Down the 'why Ptaris/Xan doesn't have spots' rabbit hole
If you give the githyanki egg to Lady Racism in act 3 you get to meet the hatchling and experience one of the most infuriating plot lines in the game, but my gripes with it and the egg plot in general will have to wait for a different essay. For today's session of 'is this intentional storytelling, the rule of cool or an overseight?' I want to focus on his lack of spots.
Ptaris/Xan does not have a unique head model. He shares a face with Varrl, this one other kid who's scrubbing the floor in the dormitory, and one of the kids whispering in the hallway.
side note: I know it's just reused assets but this resemblance makes me feel like I'm kidnapping Varrl's baby brother😭
So, now I'm wondering: did they forget to add spots to Ptaris or are they trying to tell us something with their absence? Because the only other githyanki without spots in game is Vlaakith herself.
The society of brilliance had to pull some powerfull magic to make him grow so fast and Vlaakith is a litch so I'm wondering whether githyanki can lose their spots due to weird powerful magic. An interesting detail about Vlaakith is that in her official portrait she does have them. Now, the portrait is a piece of cropped concept art with a painterly texture and a black background slapped on and Larian might not have gone back to fix it once they setteled on Vlaakith's appearence-very likely since she also has smooth elf ears in the portrait. But if it is intentional it raises some questions.
Is the Vlaakith in the painting not the current one? If that is the case why is a creche that is less than 200 years old displaying a portrait of an older ruler? And how come Lae'zel does not comment on it? Is it a portrait of the original Vlaakith? If it is, one thig to note is that both og and current Vlaakith have black sclera. In game the people who have that usually have dealt with the hells: Wyll after he transforms, Zevlor, the gal who gives us the soul coin after we save her (there's also Kar'niss but who knows what his backstory is). Og Vlaakith had plenty of dealings with the hells with the bargain for the dragons and the chaining of Orpheus. I wonder what current Vlaakith is doing with the hells, of if the thing just transfers cause she's now the beneficiary of those two pacts.
If just the ear is an overseight on the part of the developers and the person in the painting is meant to be the current Vlaakith, then she is either pulling a queen Elizabeth I and all of her portraits are copies of the only portrait she ever liked way back at the begining of her reign when she still had her spots or she is demanding astists add the spots in to cover up the fact that she doesn't have any.
If their absence is due to magic it means that the larger githyanki public (or at least just the gishes) is somewhat aware of what kind of fucked up magical shit leads to a lack of spots and it would not go well if they were to see her like that. Yes, Vlaakith does show herself in game with no problem, but she does so to the inquisiton who are already cool with her lying about Orpheus and Lae'zel and co who she plans to kill no matter what. Lae'zel might not be reacting to it cause she didn't study magic and gith!Tav is not reacting cause they are written to be the dumbest gith to ever yanki.
It is also possible that the lack of spots has nothing to do with magic and it is just something very rare that happens cause genetics are funky like that. If that's the case and the portrait is of current Vlaakith, is there a stigma against gith with no spots? Did Zerthimon have no spots and now githyanki are prejudiced against all gith born with none? In this scenario Vlaakith demanding to have spots added in her portrait is such an inseucre weak ass bitch move🤦. Also how many people will Lae'zel have to gruesomely kill before githyanki society readjusts its views and no one dares mess with her son?
There is also the possibility that the spots are just partly genetic and they develop or not as a result of the conditions in the hatchery. We know Xan had some problems with his fetal development(can that word be used when talking about eggs?) and Ko'kuu says that the conditins must not be disturbed for it to have a fighting chance, so maybe taking the egg out of the acid pool has some side effects aside from slower hatching. This option creates some problems for me, cause if the spots are due to the conditions during the egg's development what would a gith born from the typical mamalian gestation-which, from what I understand, was the way they reproduced before they moved to the astral plane-look like? Would they still have spots? If they do, then does that mean the the gith womb is highly acidic? Why don't they have natural acid resisstance if that is the case?
And if the spots come to be as a result of the egg incubation that pushes the birth of both Orpheus and Voss way after the rebellion when they were well established in the astral plane and they started laying eggs. This messes up all my favorite headcannons about those two and the rebellion timeline, so I'm not a big fan of this possibility.
So I think this is the bottom of the rabbit hole, feel free to add any thoughts to it or use any of the ideas however you like.
