The Once and Future Champion (Baldur's Gate 3/Dragon Age)

[heralding_bubble]

One of Elminster's jobs as a Chosen of Mystra is to go to dungeons and repopulate them with magical items, which I still find funny.
Guess the Harpers gotta take a vacation from enforcing the medieval stasis sometimes.
Also yeah, bisexuality is the norm and incest is common among nobility in Faerun.
It's a wacky place when you look past the sanitisation.

Anyway, the situation seems to be turning into a powder keg, here's hoping it doesn't get lit (like Elminster does)

 

[Larekko12]

Eh.
In a world with a continuous afterlife proven, life and death lose tons of moral meaning. The the emphasis changes to the quality of either.


Mystra isn't wanting him to die, for being disobedient, betraying her boundaries as a lover and risking the unmaking of a region. She's wanting him to repent and recommit to her.

That honestly seems reasonable for their given power dynamics.

It's like oh no Goku is dead! Let us take this weekend trip to the afterlife to go see him.

That is unless the sacrifice will burnout his soul.

Shadowheart needs to work on coming to Selune quick fast and in a hurry.

 

[TyricGaias]

Now I feel bad for causing two of my favorite fic authors to fight

 

[LordofBones]

Let's just say that Ed Greenwood had fetishes, which he used his author-avatar NPCs to indulge in perhaps a little too much for mainstream tabletop RPG'ing. Because while Elminster is still the most accomplished archmage in Faerun and everything else in the lore, he's also a skeevy perv. So yeah, I never anticipated that the one time I put Elminster in a fanfic I'd actually not bash on the dude... because he's honestly one of my least favorite NPCs in the canon.

Click to shrink...

Greenwood is a fine world builder. It's just that his actual character writing is awful. You can't claim that Manshoon is some Illuminati-level master schemer and then write him like he's the magical counterpart of Dr Claw.

 

[Matrix Dragon]

I'm surprised the Elminster scene wrote itself with that much dignity

Click to shrink...

No one let him go outright 'doddering old bastard', and the situation with Gale had him distracted from lechery.

 

[DIT_grue]

"Kindness is too often a decoy." Jaheira said flatly, as she reached one hand into a pocket and withdrew a corked flash - a flask inside of which a mind flayer parasite was wrigging. "This is why we're here, you see. It is a curious creature, that hides all manner of secrets. But if there's one thing we know-" She drew up short just out of weapons range of us and held up the flash, and the parasite began to thrash more and more wildly as it drew nearer to me. I could feel the tadpole in my own head start tingling in sympathetic response. "-it's that these creatures know their own." Jaheira put the flash back in her pocket and grimly drew forth both her swords, her face an executioner's mask. "You should never have come here, True Soul." she spat.

Click to shrink...

flask

 

[cliffc999]

"Oh gods!" Karlach was gushing as we entered the inn. "I can't believe i've actually met Jaheira! The Jaheira!"

"Someone famous?" I asked her.

"Only one of the greatest living heroes of Baldur's Gate!" Karlach forgot her indoor voice. "Over a century ago she was one of a group of adventurers who saved the city from the son of the God of Murder! When I was a little girl I was raised on stories of her, and now I'm actually getting to work with her? Eeeeeeee!" I winced and stifled the urge to cover my ears at Karlach's literal squee of delight.

"Forgive my friend, she's... enthusiastic." I turned back to Jaheira as we drew towards a table off in the corner of the inn's ground floor.

"Not the first time." Jaheira replied amusedly. "You've come a long way." she said to the rest of the group, "and to be honest I don't have that much of the good stuff left. Go get yourselves settled in, grab a hot meal and find a place to pitch your bedrolls. I'll share a drink and talk a bit with your leader before we all decide what to do next." she finished reasonably.

"Go on." I urged them, recognizing when somebody wasn't going to talk freely without being alone. Jaheira nodded to me in thanks, then turned away after they'd left to briefly rummage through a nearby cabinet. "Now where did I leave- ah!" She came out with a bottle of wine, and laid out a pair of goblets and poured each one half-full, then suddenly pushed the bottle into the center of the table- wait a minute, I'd seen this one before. I mentally thanked Varric yet again for his lessons, and looked very carefully at Jaheira's hands instead of where the suddenly moving bottle had been intended to make me look.

"Thank you." I told her, and quickly and deliberately reached down and picked up the other goblet than the one she'd been intending me to drink from, plucking it gently from Jaheira's grasp. "Bottoms up!"

"Damn." Jaheira narrowed her eyes at me, then gave a respectful nod. "That usually works."

"It usually does." I agreed with her. "Although I can't figure out why. It's not poison - if you wanted us dead you'd have just done it at the gate, or else served us all the exotic flavorings. So why spike only my drink after getting me alone, and with what?"

"It was a truth potion." she admitted shamelessly. "You've got a mind flayer parasite in your head, and they change people. Even if your mind isn't the Absolute's, that doesn't necessarily mean you aren't still a hidden threat."

"Ah." I nodded... and then I set the goblet down and picked up the other one. "Please don't ask anything too embarassing, if you would?" I said urbanely, and then drank the spiked wine.

"Huh." she raised her eyebrows at me. "You're a rare man, Hawke."

"You don't know how rare." I heard my tongue say... damn, this stuff worked fast. I began to reconsider the wisdom of my gesture of trust, although I imagined that if I'd made a serious effort of will I could still have held back. Then again, if this stuff was in your drink and you didn't know it was there, you wouldn't know to concentrate-

Jaheira chuckled knowingly as she sipped her own wine. "Don't worry, I'll be gentle. Just one question... how much has that parasite changed you already?"

"I don't know." I admitted. "I'm not aware of any real change, I've been resisting its temptations as much as possible. But I have needed to touch briefly upon the power several times in order to imitate a True Soul when dealing with cultists, or to communicate silently with my allies. And I can't guarantee there haven't been more insidious effects I'm not conscious of."

"Thank you, that was what I needed to know." Jaheira replied, and then reached out and sprinkled some crushed dried leaves into my cup. "It wears off relatively quickly in any event, but that should counteract what's in your system." I raised my cup to her in thanks and we finished off the rest of our drinks. Jaheira and I chatted a bit about our respective backgrounds - of course I knew she was using the atmosphere of ease to try and draw me out, just as I was doing the same to her - and by the end we were laughing together.

"It's a pleasure to work with another professional, for once." Jaheira saluted me with the dregs of her wine cup. "Quite a few people would have resented my little trick with the potion."

"You're outnumbered, surrounded, in the middle of a magical deathland with no clear line of retreat, and dealing with an enemy that can turn people into mentally enslaved sleeper agents. Of course you're going to be suspicious and devious, you need to be." I agreed with her. "Your Harpers are a very impressive crew, and I'm very glad that I'm not going to be dealing with everyone in Moonrise Towers all by myself. I had to fight the battle of Moonhaven with druids - no disrespect to their spellcasting powers-"

"I should certainly hope not, considering that I am one." Jaheira grinned at me.

"-but who for all their magic still weren't the sort of veterans your people clearly are. And then there was the tiefling militia... and speaking of which, what are they doing here?"

Jaheira's expression turned grave. "Their caravan got hit by a column of troops from Moonrise Towers while they were camped alongside the Risen Road to Baldur's Gate. The road draws very close to the border of the Shadow-Cursed Lands there, and the survivors of that attack were driven by the raiders straight into the darkness. Thank Mielikki that they were able to figure out quickly enough that they needed bright lights to survive, but even so they would have all been lost souls soon enough if they hadn't had the good fortune to encounter one of my scout patrols." She shook her head. "I don't have enough men to get them back out of the cursed lands and then escort them down the road far enough to be safe from another raid by the Absolutists, not and simultaneously hold my position here. Hellfire, I don't have enough men to get myself out unless I'm willing to abandon our entire mission with no chance of recovery. So here they are stuck, like all the rest of us."

"What is your mission, if I might ask?" I inquired.

"I'll discuss that with your entire team. Come." she ordered, and we got up and rejoined the others. We all assembled in a room off of the main floor of the inn that was normally used for private dining parties, and had now been repurposed as a map room and command center. A glance at several of the maps on the table brought the relieving sight that the Harpers had been using their time here to painstakingly explore and chart trails through the Shadow-Cursed Lands, even if their exploring parties hadn't yet made to within sight of Moonrise.

"General Ketheric Thorm." Jaheira said ominously, as she faced us all from the head of the table. We'd finished bringing her up to date on most of what had happened with us since the nautiloid crash - leaving out certain sensitive parts such as exactly which deity Shadowheart worshipped and suchlike - and now it was her turn.

"What about him?" Halsin asked. "We were both present when he died, nigh on a century ago."

"He's back." Jaheira answered him simply, and Halsin gasped in shock. "And yet again he is the lord of Moonrise Towers, and raising an army of evil there with which to scourge the land. Only instead of Shar, now he serves the Absolute."

"I've seen the dead raised," I broke in. "But only immediately after death, several days at the longest. There's magic that can raise someone who's been gone for a century?"

"None that I have ever heard of." Jaheira agreed. "And you don't need to convince me that he truly died the first time, I personally helped shovel the dirt on that bastard's face! But I also- no, let me tell the tale in order." She took a deep breath and continued more calmly. "I don't know how long the Cult of the Absolute has been infiltrating Baldur's Gate, but my Harpers first heard of it several months ago. At first it was merely rumors, whispers, disappearances - the usual thing you get when another bunch of stupid bastards are crouching around an idol in the sewers and thinking they'll earn ultimate power on a platter if they just knife enough beggars. But then things got quieter. More subtle, more sophisticated. The more we looked the worse things got, but the less concrete evidence we found. Then we discovered that people were not merely being recruited but also implanted, with mind flayer parasites." She nodded at us. "You know better than I do what that implies, particularly when we discovered that the ceremorphosis was somehow being halted." She exhaled. "Every lead we could turn up led back to Moonrise Towers, so I called in all the reinforcements I could get. Not just Harpers, but also a detachment of Flaming Fist that I convinced an old ally to lend me. We put together an expeditionary force capable of traveling through even these shadow-cursed lands and came here for a reconaissance-in-force. There were almost a hundred of us... and now there are barely fifty." She shook her head. "High Initiate Isobel had come here on her own shortly before we did, searching the lands around Moonrise for something related to the Shadow Curse. She was already using her powers to create a shelter of moonlight around this inn when our expedition arrived here almost two weeks ago."

"What happened?" I asked.

"Despite everything we did to maintain operational security, someone in Baldur's Gate must have warned Thorm that we were coming. We'd barely arrived in the area when we were attacked while still marching, by almost twice our number in goblins and lesser undead with Thorm and a small number of other veteran knights and spellcasters as officers. I saw the old bastard marching at the head of their column with my own two eyes." She chuckled grimly. "And I personally put an arrow in his eye as well, right up to the fletching.... and the son-of-a-bitch just reached up and pulled it out like it was a splinter." She shook her head wonderingly. "Whatever brought him back from the grave didn't just make him alive again, it made him immortal. As near as we have been able to determine, he literally cannot die."

"If he's that invincible, how is this place still standing?" I immediately asked.

"Good question." Jaheira acknowledged. "Thorm's ambush did to us basically the same thing that happened to the tiefling caravan - the main force hammered us while a flanking force cut off our escape in every direction except deeper into the shadow. We were able to retreat in good order, but we still had to retreat. And so we ended up here." She nodded to me. "And you're right... if Thorm came here and led an all-out assault, we wouldn't be able to stop him. Except he hasn't."

"From what Halsin has told us of what Thorm managed to pull off when he was leading the original Sharran incursion here a century ago, he's a very experienced field commander." Gale said. "So I'm assuming that he's not the sort of person who just overlooks the extremely obvious."

"He is - or was - a half-elf, with the extended lifespan of one." Jaheira said. "And he spent almost all of that life at war, in the service of several gods and nations. He does not give himself the title of 'General' merely out of vanity, it is one that he has legitimately earned many times over. No." she agreed. "He is not so stupid as to overlook the obvious. And yet, except for several harassing attacks by his mindless undead, he has not come here." She shrugged. "My scout teams report that more and more cultists of the Absolute are being assembled and outfitted, both at Moonrise and at field camps set up outside the shadow-cursed regions, and that shipments of supplies keep arriving and being stockpiled for the same. Thorm is raising an army - not merely a warband or a group of raiders, but a substantial military force of thousands of men, possibly even tens of thousands. Perhaps that is what preoccupies his time, and keeps him from bothering with me and my remnants so long as we are safely contained. Or perhaps whatever dark power animates him is repelled by Isobel's protections as well."

"Does he need the Shadow Curse to remain animate? Is it possible he's some new type of undead?" Shadowheart asked.

