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lettersfrombel10 Tarsakh 1492 DR
Our camp near an abandoned village, marked as Moonhaven
My dear River,
I am writing this before I settle down for the night, and hoping I do not snap the quill in two. I forgot that caring about others, even in a superficial sense, means that you have new sources of rage and grief. But I get ahead of myself.
Drow are definitely involved in this nonsense. We managed to find a group of goblins who had caught a lone druid and were torturing him for information. There was something their bosses are looking for, that they assumed the druids would know about. They were acting under orders of a ‘Minthara’. That is a drow name, and may well be the ‘boss lady’ we heard spoken about. We also found a drawing some goblin made of the leadership — a goblin using magic, an elf and a third humankind. The prisoner Sazza mentioned Priestess Gut, calling her a mighty booyahg. I know you speak enough Goblin to know that means mage of an unspecified kind. Let’s assume Minthara is the ‘boss lady’ drow elf. And we now have an unknown third.
We have not located the goblin camp yet, but we did find a ransacked village that some goblins were squatting in. While I tried to use stealth to get by, Karlach is not a subtle woman, and the guards noticed her. Thankfully, most goblins will decide a large, well-armed woman who is slightly on fire is Not Their Problem, and they also are willing to assume that a drow male is working for Minthara. Or else this True Soul business has the goblins bewitched.
It... dear River, I have a confession to make. And, since I am not a follower of any god, you get to hear it. Exploring the town was getting to me. Without knowing what happened, seeing the place ransacked was just so stupid and senseless. And maybe this Cult of the Absolute has a plan that is not good, but at least rational, but they are aren’t telling the goblins, and the goblins don't expect them to. We came across a group of goblins torturing a deep gnome which... I’d never seen one outside of the Underdark. They don’t have the same feared reputation as we and the grey dwarves do, they just keep to themselves, and try to go unnoticed. I tried my own personal charms to bluff them into releasing the gnome to me, and it was working, slowly. The goblins were trying to decide if I was really a True Soul but... I felt Junior and realized that I could give them what they asked, and just... reached out. And they immediately complied.
I should not be trusted with this power. Because the first time I used it, it was in such a stupid, petty way, and I know what sort of people use power in such ways. And I probably could have talked the goblin around, or started a fight, I was just tired and irritated. Not helped by the fact that the gnome immediately assumed I was his next tormentor, or that I was going to enslave him. Which, the man has had a far worse day than me, and even if he told me he’s lived in Baldur’s Gate for years, he’s from the Underdark. He's not wrong about the reputation of the drow, and certain members of my people would delight in stringing him along if he wasn't resigned to his fate. He couldn't know that I have a distaste for slavery, and no need to prop up my own ego by reminding those who lack power that they cannot stop me.
Some other things happened, and I might detail them in my next letter, but, after that, I was ready to go back to camp before we tracked down the goblin camp and leadership. Have something to eat, lie down on my bedroll and really wish I was in a town so I could burn off some stress (read: see which of my new companions wants to go find a tavern for drinks and company) and have an actual bed. But someone was waiting for us back at camp.
(Scrawled in the margin: Edit this before you send it on. No sense exposing others’ secrets.)
Wyll is a warlock, and has dealings with the Hells. We met his patron. Wyll literally can’t talk about the details of the deal he made, but between his own statements and my read on his character as a, how did Madame Lae’zel put it, ‘idealistic do-gooder’, he assumed he could work killing fiends and the ‘heartless and soulless’. Never, ever, try to out negotiate a devil, unless you have no choice but to deal with them and have to at least try to fight back. And then always assume the least favorable read of the documents in question. Because that is how devils operate: even we have such cautionary tales to keep the young and the insufficiently cautious from causing problems. And for someone who is genuinely good-hearted or arrogant enough to assume they can outwit a devil, the devil is in the details. The devil might start out being generous in interpretations, to create a false sense of security and a larger distance to fall, but they will eventually start pulling on the leash. And it seemed that our Wyll’s time had come.
