Act One: Summary
Jun. 27th, 2024 07:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lettersfrombelDecisions:
— Helped the tieflings.
— Returned the chest to the Zhentarim without opening it.
— Found infernal iron, but not in time to realize what to do with it until Act 2
— Killed Gandrel, the monster hunter.
— Let Auntie Ethel go for her hair and Mayrina’s safety. Used the wand, and turned it and the undead Connor over to her.
— Gave the Noblestalk to Shadowheart.
— Got Sovereign Glut killed, so didn’t have to intervene in a myconid power struggle.
— Talked the duergar into turning on Nere and leaving the deep gnomes behind.
— Let Lae’zel use zaith'isk, and failed all the rolls there,
— Was given the githyanki egg, which is now in Lae’zel’s possession.
— Willing to use the tadpoles, but not force others to do so.
Relationships
Party Members
Astarion: (Approval: , Act 1 Romance Scene gotten) [CW: abuse] Bel feels like Astarion is far too relatable because it turns out Lolthite drow culture is full of fucked up shit, when you are male and a younger son. Like, Bel will concede that he wouldn’t trade his backstory for Astarion’s because about the only way Astarion fared better was ‘might have had an okay childhood before he became a vampire spawn’, and Bel isn’t sure that is an improvement since it means the fall to abused slave might be worse for being more of a loss in status. It does mean that Bel is invested in helping Astarion also figure out how to be an independent person again, and getting together the resources to kill a centuries-old vampire. Paradoxically, it is also what will doom the romance because Bel doesn’t feel like he can deal with being Astarion’s friend and his lover, especially as he figured out that Astarion probably approached him (at least in part) because ‘party leader, okay with having a vampire spawn around’.
Gale: (Approval: , Act 1 Romance Scene declined). Bel likes Gale, even if he also is well aware that Gale has trouble with hubris and loves the sound of his own voice (which… Bel likes to talk, but he’s more interested in conversation). Bel is very worried about the orb, since it’s not until Act 2 that we get it stabilized. He does trust that if Gale will run far and fast if the thing is going to blow, but he also worries Gale will push himself too hard to be helpful. I don’t think Bel considered Gale particularly attractive until the Act 1 romance scene — that while Bel finds Astarion and Wyll physically attractive, Gale is more in the ‘gods, does that man have a great voice’. Bel also envies a skill at teaching, even if Gale is in the ‘wizard who will talk my ear off about the thing he cares about as an affectionate gesture’. Which… at least two of Bel’s brothers are the same way, though Bel’s younger brother never expressed that until after running away from home. So, it’s more ‘I don’t find this boring, because I recognize this behavior and it is familiar’.
Lae’zel: (, Act 1 Romance Scene declined). It’s funny, Lae’zel is not that much younger than Wyll, but Bel feels a lot more like ‘she is young, protect her’. I suspect because Wyll has been on his own for some time, while this is literally Lae’zel’s first time leaving home and interacting with people who were not the same people she knew all her life, and the occasional visitor. At first Bel didn’t key into her being particularly young, because ‘mind flayer ship’ is an environment that Lae’zel actually knew more about than him, but as soon as they returned to Faerun, he is ‘oh, this is comparable to how I felt when I first reached the surface, with an added dose of horror because of these parasites’. I don’t know when he keyed into how inexperienced she was in general — I think the scene where he is trying to talk her down from ‘I am going to kill everyone, and then myself’ when it seems like ceremorphosis is eminent. But it leads to a mix of treating her as competent in things Bel knows she knows, like her own culture and fighting, and wanting to give her the chance that her own people seem bent on denying her by lying to her. Bel also relates to the idea of being told you are worthless until you prove otherwise, or generally having a childhood where you can’t necessarily trust other people, even your peers or caretakers. (He is glad that Lae’zel was clearly disapproving of a teacher threatening to kill a student at the creche, even if it was only ‘this is a thing my teachers would have let the students handle among themselves’.)