"He does not." Jaheira said. "Our first battle with him was just outside the cursed region. He can leave it if he chooses."

"An army of thousands... perhaps tens of thousands. If he's raising that kind of force, there's only one place I can think of where he'd be taking it." Wyll said, shocked.

"Baldur's Gate." Jaheira agreed. "That seems to be his plan - a fifth column within the city to weaken it and perhaps open an entranceway for him from within, and a force of conquest with which to break open the Gate and either sack it or turn it into another realm of misery like he did the lands that used to be here. We don't know yet where his mind flayer allies come in, or even where they are, but the tadpoles clearly prove that he has them."

"No, wait." I said. "The vision the Absolute sent us, before the Prism blocked it - there were three people she called her 'Chosen', the ones who 'spoke in her name', and they were apparently of equal seniority. One of them was an elderly male elf or half-elf, a warrior in heavy armor - presumably that's General Thorm. But then where are the other two?" I described both the strange pale woman and the handsome young nobleman. "And are they at Moonrise Towers as well, or handling similarly sized projects for the Absolute somewhere else?"

"Damn it." Jaheira swore. "Are you telling me that as outnumbered and deeply up shit creek as my people are, we still aren't dealing with the full scope of the problem here?"

"That reminds me." Gale said grimly, and we passed on the part of Elminster's warning that related to what the Absolute could eventually grow into.

"Elminster was here? The Sage of Shadowdale? You were speaking to him just this morning?" Jaheira goggled. "And he has confirmed this is potentially a global-scale threat, in the long run?"

"Yes." I said. "But he couldn't do more than pass on the warning - Mystra has commanded his non-interference otherwise."

Jaheira swore colorfully in at least three languages, none of which I spoke. "You know what? If the gods want me to expand my operation here, then they can send me or Isobel a messenger. I'm already outnumbered and overextended, and barring direct divine revelation I am sticking with my original objective. Which is to figure out what the hell has made Ketheric unable to die, strip it away from him, and then kill him. Again."

"Made any progress?" I asked.

"Pfft." she snorted. "I can't even get to Moonrise, let alone inside of it. You think the Shadow Curse you've seen is bad? This is the less severe region of it. There are patches of darkness out there so thick that you could be surrounded by twenty torches and still be drained of your life in an instant. Even the Selunite blessing is overwhelmed." She nodded to Shadowheart. "I wouldn't guarantee that even the Blood of Lathander could hold proof against the deepest darkness, although that certainly has a better chance of working than anything we've tried so far. But it's precisely those deep patches of darkness that cut off any route to Moonrise." She looked up. "Your intelligence about the 'moonlanterns' the cultists use to ignore the Shadow Curse, that matches what I have found out as well. What my scouts have been searching for these past days are their caravan routes, so that we can ambush one and steal a moonlantern for ourselves. But even if we pulled that off, I hadn't solved the problem of how I was going to get anyone into Moonrise Towers proper and have a hope of seeing them alive again..." She trailed off.

"Until half a dozen people with tadpoles in their heads just fell into your lap." I agreed, having readily seen where this one was going. "It's already worked once, so let's hope it does twice."

"It had better, or we're all fucked." Jaheira agreed.

"Have you heard of the Netherese travelstone system? We've been using it for a little over the past week." I said. "Maybe we can use that to run a message out of here-" I stopped when I realized something. "Damn. The Shadow Curse is interfering with the attunements. I can't 'feel' any of the travelstones we attuned to on the way here, even though there's one near Last Light Inn we could still use."

"Pity." Jaheira said. "If I could get one message out to the High Harpers-" She shook her head. "I've had several volunteers to be couriers. None have made it."

"Have you been using that parasite to check everyone here?" I said.

"Every time someone leaves, they don't get back in without passing it." She agreed. "No, I do not think Ketheric has a source inside my encampment. Then again, it is only his living servants who need moonlanterns - there are any number of undead out there, lurking in the shadows where we cannot see them."

"We met a pair of Death Shepherds and a pack of ghouls on the mountain pass leading past Rosymorn." I remembered. "Now I'm thinking I know where they came from."

"Quite likely." Jaheira agreed. "All right - I am waiting for a progress report by my latest caravan-tracking team. If they found something, I would appreciate your help with the ambush... particularly since I am going to need to give you the moonlantern so that you can reach Moonrise. But that won't be for hours yet." She looked briefly out the window. "I'll want to introduce you to the priestess so that she can cast her blessing upon you - it helps protect against the Shadow Curse. I can't afford to have it used on every patrol, she only has so much power, but I can prioritize you. Right now she is conducting her daily ritual to reinforce and renew the shielding, but after she is done..."

"I won't be going with them." Halsin said suddenly. "For one, I don't bear the parasite so I can't accompany them to Moonrise. And for another, your mission is not why I came here. I came to try and put an end to the Shadow Curse."

"That would be lovely... if you could pull it off." Jaheira said. "But what in the world makes you think you can?"

"At present, very little." Halsin acknowledged frankly. "But this was my home. Our failure to stop Thorm from finishing his curse of vengeance on this land before killing him the first time is why it was devastated, and I have never forgiven myself for that failure. At first I didn't remotely have the power to even dream of making an attempt, and then for decades I had my obligations to the Grove... but finally I am free to pursue my quest and have found my way back here. And I will not be leaving until after I have made certain that there is nothing left to attempt."

"I respect that, but I can spare no one to aid you at present." Jaheira replied to him. "And your traveling companions will also have another mission. So please, do not throw your life away out there in the shadows. Particularly not since I fear that no matter what else, the curse will never be truly undone so long as Ketheric Thorm remains free to walk the land."

"Perhaps our goals will run in parallel again after all." Halsin said. "But for now, with your permission, I will withdraw to begin my investigations."

"Silvanus guide you and keep you safe." Jaheira said to him, and the two druids nodded at each other before Halsin made his goodbyes to us and left. We discussed a few more details with Jaheira and then our meeting broke up as well.

According to Jaheira Isobel would be occupied with her protective ritual for around another hour, so we ended up splitting up all over the inn. Wyll was busy helping two tiefling children who'd apparently been drafted as bartenders deal with a belligerent drunk. Karlach had gone to see if the tiefling smith Dammon was one of the survivors so she could get her infernal heart readjusted further using some infernal iron we'd found among the supplies in the Grymforge. Gale was busy pondering the heavy tidings that Elminster had brought him over a glass of wine, and politely demurred my offer to sit and talk with him about it. Shadowheart had ducked outside to get some fresh air on the inn grounds, and also avoid the questions of curious Harpers about the Blood of Lathander and related matters. Lae'zel had gone to observe the Harpers who were at weapons practice, saying that she wanted to 'judge the quality of our new allies'.

And I had had my own plans entirely derailed when I had spotted Mol sitting and playing a game of chess with the last person in the world I'd have expected to be here.

"Mol, please tell me you haven't signed anything or agreed to anything." I begged her as I approached the two chessplayers.

"Of course not." Mol snarked at me. "This is still us getting the other one's measure! Dealing comes after."

"Indeed it does," Raphael smirked up at me. "And this is an exchange to which you were not invited. Do please depart in a civil fashion, there's a good fellow."

I resisted an urge to throw the chessboard out the window and sat down at the table anyway. "Mol, how's about I stand you a round?"

"People paying for drinks are definitely invited to my table!" Mol agreed cheerfully.

"Nothing on my account, thank you." Raphael smirked as he raised an elaborately finished golden goblet to me in acknowledgement. "I doubt this venue even carries any of my favorite vintages. I'll just refill my own."

"Half honey mead and half water, and keep it coming!" Mol called out cheerfully to one of her bartender rapscallions. "What?" she looked at me challengingly. "I'm gambling for money here and I've got half your body weight. A girl needs to pace herself under those conditions."

"You do know he's a devil, right?" I made sure to tell Mol first thing.

"'Course I do." she said. "Now ssh, I'm winning!"

"Mol, he's hundreds of years old at least and been living the high life the entire time - which includes a lot of chess playing. Are you a grandmaster genius at this game?"

"What, you think I can't beat him?" Mol shot back proudly.

"I think an experienced sharpster like you knows perfectly well that you deliberately lose the first couple of times to get the mark nice and relaxed before you start dealing from the bottom on them." I told her. "And that Raphael here has been so charming and amusing that you were temporarily distracted from remembering that."

"I wasn't- shit!" she swore, and immediately knocked over her king. "Oops, look at that, I lost!"

"I assume you don't want a rematch, either." Raphael told her equably.

"Not until after I've had a private word with one of my advisors, at least." Mol said, slapping a gold coin down on the table as payment for her wager. "There, all settled up and it looks like we won't be doing any further business tonight. But hey - only two of us here are growing any older, right?"

"Of course, of course." he chuckled urbanely. "Enjoy your evening, and perhaps we'll chat another time. For right now, I'd appreciate a word with Hawke here."

"See you around then, or maybe not!" Mol agreed quickly. "Uh... good luck?" she said uncertainly to me.

"Wyll's at the bar." I pointed at him. "Ask him about his own negotiations and how they went."

"I'll do just that." Mol agreed, and then made herself scarce. Quickly.

"And so the brave and noble paladin has spared yet another innocent child from a horrible fate." Raphael said smugly after Mol had gone. "Or has he?"

"Even if you can teleport in and out, you still didn't come all this way to this cursed a place just to pick up a teenaged cutpurse." I challenged him. "She was just something you were amusing yourself with while you waited for someone else." I stared challengingly at him. "So, what's your pitch this time?"

"You really shouldn't underestimate people like that, Hawke." Raphael said knowingly. "Why, it was only a decade or three ago that I was dealing for yet another 'teenaged cutpurse', and today that young man is poised to enter the highest ranks of nobility. Most impressive!" His smile turned slightly cruel. "Granted, he has been a bit irregular with his payments of late." He chuckled evilly. "Ah, but that's how it is with mortals. They're all so... mortal, in the end."

I sat and waited quietly, sipping at Mol's abandoned drink. Why not, I'd paid for it.

"You are of course correct." Raphael agreed smoothly. "Our encounter here is not coincidence. Nothing is a coincidence, truly. You, like all mortals, so desperately believe in the mirage that is free will. Denying the ugly truth that your superiors have plotted out every potential path ahead, and that your only 'freedom' is being allowed to choose only from the options that they permit you to have." He chuckled. "No offence meant, of course. I'm sure everyone in this inn thinks they could have changed things, had things work out better for them. If only they hadn't missed the opportunity to."

I stared and took another sip. Loudly. Ostentatiously.

"You're learning." Raphael complimented me. "Give the opponent as little to work with as they can. Let their own desire overfill the silence. It's a useful maneuver." He chuckled again. "For amateurs."

"Amateur or professional, you can't beat someone at a game if they don't sit at the gametable." I nodded towards the abandoned chessboard.

"Touche." Raphael nodded briefly. "But not all games are visible... too often, not until after you've already started playing them. And then there's temptation... oh, we can never forget temptation, can we? Why, the last time I successfully tempted someone in this region, I profited off that victory for decades."

"You are not going to claim you're responsible for that." I nodded out the window at the Shadow Curse visible in the distance.

"Of course not." Raphael affected an elaborate shudder. "I would never leave such an unsightly and crude mess behind. Far too much attention for so little gain. But where are my manners? Why, I haven't even asked how you've been faring, or if your journey was pleasant." Raphael chuckled. "You do look a bit green around the gills, now that I mention it. Why, I have this picture in my head of you tossing and turning in the middle of the night. Such unrestful sleep. Such strange dreams."

"I'm not going to sell you the mind flayer, but if you happened to trip over him and haul him away for free, I might cry." I sniffled theatrically. "Just don't take the rest of the relic, or its other occupant and the protection they give." I didn't feel the slightest hesitation about bringing that topic up - after all, if he knew about the 'Guardian' then he already knew the rest of it. And who knows, maybe I'd get lucky and he really did want the Guardian's soul, at which point I'd gladly let him reave it for free and even buy him a drink.

"Ahahahaha!" Raphael laughed. "No, I have no interest in that silly little creature. Illithids are so very bad for business - they don't even have any souls for us to take. I'm afraid that I must leave your not-so-imaginary friend to your tender unmercies - he is of very little use to me. Still, I am gratified that you're starting to learn the proper attitude. So in appreciation of your offer, I'll gift you a piece of the truth. With no obligation attaching, don't trouble your weary little head."

"Let me guess - just enough of a piece that I'll be more tempted to buy the remainder?" I said cynically.

