Hiya! I do a bit of everything FFXIV-related, but mostly comics of my WoL Wolfram (40yo Male Highlander Spellblade), Housing Builds, and GPosing. Also, I'm one of those surprisingly rare Raubahn shippers! I'm totally normal about them. 😅
Here's a pinned post of my content in a (slightly) more organized way.
Happy Pride~~ Laurent is definitely not afraid to beat some homophobes with that brick he's holding, lol. Pride is a protest 😌 Of course, he's also pansexual and very much loves his husband
Don't make Kris sad during Pride (or ever really), he'll make you regret it
gale's early access dialogue transcripts - part 4: gale's condition & how artefacts worked
gale's condition functioned somewhat similar to the way it does now in full release. however, there were also major key differences:
the implication of how the condition affected him physically
reveal of gale's condition
treatment of gale's condition
curing gale's condition -> speculation based on early access
i'm going to go through these differences point by point.
1. the implication of how the condition affected gale physically
i wrote a much more detailed meta post about gale's condition as presented in early access and gale's unique key art already so i'm going to link it here should you want to read in even more detail about it.
for brevity's sake, i'm not going to go into the same depth here and only present the main points raised:
the netherese orb, a piece of magic that karsus unleashed on the day he cast karsus's avatar and the historic event that came to be known as karsus's folly happened, not only caused gale to be robbed of most of his magic, a once archwizard and chosen blocked off from spells he used to cast with ease, but his keyart as well as lines from auntie ethel implied a deeper corrupted: "rot and ruin", as one of ethel's vicious mockery lines said, which she was able to smell beneath gale's "bandages".
as ea hadn't yet implemented at least somewhat unique body models - with a few exception like wyll's scars or astarion's scars - we never got to see that idea translated into game.
yet the bandages were visibile in gale's keyart on his right hand and arm, while his left seems to be free of the same affliction:
i think it's fair to say from these textual and visual clues - as well as others i detailed more in the meta post i linked above - that the orb that still causes gale's blood to taste like bile even in the full release had far, far deeper reaching consequences for him.
a deeper corruption. some form of petrification/putrefaction that primarily was then focused on one of his hands, reaching up aready to his arm.
2. reveal of gale's condition
i) full release: gale now reveals his condition to the player once his approval is high enough in ! conversation while travelling.
ii) early access: in early access, not only did giving gale artefacts work entirely differenty, which i'll go into in the next point, but he also revealed his condition in an entirely different dialogue set before a long rest at camp:
the vague story in the deer stew scene, which would had a low and high approval version, and the detailed version after the tiefling party, which i'll be going into in part when talking about the last point "curing gale's condition" since gale will speculate on possible cures for the orb himself in this conversation.
with the deer stew scene, in which he'd lead the conversation in with asking how the player found the deer stew he made after a family rescipe and explain how he'd come to trust and feel comfortable with them over their travels together, enough so that he would reveal that he needs "powerful artefacts" to soothe his condition.
in full release, gale still says similar things as the dialogue from the deer stew scene is at least partially re-used, however it's not at all reflected in the actual game: even komira's dancing lights locket will do, as well as any other low tier items, completely undermining the severity of gale's condition, his reason to leave waterdeep, the city of splendours in which such trinkets would be easy to come by in abundance, and, ultimately, the threat the orb represents.
which brings me to my next point:
3. treatment of gale's condition
in early access, this wasn't the case and gale truly did require actual three powerful artefacts, among them:
the sword of justice (anders, paladin of tyr)
the shadow of menzoberranzan (obtained in the underdark)
the staff of crones (obtained after beating ethel)
selune's dream (obtained after beating the leaders of the defiled temple)
the idol of silvanus (obtained by stealing it from the grove)
the iron flask (obtained by opening the chest of the zhentarim)
boots of speed (duergar item obtained in the underdark)
if the protagonist happened upon such an artefact, they would remark upon it, asking gale if this is one such artefact that would help to soothe his condition and gale would reply affirmatively:
the player at that point was able to give it to him immediately either outside of camp or at camp via player-initiated dialogue ("give gale the staff of crones") instead of the clunky "donation box" mechanic in full release.
giving gale the artefact immediately would have a more positive reaction (and a deeper bow of respect to the player after thanking them & absorbing the artefact), giving it to him later would still be received positively by gale, however result in a shallower bow to the player.
he would absorb the magic inside these artefacts in the same way he does now, but as previously stated, his dialogue would differ:
conversation after giving the first artefact:
Gale: I can feel the storm abating. Yes, this will keep my condition in check – for a precious while.