Karlach: (Approval: , Act 1 Romance Scene not triggered). Karlach is probably the most fun of the companions. Like, seriously, Bel can not imagine not liking Karlach. While the whole ‘has an infernal engine instead of a heart’ and ‘an archduke of Hell wants her back’ is concerning, Karlach seems relatively well-adjusted. (Bel isn’t good at recognizing people who seem happy but are dealing with shit, so he generally goes along with things and just checks in with them.) I also have a head canon that while the game writers had to deal with Insert Your Name Here for a custom character by having Karlach always call the main character ‘soldier’, Karlach isn’t inclined to call Bel ‘Belantar’, and unfortunately ‘Bel’ is also the name of one of Zariel’s generals.
Shadowheart: (Approval: , Act 1 Romance Scene not triggered). Oh, look, another person who Bel will fight a god for. Bel’s upbringing means he doesn’t really trust gods, because… well, Lolth is both fickle and cruel, and largely seems to get by on a mix of ‘her church suppresses other options’ and ‘a bunch of her high-placed followers like being fickle and cruel as well’. Like, he’s generally fine with rank and file clerics and followers of darker gods, because they largely seem like normal people who are getting something from it, but he’s suspicious of the gods themselves. After all, if Shar is the patron of pain and loss, that isn’t exactly conducive to stopping those things.
Wyll: (Approval: , Act 1 Romance Scene gotten) And the play of the act for Biggest Upset is Bel deciding that of the three (four, including Halsin) love interest men, he is going to pick the one least like himself. As I mentioned, Wyll or Astarion would be the ones who had the immediate physical attraction, but a lot of the traits Wyll has are things Bel wants to develop, but is also afraid of because they are things that can be used against him. One also has the issue that Bel is the sort to jump in for physical intimacy, but has trouble with emotional intimacy, while Wyll is clear that he wants to do things as an actual courtship with emotional intimacy coming before physical intimacy. Which also means that Wyll, despite being a 24 year old human, probably has more experience with a romantic relationship than Bel, 120 year old dark elf. (I also suspect by getting Bel to cool it, that is the push he needs to figure out if dating/romance/etc. is something he even wants.)
Camp Followers:
Barcus: Bel likes the deep gnome, though he couldn’t tell you why given Barcus’s reaction to being rescued from goblins by a drow is ‘well, guess I’m going to be tormented some more’. I think it is largely because there is the element of familiarity about the Underdark that makes it… well, comfortable in ways that interacting with surface folk isn’t. And, well, Barcus’s statement about how things like ‘we turned the duergar against the cultists, and managed to get them to leave the enslaved deep gnomes behind, effectively freeing them’ don’t happen in the Underdark was... well, inspiring.
Halsin: Another man who, appearance-wise, is ‘eh’, but Bel is totally attracted to his voice and personality. Bel also is drawn to the fact that he doesn’t feel like he needs to be the grownup here, because Halsin is both older than him by several centuries, and has at least dealt with his trauma in ways that are semi-functional. And also isn’t directly dealing with the stress of having a mind flayer parasite in his head. Like, Bel assumes Halsin is Not Okay with how things happened at the Grove, and is more than a bit fucked up by the events surrounding the creation of the Shadow-Cursed Lands, but he isn’t actively having a crisis at the moment. I suspect Bel is walking a fine line between ‘don’t tell Halsin anything anyone else wants to keep hidden’ and ‘I have no idea what I am doing with my friends, help!’.
Volo: This man is utterly ridiculous, walking into a goblin camp and not expecting to be captured and forced to provide amusement for them. Also, there is no way Bel is letting him near his eye with that needle. (That is too big for a needle, Volo, what even?)
Withers: Mysterious, but helpful, and largely content to ignore everything, aside from being enigmatic and using divine magic that Shadowheart can’t cast yet. Bel hopes that the fact they found Withers in a shrine to Jergal, and that he has a grudge against the Absolute, means this isn’t going to bite them in the ass. (Also, Bel isn’t sure they could remove Withers unless Withers wanted it to happen.)