"That goes without saying." Raphael freely admitted. "And so - General Ketheric Thorm." he dramatically orated. "Proud father. Man of faith. Utter fool." he curled a scornful lip. "On the night the Harpers defeated him the first time, someone murdered his entire army in the heart of their most secure fortress. But who could possibly benefit from such a massacre?" Raphael chuckled. "If you want to know more, I could work the exchange of such precious knowledge into the terms of your future deal. But the time for quibbling over clauses and contracts hasn't quite arrived." He waved away my denials before I could make them. "Don't worry, though. You'll be coming to me again soon enough. Oh, and that reminds me. Your warlock friend - his patron sends her regrets that she couldn't stop by in person, but she asked me to bring him a message." He reached into his pocket and withdrew an elaborately sealed envelope. "Do make sure young Ravengard gets this, would you? It's rather urgent - to him, at least."

"I hope you at least charged her an arm and a leg for postage." I said darkly, as I took the letter.

"Perhaps I did, perhaps I didn't." Raphael smirked as he stood from the table. "But at present, I'm afraid that you're making me late for a meeting with another client. Until we meet again!" he finished cheerfully, and vanished.

"I hope you made infernal pacting sound as horrible as possible." I told Wyll as I sought him at the bar.

"Nothing held back." he agreed. "Mol's a very proud young woman, though, and with the most dangerous belief a rogue can have - that she'll always be smarter than the marks."

"If you're too cocksure that everyone else at the card table is a sucker, then you're the sucker." I agreed. "Hopefully, my pointing out where Raphael was successfully rooking her with one of the cardsharp's basics has helped her reconsider that belief - or at least made her doubt her odds of outwitting Raphael enough to not want to sign on the dotted line."

"If devils couldn't make people believe that there was always a chance to cheat them if you were just clever enough, nobody would ever sign one of those pacts." Wyll agreed. "I should have- agh!" he winced. "Damn it, came too close to the forbidden topic."

"Please tell me that was just a warning shot and not you leaving yourself open for another one of Mizora's punishments." I trailed off.

"Warning shot." he agreed. "Fortunately."

"Which reminds me." I said sadly. "Mizora apparently couldn't stop by in person, so Raphael offered to carry a message for her." I handed him the envelope.

"Mizora is lower on the infernal power scale than Raphael is." Wyll shuddered. "But he ran an errand for her? What are they scheming together? What fresh hell am I in for now?"

"Only one way to find out." I winced, and Wyll reluctantly drew a dagger and neatly slit open the envelope.

"Mizora's handwriting." Wyll said. "And not a forgery - there's a spark of her power imbued in the ink-" His eyes widened. "This note's written in her own blood." he trailed off faintly.

"Please tell me it's not a ransom note." I swore vehemently.

"As if I'd pay even a bent copper coin for her?" Wyll snorted. "No, it's a command. Apparently one of Mizora's most important assets is being held prisoner at Moonrise Towers. I'm ordered - ordered is underlined - to set them free at all costs." He swore viciously. "My pact was to hunt devils at her command, and now I'm being told to rescue one? She's enjoying twisting this knife worse and worse!"

"And of course she specified a penalty." I didn't guess.

"Clause Z, Section 13. 'Should the promised soul refuse obeyance or neglect duty, the pact-holder shall cast the promised in Avernus as a lemure.'" Wyll read off the paper. "She's not even being subtle this time."

"Well, we were going to Moonrise anyway." I tried to make the best of it, however weak that effort was.

Wyll nodded back, and folded the note and put it away. By wordless agreement, we got out a bottle of the good stuff and poured ourselves a stiff one each.

"I'm going to go join Lae'zel at the practice yard they set up, work off some steam." Wyll said finally, and at my nod he got up to leave. I had another drink, then corked the bottle and went outside to enjoy some fresh air. I'd had a surfeit of unpleasant conversations recently, and I needed a moment for myself.

So of course I wasn't out on the grounds three minutes before I ran into someone else sounding like they needed help. Specifically, the sound of a weeping woman, a dark silouhette against the silvery dome as they sought a moment alone for themselves near the border of the protections. The outline of horns told me that it wasn't Shadowheart, but it wasn't until the young woman began to querulously try and sing through her tears that I realized-

"Dance upon the stars tonight / Smile and pain will fade away. / Words of mine will turn to ash / As I call the last light- as I call-" Alfira broke off her attempt at a song, sobbing again.

"What's wrong?" I asked her gently.

"Hawke." she said, turning away from the lake to look at me briefly. "Nothing- I'm-" She sniffled and reached for a handkerchief, realizing the futility of trying to pretend she was fine when her eyes were raining tears. "-really not fine at all." She blew her nose and sighed. "I-I have to keep a brave face up in there, for the children. I can't let them see me like this, even if-"

I realized that someone wasn't here, and my heart sank. "Lakrissa?" I asked her gently as I sat down next to her, remembering the name of her girlfriend from our awkward introduction at the party that night in the Grove.

"Yes." Alfira confirmed, her voice choked. "I was restless - up and walking around the perimeter of the camp, trying to finish my new song. Throes of creation and all that, you know? So she was back in our tent... alone... when-" Her lead lowered. "They called me a heroine for being alert enough to yell a warning that the cultists were coming, but that only makes it worse! What kind of heroine isn't with- isn't with-" And suddenly my arms were full of sobbing tiefling. "I just left her there! Gods, my teacher's already died on this horrible trip and now my lover's gone the same bloody way-" She collapsed against me.

"My mother left to go shopping in the lower market, while I was busy dealing with 'important matters' up in our house." I told her. "I didn't even insist she take a guard with her - we'd had that argument several times before, and I'd lost every time, so I just got tired of insisting. And that day, she never came back." My voice filled with iron. "I tracked down the man who'd taken her and I killed him. I even got there in time to hear her last words." I sighed and continued more gently. "Being there to see them die doesn't help, Alfira. Either way, they're still gone... and you're still not." I sighed. "And either way you have to keep living."

"I know." Alfira sobbed. "My friends said that. Jaheira said that. And they're not wrong." She sniffled again into my shoulder. "So why does it hurt so much?"

"Not because we did anything wrong." I told her. "It's just because we're alive." I remembered something Jaheira had mentioned during her debriefing. "Look, some of the other survivors reported that the Absolute's raiding party was taking prisoners. Lakrissa might still be-"

"Still be alive to get locked up in that horrible tower the Harpers can't even reach and where they're going to shove a tadpole in her head?!?" Alfira cursed vehemently. "And you think that's better?!?"

"Since I'm going to be going to Moonrise Towers and freeing every prisoner I can, I hope it's better." I promised her. "Not that I can guarantee she did make it, but if she did-"

"You did save us once." Alfira agreed, her voice soft. "May the Lord Of All Songs be willing that you can do it again."

"A devil I met once told me that hope was his favorite emotion, because it was always just a tease." I surprised Alfira. "And out of all the people I've ever met in my life, he was the hands-down grand champion of being full of shit. So let's both try to prove him wrong once more, can we?"

"All right." she smiled at me sadly, wiping away her tears. "I'll try. And thank you for everything." And she leaned in to kiss me with soft lips on the cheek-

"You're having a wonderful time, I see." Shadowheart's voice filled both our ears, and was full of enough acid to strip the shine off the Grymforge golem.

"Ah!" Alfira squeaked in embarassment as we both separated so fast we practically teleported. "No, it wasn't like that! I wasn't-"

"Wasn't making the same offer again that you made the last time both of you were out at night together, only with more success this time?" Shadowheart glared at her, her back to me as she turned to stare down Alfira.

"Please believe me." Alfira begged her, literally on bended knees. "I grabbed onto him. I kissed him. He didn't want anything, and he wasn't doing anything-"

"You're not the one I'm angry at." Shadowheart finally said to her after a long pause. "Now please get out. I want a private word with my friend."

"I'm so sorry." Alfira begged me, and then at Shadowheart's glare ran for the inn like her life depended on it.

"She'd lost her lover in the attack. She was desolate. I was just-" I began.

"Comforting the bereaved?" Shadowheart's voice came back tonelessly, her back still turned to me. "Yes, I saw how comforting you were being."

"Word of honor, Shadowheart. Nothing happened. Nothing was going to happen." I insisted.

"And your word's always been your bond, hasn't it." she eventually replied, her voice still emotionlessly rigid - and after what had been far too long a pause to regain her self-control. "But I still saw what I saw."

"Shadowheart-" I pleaded.

"No." she cut me off. "I don't want to talk about this right now. I came out originally to tell you that Isobel is ready to see us, and that I'm not going to attend the meeting."

"I think-" I began, for her to spin around and glare at me, her face taut and expressionless.

"Business. Only." she husked out with a visible effort at not raising her voice. "And the first order of business is, I can't let a High Initiate of Selune even get a glimpse of me. She'll recognize me for what I am on sight, and I really don't think the Harpers are going to be as understanding about it as the druids of the Grove were. Seeing as how they're crusaders against evil cults, not servants of nature's balance." She paused, her face twisting awkwardly before she continued. "And seeing as how Shar's curse on this land has already helped kill a lot of their friends."

"What's your plan for operating without the blessing? The Blood?" I asked her, damping down my own emotions and trying to focus solely on the job-

"Yes." she agreed. "Not that I could risk accepting a blessing of protective magic from a priestess of the Moon anyway. Given who I serve, it would probably set me on fire." she bit off her words.

"Then let's hope Jaheira didn't give her an exact count of our party, so she won't notice that you were out visiting the privy at the time." I finally said.

"Hope." Shadowheart echoed meaningfully, and I winced inwardly yet again.

"Can we talk later?" I begged her quietly.

"Hopefully." she skewered me yet again, and I retreated in disorder before this conversation went any further down into the Underdark than it had already delved. Damn it, this just wasn't like her. She'd laughed at Alfira's offer that night in the Grove, she wasn't insecure about it at all-

I sighed and realized that dying probably did make someone a little insecure, and that unlike Wyll Shadowheart had already been doing the 'No I'm fine' routine about it even before this mess had come up. So at a moment when she'd already been feeling uncertain enough, she'd then seen the worst possible thing at the worst possible time-

Damn it. I couldn't even begin to say anything further about this without just making it worse. And we were about to head off on a desperate and dangerous mission. And she really didn't want to talk about it, and I couldn't dare to bring it up again until she was ready to talk about it.

I cursed the gods and their perverse sense of drama and even more perverse timing all the way to Isobel's room. The rest of our group looked knowingly at me when they spotted Shadowheart's absence, and I cursed inwardly yet again that their perfectly reasonable assumption didn't begin to cover the actual depths of the shit I was in at present.

Lock all that way right now, Hawke. It's time to be a professional again.

"High Initiate Isobel?" I asked her after she'd answered our door knock with an invitation. Isobel was one of the most beautiful women I'd ever seen, only slightly shorter than Wyll and with a lovely round face and voloptuous body. Her armored robes were of a design I'd never seen before and emblazoned with the insignia of the waxing moon, and a white-metal spear was slung on her back and an unornamented tiara of plain silver said on her brow. Her hair was silvery-white, of a shade I'd never seen before in nature, but her features were smooth and young. Two slim pointed ears sticking up through her uncombed mane bespoke of her half-elven blood.

"Silver hair." Gale said wonderingly. "You've been specially blessed by the Moonmaiden."

"I'm not that special, really." Isobel said warmly. "Jaheira's told me about you - the True Souls with free will, who are going to save us. And just call me Isobel, no title."

"All right." I agreed. "You've been doing an amazing job protecting this place. The magic I've seen here - the sheer scope of it is breathtaking."

"Selune provides the blessing." Isobel replied. "I'm just the person who asks Her for a little help." Her smile faded away. "And now I'm afraid that I'm going to have to ask you for a lot more."

"Moonrise Towers." I agreed. "First the moonlantern to get us there, and then we infiltrate."

"You're the only ones here who can." Isobel agreed. "Myself and the Lady of Silver are the defense; you will be the offense." She chuckled. "Your walking in just when we most need you is almost too good to be true. But I'd be a poor priestess indeed if I couldn't recognize providence when I saw it."

"Have you learned anything about the Shadow Curse in your studies of it?" Gale asked.

"Some." she agreed. "It's a malediction of Shar, but of course you already know that. But it's lasted far too long and sunk too deeply into the land to be the Nightsinger's work alone."

"Multiple evil gods are contributing here?" I moaned.

"No." Isobel said. "I think the spirits of the land have somehow been coerced or tricked into tormenting themselves. That's certainly in keeping with the Lady of Loss's handiwork - to break someone down until they deliberately perpetuate their own misery. Tricking them into believing that self-destruction will be the end of their pain, not the cause of it." Her lip curled scornfully. "But I am a servant of the Moonmaiden, so of course I'm a little biased on that topic."

