of the Watchers next to the Steel Watch fan group on the north end of Wyrm's Crossing and uh. The Watcher blew up one of the fanboys. Oops. RIP Trinigan Gazotts.)

I kinda want to write a whole post about just this, but Shadowheart's parents are still put up on display in the House of Grief basement in spite of the fact that she is almost certainly (?!) dead and/or a mindflayer by this point:

You can talk to them but you cannot help them in any way. I'm aware that this is just a tease for Shadowheart's plot, but I want to nitpick this so bad. The Sharrans have regular prison cells in the building; what is the point of hanging up these two on the Spencer's Gifts lights indefinitely? Whatever bummer vibes Shar is getting off of them can not be enough to pay for their magical upkeep. Do the Sharrans have to take them down at mealtimes, or are they fed with sandwiches on sticks, or...?

The love test at the circus is NOT interesting; the dryad assumes that you are in love even if you are forever alone and gives her usual sales pitch about bringing the one you love to her.

If you didn't save Wulbren or Barcus, the entrance to the Ironhand Gnomes' cave is just blocked off.

Astarion's unfortunate end if you don't recruit him has been covered in great detail by other posts, but I will remark that it is funny to kill Cazador yourself as a gnome because you have to hop up to stab him. It's also very, very funny to see Cazador explain his whole evil plot to you, random gnome woman who just showed up, if Astarion isn't around. This man is desperate for somebody to think he's cool, so I guess he'll settle for attention from the cattle if he's gotta.

Volo still shows up tied to that trolley cart by the foundry, but there's no angry mob around him.

If you haven't encountered the inquisitor at the creche, or the avatar of Vlaakith in the shadow cursed land, they both show up in the Elfsong's basement

There is no hag plot if you did not encounter Ethel. The captain at the Blushing Mermaid is just as she seems, there's no hag lair, and Vanra and her mother want nothing to do with you. There's no hag support group; that house has a group of random hostile thugs in it instead (with a tenuous tie-in to Ninefinger's Guild).

In Act 3, Raphael will totally say "listen here you little shit" if you hassled him outside of the mausoleum in Act 2 by, oh, I don't know, casting Silence on him? (after which he does NOT give you the Yurgir quest, he just leaves).

Bluurg and Omeluum do not show up at the Society of Brilliance's lodge if you did not meet them in the underdark in Act One, but there is a letter indicating that they will show up later. I checked, and Omeluum is also not in the Iron Throne.

Nothing funny or new happened with Orin. I threw her in a pit. BUT worth mentioning? You can skip the entire Bhaalist powerword kill trial if you just send one invisible party member through the area and just find the warppoint near the temple afterward. You're welcome.

If you get to the epilogue alone, Milil will comment that he expected more guests, but Withers will speak as if multiple people are there no matter what

Also, if you are a lonely little mindflayer, this has no effect on the refreshments offered at the epilogue party. Mindflayers can drink alcohol, apparently, but obviously nobody is here to eat all the food Withers put out. WTF, pee paw.

And I think that's mostly all the was interesting or different in this run. It was a fun challenge!

[harlequinchaos]

Are you sure, Astarion? 🤨

[sweetmage]

Squidyl :)