Wyll believed that his contract would prevent him being sent against a tiefling. Madame Mizora disagreed. Apparently Madame Mizora also is one of the Archdevil Zariel’s servants, and had no love for Karlach even before Karlach slipped her collar and left. Hence, Wyll’s next step in his planned downfall was to kill a woman that didn’t deserve it. And if not for the rest of us, and the parasites in our head, he might have done it trusting in that stupid contract, only to find out that he had innocent blood on his hands. But Madame Mizora was paying enough attention that she realized Karlach was found and spared.
I only have this one impression of her, but, devil status aside, she reminds me of a number of women I knew in my youth. Thank all the gods, I was never any one of those women’s personal pet, because even at my worse I knew my continued life and health depended on being the humanoid equivalent of one of those lap dogs rich humans keep as companions. Not even that, as other people will object to how you treat a dog. But that did require some clever thinking on my part, and the lure was just the loan of social power, not magical power.
I had assumed she’d just inflict pain on Wyll, using that infernal bond. I may be infatuated with the man, but my background has prepared me for seeing someone I like in pain, and knowing it would be my own death to interfere. It would be rage-inducing enough. But she transformed him. I cannot tell if he was transformed into a tiefling or something more fiendish. Tiefling may be the best approximation regardless: a mortal man with the face of a devil. Madame Mizora seemed to think this would put a damper on his ‘Blade of the Frontiers’ career. I can’t find it in myself to contradict that, given I am living proof that it does matter what you look like when rescuing people. If Wyll had been the one to get that deep gnome down before meeting Madame Mizora, he would have been seen as a hero, not just a bigger bully.
This is all getting far too attached to a man I merely want to bed. Yes, it is tragic and upsetting, but wanting to fight a devil is only a good option if I’m confident she will kill me, and we’ve exhausted ‘cure’ options. Martyrdom has never suited me, dear River, nor letting my emotions get the better of me. I am the model of restraint. Hence why I am writing to you, after I checked in with Wyll and Karlach. (Who was also impressed by our Blade’s self-sacrificing tendencies. Do not get me wrong, I agree with Astarion that Wyll should have known better than to make a deal with a fiend and expect it to work out perfectly for him, and this is a natural consequence of that, but I hate seeing it happen.)
Thank you for letting me vent, even if we can’t do it in person over drinks. I do miss that.
I remain,
Your dear friend,
Bel
From the Player:
Our camp near an abandoned village, marked as Moonhaven
My dear River,
I am writing this before I settle down for the night, and hoping I do not snap the quill in two. I forgot that caring about others, even in a superficial sense, means that you have new sources of rage and grief. But I get ahead of myself.
Drow are definitely involved in this nonsense. We managed to find a group of goblins who had caught a lone druid and were torturing him for information. There was something their bosses are looking for, that they assumed the druids would know about. They were acting under orders of a ‘Minthara’. That is a drow name, and may well be the ‘boss lady’ we heard spoken about. We also found a drawing some goblin made of the leadership — a goblin using magic, an elf and a third humankind. The prisoner Sazza mentioned Priestess Gut, calling her a mighty booyahg. I know you speak enough Goblin to know that means mage of an unspecified kind. Let’s assume Minthara is the ‘boss lady’ drow elf. And we now have an unknown third.
We have not located the goblin camp yet, but we did find a ransacked village that some goblins were squatting in. While I tried to use stealth to get by, Karlach is not a subtle woman, and the guards noticed her. Thankfully, most goblins will decide a large, well-armed woman who is slightly on fire is Not Their Problem, and they also are willing to assume that a drow male is working for Minthara. Or else this True Soul business has the goblins bewitched.
It... dear River, I have a confession to make. And, since I am not a follower of any god, you get to hear it. Exploring the town was getting to me. Without knowing what happened, seeing the place ransacked was just so stupid and senseless. And maybe this Cult of the Absolute has a plan that is not good, but at least rational, but they are aren’t telling the goblins, and the goblins don't expect them to. We came across a group of goblins torturing a deep gnome which... I’d never seen one outside of the Underdark. They don’t have the same feared reputation as we and the grey dwarves do, they just keep to themselves, and try to go unnoticed. I tried my own personal charms to bluff them into releasing the gnome to me, and it was working, slowly. The goblins were trying to decide if I was really a True Soul but... I felt Junior and realized that I could give them what they asked, and just... reached out. And they immediately complied.