"Our druid friend Halsin would certainly like to know what you've theorized about the nature spirits." I very urgently changed the subject.

"I'll make sure to look him up, then." Isobel agreed. "But for now, you need a protection cast upon you. Hold still... this might tickle." she quirked a momentary smile, and then raised her hands in invocation. A warm silvery light materialized out of thin air and wrapped around us all, before fading beyond visibility without actually leaving. We felt a pressure on us fade, one that we hadn't been consciously aware of until after it had eased off.

"There you go." Isobel said. "Now you won't take damage if you stray beyond the range of your torches while out in the cursed lands. You'll still have to avoid the deeper darkness though - until we can get a moonlantern for you, that will still kill you."

"How long will it last?" Lae'zel asked practically.

"Several days." Isobel assured us. "And by then we'll hopefully have successfully located and ambushed one of their caravans. If not- well, then we'll have to think of something else."

"Anything else we should know before we get started?" I asked her.

"Ketheric Thorm is a terrifying man." Isobel said, wrapping her arms around herself defensively as she began to pace nervously. "But you have something he doesn't." she affirmed, turning back to face us. "Allies worth having." Her eyes turned sad. "He is apostate to Selune, and betrayed us all to Shar - and now again, to the Absolute. If only he had not fallen..." she trailed off sadly, and looked out the window. "Then none of this would have come to pass."

"'If only' has poisoned more hearts than all the venoms in the world." I quoted Halsin. "Pray for the man he was, if your compassion bids you to do so. But do not bless the man he is."

"Spoken like a true paladin." Isobel agreed softly. "I will pray that your Oath gives you the strength to withstand what you must face."

"Thank you." I said. "And- who are you?" I turned suddenly to see a large man in a Flaming Fist uniform enter Isobel's room... from the balcony, not the door.

"Marcus?" Isobel queried him worriedly.

"Hello Isobel." Marcus replied with an unsettling smile.

"Where have you been?" Isobel said. "I haven't seen you in-"

He'd been unaccounted for? My blood turned cold as I realized a horrible possibility- I frantically pushed with my tadpole-

True Soul! I heard Marcus' voice answer me in my head. Ketheric Thorm commands that the priestess be brought to Moonrise Towers alive at all costs. Aid me!

"He's infected!" I barked out, immediately stepping in front of Isobel and drawing my sword. "SOUND THE ALARM!"

"Traitor!" Marcus spat, going for his own blade and clashing it against mine. A sudden screaming filled my head as Marcus pushed his own tadpole, broadcasting a savage call outward- a call I could dimly hear being answered-

And then Gale solved the problem of Marcus' immediate threat and sounding the alarm both at once, as his Thunderwave spell woke up everybody in Last Light Inn with a booming CRACK as the man was ejected straight out of Isobel's balcony door and knocked flat on his arse. But we didn't have time to so much as gasp in relief as two horrible figures - they looked vaguely like the ghouls we'd fought before, only with wings - dropped down out of the sky onto the balcony, flanking Marcus and helping him back up, and the sounds of leathery wing flaps and the screams of surprised Harpers and tieflings told us that more of these flying ghouls were landing all over the grounds.

"The Absolute will have you all." Marcus snarled with words of ice, and the battle was joined.

---

Author's Note: Yes, I know I just threw in some relationship drama. Trust the author, I am actually going somewhere with this. Somewhere not stereotypical. It just needs a little time to cook.

Mol's scene with Raphael goes a little better for her here than in canon, because unlike Tav Hawke can speak fluent con man. I mean, he was only besties with Varric for almost a decade. And yes, I know that in Faerun they call the game 'lanceboard'. Hawke is not from Faerun, he calls it chess.

And yes, Alfira's grieving for her teacher routine is done in the Grove in-game, not here. Lakrissa is one of the tieflings captured by the cult in Act Two, though. So yeah, she's gonna have a meltdown - Hawke didn't help her with grief therapy in the Grove so she's still dealing with that stress, and now she's lost her lover too? Poor girl. And really, Alfira is one of the most beloved minor NPCs in this game for a reason - she's just too sweet. (Also, she gets the best damn song in the game. Seriously, there is a point in BG3, in the middle of a minor sidequest convo, where the game just goes 'And now hold everything for a three-minute music video.') So there was no way I wasn't getting something with her in. I may try to avoid bashing my non-faves, but dammit, I entirely admit I play favorites.

The truth serum scene is canon, even if Hawke takes it much more matter-of-factly than Tav does. I'm not even sure how that works, I've never heard of truth serum in the tabletop. I decided to go with 'It's basically a relatively non heinous Wisdom save to resist, its just that unless you know you drank it, you usually aren't trying to save.' Hawke of course deliberately blew his save, he was cooperating.

Karlach fangirling over Jaheira is also 100% canon. If you have her in your party when you enter Last Light Inn, you get an earful. Karlach is totally a Jaheira stan. I'm sure she owns all the merch. *g*

Mizora shows up to deliver the message in person in Act Two, she doesn't have Raphael carry it for her. I altered it because honestly, it's a plot hole the original way. She's the prisoner they need to rescue, so how the fuck is she showing up in person to tell Wyll that she needs rescuing? They couldn't have used a dream sending or something?

And yes, Marcus has wings in the game but doesn't here. I thought the wings on him were just silly, so, nope. He just snuck into the inn while Jaheira was busy and then climbed up on Isobel's balcony like a normal person. (He risked meeting Jaheira if he walked through the inn's interior, after all, and he knows she's got the tadpole detector in her pocket.)

 

[BigBad]

As I recall, those wings were originally Aylen's, having been torn off her and then grafted onto dear loyal Marcus. Adds a little bit more ew to it.

Loving the pace. It can be easy to get bogged down early on but you've been chivyving them along with a quickness.

Not a fan of the romantic misunderstanding byt I assume it's less Shadowheart overreacting to something simple and more her seizing an opportunity to try to rebuild her walls as she wrestles with her faith in Shar.

 

[NihilSupernum]

Coming back to the Elmister debate - the dude just wasn't aware of the lore and wanted to ask you the reasons for your dislike.

And I'd say that his sex-change and other romantic hijinks are the least of the reasons to dislike him. He's the archetypical DMPC that exists to style on the actual players and promote the DM's - or the writer's - ego. He's also founded the Harpers, is a God's chosen and is Mystra's lover. All of these things are incredibly cringe.

I do like Elminster's scenes in BG3, though, the man's got a certain Gandalf vibe.

Edit: nevermind, it was Karmic. He does not consider any of that to be a downside, going by his self-insert Marty Stu stories. He did also write a Baldur's Gate story, if I recall. Predictably, it was about a really short and really powerful Bhaalspawn that went around hugging people. The man is a specialist in that, I'll give him that.

 

[Matrix Dragon]

Generic Ketheric Thorm

Click to shrink...

I think that should be General. Even if Jaheira is sick of this sort of idiot by now

That's certainly in keeping with the Lady of Loss's handiwork - to break someone down until they deliberately perpetuate misery on themselves.

Click to shrink...

*Laughs bitterly in Shadowheart.*

... Now that I think about it, what would happen if she got a blessing of Selune at this point... ?

 

[G1336]

There's lots of reasons to be disgusted with Elminster. One of the more egregious is that he never met a young girl he didn't want to groom. Even if he took the role of father figure from the time she was a toddler.

 

[DIT_grue]

Spoiler: Suggestions

"He is - or was - an full-blooded elf, with an elf's lifespan." Jaheira said. "And he spent most of those centuries of life at war, in the service of several gods and nations. He does not give himself the title of 'General' merely out of vanity, it is one that he has legitimately earned many times over. No." she agreed. "He is not so stupid as to overlook the obvious. And yet, except for several harassing attacks by his mindless undead, he has not come here." She shrugged. "My scout teams report that more and more cultists of the Absolute are being assembled and outfitted, both at Moonrise and at field camps set up outside the shadow-cursed regions, and that shipments of supplies keep arriving and being stockpiled for the same. Thorm is raising an army - not merely a warband or a group of raiders, but a substantial military force of thousands of men, possibly even tens of thousands. Perhaps that is what preoccupies his time, and keeps him from bothering with me and my remnants so long as we are safely contained. Or perhaps whatever dark power animates him is repelled by Isobel's protections as well."

Click to shrink...

a

"No, wait." I said. "The vision the Absolute sent us, before the Prism blocked it - there were three people she called her 'Chosen', the ones who 'spoke in her name', and they were apparently of equal seniority. One of them was an elderly male elf, a warrior in heavy armor - presumably that's General Thorm. But then where are the other two?" I described both the strange pale woman and the handsome young nobleman. "And are they at Moonrise Towers as well, or handling similarily sized projects for the Absolute somewhere else?"

Click to shrink...

similarly

"Pfft." she snorted. "I can't even get to Moonrise, let alone inside of it. You think the Shadow Curse you've seen is bad? This is the less severe region of it There are patches of darkness out there so thick that you could be surrounded by twenty torches and still be drained of your life in an instant. Even the Selunite blessing is overwhelmed." She nodded to Shadowheart. "I wouldn't guarantee that even the Blood of Lathander could hold proof against the deepest darkness, although that certainly has a better chance of working than anything we've tried so far. But it's precisely those deep patches of darkness that cut off any route to Moonrise." She looked up. "Your intelligence about the 'moonlanterns' the cultists use to ignore the Shadow Curse, that matches what I have found out as well. What my scouts have been searching for these past days are their caravan routes, so that we can ambush one and steal a moonlantern for ourselves. But even if we pulled that off, I hadn't solved the problem of how I was going to get anyone into Moonrise Towers proper and have a hope of seeing them alive again..." She trailed off.

Click to shrink...

it.

"My mother left to go shopping in the lower market, while I was busy dealing with 'important matters' up in our house." I told her. "I didn't even insist she take a guard with her - we'd had that argument several times before, and I'd lost every time, so I just got tired of insisting. And that day, she never came back." My voice filled of iron. "I tracked down the man who'd taken her and I killed him. I even got there in time to hear her last words." I sighed and continued more gently. "Being there to see them die doesn't help, Alfira. Either way, they're still gone... and you're still not." I sighed. "And either way you have to keep living."

Click to shrink...

This is a peculiar phrasing I've never encountered before. Possibly with rather than of? That's a simple change that would make sense on the face of it.

 

[cliffc999]

Ugh, this game. The stupid narration in the cutscene describes the Chosen of the Absolute as the pale woman, the young nobleman, and the elven warrior... and then I find out that Thorm's actually a half-elf. Yes, I know that's probably meant to be 'the vision of the Absolute wasn't entirely clear', especially as elves and half-elves in BG3 look a hell of a lot alike, but it still annoys writers trying to make sure the objective details are all correct.

Anyway, went back and made the necessary text touch-ups. Fortunately, it wasn't a load-bearing detail.

 

[BigBad]

I honestly think they only made him a half-elf because elves can't grow beards. He otherwise looks as fully elven as Halsin.
ETA: They also describe Gortash as a 'handsome young man' and, well...

 

[cliffc999]

I will entirely forgive them that retcon if it was for the beard. No character voiced by JK Simmons is really complete without a manly beard.

 

[Kylia Quilor]

I'm not even sure how that works, I've never heard of truth serum in the tabletop

Click to shrink...

Elixer of Truth is an item right there in DMG 3e and 3.5? and Zone of Truth is a spell in 3.x. I don't know enough about 5e to say if they're in 5e, but it's not new or left field?

 

[cliffc999]

Elixer of Truth is an item right there in DMG 3e and 3.5? and Zone of Truth is a spell in 3.x. I don't know enough about 5e to say if they're in 5e, but it's not new or left field?

Click to shrink...

Huh. Somehow I'd missed that one. Well, the more you know.

 

[ModerationArt]

Mizora shows up to deliver the message in person in Act Two, she doesn't have Raphael carry it for her. I altered it because honestly, it's a plot hole the original way. She's the prisoner they need to rescue, so how the fuck is she showing up in person to tell Wyll that she needs rescuing? They couldn't have used a dream sending or something?

Click to shrink...

I mean, if you look between her showing up at Moonrise and her showing up in camp, the Moonrise version is pretty obviously not in person, per say. It's more an astral projection or sending or whatever the DnD equivalent is. Though, like you said, if she was truly trapped as she is with no escape, it is a little weird that she can send a magical message out like that.

But, I mean, no less weird than her being able to get a written letter out to Raphael and work out a deal for its delivery. Despite, you know, being trapped.

 

[cliffc999]

But, I mean, no less weird than her being able to get a written letter out to Raphael and work out a deal for its delivery. Despite, you know, being trapped.