Scratch and the Owlbear Cub: Best boys.
Bel’s Shit List (note: only includes active entities):
Whoever is leading the Cult of the Absolute (note: find out who this is, three people)
Cazador Sszar
Enver Gortash
Mizora
Vlaakith
Archduke Zariel
Bel’s ‘On Notice’ List:
Mystra: Seriously, you couldn’t make it so Gale’s bad decision didn’t threaten an area the size of a city? (Like, Bel totally admits Gale fucked up and probably needs to own ‘do not mess with forbidden magic when your lover, who does, in fact, know more about magic than you, tells you not to, not even to impress her’, but not impressed with how Mystra handled things because he’d rather not be blown up.)
Raphael: Does this act really work to get people to trust you? Or are you just figuring that a bunch of people with tadpoles in their brains aren’t going to be picky about help.
Shar: Bel doesn’t trust her wanting what is best for Shadowheart. Like, Bel doesn’t trust gods in general, but Shar doesn’t seem like the right god for Shadowheart, or at least a Shadowheart without memories. And asking Shadowheart to trust that her memory removal was for a good reason and something she consented to is sus. Also, he doesn’t believe it is all Selunite propaganda.
Ulder Ravengard: Why is he not on the shit list? Because Bel realizes that if Mizora isn’t an idiot, she would be using Wyll against him and Baldur’s Gate, and there is no good answer to that. Bel recognizes that if he had to choose between, say, abandoning one of his companions to protect another, he would not be okay with the choice he made, and that Ulder Ravengard may have more people he needs to protect than Wyll. It is definitely a ‘I need to see that this decision broke you as much as it broke Wyll’ though. (It doesn’t help that Wyll can’t tell anyone the terms of his pact, so Bel has no context beyond ‘Wyll shows up with a devil and warlock powers’, but Bel was betting either naiveté or desperation, and has been skewing more and more towards desperation as he gets to know Wyll.)
— Helped the tieflings.
— Returned the chest to the Zhentarim without opening it.
— Found infernal iron, but not in time to realize what to do with it until Act 2
— Killed Gandrel, the monster hunter.
— Let Auntie Ethel go for her hair and Mayrina’s safety. Used the wand, and turned it and the undead Connor over to her.
— Gave the Noblestalk to Shadowheart.
— Got Sovereign Glut killed, so didn’t have to intervene in a myconid power struggle.
— Talked the duergar into turning on Nere and leaving the deep gnomes behind.
— Let Lae’zel use zaith'isk, and failed all the rolls there,
— Was given the githyanki egg, which is now in Lae’zel’s possession.
— Willing to use the tadpoles, but not force others to do so.
Relationships
Party Members
Astarion: (Approval: , Act 1 Romance Scene gotten) [CW: abuse] Bel feels like Astarion is far too relatable because it turns out Lolthite drow culture is full of fucked up shit, when you are male and a younger son. Like, Bel will concede that he wouldn’t trade his backstory for Astarion’s because about the only way Astarion fared better was ‘might have had an okay childhood before he became a vampire spawn’, and Bel isn’t sure that is an improvement since it means the fall to abused slave might be worse for being more of a loss in status. It does mean that Bel is invested in helping Astarion also figure out how to be an independent person again, and getting together the resources to kill a centuries-old vampire. Paradoxically, it is also what will doom the romance because Bel doesn’t feel like he can deal with being Astarion’s friend and his lover, especially as he figured out that Astarion probably approached him (at least in part) because ‘party leader, okay with having a vampire spawn around’.