-
Player - Option 1: How long will that precious while last?
Gale: It's hard to predict the effect any given artefact has, but my condition is hardly a patient one.
-
Player - Option 2: I think I should be reimbursed for my efforts
Gale: As long as we travel together, what's mine is yours. And if we survive our many ordeals, I'll host you a banquet in Waterdeep the likes of which you've never seen. Such promises will have to wait however. My condition is hardly a patient one.
-
Player - Option 3: So this is what regret feels like
Gale: A feeling you may have to grow accustomed to while I'm around. My condition is hardly a patient one.
-
Gale: I will consume the magic inside. What was a powerful artefact will be rendered no more than a trinket. But it will save my life- even it only temporarily.
Gale: Rather soon I will feel it stir again – like a distant thunder sending tremors through the soul. I will need to consume another artefact before the lightning strikes. There's no choice but to find more. In the meantime, my thanks again.
-
Player - Option 1: You are welcome
Gale: My lord, I bow to your boundless kindness!
-
Player - Option 2: That condition of yours is a very expensive one.
Gale: I obtained it in Waterdeep. Nothing there comes cheap.
-
Player - Option 3: Thanks doesn't get me that artefact back.
Gale: I myself am a much more powerful artefact in your arsenal. Rest assured of that.
conversation after giving the second & third artefact
Gale: It's good to perceive this constant fear repressed into a quiet scare. Let's hope it will last a good long while.
-
Player - Option 1: I'm glad you're feeling better.
Gale: And I'm impressed once more by your benevolence! I say that with great sincerity. Mere days have passed since our first acquaintance, but you've gained the respect of years. As such, I do not wish to give you false hope. We're only treating the symptoms, not the cause.
-
Player - Option 2: A constant fear? That sounds unpleasant.
Gale: Unpleasant, certainly. Gut wrenching too. Heart rending even, if pinched for an adjective. Then again - keeps you on your toes.
-
Player - Option 1: Let's hope this was the last artefact I had to part with.
Gale: Come, come, these are mere fabled objects of great to enormous value. My continued presence though – quite priceless! On a more serious note, I do not wish to give you false hope. We're only treating the symptoms, not the cause.
-
Gale: Time is a precious gift. With time, we may even reach Baldur's Gate, a city rife with magic, wizards, scholars, and perhaps: solutions.
-
Player - Option 1: In that case I share your optimism. Here's to the journey ahead.
Gale: And here's to your company.
-
Player - Option 2: The tadpole is my main concern. I'm in need of solutions too.
Gale: And don't think I've forgotten!
-
Player - Option 3: Baldur's Gate lies many miles to the west. Don't get your hopes up.
Gale: Too late for that.
-
Gale: Oh, I can picture it now: Academies, libraries, laboratories – the assembled knowledge of centuries that may just set us free.
Better yet: soft beds, home cooked meals, and all the other little luxuries this wilderness so brashly denies us.
Gale: Gods, I'd pay a king's ransom for a hot, lavender-scented bath – minstrels serenading as I close my eyes and let the water's warmth dissolve all woes. Hah! Plenty to look forward to.
player withholds artefacts
Gale: A word, if you please. Remember how I told you I was in *dire* need of magical artefacts to absorb? Clearly the matter has hardly been a priority of yours, but even so, you can consider it closed. I no longer require assistance – neither yours, nor that of artefacts.
-
Player - Option 1: I don't follow. This seems awfully sudden.
Gale: Not at all. I've had a solution in mind for a while now, it just took me some time to... set it in motion. That's it – I won't take more of your time this lovely evening. Rest well.
-
Player - Option 2: Care to tell me why?
Gale: Not really, no. I've had a solution in mind for a while now, it just took me some time to... set it in motion. That's it – I won't take more of your time this lovely evening. Rest well.
-
Player - Option 3: Good to know – and goodnight.
Gale: Goodnight.
-
Player - Option 1 [Wisdom check]: Something's off. Try to connect with Gale without him noticing.
[Failed] Narrator: You flutter through his mind like a bat through the night and you see... nothing but darkness.
Gale: Up to tricks, are we? No matter. All you see is what I want you to see. In my mind, you are quite blind.
-
[success] Narrator: You flutter through his mind like a bat through the night and you see... fire. You hear laughter. You smell brimstone. Mocking words drift back to you. “This is the House of Hope”.
Gale: [disapproves] Stop that! How dare you... Forget whatever it was you saw. It's all beyond you now anyway.
-
Player - Option 1: You too, Gale.