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As if Raphael wouldn't deliberately go to where Mizora was so that he could rub it in to a rival and then gouge her mercilessly for helping her get out a message. (Which is actually what happened.)

 

[Faralis]

"No." Isobel said. "I think the spirits of the land have somehow been coerced or tricked into tormenting themselves. That's certainly in keeping with the Lady of Loss's handiwork - to break someone down until they deliberately perpetuate their own misery. Tricking them into believing that self-destruction will be the end of their pain, not the cause of it."

Click to shrink...

Yeah, Shadowheart would haven't liked that comparison. At all...

 

[Daeth]

ETA: They also describe Gortash as a 'handsome young man' and, well...

Click to shrink...

I might be misremembering, but Gortash was a handsome young man, during the early access version of the game, but players liked him too much based solely on those looks, so they changed him to his current less attractive looks.

 

[Hmmaster]

I might be misremembering, but Gortash was a handsome young man, during the early access version of the game, but players liked him too much based solely on those looks, so they changed him to his current less attractive looks.

Click to shrink...

No - we never saw Gortash until they were promoting the full release version. He wasn't in Early Access, beyond the silhouette of him in the vision and a couple of very small references in in-game books. IIRC, the first time we saw his in-game model was during a Panel from Hell.

 

[Frankfawn43]

Yeah, I find Raphael being an opportunistic shit who wants to extort and laugh at Mizora a lot more believable than no one thought to prevent the prisoner from casting magic messages/astral projections. And the just the thought of Mizora's face when Raphael walked in with his smug ass grin is worth it. Besides are we really going to complain about more Raphael screentime? Man is a fun villain, and I love punching him after hearing him talk shit for so long.

 

[Velk]

Man is a fun villain, and I love punching him after hearing him talk shit for so long.

Click to shrink...

The man is a proper Supervillain, half of the fun is him chewing the scenery.

 

[cliffc999]

Yeah, I find Raphael being an opportunistic shit who wants to extort and laugh at Mizora a lot more believable than no one thought to prevent the prisoner from casting magic messages/astral projections. And the just the thought of Mizora's face when Raphael walked in with his smug ass grin is worth it.

Click to shrink...

Did you notice that Raphael made Mizora write the message in her own blood? Just try to imagine how smug his grin was when he pretended his pen was out of ink.

Fortunately for Mizora I have decided that devils can magically conjure out their blood to write with without having to open a vein to do it the hard way... but usually they only have to do that for the signature, not the entire damn sheet.

 

[Tzeentch]

The idea that you can call on your gods for aid, and they will answer." I said, as full of wonder as a small child. "That- that's absolutely inconceivable to anyone from Thedas. Do you have any idea how very privileged, how blessed you are to know this joy?"

Click to shrink...

Ironic that prayers to Andraste and The Maker have a MUCH better chance of being answered outside of Thedas than in it, if the lesson of Sertrous, Demon Prince of Heretics is any indication.

Doesn't matter who/what someone believes in, or if a deity has a singular existence. As long as there's Faith, power follows.

 

[cliffc999]

"Run!" I immediately called, as I kicked the nearest piece of furniture - which happened to be Isobel's desk - at Marcus and his flankers as hard as I could, hoping to block the balcony doorway at least momentarily. "Get Isobel out of here! Fall back to the main room!"

My fellow party members were visibly confused at my calling for a retreat, but that didn't stop them from trusting that I knew what I was doing. Karlach was first out the door, clearing the way, as Lae'zel and Wyll closed in on the person we had to protect the most and guarded her from each side. Gale contributed another Thunderwave, blasting the desk into wooden shrapnel and filling Marcus and his ghoul minions full of splinters. The two ghouls dropped, and Marcus staggered back bloodied.

"What are we doing?" Isobel asked me as we straight-up manhandled her out of her bedroom door and onto the second-floor balcony ringing the inn's wide-open main floor.

"This way!" I yelled. "I can hear those ghouls landing all over the campus - Marcus is having them go for the refugees to draw the Harpers away from the primary target, you! We've got to make him change his priorities!"

As if in response to my words, one of the ghouls who'd burst in the main floor of the inn and was about to strike down one of Mol's kids turned its head in response to our sudden motion and cries, and its eyes narrowed the instant it saw Isobel. It immediately ignored the people in front of it to launch itself into the air instead, flying up through the open center of the inn floor and towards where we were heading down the balcony. I tossed a cleansing smite at it while it was in mid-air and it stopped just short of the railing, its undead flesh burning from the cleansing energies of my templar powers. Also, I'd temporarily disrupted the magic allowing it to fly, and the ten-foot drop to the ground floor below finished it off.

"I don't have very many spells left!" Isobel cried worriedly as she drew her spear in response to another ghoul lunging at us out of one of the bedroom doors we were passing. Karlach smashed it to the floor without breaking stride and we moved on. The flap of leathery wings warned us that two more were rapidly closing on us from the rear, and Lae'zel yelled at us to keep moving while she engaged them both as a rearguard.

A sudden bright golden flare visible through the back windows of the inn told me where Shadowheart was, as she unleashed the power of the Blood of Lathander on whatever ghouls were attacking out there. I wished her best of luck and kept our party moving forward until we reached one of the staircases down, then headed for the main doors to the inn.

"Isobel!" Jaheira called to us, spotting us as we came out the front doors. I'd hoped she'd have gotten out front to start rallying her troops-

"She's the target and the lure!" I yelled to Jaheira, hoping that she'd pick up on my intention.

"Set up there! And you three, there!" she immediately turned and started barking orders to the Harpers in the courtyard. They abandoned their still-incomplete battle formation and start spreading out along the sides of the front courtyard, taking ambush positions alongside the smithy and the stables-

"HEAD FOR THE BRIDGE! GET HER OUT!" I shouted loudly enough to be heard all the way on the other side of the building, and we dragged a struggling Isobel along with us.

"If I abandon the inn grounds, the protection falls!" Isobel cried. "I can't leave!"

"We're not going to." I assured her. "But we want Marcus to think you're escaping-"

Another unearthly howl shrieked out over the grounds, and all of us winced. The distant cries of battle faded away as almost twenty winged ghouls silhouhetted themselves against the sky, every surviving attacker having abandoned their original mayhem-and-distraction attack to all frantically pursue us - pursue Isobel, the target they were ordered to capture "at all costs" - before she could escape.

Half the ghouls landed in front of us, half behind. We were pinned on the bridge, cut off in both directions-

I didn't even bother signaling to Jaheira. I simply unleashed everything I had on the ghouls in front of us and motioned everyone else to do likewise, trusting in her ambushing Harpers to cover our rear for long enough. Gale managed a third Thunderwave to break up the phalanx of ghouls facing us and batter them prone, and then we finished off the survivors with sword, spear, and flame. I turned around just in time to see the rear pack of ghouls still frantically struggling to get out of Jaheira's entangling spell, the same one she'd used on us, as every Harper within bowshot methodically shot them to pieces.

"Oh thank Selune." Isobel gasped in relief, as she wiped ghoul ichor off her spear. "But where's Marcus?"

"If he gets back to Moonrise, our entire infiltration plan is blown." I swore viciously. "But I had to-"

"Search the grounds!" Jaheira barked to her men, and then nodded to me understandingly. "You couldn't let the civilians get massacred, and that meant you had to leave him alive long enough to command his undead to do what they did. But now he'll be-"

I closed my eyes and stopped trying to suppress my tadpole and instead risked letting it in - as carefully as possible, but still a deliberate reversal of my policy. I needed to be aware, I needed to know-

"He's on the first floor, the large room at the back right." I said. "I can sense him."

"That's the infirmary!" Lassandra wailed. "He's not going to-"

Jaheira and I both cursed in a steady, voluble stream as we broke into a run. And when we finally got there, we ran into exactly what we were afraid of.

"Give Isobel to me and then let us leave, or I'll start killing them - one every minute." the wounded Marcus smiled coldly at us from where stood over a cot in the field hospital they'd set up here, a comatose Harper's throat under the point of his dagger. Marcus was holding his body bent over the pommel, his hands on top of it, in a position where it was obvious that even if he spontaneously fell unconscious right at this moment his body weight coming down would still kill his victim immediately. And of course we couldn't hope to finish nocking a bow or casting a spell before he could strike.

"If we give her to you, everyone in this inn dies anyway. Including them." Jaheira spat.

"And if I don't get the priestess back to Moonrise, I die." Marcus retorted. "The General does not tolerate failure, especially not of this magnitude. I have nothing left to lose, Jaheira. You do."

"Marcus?" I stepped forward. "I'd like to talk to you for a minute, not your tadpole."

"I am one with the Absolute and She is-" he shouted, and I pushed into his mind with everything I had.

There was a man once who was a loyal Flaming Fist! I am a True Soul, but I retain my own mind! Does that man wish to join me? Does he want to be free? I forced the thoughts into his mind as deeply as I could-

"I-I-" Marcus stuttered... before I felt his will gather and he shoved me out. "You offer me nothing. You are a small scrabbling mote, frantically clutching at a temporary freedom and doomed to die. I have a chance to serve something eternal, something pure."

"At the cost of everything you were? Of the man you are?" I still tried to reach him.

Marcus - or the possessed thing that was what was left of him - actually laughed in reply to that. And what was even more horrible about his laughter was that it was no mockery, no blood-stained defiance, but a genuinely pure, joyous laughter. "I should thank you, traitor! You have given me an opportunity nigh-unique among the True Souls, one that perhaps only Her Chosen have known before - the opportunity to choose her service, rather than be called to it. What was I in the Flaming Fist, but a mere jumped-up hiresword who was paid in slogans rather than coin? But when I bring her back to the General in triumph, I will be elevated beyond Z'Rell, beyond Balthazar, to be the right hand of the right hand of the Absolute! One of the future rulers of this world!" He leaned forward menacingly, bringing his dagger down harder against the neck of the helpless Harper whose hospital cot he was leaning over and drawing forth a thin red line of blood from the pressure. "Time's up. Decide now, or the slaughter begins."

Jaheira looked at me, and I looked back at her. It was extremely depressing how neither of us even needed words.

"They're your people, Jaheira." I bowed to the inevitable. "And I'm out of ideas."

"Whatever it takes, a Harper will do." Jaheira intoned softly, before her gaze lashed out terribly enough to pin a man to the wall. "No deal. Do your worst."

"What?" Marcus gaped at us as if we'd just babbled the most incoherent nonsense.

"The beds are far enough apart that you can't reach the next man before we reach you." I explained to him somberly. "So just one more life, to save everyone else here."

And then both Jaheira and I dropped our jaws as Halsin materialized out of nowhere, having apparently been shapeshifted into a cat or a mouse or something small enough to overlook under the bed. As he'd silently resumed his humanshape behind Marcus, in just the ideal position to get his arms around the True Soul from behind, he had the already-distracted Marcus wrapped up in a bear hug before the cultist could react. With a single heave of his mighty shoulders Halsin pulled Marcus up and away from the bed, bringing the dagger safely clear of the unconscious Harper's throat, before bearing down with his full strength and crushing the True Soul's ribs. Marcus gasped and collapsed in Halsin's arms, blood spurting from his mouth, and Halsin contemptuously flung him against the wall. Stunned and left gasping for breath, Marcus wasn't even able to regain his footing before Jaheira stepped forward and spitted him through the throat.

"Still alive." Halsin said after checking the hostage, and then looked up at us. "That was a terrible choice you faced. I'm glad that I was able to spare you the burden of making it."

"I'm glad that I don't have to dig yet another grave for someone who trusted me and who I lead to their death." Jaheira swore relievedly. "I owe you a big one, Halsin."

"You owe me nothing." he replied, and then looked down at the dead Marcus. "Sometimes I think that the saddest are not those who do evil, but the ones who have the choice to escape evil and yet still refuse." he intoned sadly. "But if nature has taught me anything, it's that even with all the care in the world some will still flourish and some will still wither."

"We need to sweep the grounds, make sure they didn't leave behind any other surprises." I turned away hurriedly to focus on practical matters. "Let's get that organized."

"All right." Jaheira agreed. "Somebody make sure that bastard won't rise up as undead, then search the body for intel and throw it down a hole. The rest of you, with me." She swept out of the room, her men going with her, and I nodded to the rest of the party to split up and go help them.

"Hawke." Isobel's hand on my arm stopped me firmly before I could join the mop-up too. "How could you do that? How could your Oath bear such-?" she trailed off, her eyes confused and scared.

"I don't know." I sighed. "I didn't feel the slightest warning that I was about to do something forbidden." I shook my head sadly. "I suppose I've been too late to save people so often that my soul has given up on punishing me for being unable to spare the already dead."

