Upon the very Eve of Midsummer, when the sky was blue as sapphire and white stars opened in the East, but the West was still golden, and the air was cool and fragrant, the riders came down the North-way to the gates of Minas Tirith.
Then the King welcomed his guests, and they alighted; and Elrond surrendered the sceptre, and laid the hand of his daughter in the hand of the King, and together they went up into the High City, and all the stars flowered in the sky. And Aragorn the King Elessar wedded Arwen Undómiel in the City of the Kings upon the day of Midsummer, and the tale of their long waiting and labours was come to fulfillment.
starlightweave's wedding VP
wanted this incredible surprise me comm by @chocolamay to have its very own post~
Love your blog, and I find Mal's story so interesting! I was wondering if you had a timeline of her life anywhere, as I'm really curious as to hear more of her life before BG3, how long it was between when she and Halsin last saw each other before she came back, and why she took thoriel and eventually left :(. I also recall you posted a while back that she dies kinda young! Which was SO shocking and sad to me, so I was wondering how and why that happened (if that is still part of her story...almost hoping it isn't lol 😭). So whatever you feel like sharing, I would be happy to hear more about her 😊
Aaaaaa thank you so much!!! That makes me very very happy 🥰
And as far as Mal's lore being in one place... well, bad news. I always wanted to make a separate page for her where I updated her story as it went, but just like all my other ideas and projects, it's been sitting in my 'to do' list for years.
I had one early on, while I was still playing Mal's campaign, but it hasn't been updated in forever. It still has a little bit of her backstory, though!
I can clarify and answer some things now, though!
So, her and Halsin? I actually haven't decided if they ran into each other post-game, while she was traveling the world with Astarion. In my mind, they torch Cazador's palace after everyone just sort of.. goes separate ways and they have no reason to stick around in the city, and then the two travel north to start their grand adventure. Why north? Well, it's because Mal's not from Baldur's Gate or the surrounding area, she's actually from the High Forest, so their first plan of action is to travel towards what was once her home. They don't plan on staying there long, but I feel like Maleane would've needed to have some semblance of 'normal' after being yanked out of her previous life and spending months fighting cultists and toppling gods and whatnot.
Maybe they did run into each other briefly, as Astarion and Maleane spent nearly a century just traveling and getting themselves into all sort of business. But even if they did, I don't think it would've been significant enough to leave a mark in their relationship as it was incredibly clear that Maleane was so in love with Astarion (and they both so co-dependant on each other), that there was no room for any sort of significant relationship besides that (and that is not to say that Halsin wouldn't have accepted something a lot more casual and temporary, but I just don't think them developing anything was really in the books at the time).
Maleane only returns to Halsin after she has a pretty awful breakup with Astarion and then spends some four years alone in the forest, slowly losing her mind. It's the reason she decides to have a baby in the first place. Because she's just so heartbroken and so lonely that at the time it seems like the only way to crawl out of that hole, yaknow? It's not a logical or a sound decision, but it's a desperate one because that's what Mal was after Astarion dumped her... she was just desperate.
Through the subsequent pregnancy and the sickness that comes with it, Mal ends up at Halsin's doorstep (following her father's old teachings to "always seek druids when you're sick or injured" AND Mal finding the old, stained wooden duck, that Halsin carved himself and gifted to her during the epilogue party).
But just because she finds refuge, a little corner of peace, it doesn't mean that all of her other problems disappear. Things like depression, trauma, they don't disappear just because someone's kind to us, you know? They can, of course, but.. they don't always, unfortunately.
And that's sort of what happens with Mal. She feels better when she's with Halsin, she feels loved and loves him in return, but all of her trauma that she refused to untangle during her time with Astarion, all of the unhealthy coping mechanisms, together with a lot of sadness and other negative feelings she refused to address and just repressed throughout the century, they're all still there. And they're messing her up on the inside.
It doesn't help that on top of that, she faces discrimination from the outside world. Halsin might love her and see the best in her, but that doesn't mean that the people of Reithwin share the same sentiment. And it's not like Mal ever truly cared what others thought of her, but it makes her much more aware how the world sees her. That no matter how she tried to fit in and be more like Halsin, she would still face other people's ire. Some of it undeserved (she didn't have a choice when she was born a drow), but some of it is (because she's just.. a pretty shitty person to begin with, and she did some awful things in her life and screwed some people over).
And that goes hand in hand with the fact that at that point Maleane is done with pretending. All her life she played an act to the outside world, molding herself to become whatever the other person wanted to see in order to manipulate them and control them. All of that is gone, the mask slips, and she cannot muster the strength to put it back on. And so people sort of.. see who she truly is underneath and they, well, don't like it.
