Baldur's Gate 3 - Blog Posts

work in progress😼

Commission for client on FB. His dragonborn character from his DnD campaign stands proudly on the island.

Hello everyone, new writer here!!

I have some writing ideas in mind but I thought it'd be wiser to start off by writing what you guys want to read first then I might elaborate the projects I already have in mind.

GENERAL INFOS:

English isn't my first language so please be bear with me if I make any mistakes (which will happen for sure)

I probably won't write for a male!reader. Nothing against male readers, of course, but I feel that I don't have enough writing skills to write as well for a man as I would for a woman. That being said, I still might try it out in the future if it's something that many of you want. Gender neutral is also totally fine to me!

Keep in mind that I'm still studying so I might not be always able to post the same day someone sends a request, but I'll try to write my fics in no more than 3 days after the commission

If any fic I write contains spoilers from the book/series/movie THERE WILL BE A WARNING so that I don't ruin anything to anyone🤗

FANDOMS I WRITE FOR:

The Arcana

Dragon Age, all four games

Game of Thrones, all series and books

Kingdom of Heaven

Lord of the Rings, Silmarillion and other book characters included

Baldur's Gate 3

Death Note

My Hero Academia

If you want fics from other fandoms you can still ask me and I'll do some research on it so that I can make something, but it will take more time ofc.

THINGS I WON'T DO (smut related):

Anything revolving a lack of consent so no noncon, dubcon, cnc,...

Pedophilia and zoophilia (ew)

Any naughty actions related to any sort of bodily discharge (period excluded)

Any butt stuff related activities, no shame in who likes it at all but it's something that I just don't like personally and wouldn't be comfortable writing

I think that is all you guys need to know for now, once I'll get enough fics done I'll add the masterlist in this post too so you guys can see if my writing is of your liking.

Byeeee hope I'll see you in the requests!!!!

Gale is my 1950s weak male wife that cooks dinner for me after a long day of work and looks after the kids.

(yes I made this)

Break of Dawn, Chapter 3 (Astarion x Tiefling! Tav)

A/N: I wanted to experiment writing chapters from Astarion's perspective, so that's what this is. Featuring Astarion's awesome flirting skills and vague Gale slander.

Warnings: Brief flashback scene with Cazabitch but nothing too graphic.

WC: 4k

Astarion could not believe his good fortune.

To be fair, he would’ve thought a day spent somewhere besides the palace or someone else’s bed without the threat of a whip to the back would’ve been paradise, but this? This was beyond anything he had dared to hope for.

Which was funny, considering how his day had started.

It was the same as always: woken from a weak trance he had been lucky enough to earn by the tapping of his master’s staff. He had rolled out of his bunk and bent his head as Cazador gave his orders. Ten people by sunrise, no preference for age or sex, but he’d receive something by way of a reward if he found someone blonde. Astarion never questioned his master’s tastes. Success meant dinner, failure meant pain. He had agreed because he had no other option.

Cazador had gripped his chin in a frigid hand, tilting Astarion’s head back until he was forced to meet his master’s eyes. A small smile had crossed his face while he examined Astarion, a cruel sort of fondness in his gaze.

“Your brother fell short of my expectations,” he had drawled in a voice like a breeze through a crypt. “And I have no desire to punish another of my children tonight.” One thin eyebrow had raised. “You won’t disappoint me, will you?”

“No, master.” 

The smile twitched up slightly.

“For your sake, I should hope so.”

Cazador had bent and pressed a kiss against Astarion’s hairline, and it took everything he had to suppress the shudder that almost wracked his body. As Cazador straightened, the grip around his chin suddenly tightened, and Astarion caught a glimpse of what he knew to be the beginnings of Cazador’s irritation.                 

“I gave you the privilege to rest, my child. It is well past nightfall now. Did you not think I would want you ready by sunset?”      

“I’m sorry, master, I—"

A squeeze against his throat and Astarion’s voice had choked off.

“You have taken advantage of my generosity. Perform well tonight, and perhaps I will overlook this slight.” Cazador had given him a long, slow blink. “I told you ten for tonight?”

Astarion nodded, knowing better than to speak. Cazador’s smile split into a full grin, fangs curved over pale lips.

“Bring me fifteen.”

Astarion had dressed as best he could, doing his best to hide the ache deep in his bones and the familiar dagger pain in his stomach. He had passed the kennels on the way out and ignored Petras’s howls from inside. Petras had failed. Astarion would not.

He had walked the halls so many times that he barely registered the servants stalking the passages, fists clenched tightly around their brooms and rags, eyes turned down in permanent subjugation. His thoughts swirled in a spiral of his own mental chastising. He knew better than to oversleep, knew better than to push his master’s limits. Now he was paying the price. Fifteen before the sun came up was near impossible, but it was nothing he hadn’t managed before. Astarion had grit his teeth. He wouldn’t fail.

He was so distracted that he had nearly collided with Dalyria. Astarion hissed and sidestepped her.