"Selune help you." she said sadly. "To be broken and reforged in such a manner..."

"It beats breaking and staying broken, I guess." I replied after a pause.

"True." Isobel said. "I-" she wiped away a tear. "I'm sorry. It's just- knowing that all this happened because of me, because Thorm wanted me- I wish I could just leave, that I could just go away and not have to deal with this-" her voice broke. "But of course I can't. I'm the only thing standing between the shadows and death for everyone here. My own heart traps me more tightly than any cage."

I didn't dare move close enough to be victim of a surprise hug, having already had enough problems comforting one distressed woman tonight. But I did take the risk of gently drawing Isobel aside to somewhere we could talk privately. Especially given the next question I had to ask.

"Isobel... why did Marcus say that his mission was to take you back to Moonrise?" I asked her.

"I was really hoping you hadn't caught that." she sighed, her expression downcast. "And Moonmaiden help me if Jaheira did."

"You don't have to tell me." I finally agreed. "But if it's something you wish you could tell someone, but are afraid to - well, right now I don't think you'd find a single person in this inn who was in less of a position to judge you than me."

"Ketheric Thorm is my father." Her soft words practically put my jaw on the floor.

"... you're a half-elf, you can legitimately be that old. Jaheira is, after all." I tried to puzzle out. "But you look as young as- you look far younger than Jaheira does, even with your silver hair."

"I died approximately a century ago." Isobel kept right on breaking my brain. "And when I'd passed away my father was still a loyal servant of the Moonmaiden and a just and kindly governor of this region, and everything was green and good-" She fought for control and then continued on, her voice firm and even. "I don't remember anything of that time, it was all just blackness. And then suddenly I was alive again, and Father was there. He looked far older- much more grim, more burdened- but it was still him. And yet at the same time, it wasn't."

"So two impossible resurrections after over a century." I said. "Did he tell you how it was done?"

"No." Isobel replied. "That was the second question I asked him, but he wouldn't speak of it." My mind stuttered in curiosity as to what her first question could possibly have been, but there was no way I was going to disrupt the flow of her confession by talking. "All he'd say is that it was worth the price he paid - any price he could possibly pay." She shook her head. "But as happy as I was to be alive, I couldn't pretend that nothing had changed. When I began to see how the land had been cursed - when I could sense the darkness within my father, sense the traces of it still lingering in me-" She fought back her tears. "Can you imagine being away from the world for so long, and then returning to find out that in the interim your own father had become a worse horror than any he'd ever fought? That he did so much harm to the people who trusted him, the land he ruled, the goddess he worshipped? All in the name of Shar?" she declaimed, her voice thick with horror.

"How did serving Shar lead him to the Cult of the Absolute?" I thought out loud. "All the intelligence we've been able to collect is that their churches aren't allies."

"When I finally confronted father about his turning to Shar, he denied serving her any longer. Shar had lied to him, he said. She'd made him a promise and then broken it. But he wouldn't talk about what new evil god he now served or why, or what horrible pacts he made to make us alive again-" She shook her head. "He ordered me locked away. He said that I would eventually understand but for now I had to be kept safe where I couldn't interfere. But I grew up in that tower, and his new servants didn't know enough about its secret ways to stop me from escaping. And so I wandered over the region with only my goddess' blessings to spare me from the curse, trying to piece together exactly what had happened - how things had gone so wrong-" She sighed. "And then Jaheira arrived with her troops, fleeing with death behind them into nothing but death ahead of them. So I led them to shelter here at Last Light, and - well, when a priestess of the goddess known for being most opposed to the dark power who cursed all the land around shows up to offer you her aid against that very same darkness, even cynical old Harpers don't have enough suspicions to ask inconvenient questions."

"Later on, I'm going to want you to tell me about some of those 'secret ways' before we try to infiltrate Moonrise." I said. "But that's for later. Right now you need a friend, not a co-conspirator."

"What I need is for this nightmare to be over." Isobel forced out. "And I also need to apologize to you. Just now I castigated you for being willing to sacrifice one life to save many more... but isn't that the very same thing I asked you to do, when I begged you to kill my own father?" She looked away, her voice thick with guilt. "How under the moonlight did I ever come to this?"

"I'd steal another wise quote from Halsin, but you were right here when he said it the first time." I tried to joke.

"Oh, is that where you got the last one from?" Isobel smiled weakly.

"Well, they do say that wisdom is largely a matter of listening to the proper teachers." I gently threw back.

"Hah! Yes, it is... and how harsh it is, sometimes, when that proper teacher is experience." She sighed, and then nodded to me with a gentle smile. "Thank you, Hawke. Being able to just let it out with even one person - that helped a lot."

"Any time." I reassured her, and then we both got up and got back to work.

---

"There." Lassandra said, pointing ahead.

Several hours after the attack at Last Light, a Harper scout patrol came in with the news Jaheira had been seeking - one of the cult's caravan routes had been located. They'd spotted something that could only be a moonlantern from a distance, accompanying a large column of troops headed away from Moonrise and towards the Risen Road. Given that Ketheric Thorm was bivuoac'ing the bulk of his burgeoning army outside of the Shadow-Cursed Lands, this was clearly another unit he'd raised and formed at Moonrise being sent out to forward field positions. Which meant that after delivering their troop contingent, the moonlantern escort would be coming back to Moonrise along the same or a similar route within the near future.

And so our group, augmented by Lassandra leading a squad of Harpers, were staking out the best ambush site we'd been able to find on that route. There were a pair of ruined houses adjacent to a road intersection that would give both cover and an elevated firing position to the Harpers, while those of us with tadpoles in our heads would go out and greet the Absolutists on the road and get them to stop right in position. At my suggestion we'd even seeded the road with several smokepowder charges, carefully buried under a thin layer of dirt and with their positions marked and memorized by those of us with fire cantrips.

"You cannot tell me this was the natural geography of the region." I swore softly. Because the terrain we'd crossed over to get here had been insane. it had been bad enough on the outskirts, but the further in we got the less sense the geography made. Endless winding paths that wildly rose and fell across steep hills and low bluffs, deep ravines winding about all over like so many tangled snakes to the point you couldn't go a mile in a straight line without crossing several chasms, even bottomless canyons with eldritch green fire glowing dimly at their bottom- it was as if the Shadow Curse had not merely tainted the land but outright warped reality.

"No, according to Jaheira this all used to be farmland." Lassandra agreed. "I didn't even know a curse could be this powerful, but sometimes I swear the land around here is half in Faerun and half in another world entirely."

"It might well be." Shadowheart agreed. "I've never heard of even the most powerful Sharran magic enacting anything like this anywhere else."

"It's time to tighten up." I decided. "Set up in your ambush positions and don't break cover. If you've got to take a piss then do it right where you're kneeling." I finished crudely. "Unless our estimate's way off, that caravan will be here within the hour."

"Got it." Lassandra agreed. "Heads down and strict noise discipline from now on, boys. You decoys can get out front and be as loud as you like though!"

"Such a privilege." Wyll joked, as we moved out to stand in the open road and wait.

Eventually a strange silvery light became visible through the shadows, slowly growing brighter and brighter. It was almost but not quite an identical shade to the barrier Isobel had been maintaining over Last Light - I wondered if the Absolute cultists were somehow using sacred relics of Selune as a shield. But no, if such things existed then surely Isobel would have mentioned them and yet she'd had no more idea what 'moonlanterns' really were than any of us did.

My eyebrows raised as I saw that the lead figure bearing the moonlantern was not a man but a spider - or, rather, a horrible man-spider crossbreed. Its lower body was that of a giant black spider, and its upper body that of a twisted and deformed dark elf with eight eyes instead of two. Marching along with him were a squad of goblins. I exhaled in relief as our estimates turned out to be correct - the moonlantern convoy was returning from an escort mission, not setting out on one, and so had only the lantern-bearer and a small escort.

"Drider." Gale whispered. "Lolth does that to a drow who fails her sacred tests and then the drow use them as beasts of burden and cannon fodder. Just like Minthara said."

I carefully measured their progress against the obscure mark I'd left on the trail in the right position, and waved our team forward as soon as he reached it. "Identify yourself!" I called out, pushing my tadpole-

The drider's mind shivered in response, revealing him as a True Soul. His initial alarm faded away as he recognized us as the same.

"Why are you here, True Soul?" he asked us, puzzled. "How do you survive the curse without a moonlantern?"

"There's been a new discovery." I explained. "They sent us to meet you. Come forward."

The drider thought it over for a moment, then decided to risk it. Which was good, because they'd stopped just a little short of where we were hoping they would...

"Now." I said calmly to Gale and Shadowheart, and both of them shot Fire Bolt cantrips right into the lead pair of smokepowder mines. That was the signal for the Harpers to start firing, and between the land mines blowing their feet off and the archers we had prepositioned in a perfect L-shaped ambush, all of the goblins were dead without any of my team having to draw a weapon. The wounded drider gave a horrible shriek of rage and charged us with suicidal bravery. It was a sufficiently tough and large opponent that it would have done serious damage to at least several of the Harpers if it had reached them. But they were lightly armored skirmishers and we were a heavily-loaded strike team, two of whose frontliners had adamantine armor or weapons in addition. It took us all several exchanges of blows to finally beat the thing to death piece by piece, but with six of us all piling on we were able to finish it off while still fighting conservatively enough that we didn't take any serious damage in return.

"Got it!" Gale said, holding up the moonlantern triumphantly. "Hopefully myself and the High Initiate will be able to do something with-" He cut himself off and suddenly held the lantern close up to his eye, peering within. "Um... Hawke? There seems to be a person inside here." Gale said confusedly.

We all drew in to peer at the lantern and sure enough, the silhouhette of a woman was just visible through the frosted glass if you were looking closely enough. "Oh please, oh golly, me oh my, you must release me or I'll die!" a tiny high-pitched voice chanted.

"This... was not what I expected." Shadowheart said warily. "And if we let her out, will that moonlantern even work? We can't get into Moonrise without one - even if the Blood of Lathander gets us through the darkness, our lack of one of the cult's artifacts will be too suspicious."

"What is she, anyway?" Karlach puzzled.

"She could be any one of several things - the glass isn't clear enough to see through." Gale said. "Um, miss? Might we ask who you are?"

"Stop being tricksy and please free the pixie!" the lantern complained cutely in a voice like silver bells.

"Pixie." Lassandra noted. "A creature of the feywild - not evil, but legendary for their trickery. Often to the point of not caring if someone gets hurt by their joke."

"This lantern only lights the way when I am hurting night and day!" the pixie begged.

"Damn it, if she's telling the truth about that then keeping her in there isn't even expedience, it's slavery." I swore.

"We need the lantern's protection from the Shadow Curse." Shadowheart replied ruthlessly. "If we let her out, we lose that."

"Release me and you'll get my special blessing, I promise truly with no messing!" the pixie pleaded.

"We're not arguing about this." I said firmly. "How do I get this thing open- never mind, I see the latch." The lantern face swung open just as if it were a regular lantern, and a one-foot-tall purple woman with wings flew right out.

"FINALLY!" the pixie swore in a crass accent entirely unlike the faery speech she'd been using and worthy of the coarsest barmaid in the Hanged Man tavern. "Been trapped in that coffin with nothing but a mad drider and the smell of my own farts for company!"

"Hello." I said dazedly. "I'd ask how your day has been, but that would be a stupid question."

"Hah!" she laughed. "I like you, you've actually got manners! Pleased to meet you, I'm Dolly Thrice."

"Hawke." I introduced myself.

"Right, you want to be able to walk around in this cursed pit - Raven Queen only knows why - without getting sucked dry? I can do that for you." She reached into her pocket and pulled out a tiny silver ball and tossed it to me. It expanded in the air as it flew, landing in my hand as something suitably sized for a human to hold and not a pixie. "Just shake that and say the magic words, and you'll have pixie dust poofing out all over your arse. Keeps the curse off you no problem!"

"Thank-" I began, but Dolly had already spun around twice in the air and vanished.

With great trepidation I shook the ball, and after a dramatic pause just long enough to make a man feel like he'd been tricked the ball finally started glowing with sparkles and then spoke to me with Dolly's voice. "What's the magic word?"

"Please." I asked her.

"Wrong!" she barked, and the ball mildly stung my fingers - not enough to make me drop it, but enough to be noticed.

"Pretty please with sugar on top?" I tried.

"What are you, three years old?" she laughed mockingly.

"Oh my lovely Dolly Thrice who is so very sweet and nice, would you assist your humble friends so we won't meet our cursed end?" I desperately tossed out a bit of doggerel.