Some people gossip about her, but others go as far as kind of.. bringing Halsin down with her. Some washerwomen and shepherds even start whispering that she's a drow witch who's corrupted their beloved healer. And that sort of talk stings, when it reaches Mal eventually.
It makes her that more aware of her own feelings and fears deep down.
Because you know how she realizes she truly loves Halsin? It's when she catches herself thinking that she's just... bad for him. That she's this snake who slithered into a kind druid's bed to use him. For protection, for love, for care. That the only reason she even found him after all those years was for her own gain. She only cared about herself when she first showed up.
And I think deep down she really struggles with the idea that she doesn't deserve him (and imagine how tough it is to even wrestle with such an idea when you're an arrogant prick who thinks they're the hottest cake in the world). And so.. her love for him turns her selfishness into guilt. She just feels guilty whenever she's with him and with her overall shaky mental health and a lot of people being either cruel or indifferent to her, Maleane reaches a breaking point.
Misery sets in her bones and she just wants to escape. She wants to go home (and that's a major theme in her story, the search for 'home', without really knowing what home is). She's terrified of being alone, but she also feels like she's drowning again in Reithwin.
There's no one true reason, more like a mixture of things, that push her to leave. Some of them are true, some of them even Mal doesn't know if they're real, but it's what she tells herself when she decides to go.
Mal tells him that she couldn't possibly take Halsin away from Reithwin, that's his home and he's very much needed there (which is true). But deep down... she's also running away from him. Partially because of her guilt and having to face the fact that she just doesn't belong in his world, in his life. But also because she feels like she's suffocating there, with him (and that's sort of.. a less clear answer to that equation because she definitely thinks that way, but is it how she truly feels? or is it her mental health declining again combined with being in a place where she feels like an outsider that influences her conclusion?).
And that's sort of.. part of Malsin's tragedy. Their love is there, the feelings are there, but there's also so much 'noise' surrounding them that it's almost impossible to make sense of what is 'true', if that makes sense? But life just works in a way that you have to arrive at some sort of an answer, make some sort of an explanation for what's happening, and even I, the creator, cannot give a clear answer on whether they're right or wrong.
But in the end, whether their reasons or conclusions were right or wrong, Maleane leaves Reithwin with Thoriel. Halsin accompanies them back to the High Forest, he helps repair Mal's little cabin in the woods, sets it up for them to live. He quietly hopes that she's going to ask him to stay. He struggles, deep down, with all that's happening. With the fact that Maleane is just.. unhappy. And he attributes that unhappiness to himself. Which is yet another one of those 'but is it truly what it was?' sort of situations.
Halsin is deeply aware of what sort of love Maleane shared with Astarion, he knows how his absence absolutely shattered her heart. He hoped that his love would eventually heal those wounds, but as time passes, he starts to wrestle with the idea that... maybe he will never be enough. Maybe Mal will never be truly happy. Because it's not him that her heart truly yearns for, you know? Maybe their love is simply not enough.
And when Maleane doesn't ask him to stay (something she regrets deeply later), it's almost like a confirmation of his deepest worries. It's a dagger to his heart, because in his mind it just confirms that Mal doesn't want him. Not in the way he wishes to be at her side.
To me it's all.. wrong place and wrong time, to be honest. I think that Mal just needed time, a little more space, but their communication just kind of.. broke down. And both of them subsequently arrived at the wrong conclusions.
Adding to the tragedy is the fact that Mal asks him to visit. To see Thoriel. To see her. And when he does return a while later, she ends up asking him to stay. But by that time... he already has someone waiting for him home, in Reithwin. He cannot stay, not now at least.
He does visit them throughout the years, even after they both move closer to a drow commune (and further away from him). They end up being in a sort of a.. situationship (same as with Astarion) for almost two decades. They still love each other, they have feelings for each other. But they also have a lot of things left unspoken between them.
There's always that sort of... awareness around them, of things that could've been. Things that they could've had. What both of them could've been.
But yeah! Then Mal just raises Thoriel on her own (and later with the help of that drow community they find, the one her father was originally from), while her beloved bear-man and her undead deadbeat boyfriend show up from time to time, stick around for a while and then leave again. Until Thoriel is old enough to go on her own adventures (and imagine what sort of itch she had for that after growing up on stories from Mal, Astarion, Halsin, and all the drow folks)!
Despite her own grievances with the man, Thoriel loves her mother enough to encourage her to leave and travel again, just like the good old days, with Astarion. And that's what she does. Even if it's not the same and they're both a bit more jaded and well-aware of the sort of heartbreak they inflicted on each other. They both go back on the road, with the vague end-goal being finding a way to cure Astarion's hyper-sensitivity to the sun.
And then Above the Vaulted Sky happens.