“Watch where you’re going,” he had growled at her. Dalyria had just huffed and continued the way he had come from, he caught the faint scent of blood as she passed. He paused and turned back to watch her go.

“You ate?” he called. Dalyria had stopped and tilted her head back.

“I brought the master one of the hunters from the Gur camp. I was rewarded.”                                                                                                      

Astarion’s stomach rumbled at the mere mention of a meal.        

“With what?” 

Dalyria had blinked, and Astarion caught a glimpse of pity. Maybe a bit of guilt.         

“A rabbit.

Astarion could hardly believe it. Two hundred years and he’d never gotten a rabbit. Dalyria flinched as Astarion couldn’t even bother to hide his rage.

“Perhaps if you’re quick tonight, you will be rewarded, too.”

Astarion said nothing as he slipped away. He couldn’t fail now. Not if rabbits were on the table. He’d bring Cazador all the blondes on the Sword Coast if he had to.   

The lamplit streets of Baldur’s Gate were familiar to Astarion as he slinked down the paths to his usual haunts in the Lower City. Yousen had nearly been flayed alive a few nights prior when he’d brought back the son of a wealthy patriar by accident, so the Upper City was currently off limits. That meant seedy bars and sweaty hands ruining his already patched-together clothing, but at least the people there wouldn’t be missed. He could already feel himself going through the motions: drawing his back up straight, fixing his hair, digging roach legs out from between his teeth and wiping the dirt from his skin. Tonight, he was a charming magistrate from the Upper City looking for a pretty commoner to bring back to his estate. Confident, sultry, put-together. For his sake, he hoped he found someone who bought it.

Astarion passed the Elfsong and noticed it was busy but decided against finding a mark there. He’d gone to that tavern the last few nights he’d been sent out and had no desire to draw suspicion, even if the patrons there were usually of a higher class than those that frequented the less popular bars in the city. Instead, Astarion’s feet brought up to the Blushing Mermaid. He wasn’t fond of the sailors and pirates that he pulled there—the one thing worse than their breath was their manners, both in and out of the bedroom—but the Mermaid’s clientele was often a desperate sort. People who had just spent months with nothing but the open ocean for miles and only their own hands for company. Usually, all it took was a whispered promise of ecstasy to get a wayward sailor following on his heels. The quality of any resulting situation was rarely stellar and often painful, but it was nothing Astarion hadn’t stomached before.

He was already running down his reliable list of lines to use on his chosen victim when a sudden gust of air blew past the top of his head. Astarion curled his lip, knowing his hair was now likely in disarray, but a scream further up the street drew his focus away.

It was Baldur’s Gate. Astarion had heard screaming before, often followed by the sound of a coin purse or a stomach getting split open and the footsteps of a thief fleeing the scene before the Fist arrived, but this felt different. It wasn’t a scream of someone being mugged or assaulted. Whoever it was sounded terrified.

He didn’t even get the chance to find out why when a light flared up before him, and even after two centuries of running from the sun Astarion could tell it wasn’t daylight. If his lungs still had breath, he was sure the air would’ve been sucked from him. His ears popped, and the light disappeared.

The next thing he knew, he was in a very tight and very dark place, and for a moment his undead heart seized at just the prospect of being deep underground again. His hands clawed out, terror in his throat. What had happened? Had he passed out? Been attacked? Tears burned in his eyes because he knew it didn’t matter what had happened if he had failed. If one of Cazador’s minions had had to drag him back to the mansion empty handed.

He was back in a coffin, back to endless days of blackness and hunger and—

Astarion’s hands met glass.

The panic waned for a moment, replaced by confusion. His fingers dragged down a cold surface, and now that he wasn’t consumed entirely by fear and actually focused, he could see that the surface in front of him was transparent but fogged up by smoke and his frantic undead breath. Glass, he told himself. Not wood. Not a coffin.          

But that hadn’t answered his question of where he was. Or, more importantly, how much trouble he was going to be in when he escaped.

He was just beginning to formulate excuses and apologies for whenever he next faced his master’s wrath when the glass suddenly lifted away, and Astarion found himself face to face with one of the most hideous creatures he’d ever seen. All tentacles and beady orange eyes, long fingers holding up something squirming, and then he was screaming as his eyelids were pried open and it was shoved into his socket, wriggling all the way down.

Astarion had faded in and out of consciousness after that, wondering if it was all just a bad dream—somehow worse than his usual bad dreams—but soon he felt a shudder through the floor, and the far wall was ripped away. He couldn’t get a good look outside, but he saw a bolt of fire rip through the room. Astarion could do nothing but watch in terror as the room began to burn and hope that he wouldn’t be roasted alive. Well, not alive, but…you know.

Soon after he caught sight of someone moving outside. He had reached up and wiped away some of the fog on the glass and saw the vague outline of a tiefling climbing down from some kind of large pod. The same kind of pod Astarion figured he had to be in. He watched the tiefling straighten out, horns stark against the blaze of flames, and saw their face framed in the light streaming from outside. It was a woman, that much he could tell, but she was sprinting from the room before he had the opportunity make out much else besides that and the symbol of a sun on her chest armor. He didn’t even have the chance to call out for help.                   