Gale: (Approval: , Act 1 Romance Scene declined). Bel likes Gale, even if he also is well aware that Gale has trouble with hubris and loves the sound of his own voice (which… Bel likes to talk, but he’s more interested in conversation). Bel is very worried about the orb, since it’s not until Act 2 that we get it stabilized. He does trust that if Gale will run far and fast if the thing is going to blow, but he also worries Gale will push himself too hard to be helpful. I don’t think Bel considered Gale particularly attractive until the Act 1 romance scene — that while Bel finds Astarion and Wyll physically attractive, Gale is more in the ‘gods, does that man have a great voice’. Bel also envies a skill at teaching, even if Gale is in the ‘wizard who will talk my ear off about the thing he cares about as an affectionate gesture’. Which… at least two of Bel’s brothers are the same way, though Bel’s younger brother never expressed that until after running away from home. So, it’s more ‘I don’t find this boring, because I recognize this behavior and it is familiar’.
Lae’zel: (, Act 1 Romance Scene declined). It’s funny, Lae’zel is not that much younger than Wyll, but Bel feels a lot more like ‘she is young, protect her’. I suspect because Wyll has been on his own for some time, while this is literally Lae’zel’s first time leaving home and interacting with people who were not the same people she knew all her life, and the occasional visitor. At first Bel didn’t key into her being particularly young, because ‘mind flayer ship’ is an environment that Lae’zel actually knew more about than him, but as soon as they returned to Faerun, he is ‘oh, this is comparable to how I felt when I first reached the surface, with an added dose of horror because of these parasites’. I don’t know when he keyed into how inexperienced she was in general — I think the scene where he is trying to talk her down from ‘I am going to kill everyone, and then myself’ when it seems like ceremorphosis is eminent. But it leads to a mix of treating her as competent in things Bel knows she knows, like her own culture and fighting, and wanting to give her the chance that her own people seem bent on denying her by lying to her. Bel also relates to the idea of being told you are worthless until you prove otherwise, or generally having a childhood where you can’t necessarily trust other people, even your peers or caretakers. (He is glad that Lae’zel was clearly disapproving of a teacher threatening to kill a student at the creche, even if it was only ‘this is a thing my teachers would have let the students handle among themselves’.)
Karlach: (Approval: , Act 1 Romance Scene not triggered). Karlach is probably the most fun of the companions. Like, seriously, Bel can not imagine not liking Karlach. While the whole ‘has an infernal engine instead of a heart’ and ‘an archduke of Hell wants her back’ is concerning, Karlach seems relatively well-adjusted. (Bel isn’t good at recognizing people who seem happy but are dealing with shit, so he generally goes along with things and just checks in with them.) I also have a head canon that while the game writers had to deal with Insert Your Name Here for a custom character by having Karlach always call the main character ‘soldier’, Karlach isn’t inclined to call Bel ‘Belantar’, and unfortunately ‘Bel’ is also the name of one of Zariel’s generals.
Shadowheart: (Approval: , Act 1 Romance Scene not triggered). Oh, look, another person who Bel will fight a god for. Bel’s upbringing means he doesn’t really trust gods, because… well, Lolth is both fickle and cruel, and largely seems to get by on a mix of ‘her church suppresses other options’ and ‘a bunch of her high-placed followers like being fickle and cruel as well’. Like, he’s generally fine with rank and file clerics and followers of darker gods, because they largely seem like normal people who are getting something from it, but he’s suspicious of the gods themselves. After all, if Shar is the patron of pain and loss, that isn’t exactly conducive to stopping those things.
Wyll: (Approval: , Act 1 Romance Scene gotten) And the play of the act for Biggest Upset is Bel deciding that of the three (four, including Halsin) love interest men, he is going to pick the one least like himself. As I mentioned, Wyll or Astarion would be the ones who had the immediate physical attraction, but a lot of the traits Wyll has are things Bel wants to develop, but is also afraid of because they are things that can be used against him. One also has the issue that Bel is the sort to jump in for physical intimacy, but has trouble with emotional intimacy, while Wyll is clear that he wants to do things as an actual courtship with emotional intimacy coming before physical intimacy. Which also means that Wyll, despite being a 24 year old human, probably has more experience with a romantic relationship than Bel, 120 year old dark elf. (I also suspect by getting Bel to cool it, that is the push he needs to figure out if dating/romance/etc. is something he even wants.)