And then that's it. I don't think she even reached the age of 150 by the time she died. now the question is does she stay dead??? i would like to answer but that's genuinely such a massive lore dump lmfao i barely talked about any of this and only really hinted so.. yeah. might be a bit much to unpack lmfao
Btw I am working on a post of Gale's different dialogue during his weave scene! It'll be up tomorrow thanks to Tumblr and it's stupid audio upload limits B(. Wanted to let you know since I mentioned the other day gale says something different if you know about mystra before that scene: "just pondering what I lost" and how it reminded you of EA.
I was expecting to find only 3 unique responses, but ofc this is BG3 so I found way more lol. he has 6 unique responses, 3 each for each of the 2 "generic" Tav dialogues. The one you get depends on how many magical boots he's consumed. And THEN he has 5 more unique responses if you're a certain class (again depends on # of boots eaten).
Looking at them all together it's really cool bc you can see Larian made these little but significant changes to show a reflection in his mental state. If the orb is "normal" he's cagey about why he was conjuring mystra's image. That's the one where you can pass an insight check to have him go on about mystra and his "need to see her." But as the orb gets worse, he becomes more open about it and his fears, no insight check needed, to the point where he doesn't hide that he is actively praying to her.
I also found cool lines from Gale about magic that only draconic sorcerers get! So I'm posting those too (wild magic sorcerers ofc get their own lines too which I'll include. Storm sorcerers don't get 1 unique subclass dialogue the entire game bc Larian hates me and Silmë specifically 😭)
ooh i'd love if you could tag me or send me that post when you make it!! i had no idea gale had so many different responses for the weave scene, i always get that scene way too fast even if i'm not romancing him haha. the scene i was thinking of in EA was an extended camp scene where you find him at night trying and failing to cast a spell, and when asked about it he'll tell you there's something he's lost. if you persuade him he'll then explain that he lost mystra after trying to impress her. this scene also offered another way to initiate his romance if you chose not to during the weave scene, and that's where this dialogue came from. which i LOVE because i'm obsessed with him being cheeky and teasing you about the dictionary definition of "perhaps" LMAO. i'm sure that scene can be found on youtube if you've never seen it before but i also plan to post about it eventually when i go back to playing EA again!!
"Larian hates me and Silmë specifically 😭" haha that reminds me i felt the exact same way when i found out about the "no, but i am an awfully good poet!" "splendid! perhaps you can look over some of my own verse!" bard-specific dialogue for meeting gale in EA!! i saw that and went "okay i know i didn't even play bg3 until 2024. i wasn't actually here for early access. but i think larian removed this just to spite me. they hate me and elenion specifically."
i am SHOCKED that storm sorcerers don't have a single subclass-specific line though, especially since gale has all these little lines that connect him with storm imagery and his art on the EA startup screen and loading screens always showed him using lightning magic. you'd think storm sorcerers could've had at least one subclass-specific line with him.
“I-I don’t know,” he continued. “I don’t know. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.” He stared at his palms, at his nails caked with dirt and blood. “Tell me what to do, Gale. Tell me what I should do.”
“What do you want?” said Gale softly.
Another hoarse laugh. “What do I want? What the hells does it matter what I want?”
for every "🌹" received in my inbox i'll post one random sentence paragraph of a random WIP i'm currently writing
Pairing: Gale x Female Tav (Silmarien)
Rating: M
Word count: 1,903
An excerpt from The Bitter & The Sweet, my upcoming Gale & Silmarien fic
was tagged by @optimisticgrey and @bladesingerlily for WIP whenever, thank you!
I hope u all enjoy this glimpse into how Silmarien's mere existence reduces Gale to being a filthy mortal man 🥰
He had been lost in thought, of course – yes, that was a satisfactory explanation as to how he had ended up wandering to the river, despite knowing that Silmarien was bathing there. He had not been drawn by unconscious powerful desire, no, he was master of himself, not a slave to lust.
And yet–
He heard her laugh, high, clear, and sweet, a splashing stream in a moonlit glade, as his eyes fell upon the bundle of clothing left on a tree stump. And there, resting atop her midnight blue cropped shirt and her soft pink leather pants was a small bit of cotton fabric, stark white; something that should have remained hidden, now right before his eyes, bright in the sun.
His throat was suddenly very dry, and his breath quickened, with terror – with lust, a lust so torrential it had his hand moving, reaching out to–
The orb raged and he clutched his chest, doubling over with the pain radiating from it, the pain of unobtainable, fiery desire. The vision of holding that scrap of fabric in one hand, the gusset pressed to his nose, to his tongue, as he took himself in his other hand, imagining it was the source of Silmarien’s scent against his tongue, not just the ghost of it.
He tried to wrestle control of his imagination, and thus quell the raging orb as it longed for that which he could not have. To be so overcome with lust as to reach out a hand to steal a woman's…underthings, and to fantasize about – good gods, what had come over him!? When had he become such a lecher?