"... damn, that's not bad for a human! Not bad at all!" Dolly's voice laughed, and then finally a giant puff of silver dust shot out of the ball and showered over my entire party. An immediate feeling of safety settled in, similar to but not identical to Isobel's blessing. And it felt stronger somehow, as if the worst the Shadow Curse could do would just slide right off as if we weren't even there.

"Thanks for being a good sport, Hawke! From now on 'Please' will do just fine. Bye!" Dolly Thrice's voice came from the ball one last time, and it stopped sparkling.

I turned to be greeted by the expressionless faces of the rest of my team and several Harpers trying manfully not to laugh.

"If it's ridiculous but it worked, it still worked." I finally said, and drew the shattered remnants of my dignity up around me as we returned to base.

---

Isobel solved the problem of us not having a working moonlantern to present at the cult headquarters by casting her own moonlight blessing on the empty lantern casing we did have. That gave it a roughly similar light to the operating moonlantern and even a minor amount of genuine protection against the Shadow Curse, which would keep anyone from noticing the difference unless they confiscated our lantern for a close examination.

Experimentation with the silver ball confirmed that Dolly would only give her pixie dust blessing for me and members of my immediate party, which put a scupper on the idea of using it to protect all the Harper patrols as well. Fortunately, the clown makeup those Harpers who'd experimented with the ball had ended up wearing scrubbed off readily enough, and the one particularly demanding Harper who'd ended up polymorphed into a pig reverted back only a minute later. I made a mental note to be very polite to any other pixies I met in the future. Halsin and Jaheira both confirmed that yes, that really was the best idea when dealing with feywild spirits.

"This is a valuable clue." Halsin said as he handed the ball back to me. "If a protective enchantment of the Feywild is so much more powerful at holding off the Shadow Curse than even the most powerful blessing of Selune, then that confirms my suspicion that the Shadow Curse is ultimately rooted in Shadowfell magic. Which is the last piece of the puzzle I needed."

"You've figured out how to end the Shadow Curse?" Jaheira said, amazed.

"No, but I know where to search for the solution." Halsin replied. "One of the patients in your field hospital gave me the clue - the Flaming Fist, Art Cullagh. I was actually examining him when the attack started, and I'd hidden myself in the infirmary to better protect the defenseless patients from anyone who might attack there. That's how I was fortunate enough to be in position. But as I understand it, you found Cullagh already present and wandering around the Shadow-Cursed Lands when you arrived, yes? He didn't come in with your contingent?"

"No, he did not." Jaheira agreed. "We had no idea what he was doing here by himself, or how the hell he had survived. He was incoherent, raving - and then, comatose. All he's ever said is that one nonsense bit of song he mumbles under his breath, over and over."

"From what I've been able to determine he arrived here before the Shadow Curse came down - a Flaming Fist of several generations ago, sent to these lands to investigate rumors of Sharran corruption among the Selunite community here." Halsin said gravely. "And somehow he was trapped in the border between the Shadowfell and the Prime Material when the Curse was called down. He wandered there for decades, lost so deep in the Shadowfell that time itself was distorted. He only very recently returned to the Prime when Isobel's shielding of Last Light Inn created a beacon that he could follow." Halsin took a deep breath and continued. "What first attracted my notice to him was that very bit of doggerel he keeps singing in his delirium. It mentions a name, Thaniel - a name none of you would have recognized, but that I know very well." Halsin said. "Thaniel was the spirit of the land of this region, a powerful nature spirit of the Feywild. I knew him as a boy. I even played with him." Halsin sighed with rueful memory. "I am certain that Art Cullagh met Thaniel, or a remnant of him, while he was trapped in the Shadowfell. That is how he remained alive in there... and that is almost certainly why the land is cursed and remains cursed. It's very spirit has been abducted, taken from their rightful place in the Feywild and imprisoned deep into the Feywild's counterpart, the Shadowfell."

"What an elegantly poisonous misdirection." Jaheira said with mixed contempt and wonder. "Shadow Curse. Shadowfell. Shar put it out there in plain sight, but everyone missed it because we were so focused on the curse having been called down by a servant of hers and her own aspect as a goddess of darkness. When it was all actually a manipulation by Shar to twist other forces to hold the shadow in place, and use barely any of her own power in maintaining it. So even the strongest blessings of Selune could never have more than partial success at holding it back, but any spirit of the Feywild could easily counteract the Shadowfell - at least over a limited area." She nodded towards us, and by extension the pixie ball still in my pocket.

"And if we can find and free Thaniel from the Shadowfell, then perhaps we could free the entire area." Halsin agreed. "Which is why I will need Hawke's help again."

"We've got to get to Moonrise Towers as our first priority." I reminded him.

"Is this something any of my men can do?" Jaheira offered. "I know what I said before, but that was before you convinced me you knew what you were talking about. And before the evidence of that pixie blessing confirmed at least one of your theories."

"I won't know where to look for Thaniel until I can wake up Cullagh and ask him." Halsin said. "And he's lost in catatonia. Your healer and I agree that about the only way we could snap him out of it is to find one of his personal effects, something he had a strong emotional connection to - except that the best place to start looking for one is in Reithwin Town."

"Which is right next to Moonrise Towers, and so deep into the cursed lands that only those of us with the pixie blessing can safely travel there." I acknowledged, having remembered where Reithwin was from my study of Jaheira's map table.

"Yes. According to the investigator's log we found in his pocket, the last place Cullagh recorded himself visiting was the House of Healing in Reithwin. If you can find something of his still there-" Halsin nodded to us.

"We'll give it our best look." I agreed. "Is there anything else we need to look for?"

"Yes, but it's a secondary target only." Jaheira said. "When we first took over Last Light I had my men check out the basement to make sure there were no surprises lurking down there. They found a hidden set of rooms, reachable only through concealed entrances in the basement. We cleared some monsters out of there, but the important thing we found was records of an old resistance cell."

"Resistance cell?" Shadowheart asked. "Against what?"

"Remember that Reithwin and Moonrise were originally Selunite worshipper settlements." Jaheira reminded her. "Back when Thorm first turned away from Selune to worship Shar, not everyone in the region went along with him. Of course Thorm and his Dark Justicars demanded that everyone forcibly convert to his new goddess and forbade Selunite worship on pain of death, but the braver souls among them still tried to hold to their true goddess in secret. And from what we found in that basement, some of them also tried armed resistance. There was one cell headquartered in Last Light, but from what fragmentary records we unearthed the main headquarters was hidden in the Mason's Guild in Reithwin. And remember that we still lack complete knowledge on Thorm's rise to power, his fall to darkness... and his newfound immortality. It is possible the Selunite resistance of the times observed and recorded something we would find useful to know now, so if you can unearth it that might be helpful." She shrugged. "But that is all a bunch of might-have-beens, so if you can't do it without compromising your safety or wasting too much time then don't even bother trying. As I said, secondary target only."

"Got it." I said. "Barring objections, we'll depart tomorrow morning. I want a good night's sleep before we try anything this risky." I also wanted a chance to privately consult with Isobel again on the layout of Moonrise Towers, but we definitely needed to rest and refit as well.

"Sounds good to me." Jaheira agreed, and we dispersed.

"I'm sorry we haven't had a chance to talk earlier like I'd promised, but things have been going at a rather hectic pace." I sought out Gale. "Have you had any further thoughts about the orb?"

"Quite a few." he said ruefully as we both sipped our wine. "It's the sort of topic on which a man dwells, not dithers." He shook his head. "Do you know what's funny? I've only just met all of you, but my largest objection to detonating the orb is the fact that you're all very likely to be caught within the blast radius when I do it. It's not as if we can just trip into the Absolute's most hidden lair and then I politely ask it to please wait for a few hours while my friends finish running for their lives."

"How's about not doing it at all?" I said simply.

"Very tempting." Gale agreed. "But... part of me can't help but think that maybe it be would worth it. Dying, I mean. If it truly did earn her forgiveness."

"That's... a bit of a rough topic with me right now." I said, fighting down an uncharacteristic swell of emotion at the thought of my own current difficulties. "Forgiveness, I mean."

"What do you- ah, never mind, that is the expression of a man who does not want to talk about it." Gale readily agreed. "And while I'm not Faerun's most knowledgeable scholar of the mysteries of friendship, some things are basic to the human condition."

"Shadowheart and I are having a misunderstanding, and I can't even try to talk to her about it until she's ready to listen." I admitted.

"Ouch." Gale said. "Romance is the one field I'm even less qualified to offer advice on than friendship. She seduced me, after all." he admitted embarrassedly. "And... I haven't really dated much outside of that. And by 'not much', I mean 'not at all'." He trailed off.

"Well, for all that she's being a bit emotional right now she's still a very intelligent woman who knows what she wants." I consoled myself. "So this should all clear up soon... preferably."

"One day at a time." Gale agreed.

"And as to your own matter..." I tried to think past my own emotional tangles and see the situation clearly. "Whether or not Mystra forgives you is of course very important to you, and I'm not saying it shouldn't be. But I'm not certain if it should be the most important thing to you." I looked at him. "Whether or not you can forgive yourself, that matters too."

"And I will definitely reflect on that further." Gale agreed seriously. "But for right now, I think I'll put this bottle back on the shelf and get ready to turn in. Preparing spells with a hangover is worse than trying to cast drunk."

"I can only imagine." I agreed, deciding that this should be my last drink as well. "Good night, Gale."

I made the rounds and checked in with the others, with one exception I couldn't find, and then realized I was still too restless to sleep. I decided to go get some fresh air down by the lakeshore, the quietest place to be alone within the shielded zone of Last Light, and almost inevitably I found her there too.

"We always seem to be meeting alone under moonlight." Shadowheart greeted me softly. "In hindsight, that should not have been a good omen."

"Shadowheart-" I began.

"Stop." she raised her hands. "I- am not going to enjoy this. It's- I promised that I wouldn't get emotional, but promises have failed before." She kept her face straight with an effort I could almost feel without telepathic powers, and forced herself to continue. "The night we first kissed, you told me about how your relationship with Merrill ended and why. And I'm afraid the same thing is happening - will happen - with us."

"Shadowheart... please. No." I begged her.

"I'm sorry." she turned away from me, unable to face me. "I- I just can't." Her voice firmed up again. "You said that even though she still cared for you, she couldn't ever fully love you anymore because she could never fully trust you again anymore. And neither can I." She shook her head. "It doesn't matter if it was an innocent gesture or not. Perhaps it was, perhaps it wasn't. What I'm talking about is how I reacted to it." Her voice almost broke, and she clutched her dignity to herself with a visible effort. "How I'm still reacting to it, no matter how hard I try not to."

"Damn it!" I wailed, my heart crashing to the ground as ashes.

"Trust... is something I've never really had before. By now you've learned enough about Sharrans - other Sharrans - to get a clearer picture of what my upbringing must have been like." Shadowheart continued tonelessly. "Shar's church does not coddle the weak. Everyone is tested. Trust is a weakness to exploit. And then you- you were the first person I met who made me even start to believe that they could be wrong. Until my trust in you was tested... and it failed."

"Then we try again." I insisted. "One failure isn't-"

"It is." She corrected me. "If it's severe enough." Her voice turned ugly. "Or if one partner was flawed enough." She continued hurriedly. "I don't mean you. I mean-" Her shoulders slumped. "I-I don't even know to explain this, but-"

"She offers you nothing but pain and loss." I begged Shadowheart. "Turn away. Find another goddess!"

"But I won't." Shadowheart finally replied. "I have finally come to the point where I can no longer pretend. No longer prevaricate. I must choose... and I choose Shar. It all comes down to that."

I punched the nearest tree so hard that I needed the Bulwark stance to make sure the tree bark shattered before my knuckles did.

"I set you free, Hawke." Shadowheart spoke gently as she slowly walked away. "Find someone who can share her heart with you, and who won't leave you. Hells, make it Alfira if you want- there's really nothing wrong with her, she's a genuinely sweet girl." She sighed. "I only made you believe that I was one. And as it turns out, I am not."

"Leave if you have to." I forced myself to say, my voice a hoarse whisper. "But know that you can always come back. Please... don't cut yourself off. Don't believe that you can't come back."

"We're- still going to have to work together, if any of us are to get out of this alive." Shadowheart stopped, but still remained facing away from me. "So I won't reject you any more harshly than this." Her voice turned colder. "Lady Shar teaches that in the end, all hope is false. And in this case, I can guarantee that will be true. I can't stop you from still hoping if you choose to, Hawke." Her voice turned sad. "But you'll only hurt yourself if you do."

"I-" I fell silent and flinched, turning away. There were no words for this.

"Good-bye, Hawke." Shadowheart's voice came to me. "Tomorrow there will still be the mission, and my loyalty to our group. But from now on, that's all."

