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lettersfrombel4 Mirtul, 1492 DR
Moonrise Towers
Dear River,
Check one off the bucket list; I have engineered a prison break.
I located the prison below Moonrise Towers. Alas that Wyll’s father is too important to be held with the rank and file. We did have the gnomes taken from Grymforge, the other tieflings, and Minthara, who was apparently being ‘interrogated’ in preparation for using her body as a mindless thrall to the Absolute.
River, I have detailed that I did not like Minthara. The first words out of her mouth on meeting me, someone who was disguised as her ally, was that I should never consider myself equal to her because of my sex. I should have killed her when I had the chance, and I would have set aside my petty need to spite her had I known these consequences. Because a swift death would be kinder than having her mind shredded and whatever remained bound to the Absolute’s will.
I have never hesitated about taking advantage of the perception of the drow, and this was no exception. No one would find it odd that a male drow would loiter around the cells while a high-ranking female drow was being brought low, even without a personal history between them. Or would ask to have a chance to wield the whip. My initial plan was to ‘accidentally’ kill her, a mercy under these circumstances.
But, listening to her interrogators gave me an idea. I don’t know exactly where Minthara is from, but I would guess she is a noblewoman from one of the great cities of the drow. For all that my family claims ‘nobility’, it is only because we are far enough from a center of power that we are not seen as pretentious upstarts. Either way, a younger son is not the same thing as any daughter of the House. While there is competition for positions within the House, one accepts that a son, at best, can command other men, or act under a woman’s power. But, there can only be one Matron of a House. My sister could never let her guard down among our cousins, and even our mother was at best an ally only while my sister is too young to hold the House. A woman could avoid becoming a priestess, but that could be seen as weakness unless she showed some other obvious talent. Men of the same House can be rivals, but can also work together more, which is probably why the larger cities make sure the House does not have too many living sons.
But, I get off topic. I was telling you about my idea. We all learn how to deceive with the first taste of a mother’s (or wet nurse's) milk, but I would bet Minthara had learned that she had to always appear strong, even when facing someone who outranked her, or a rival would consider her vulnerable. Even while Lolth requires our obedience, she has no interest in weaklings. A man like myself… well, there is a lot more bowing and scraping to make it clear that I know my role with respect to women. And on the surface, knowing when to be threatening and when to seem weak has kept me alive.
To summarize: male drow, even those of us of high social rank, learn a lot more to eat shit and then tell the server it was delicious and ask for seconds, and understand that it is better to delay the knife in the server’s back and risk never having the chance, than to die in the attempt. Minthara would not have held back if that human noble’s son (the one that had been ceremoposed, you remember?) had insulted her, and then we would have been tossed in jail and have created a whole new set of problems.
So, I make the mental link, and suggested to Minthara we fake out the guards: to act as though I had erased her mind to make her an obedient thrall of the Absolute. I have no idea if the mental link was why she decided to go along with it, if she hated the Absolute worse than she currently hated me, or decided that she could get me to kill her (or try to kill me) later.
I’m not going to deny I derived pleasure from the subterfuge, even if I was aware that using the act to humiliate Minthara beyond what was necessary to fool the cult was both risky — Minthara is not using to having to suppress her anger — and… I don’t know how to explain it, but some of the thoughts I had made the pleasure turn to ash in my mouth. But, I like tricking people, and as I said, it fit what people believe about the drow that we would do that to one another. And the rescue let me get what I think I wanted from Minthara. Perhaps because it was not just myself, a male drow, rescuing her, but because I suggested tricks I had learned from my past, that Minthara wouldn’t have considered herself.
Since the artifact is now also shielding her, I guess we have a new member of our merry band, and I have to figure out how to get her and Master Halsin in the same group without them trying to kill each other. She was part of the group that locked him up and tormented him, while plotting to raid his grove, even if at least some of that was the Absolute. For now, he is still at the Last Light, with Art Cullagh; I hope ‘she can’t leave without being re-enslaved or turned into a mind flayer’ is acceptable to him, especially if she can help with the shadow curse.
We had to go back for the gnomes and tieflings. Sadly, those required more direct methods — it turns out when you slip a miner some tools, he can break masonry as well as stone. Things were going rather well — we found river access behind the cells, with only the back walls in the way — until the guards spotted the gnomes breaking the tieflings out. We made it out before anyone noticed that the guard staff was killed, and escorted the prisoners Last Light Inn.