[conversation ends]
-
Player - Option 2: Gale, what did you do?
Gale: No more than what I had to – and that's all I'll say on the matter.
-
Player - Option 3: We'll let all this rest for now but it will be addressed again later.
Gale: Much later. If ever.
-
Player - Option 4: I don't think I want you around any longer.
Gale: Suit yourself. Like I said: I no longer require your assistance. Farewell.
[Gale permaleaves the party]
as you can see, it's heavily implied that gale, if left with no choices and no support, would seek out raphael to make a deal, to ensure that the orb is soothed, assuring the survival of others as well as his own.
4. curing gale's condition
i touched on this topic in another more detailed post here, too. for the sake of thoroughness, i want to include parts of what i touched in this post, here too.
in a previous point, i also touched on the fact that gale revealing his condition was, as it is in full release, very much a two-part story. the first in only the vague details, the second, where he shares his mind and memories with the protag, the full entire story.
this was very much the same in early access: here, you could spend the night with gale at the tiefling party. come morning, he would share the full story of how he came to be afflicted with the orb and also muse about possible ways to cure it.
i'll be sharing the relevant parts of the conversation only as it's quite long and will be the topic of another post entirely:
karsus's story
Gale: Here goes; once upon a time, very long ago, a mighty lord lived in a tower. A flying tower to be precise. I’ll save his story for another time, but the gist of it is that he sought to usurp the goddess of magic so that he could become a god himself. He almost managed but not quite, and his entire empire – Netheril – came crashing down around him as he turned to stone.
Gale: The magic unleashed that day was phenomenal, rolling like the prime chaos that outdates creation. A fragment of it was caught and sealed away in a book. No ordinary book, mind you; a tome of gateways that contained within it a bubble of Astral Plane. It was a fragment of primal Weave locked out of time – locked away from Mystra herself. ‘What if’, the silly wizard thought. ‘What if after all this time, I could return this lost part of herself to the Goddess?”
possible ways to cure the orb
Player: What would permanently rid you of the orb?
Gale: The orb was kept safe and inert in a pocket of Astral Plane, suspended in time. If I can somehow manage to expel it from my body while in the Astral Plane, it will be rendered inert again. Alternatively, I could learn to control it’s chaotic magic, that is; to succeed where I failed before. But without Mystra’s favour, I don’t see how that may come to pass. Of course there could be different answers as well. Faerun brims with more magic than any one wizard could fathom, let alone comprehend. Who knows what outlandish solutions may yet present themselves?
i think it's quite clear from here, as well as other clues presented in the game like repeated conversations between lae'zel and gale about the astral plane that survived early access, but ultimately don't lead anywhere, that the key to curing gale's condition in early access lay with finding a way to the astral plane and expelling the orb there.
conclusion & personal opinion
personally, i really like the story line that was set up for gale in early access. mostly because it made sense on several levels: lore-wise, the mechanics presented, gale's condition was severe and it was treated with the weight it deserved. no one made jokes about slurping up artefacts like carrots or wine. it required actual artefacts of power to be soothed, not mediocre amulets, rings or random +1 weapons.
we know now that a lot was cut from the full release version of the game, including things that would have been absolute key points of gale's story line: candlekeep and the astral plane.
in full release we are left with these clues that go nowhere and with a story line that's not only downgraded from potential god killer to fetch quest at a book shop and a narratively questionable confrontation with mystra. gale's condition now, it's everything the game needs it to be at the moment it's needed:
it's urgent when it needs to be, but it's not when it doesn't (long lack of dialogue between the artefacts not working and the beginning of act 2).
it can be soothed and ultimately cured by mystra but it's also extremely dangerous to her and the weave.
gale needs it to be removed if he wishes to live, but he's also fine in the epilogue if only his ambition (???) is soothed and so the orb goes dormant on its own.
it's everything. it's nothing.
still, if you made it this far, i want to thank you for reading my meta!
part 1: gale's three tadpole dreams
part 2 a: the deer stew scene
part 2b: the loss scene
part 3: 23 cut conversations with gale
part 4: gale's condition & the orb in early access
part 5: the tiefling party, the goblin party, friendship and romance
WoL x Raubahn Aldynn. A look into Wolfram's thoughts after returning from Elpis in Endwalker. It starts out dark but shows how he's already started rewiring harmful thought patterns and taking positive actions in his journey of healing. 🙂 Probably more interesting for folks who know his basic backstory. (Vague mention of past suicide attempt.)