Camp Followers:
Barcus: Bel likes the deep gnome, though he couldn’t tell you why given Barcus’s reaction to being rescued from goblins by a drow is ‘well, guess I’m going to be tormented some more’. I think it is largely because there is the element of familiarity about the Underdark that makes it… well, comfortable in ways that interacting with surface folk isn’t. And, well, Barcus’s statement about how things like ‘we turned the duergar against the cultists, and managed to get them to leave the enslaved deep gnomes behind, effectively freeing them’ don’t happen in the Underdark was... well, inspiring.
Halsin: Another man who, appearance-wise, is ‘eh’, but Bel is totally attracted to his voice and personality. Bel also is drawn to the fact that he doesn’t feel like he needs to be the grownup here, because Halsin is both older than him by several centuries, and has at least dealt with his trauma in ways that are semi-functional. And also isn’t directly dealing with the stress of having a mind flayer parasite in his head. Like, Bel assumes Halsin is Not Okay with how things happened at the Grove, and is more than a bit fucked up by the events surrounding the creation of the Shadow-Cursed Lands, but he isn’t actively having a crisis at the moment. I suspect Bel is walking a fine line between ‘don’t tell Halsin anything anyone else wants to keep hidden’ and ‘I have no idea what I am doing with my friends, help!’.
Volo: This man is utterly ridiculous, walking into a goblin camp and not expecting to be captured and forced to provide amusement for them. Also, there is no way Bel is letting him near his eye with that needle. (That is too big for a needle, Volo, what even?)
Withers: Mysterious, but helpful, and largely content to ignore everything, aside from being enigmatic and using divine magic that Shadowheart can’t cast yet. Bel hopes that the fact they found Withers in a shrine to Jergal, and that he has a grudge against the Absolute, means this isn’t going to bite them in the ass. (Also, Bel isn’t sure they could remove Withers unless Withers wanted it to happen.)
Scratch and the Owlbear Cub: Best boys.
Bel’s Shit List (note: only includes active entities):
Whoever is leading the Cult of the Absolute (note: find out who this is, three people)
Cazador Sszar
Enver Gortash
Mizora
Vlaakith
Archduke Zariel
Bel’s ‘On Notice’ List:
Mystra: Seriously, you couldn’t make it so Gale’s bad decision didn’t threaten an area the size of a city? (Like, Bel totally admits Gale fucked up and probably needs to own ‘do not mess with forbidden magic when your lover, who does, in fact, know more about magic than you, tells you not to, not even to impress her’, but not impressed with how Mystra handled things because he’d rather not be blown up.)
Raphael: Does this act really work to get people to trust you? Or are you just figuring that a bunch of people with tadpoles in their brains aren’t going to be picky about help.
Shar: Bel doesn’t trust her wanting what is best for Shadowheart. Like, Bel doesn’t trust gods in general, but Shar doesn’t seem like the right god for Shadowheart, or at least a Shadowheart without memories. And asking Shadowheart to trust that her memory removal was for a good reason and something she consented to is sus. Also, he doesn’t believe it is all Selunite propaganda.
Ulder Ravengard: Why is he not on the shit list? Because Bel realizes that if Mizora isn’t an idiot, she would be using Wyll against him and Baldur’s Gate, and there is no good answer to that. Bel recognizes that if he had to choose between, say, abandoning one of his companions to protect another, he would not be okay with the choice he made, and that Ulder Ravengard may have more people he needs to protect than Wyll. It is definitely a ‘I need to see that this decision broke you as much as it broke Wyll’ though. (It doesn’t help that Wyll can’t tell anyone the terms of his pact, so Bel has no context beyond ‘Wyll shows up with a devil and warlock powers’, but Bel was betting either naiveté or desperation, and has been skewing more and more towards desperation as he gets to know Wyll.)