We stood there on the beach, wordlessly facing away from each other, before I finally made the long walk back to the inn. And with every step, I forced myself to lock it down, box it away, and push it back into the depths of my mind to torment me with only in my nightmares.

She was right, after all. Tomorrow there would still be the mission. And at least I could still do that.

---

Author's Note: The pixie segment is canon, except for a few minor touch-ups. You really do get the whole shadow curse gloom and doom sequence suddenly interrupted by a brief visit from this tsundere ball of nonsense. It's hilarious.

The game is inconveniently absent of any explanations as to why the hell a random pixie can throw something that holds off the Shadow Curse better than a senior priestess of Selune, so I patched that in. I mean, the clues actually are all mostly in the game proper, but if there's a dialogue option where anybody actually puts them together then I've never found it.

As for Shadowheart and what the hell is on her mind... keep reading.

 

[cliffc999]

I'd lied to him. It had taken everything I had as an actress and the sort of willpower that could be summoned only by imminent fear of death, and I still couldn't actually look him in the eye for much of it, but I'd successfully lied to him.

Of course I trusted Hawke. There likely wasn't a more trustworthy man in the world; certainly there'd never been a more trustworthy one that I'd actually met. I trusted him even when I couldn't trust myself, and had before I'd ever found out he was a paladin. The idea that he was up to anything behind my back with Alfira or anyone else was laughable. Telling him that I didn't trust him was by far the biggest lie in that entire collection of nonsense I'd forced him to swallow, but by ruthlessly exploiting his weaknesses - and his still-lingering guilt over his one great failing with Merrill - I'd successfully pulled it off. If Hawke hadn't told me his greatest weakness, his greatest regret, then I'd never have been able to manipulate him.

All hail Shadowheart, the great deceiver. Behold her gratitude and how much she returns trust for trust! Gods, what a disgusting individual I could be-

My hand flared in agony as Shar's curse yet again lashed me with the whip of her reminder. It was a measure of how little I remembered of my earlier life that I'd honestly been unaware that the chronic pain in my hand had been a sending of the goddess. I'd only begun to figure that out after Hawke and the emotions he kept stirring in me had prompted Lady Shar to lash me repeatedly and for the same offense each time, which finally began to stir loose some long-belated pattern recognition. Hawke's temporary suppression of the curse with his paladin powers had provided the final confirmation that it was a curse. And once I finally realized that I'd been cursed, hindsight made it rather embarassingly obvious who had cursed me and why.

A young girl kneeling upon flagstones in prayer. Her tongue trips over the holy words of Lady Shar, mangling the liturgy. Her hand flares in punishment.

Shying away from properly interrogating a captive enemy. The flinch of hesitation is answered by a convulsion of pain.

An exhausted acolyte, hiding from her duties in a hidden alcove as she tries to snatch a bit of rest. The pain ensures she finds none for a long while to come.

Those incidents and many more like them flickered through my memory, once I knew what to search for. Ever since I was a little girl, whenever I'd doubted I'd prayed for the guidance of Lady Shar - too stupid, or too unable to remember, to realize that I'd had it all along.

But there was no oblivion that could shield me from Her final reminder. When Wyll had died, Withers had been able to keep Mizora from even touching his soul - however much it was in pawn to the devil-woman - until he was alive again. But he hadn't been able to do the same for me. Maybe it was because I was a consecrated priestess, maybe it was because Lady Shar was far superior to any mere soul-dealing cambion, maybe it was because I'd died while in the heart of one of her dark fortresses. But the fact remained, in those few moments between my death at the golem's hands and my resurrection... I'd been with Her.

Of course I didn't remember seeing Her. You didn't have a face-to-face with Lady Shar until the day your soul arrived in the Towers of Night in the deepest depths of the Shadowfell to be in Her keeping for eternity, and my death had only been temporary. But She had still been able to reach out and touch me a little more deeply than gods were normally allowed to do to those living in the mortal world. So although I remembered nothing but my entire body being suspended in the same sort of timeless agony that normally cursed my right hand alone, I awoke distinctly remembering what She had said even if I had no memory of the actual voice in which She had said it.

And even then, part of me had still dared to hope that I could possibly escape... until we arrived in the Shadow-Cursed Lands and I saw the true extent of Lady Shar's power. And it most certainly had been her power - I had tested for that. I'd told Hawke and the others that my contact with the necrotic energies of the Shadow Curse hadn't harmed me because my exposure had been brief enough to escape without harm, but that had also been a lie. In truth I hadn't been affected at all. The Shadow Curse did not touch me in the slightest, even without torchlight, the Blood of Lathander, or the pixie's blessing... solely because Lady Shar willed it so. That was when I knew She had neither been lying nor bluffing.

And She had-

"Shadowheart?" I inwardly flinched in terror at the sound of the one person in all of Last Light Inn I wanted to see the least - even less than Hawke, despite what had just happened.

"High Initiate." I held my voice proud and formal with all my effort, and turned to face her with my posture held as perfectly as possible. I didn't allow a single shiver of fright to manifest - visibly, at least - as I turned to face one of the most blessed servants of Lady Shar's mortal enemy, her twin sister Selune.

"Hand of Shar." Isobel greeted me coolly in return, using one of the archaic rank titles of our faith. She'd actually overestimated my seniority a bit, but not by much. "I came looking for the mysterious priestess who the Harpers were regarding so highly for her heroics during the attack. Using the most sacred artifact of the Morninglord with which to single-handedly defeat a dozen ghouls and save the entire rear flank without a single casualty, no less. I'd wondered why she was so shy... or why she'd dared to enter the Shadow-Cursed Lands without my blessing, when I finally found out about that as well." Her eyes narrowed at me. "But credit where credit is due, you are a talented actress. Because whatever I expected, it was not this."

"Thank you." spoke the priestess of Shar, the cold and proud servant of the Nightbringer. "I've always prided myself on my infiltration skills." Just let her see only what she expects, and then perhaps-

"Tell me, do they know who you really serve?" Isobel probed, and my hasty plan collapsed like a house of cards.

"Yes." I admitted reluctantly. After all, it's not like she wouldn't find out anyway the instant she actually did try to tell any of them. My heart sank even further as I saw her expression twist into the one I least wanted to see-

"Excuse me, what?" Isobel asked me puzzledly, her hostility falling away. "Even the paladin?"

"He was the first one to know." I heard my tongue saying without my permission. Damn it!

Isobel's posture relaxed from the combat-ready stance she'd been maintaining throughout. "Then- why?" she begged me to tell. "Why did a priestess of Shar risk her life at those odds to save a group of refugees? As a deception it would make perfect sense- even to the extent of wielding the Blood. Your church successfully stole it once before, so why not twice?" She shook her head as if trying to dispel baffling vapors. "But to do so and mean it?"

"Do you honestly believe you know the full depths of Lady Shar's mysteries?" I bluffed.

"Spare me." Isobel returned flatly. "I know at least as much about your goddess and her followers as you know about mine - and at least as little. Neither of us can pretend otherwise."

"All right, the truth then." I replied. "I don't want to answer your question, and I don't want to talk about it."

"I don't know what you and Hawke said to each other, but I saw him walking past me as I was coming out here. He was emotionally devastated." Isobel's words pushed at me like a wind. "Even granting that your kind have made mental cruelty both a science, a fine art, and a competitive sport, I very much doubt that you did that on a whim. Particularly not given how complicated the existence of a Sharran hiding among Selunites and Harpers would be already, and how much you would need your current allies to avoid it." Isobel challenged me. "So why?"

"Why do you care?" I heatedly shot back.

"Because Hawke is my friend." Isobel said simply. "A new one, yes. But newly met or old comrade-in-arms, I still don't like seeing my friends being hurt needlessly. So regardless of whether or not you want to talk about it, we are going to talk about it."

"Why, do you want him?" I challenged her. "You can have him." Please have him, an errant part of my heart wished regardless of how much the rest of me screamed at it to stop talking now. You could be everything for him that I only pretended to be-

"I've already buried the woman I love." Isobel shook her head. "And I don't want to replace her with anyone. So don't try to send me chasing down that rabbit hole either. Why are you here, Shadowheart? Why have you done what you've done?"

"I won't tell you." I insisted, my back against the wall. "Call your Harpers and have me executed on the spot if you want, I yet refuse. That's only death... and there are so many more things to be afraid of than that."

Isobel's expression softened again, and my heart beat faster with terror. "It's like that, then?"

"I don't know what you mean." I vainly insisted.

She turned away from me and stepped forward to the edge of the water, looking up at the moon - odd, how it was so clearly visible here inside the dome, when you couldn't even see the sky when you stepped outside. "I know what they teach you, Shadowheart. That to be sworn to Shar means that all gods have forsaken you but Her." She turned back to me, her eyes pleading. "That's not true. Selune has not forsaken any of you, and she will not. Shar leads you to forsake her. I have seen other devotees of Shar turn away from her and find true peace with other patrons. If you didn't believe it possible, then please believe me that it is!" she pleaded.

"Your compassion cuts like knives." I forced my voice to reply scornfully. "Perhaps that's why you offer it."

Isobel flinched away, her face full of guilt, and my heart began to relax. "Perhaps you're right." she agreed softly. "But if that is true, then I apologize." She shook her head and turned back to me, her hands open in invitation. "Shadowheart, if that many good people believe you have good in you as well, then try to accept that they might be right as well. Just take my hand. Let me lead you out of the darkness. Please." she begged.

"No." I forced myself to say, turning away. "I... acknowledge that I have a choice. I still choose this."

"Again." I wondered at the sorrow in her voice, at why she would choose that word. "And yet again." I looked back at her, and she met my gaze. "All right. Neither salvation nor damnation can be forced on anyone. The gods must allow us our choice."

"They must." I agreed with her. "And they will."

"But not all choices are final." she persisted. "I will pray that you choose again, before you finally reach the choice that is."

I prayed with everything in my heart for the strength to stare her down without breaking, and eventually she nodded. "If you ever want to talk, please come seek me out at any time. And don't worry about Jaheira having any objection to you - I'll take care of it." She nodded to me again. "Good night, Shadowheart."

"Good night, Isobel." I returned her courtesy, and she left me to my reflections under the rising moon.

I looked up at the face of Shar's sister and enemy, letting the temptation that Isobel had offered to me rise up and fill my being. I could taste desires, wishes, dreams - a goddess who would bless my union with a paladin of virtue, not condemn it. An affiliation that would be accepted openly, not condemn me to exile or death if revealed. A life without suffering or secrets, without masks and lies. A life with him, where we could be happy. I made myself face it, acknowledge it, wallow in it without pretense or hesitation.

And then I turned away, and left the moon to shine on my back as I returned to the darkness. Because those wishes, those dreams, they could never be mine. I did not yet know exactly what task Lady Shar would challenge me with, exactly what trial awaited me at Moonrise, but I knew there would be one and what my reward would be for success. She had made that entirely clear.

And She had made equally clear what the inevitable price would be for failure, and it was one that I would never ever pay.

Until I'd met Hawke, I would have said without hesitation that my only and dearest wish was to become a Dark Justicar - a hand-picked servant of Lady Shar, ascended to their status after grueling trials only the most devout could pass. A vessel of the goddess, who all other worshippers of Shar would accept as a personal expression of Her will. Mother Superior had always denied my requests to assay the trials, claiming that I was not ready, claiming that it was not anything I should dare to aspire to. But I'd always believed deep inside that Mother Superior had been wrong, that one day Lady Shar would call me to service as one... if I was able to prove my worth.

And now I stood on the cusp of that dream coming to fruition and I wasn't even certain that I wanted it anymore. But I was entirely certain of what I did not want to see happen, and so-

Before Shar we stand gloriously naked, beyond the vanities of mortals. In darkness there is an end to hope, to pain, to desire.

Never before did I so desperately pray that that would be true. Because if it wasn't-

No. It had to be true.

Dear gods, it had to be true.

---

Author's Note: And so we finally see what the hell Shadowheart was thinking. Hopefully not too many people are surprised to find out that she was lying.

But yeah, Shar is the worst. Absolutely, entirely, the worst. She's literally the goddess of gaslighting, and her own worshippers get it harder than any of their victims.

 

[noobody77]

Hate this forced Shadowheart stuff, gotta be honest. Seems very fake and unnatural, only put there for drama and angst instead of a natural consequence of the characters personalities.

 

[cliffc999]

Hate this forced Shadowheart stuff, gotta be honest. Seems very fake and unnatural, only put there for drama and angst instead of a natural consequence of the characters personalities.

Click to shrink...

Did you read her interlude? It is fake and unnatural. Shadowheart is doing it under coercion, not because she actually believes a word she said to Hawke.