As Wolfram approached the glowing tower he spared a moment to look up at the starlit sky hanging over the Crystarium. Everything on The First had been odd…
In his world, the night was a time of danger. When the horrors of the void felt just that little bit closer. When beasts stalked their prey. When he'd committed his first sin…one of many. For hadn't he thanked the shroud of night as he crept through the ruins toward that cursed book? Hadn't he been grateful for the silence in that temple-turned-tomb making the sounds of his chanting all the clearer? Hadn't he begged for the shadows that had crept forth from the portal? He thanked that darkness for allowing him to avenge whilst claiming he wished only to protect. Was that very lie why the shadows turned on him?
There had been a time - let's be honest, many times - when the Warrior of Darkness questioned his place in the world. What right did he have to exist when he'd watched his own tainted hands shred the flesh of those who had given him life? He had believed himself the vessel of a voidsent and rather than end himself to protect others he'd stepped away from the literal edge. Selfish. Even free of the hellhound’s control he'd continued to kill. Gleefully even, when he felt they deserved it. What he deserved was far worse.
So many times he thought he'd changed - when he met the love of his life; when he chose the hero's path; when he'd been made humanity’s champion by a goddess.
No. A bloody Primal.
“Remember what she is - a lying bitch who killed my friends,” Wolfram muttered through a clenched jaw, shaking his head to clear the image of Venat from his mind. Venat… walking the fields of Elpis with that lovely smile and easy laugh that had made him feel at home even in the past he shouldn't have seen. Who had casually mentioned Azem’s partner while giving him a knowing grin - surely hoping his curiosity would override his desire to hide his identity. In the end, it mattered not. Whoever they were, they died along with Azem and the rest of their society.
Should he have listened to his instinct? Spared everyone their future right then and there. That instinct had been to kill. Kill Meteion to stop the pain inherent in her abilities - he knew better than any the agony that empathy can bring. To order Hermes to bring back her sisters so he could grant them mercy too. To kill the future Fandaniel, a man whose morose feelings mirrored his own, for giving life to such creatures whose only purpose was to meet a cruel fate. Somehow find a way to kill every one of the ancients, no matter how much inexplicable kinship he felt for them, for creating a false utopia where that corrosive pain was allowed to take root and spread its rot. Wolfram’s instinct was to kill in order to protect… and avenge. Further proof that after two decades and countless adventures - he hadn't truly changed.
Wolf’s instincts hadn't changed… but he also hadn't acted on them. Was that for good or ill? He could have spared all those fallen stars… maybe they could have recovered without the entelechy’s interference? Etheirys, even in its emptiness, would have been better off. With no ancients, there would be no Primals. No Allagans. No Garleans. No Calamities. Even he wouldn't exist. His pain wouldn't exist. His sickness. His darkness…
…Wolfram's friends wouldn't exist either. His love would have never been born… Were his intentions even noble or had his selfish instinct simply won out? Perhaps his instincts to protect others versus himself would now be at odds with each other. Perhaps that was a good thing? Perhaps he was being too hard on himself…. and ‘overthinking’. Hells! Hadn't Rau accused him of that too?! Just days ago. One night as Wolfram was a sobbing mess fighting the transformation into blasphemy as his friend tried to break through his haze of misery to convince the mage he was loved, pleading for his continued existence. And again the next night... as he was a grateful lovesick fool thanking the gladiator by falling into his bed with recklessly impulsive enthusiasm.
Wolfram had finally allowed himself something good. His far more honorable friend deserved whatever he desired - if that was a scarred mage with a broken mind then Wolf would stop fighting the undeniable fact that they belonged together. He had never considered himself to be the sundered Azem before visiting Elpis so why should anything change now? Why should he bother his mind with the fates of the dead? His soul didn't belong to Azem - it belonged to Raubahn Aldynn. The kindest, most courageous man in Eorzea trusted him with the fate of their people. That passionate night in Ala Mhigo - every kiss, every caress, was a promise to the Commander that he would save them all. Fuck the ancients. This was their time.
He chuckled at himself, grateful as ever that only he was privy to his innermost ramblings. The Warrior of Darkness lifted his eyes back towards the dim heavens. Looking up at this dark glimmering shroud blanketing the land in its comforting embrace… It felt odd, even after so long, to think that he was responsible for it. A man so full of his own darkness that it had warped his very grasp on reality - he'd been the one to return the night to this painfully bright world. Odd yes. Oddly fitting. Rather than fear his darkness… maybe it was time to truly embrace it. He had been the perfect person to save this world - surely he could save another.
Wolfram continued to the tower with a confident smile.