I can’t say I’m impressed with how the leader of the gnomes treated our friend Barcus, who had tried to rescue him. I can only hope it was the stress of seeing someone one cared about out of his depth, but I wonder if Barcus’s feelings are reciprocated. Well, at least the Absolute does not have access to runepowder now, I can hope.
Minthara is adapting to camp… well enough. She maintains that everything she did under the Absolute’s command was not her own will, but she also vividly described how it felt. That as long as she was under its control, it felt like she was acting under her own volition, but on reflection, she realizes that she was carrying out its will, not her own. We agree that this is a fate worse than death. It is peculiar to have a conversation with a drow woman outside of our own society. By the standards of my upbringing, Minthara was breaking norms left and right by admitting she owed me a debt and would be following me in the future, but… another thing we have in common is being done with the Spider Queen. So no theological objections to me, at least.
Everyone else is a bit uncertain of her loyalty, which, fair enough. I can’t believe they trust me enough to let her stay at all. And, to be honest, River, if we had the option of letting her remain free of the Absolute but not with us, I might have taken that. I project confidence when dealing with her, out of a mix of ‘set the tone for interactions’ and general contrariness towards my upbringing, but my survival instincts from my childhood still partially expect to get punished for my general insolence towards a drow woman who is definitely older than I am, and high-born, even if she is not a priestess.
I should say ‘everyone but Gale’ is uncertain. Gale seems to think she has a heart of gold buried deep inside, and that he can use his vast stock of trivia to get her to open up to him. Meanwhile, Minthara generally seems to regard wizards as ‘useful, but not around for long enough to be worth getting attached to’. Which I really hope she does not tell Gale. He’s… not doing well. I concede that Gale’s death to stop the Absolute would be better than letting it win, but I would rather exhaust all other options. He mentioned that because he’d developed friendships with us, he was not as inclined to martyr himself for Mystra, and… well, I feel seen. Friendship and love are double-edged. They might be the ropes that keep your boat from drifting away on the current, but you can also feel them binding you and it doesn’t always sit easily.
And now I realize I’ve penned two very long letters for a very long day. This is being written the morning after, as Gale wanted company overnight. Of the platonic sort, which I admit I am less accustomed to providing. But… even as I worry about him, I find that having other people around helps me as well, so perhaps I should consider doing it more.
Your gregarious friend,
Bel
From the Player:
Moonrise Towers
Dear River,
Check one off the bucket list; I have engineered a prison break.
I located the prison below Moonrise Towers. Alas that Wyll’s father is too important to be held with the rank and file. We did have the gnomes taken from Grymforge, the other tieflings, and Minthara, who was apparently being ‘interrogated’ in preparation for using her body as a mindless thrall to the Absolute.
River, I have detailed that I did not like Minthara. The first words out of her mouth on meeting me, someone who was disguised as her ally, was that I should never consider myself equal to her because of my sex. I should have killed her when I had the chance, and I would have set aside my petty need to spite her had I known these consequences. Because a swift death would be kinder than having her mind shredded and whatever remained bound to the Absolute’s will.
I have never hesitated about taking advantage of the perception of the drow, and this was no exception. No one would find it odd that a male drow would loiter around the cells while a high-ranking female drow was being brought low, even without a personal history between them. Or would ask to have a chance to wield the whip. My initial plan was to ‘accidentally’ kill her, a mercy under these circumstances.
But, listening to her interrogators gave me an idea. I don’t know exactly where Minthara is from, but I would guess she is a noblewoman from one of the great cities of the drow. For all that my family claims ‘nobility’, it is only because we are far enough from a center of power that we are not seen as pretentious upstarts. Either way, a younger son is not the same thing as any daughter of the House. While there is competition for positions within the House, one accepts that a son, at best, can command other men, or act under a woman’s power. But, there can only be one Matron of a House. My sister could never let her guard down among our cousins, and even our mother was at best an ally only while my sister is too young to hold the House. A woman could avoid becoming a priestess, but that could be seen as weakness unless she showed some other obvious talent. Men of the same House can be rivals, but can also work together more, which is probably why the larger cities make sure the House does not have too many living sons.