I should not be trusted with this power. Because the first time I used it, it was in such a stupid, petty way, and I know what sort of people use power in such ways. And I probably could have talked the goblin around, or started a fight, I was just tired and irritated. Not helped by the fact that the gnome immediately assumed I was his next tormentor, or that I was going to enslave him. Which, the man has had a far worse day than me, and even if he told me he’s lived in Baldur’s Gate for years, he’s from the Underdark. He's not wrong about the reputation of the drow, and certain members of my people would delight in stringing him along if he wasn't resigned to his fate. He couldn't know that I have a distaste for slavery, and no need to prop up my own ego by reminding those who lack power that they cannot stop me.
Some other things happened, and I might detail them in my next letter, but, after that, I was ready to go back to camp before we tracked down the goblin camp and leadership. Have something to eat, lie down on my bedroll and really wish I was in a town so I could burn off some stress (read: see which of my new companions wants to go find a tavern for drinks and company) and have an actual bed. But someone was waiting for us back at camp.
(Scrawled in the margin: Edit this before you send it on. No sense exposing others’ secrets.)
Wyll is a warlock, and has dealings with the Hells. We met his patron. Wyll literally can’t talk about the details of the deal he made, but between his own statements and my read on his character as a, how did Madame Lae’zel put it, ‘idealistic do-gooder’, he assumed he could work killing fiends and the ‘heartless and soulless’. Never, ever, try to out negotiate a devil, unless you have no choice but to deal with them and have to at least try to fight back. And then always assume the least favorable read of the documents in question. Because that is how devils operate: even we have such cautionary tales to keep the young and the insufficiently cautious from causing problems. And for someone who is genuinely good-hearted or arrogant enough to assume they can outwit a devil, the devil is in the details. The devil might start out being generous in interpretations, to create a false sense of security and a larger distance to fall, but they will eventually start pulling on the leash. And it seemed that our Wyll’s time had come.
Wyll believed that his contract would prevent him being sent against a tiefling. Madame Mizora disagreed. Apparently Madame Mizora also is one of the Archdevil Zariel’s servants, and had no love for Karlach even before Karlach slipped her collar and left. Hence, Wyll’s next step in his planned downfall was to kill a woman that didn’t deserve it. And if not for the rest of us, and the parasites in our head, he might have done it trusting in that stupid contract, only to find out that he had innocent blood on his hands. But Madame Mizora was paying enough attention that she realized Karlach was found and spared.
I only have this one impression of her, but, devil status aside, she reminds me of a number of women I knew in my youth. Thank all the gods, I was never any one of those women’s personal pet, because even at my worse I knew my continued life and health depended on being the humanoid equivalent of one of those lap dogs rich humans keep as companions. Not even that, as other people will object to how you treat a dog. But that did require some clever thinking on my part, and the lure was just the loan of social power, not magical power.
I had assumed she’d just inflict pain on Wyll, using that infernal bond. I may be infatuated with the man, but my background has prepared me for seeing someone I like in pain, and knowing it would be my own death to interfere. It would be rage-inducing enough. But she transformed him. I cannot tell if he was transformed into a tiefling or something more fiendish. Tiefling may be the best approximation regardless: a mortal man with the face of a devil. Madame Mizora seemed to think this would put a damper on his ‘Blade of the Frontiers’ career. I can’t find it in myself to contradict that, given I am living proof that it does matter what you look like when rescuing people. If Wyll had been the one to get that deep gnome down before meeting Madame Mizora, he would have been seen as a hero, not just a bigger bully.
This is all getting far too attached to a man I merely want to bed. Yes, it is tragic and upsetting, but wanting to fight a devil is only a good option if I’m confident she will kill me, and we’ve exhausted ‘cure’ options. Martyrdom has never suited me, dear River, nor letting my emotions get the better of me. I am the model of restraint. Hence why I am writing to you, after I checked in with Wyll and Karlach. (Who was also impressed by our Blade’s self-sacrificing tendencies. Do not get me wrong, I agree with Astarion that Wyll should have known better than to make a deal with a fiend and expect it to work out perfectly for him, and this is a natural consequence of that, but I hate seeing it happen.)
Thank you for letting me vent, even if we can’t do it in person over drinks. I do miss that.