He had never desired Mystra like this, in this carnal, brutish way, as though he were a mindless beast, rather than a wizard of poise and intellect. And to desire in so vulgar a manner a woman of such high lineage and incredible power? Surely Silmë would hate him if she knew, sweet girl that she was.
It did not occur to Gale in this moment to reflect upon what Silmarien had chosen to show him in the Weave: not a kiss upon the cheek, not even a sweet one upon the lips, but a kiss full of desire. A kiss from a woman saying yes, a kiss from a woman who wanted to be taken.
He could only focus on his own unhinged impropriety. Surely he had not always been like this? Well, perhaps when he was a boy, yes, but he'd been a boy, not a man of nearly 40 years who should be in control of himself.
The pain of the orb receded enough that Gale could stand, but still it throbbed dully as he hastened away from the source of his desire. Hasten though he did, now that the idea had taken root, his imagination could not be subdued. He lay in his tent, achingly hard, one hand clapped over his eyes, trying to will himself out of this, but he could not. Between the pain of the orb and the tempest of desire, there was now no other escape.
He took himself in hand, artless, desperate, heedless as he plunged into the beauty of illusion. A most fantastical one, where Silmarien returned his desire, where his inflamed her own, where she was panting, breathless, watching with a blush as he dragged his tongue across the cotton, soaked with the taste of her. How he would make her suffer as she had unintentionally made him; how he would make her as pathetic as she had made him in his desperation for her touch, only to be denied. How torturous it would be for them both, until he buried his face between her thighs–
It was all over much too quickly. He bit down on his hand to stifle his pathetic cries. He lay there, shaking and gasping, for several moments. He swallowed thickly. He did not recall this…activity ever resulting in such a powerful crescendo that it left him so utterly drained. It had been a very long time, of course; he'd been a much younger man the last time he'd done this, and many years of the incorporeal with Mystra lay in between. Perhaps the memories of mortal love had been dulled with time…or perhaps he himself was not as above mortal pleasures as he had thought.
He noticed the throbbing of the orb had lessened considerably, a background pain he could ignore. It would seem he had partially achieved what it hungered for, but not all of it. He did not have her.
Shame washed over him at what he had done: rutting like a beast into his own hand to these vulgar fantasies of such a sweet girl who deserved nothing short of a proper, luxurious courting. And then there was the embarrassment at having climaxed so quickly. Good gods, even if all his wildest fantasies were to come true, if Silmarien returned his affections, what would he do? How could he even look her in the eyes after this?
She was so sweet and compassionate, and yet so proud, so haughty. The stubborn jut of her chin, the way she flipped her hair over her shoulder when faced with even the least bit of perceived disrespect: from strangers, from their companions, and even from Gale himself. An heir of two houses, with a lineage she could trace back centuries on one side, and thousands of years on the other; a high born maiden with the right to stand upon the shores of Evermeet, a fitting backdrop for her borderline ethereal beauty (if one was to be confined to the Material Plane).
And yet, she went out of her way to help so many, time and time again, considering no person's suffering beneath her notice. More than once, she had held out a life saving Weave-infused artifact to him, the crackle of lightning in the veins beneath the skin of her white, open palm. Her tremendous blue eyes, the concerned frown of her pink, plush mouth: You'll tell me right away when you need another one? Please? I don't want you to suffer, Gale.
She was so high above him, and yet she concerned herself with the price of his folly as though it were hers to pay. Gale did not deserve to want her, and yet – the orb throbbed more deeply with the pain of this unquenchable desire. He rolled over into a fetal position, clutching his chest against the pain.
Silmarien’s laugh echoed in his mind, so far beyond his reach.
Silmarien: *beams an image of her and Gale making out directly into his head*
Gale: I don't think she likes me :(
Don't worry, once they finally get together, Gale tells Silmë every insane fantasy he ever had about her, and she's SO turned on by it. Then SILMARIEN tells him how many times she dreamt of sucking his dick and he chokes on air 🤣
FYI I didn't make these banners, I don't recall who did 😩 I will try to find the original post and credit the creator
Upon the very Eve of Midsummer, when the sky was blue as sapphire and white stars opened in the East, but the West was still golden, and the air was cool and fragrant, the riders came down the North-way to the gates of Minas Tirith.
Then the King welcomed his guests, and they alighted; and Elrond surrendered the sceptre, and laid the hand of his daughter in the hand of the King, and together they went up into the High City, and all the stars flowered in the sky. And Aragorn the King Elessar wedded Arwen Undómiel in the City of the Kings upon the day of Midsummer, and the tale of their long waiting and labours was come to fulfillment.
Tagging @riddlerosehearts @dr4gonwriter @tociminna @perpetualmaladaptivedaydream @stareitdown @kcwriter-blog and anyone else who feels like making yet another adorable picrew