But, I get off topic. I was telling you about my idea. We all learn how to deceive with the first taste of a mother’s (or wet nurse's) milk, but I would bet Minthara had learned that she had to always appear strong, even when facing someone who outranked her, or a rival would consider her vulnerable. Even while Lolth requires our obedience, she has no interest in weaklings. A man like myself… well, there is a lot more bowing and scraping to make it clear that I know my role with respect to women. And on the surface, knowing when to be threatening and when to seem weak has kept me alive.
To summarize: male drow, even those of us of high social rank, learn a lot more to eat shit and then tell the server it was delicious and ask for seconds, and understand that it is better to delay the knife in the server’s back and risk never having the chance, than to die in the attempt. Minthara would not have held back if that human noble’s son (the one that had been ceremoposed, you remember?) had insulted her, and then we would have been tossed in jail and have created a whole new set of problems.
So, I make the mental link, and suggested to Minthara we fake out the guards: to act as though I had erased her mind to make her an obedient thrall of the Absolute. I have no idea if the mental link was why she decided to go along with it, if she hated the Absolute worse than she currently hated me, or decided that she could get me to kill her (or try to kill me) later.
I’m not going to deny I derived pleasure from the subterfuge, even if I was aware that using the act to humiliate Minthara beyond what was necessary to fool the cult was both risky — Minthara is not using to having to suppress her anger — and… I don’t know how to explain it, but some of the thoughts I had made the pleasure turn to ash in my mouth. But, I like tricking people, and as I said, it fit what people believe about the drow that we would do that to one another. And the rescue let me get what I think I wanted from Minthara. Perhaps because it was not just myself, a male drow, rescuing her, but because I suggested tricks I had learned from my past, that Minthara wouldn’t have considered herself.
Since the artifact is now also shielding her, I guess we have a new member of our merry band, and I have to figure out how to get her and Master Halsin in the same group without them trying to kill each other. She was part of the group that locked him up and tormented him, while plotting to raid his grove, even if at least some of that was the Absolute. For now, he is still at the Last Light, with Art Cullagh; I hope ‘she can’t leave without being re-enslaved or turned into a mind flayer’ is acceptable to him, especially if she can help with the shadow curse.
We had to go back for the gnomes and tieflings. Sadly, those required more direct methods — it turns out when you slip a miner some tools, he can break masonry as well as stone. Things were going rather well — we found river access behind the cells, with only the back walls in the way — until the guards spotted the gnomes breaking the tieflings out. We made it out before anyone noticed that the guard staff was killed, and escorted the prisoners Last Light Inn.
I can’t say I’m impressed with how the leader of the gnomes treated our friend Barcus, who had tried to rescue him. I can only hope it was the stress of seeing someone one cared about out of his depth, but I wonder if Barcus’s feelings are reciprocated. Well, at least the Absolute does not have access to runepowder now, I can hope.
Minthara is adapting to camp… well enough. She maintains that everything she did under the Absolute’s command was not her own will, but she also vividly described how it felt. That as long as she was under its control, it felt like she was acting under her own volition, but on reflection, she realizes that she was carrying out its will, not her own. We agree that this is a fate worse than death. It is peculiar to have a conversation with a drow woman outside of our own society. By the standards of my upbringing, Minthara was breaking norms left and right by admitting she owed me a debt and would be following me in the future, but… another thing we have in common is being done with the Spider Queen. So no theological objections to me, at least.
Everyone else is a bit uncertain of her loyalty, which, fair enough. I can’t believe they trust me enough to let her stay at all. And, to be honest, River, if we had the option of letting her remain free of the Absolute but not with us, I might have taken that. I project confidence when dealing with her, out of a mix of ‘set the tone for interactions’ and general contrariness towards my upbringing, but my survival instincts from my childhood still partially expect to get punished for my general insolence towards a drow woman who is definitely older than I am, and high-born, even if she is not a priestess.
I should say ‘everyone but Gale’ is uncertain. Gale seems to think she has a heart of gold buried deep inside, and that he can use his vast stock of trivia to get her to open up to him. Meanwhile, Minthara generally seems to regard wizards as ‘useful, but not around for long enough to be worth getting attached to’. Which I really hope she does not tell Gale. He’s… not doing well. I concede that Gale’s death to stop the Absolute would be better than letting it win, but I would rather exhaust all other options. He mentioned that because he’d developed friendships with us, he was not as inclined to martyr himself for Mystra, and… well, I feel seen. Friendship and love are double-edged. They might be the ropes that keep your boat from drifting away on the current, but you can also feel them binding you and it doesn’t always sit easily.