I remain,
Your dear friend,
Bel
From the Player:
I appreciate the irony of Bel ending the letter with a 'we have too many enemies, let's try not to get more', and this one opening with 'I am going to stab this new devil with all of my knives'.
This was also a lesson in how to deal with traps that cannot be disarmed: sneak and go slow. In a save that I lost, I blundered into a trap that killed three of us, and got Gale’s ‘in case of my death’ message. Which... if that comes up in a save I keep, Bel is going to tell Gale that the other side of security is ‘letting authorized people in’. Yes, Bel can follow complex directions, but 'we have scrolls of revivify at home'.
Bel’s arc in game is going to be the temptation of power. Because he manipulates people. For... well, usually not for bad reasons, and he’ll favor Persuasion over Deception or Intimidation, but giving him any sort of mental power is the temptation to use it. This one taste means he swore off using it for petty reasons, but his tactics for getting out of situations too dangerous to fight back in is ‘talk’, and any sort of mental powers provide an extra boost to that.
[CW: Discussions of slavery]
A lot of the Selindane Drow-specific dialog options are very #notalldrow except for Bel, it is very much ‘not all drow, but definitely, yes some drow’. He gets annoyed that people make assumptions about him, but if pressed, he also admits at least some of them are ‘just being safe’. A deep gnome is one of those ‘yes, that prejudice is probably well founded’ situations, so Bel is in the ‘I’m irritated, but at my people, my parents’ god, and the world, and not at this poor gnome, so I’m going to try to not show it’.
In more 'Bel does not give himself enough credit', he's far more likely to denounce things like torture and slavery as inefficient, a sign of an ego that needs stroking, or just not his personal taste than state that they are morally wrong. Because only recently did he have validation from any twinges of compassion as 'because it is morally wrong to do that', so has to rationalize his own gut feelings in ways that make sense given his upbringing.
And then Bel gets to watch his crush being tortured by someone who sends off all of Bel’s red flags in ‘avoid at all costs’. There are whole media studies papers written on the seductive femme villain type, but one of the things I like to world build about drow is that a lot of standard human patriarchal tropes read very differently to matriarchal elves. Elves have less sexual dimorphism, so male elves tend to be less obviously bulky, and they prize finesse rather than momentum. They are magical, so even if men are slightly stronger, magic-users are common enough that equalizes things. So Bel didn’t grow up with ‘women lack physical or social power, so have to manipulate men’, but ‘using the existing social power structure to enforce their will on lessers (and manipulating it to make sure the rules don’t apply to you) is a thing everyone does’. Bel thinks human patriarchy is weird.
(Like, I am fully aware that an evil matriarchal spider cult made of sexy people who don’t show age whose defining traits were set by men is Problematic, but it exists, so I’m going to use it to explore gender and religion and sexuality and that like the leftist feminist I am.)
Also, a lot of Bel’s ways of addressing people are heavily tone-based. He might call both Lae’zel and Mizora ‘Madame’, but the way he says it is entirely differently. Mizora gets ‘I acknowledge the fact you could turn me into a pile of ash, but I don’t have to like it’ and Lae’zel at first gets the ‘it’s cute how you think you are in charge’ which shifts to ‘you are competent and I believe you will get the status and rank I am treating you with’. Clearly Bel’s community is from the South Underdark.
This is also where Bel realizes he can’t really pretend his crush on Wyll is only on the physical level, and not just because Wyll looks different. Because Bel recognizes when he’s caught Feelings, and he hates it and wishes it was just his overactive libido latching on to someone in the party. It’s funny because I the player am ace as lack-of-fuck, and to the extent I have sexy thoughts, it’s towards women, but Bel is gay, has a moderately high libido and is touch starved and can’t figure out ways to touch people without sex/seduction. Bel also doesn’t have words for ‘guess what, Wyll, you lost a privilege you didn’t even know you had, because humans tend to be the default on the surface and, unlike me who went from default to 'outsider (feared)' with a change of cultures, you just are seeing your own people differently’.
Also, I think part of Bel has put Wyll on a pedestal, and seeing how he deals with this change in status is going to be useful for him to see a full person. Even a heroic do-gooder can have bad days.