And now I realize I’ve penned two very long letters for a very long day. This is being written the morning after, as Gale wanted company overnight. Of the platonic sort, which I admit I am less accustomed to providing. But… even as I worry about him, I find that having other people around helps me as well, so perhaps I should consider doing it more.
Your gregarious friend,
Bel
From the Player:
Bel has complicated feelings about Minthara, because he recognizes that if he had killed her, she wouldn’t be having her mind erased and reshaped by the cult. And, well, while Bel doesn’t like Minthara, he loathes the idea of the cult doing that to anyone. So, his initial plan was ‘kill her, make it seem like an accident’. But…
Bel really is a trickster and confidence man at heart, and some of that was his defense growing up in a society that saw him as lesser. If he could craft a mask to wear, he could pretend some of the shit that happened to him was his choice, even if the choice was often ‘bad thing A or bad thing B’. So as soon as he realized ‘if Minthara agrees to faking this, we can get her out alive to spite the cult, and she can murder them later’, he has to offer it to her. And having Minthara acknowledge that he was the party leader and she owed him did help.
Bel was mostly worried Minthara would snap, so ‘did actually grasp for the chance to live to kill her enemies, even if it meant following a male and acting like a slave to him’ raises his respect for her. As much as Bel uses practicality as a cover for his kindness, he also appreciates it in others who are not kind. It means they can be reasoned with. It also was why he was very careful to only do exactly what he thought was needed to sell the act, because while that clearly pissed Minthara off, it kept her rage to the ‘I can mask it’.
(Bel can’t explain why he didn’t rub in the power he had over Minthara, because it comes down to empathy — if their roles were reversed, and he was the one having to fake obedience to someone, he’d resent them for taking advantage even in times when it was absolutely necessary, and double it for times when it wasn't. He wouldn't be surprised by it, but he'd resent it. Bel is slightly worried that Minthara will see any sign of empathy as weakness, which is bad for him, but selling it as pragmatic ‘you losing your cool at me would get us both attacked by the cult, so I went for indifferent rather than sadistic to avoid that’ seems logical.)
I suspect Minthara has already figured out that Bel talks a lot of bullshit, and to not trust that he’s being honest even to his friends or himself — because it takes effort for him to trust that vulnerability won’t stab him in the back — but she’s also figured out that this guy keeps being able to walk into Absolutist bases, be a pain in the ass, wreck the place, and walk out, and you can’t argue with results.
Bel also didn’t think it through about ‘what do we do with Minthara now that you didn’t kill her’. Which means I want to see what happens back at camp when Minthara shows up and Gale, Astarion and Lae’zel have no clue why suddenly they have another drow, and one that used to be a loyal member of the cult. (I don’t even think I had Astarion with me during her scene with Ketheric, just for some scenes on the Main Floor, before going to the prison.)
And in game errors, I then didn’t save the first run through of the scene, noticed Minthara wasn’t in camp, and had to re-do it after rescuing the other prisoners. (Minthara’s interrogators apparently decided a prison break was none of their business, even with me immediately having to fight the guards outside.)
I did decide to do the rescue twice, because I forgot to account for the NPC AI being kinda dopey. No, unarmored and barely-armed prisoners, I want you to run for the boat, not come help me with combat. And then Wyll and Karlach’s inability to follow me for some reason meant that after we got to the Last Light Inn, I had to switch back to them and have them fast-travel to meet us.
Minthara’s thoughts on everyone are… well, ouch. She’s not wrong. And, like everyone else, she likes Karlach.
I was wondering if somehow I’d triggered a glitch to get Gale’s Act 2 romance scene while declining his Act 1 romance, but no… glad to see there are still platonic scenes for character development. Also for a drow, star-gazing is somewhat exotic and interesting because, no, actually the night sky is not something Bel grew up with. Bel is also trying more pushback on his companions’ opinions on gods. (Bel puts in only enough thought to worship and offerings as 'someone besides Lolth has a claim on my soul after I die'.)