Another lurch, and he had no time to stop his head from snapping forward against the glass, and everything went dark again.

Then he was on the beach.

Everything had hurt when he opened his eyes again, more than usual, but that quickly became a low priority problem when he realized he was laying in the sun. Astarion had shot up, every instinct in him telling him to run, but as he stood and looked down to assess the damage, he was beyond shocked to see no blisters, no burns. Instead, just his pale skin, fully exposed to the sun, scratched and slightly bloody but otherwise completely fine. He was standing in the sun. Standing in the sun and he was okay.        

It took another bewildered moment for Astarion to realize another thing. Besides a splitting headache, his mind felt remarkably empty. There was a strange tingle behind his eye, but beyond that, nothing. No voice telling him what to do. No whispered command to cut his own skin or to lay with a person he could not have cared less about. No compulsion. No Cazador.                         

If his headache wasn’t so bad, Astarion would’ve been convinced he had died a second time and somehow slipped into Elysium.

His elation only lasted a moment longer before reality set in, however. He was, somehow, standing in the sun, far enough away that Cazador couldn’t reach him, completely and utterly by himself with no idea where he was or what to do. The familiar rumble in his stomach told him a meal should be a top priority, followed perhaps by a tumble in the river to see if he could manage a swim without his vampiric nature causing the water to make him vomit. Then he needed to find civilization.

Astarion looked around. He needed a plan.                                   

He didn’t know how to make a plan.               

He sighed.    

Maybe the situation wasn’t as great as he thought.

Astarion was standing in front of the wreck of his pod, trying to force his brain to come up with something useful, when he heard a voice over his shoulder. He turned and saw two figures further up the road he’d been standing on, with a third a little bit behind them. Astarion blinked into the sun—his eyes were starting to hurt from the sudden strain—and caught the shape of curved horns and red skin.                  A tiefling. The tiefling. The one that had ditched him on the ship.

Now he had a plan.

A plea for help had brought the woman over, with her two companions following shortly after. A quick lie about one of the mindflayers’ pets in the bushes brought the tiefling close enough to snatch, but not before he caught her eyes and saw a momentary flash of suspicion. Astarion gave her his best smile in an attempt to broadcast that he could be trusted and grabbed her the moment she turned her back on him. Stupid move on her part. Never trust a stranger on the road.

Her companions had started yelling almost immediately as he brought his knife to the tiefling’s throat, and this close he could smell her. The sweat on her skin, the faint whiff of cinnamon underneath, and the blood in her veins. Rich and delicious. Her neck was right there. He felt his mouth begin to water and his stomach reminded him that he was starving. All it would take was a tilt of his head, an open mouth, and he’d be more fed in that moment than he had been in nearly two centuries.                      

There was a blossom of pain against his chin and the tiefling was slipping from his hands. With a start, he realized she had bashed her horns against his face. Bitch.             

Astarion leapt to his feet and held his dagger up as he faced the tiefling and her companions. In the sun, her skin looked red as cherries, but there was something wrong with it. He squinted and caught the raised edges of scars curling over her lower face and down her neck. Burn scars, from the look of it, too old to have come from the burning ship. Even with the scars, the woman was pretty. Attractive. Bright, clever eyes, long dark hair braided down her back. His gaze was drawn to her armor again, and he recognized the symbol of the sun as Lathander’s. The Morninglord had no temples in the city, but his and his followers’ quest against the undead was violent enough that Cazador had taught all the spawn to be wary of those baring the mark of the Dawnbringer. 

Astarion narrowed his eyes. So, not only had the woman left him behind, but she also happened to serve the one god who hated the undead more than anything else? Great. Wonderful. Fantastic.

He had spat out his suspicion towards the woman, accusing her of working for the illithids, to which she had retorted that none of them—neither her nor her companions—had wanted to be on that ship. Apparently, they had gotten something slimy forced into their eyes. Parasites that would turn them into mindflayers by the week’s end if they didn’t find a cure. Astarion felt his heart plummet.

He’d gotten the sun and freedom from his mater in exchange for hideous tentacles. Just his luck.

The tiefling introduced herself as Tav, the brooding half-elf as Shadowheart—ominous—and the human wizard as Gale. To Astarion’s surprise, Tav had extended the offer to him to travel with her group, much to Shadowheart’s immediate and obvious irritation. He had weighed his options. On the one hand, he knew it would be incredibly stupid to follow a Lathanderite whose sole divine mission was to hunt the undead. If she even had the hint of suspicion that he was on her god’s hit list, he was done for.

On the other, Astarion genuinely couldn’t recall the last time he’d been on his own. The last time he had to fend for himself. He had enough sense to know that trying to survive by himself would likely end in disaster, and that his odds improved exponentially when accounting for allies, even if one was Lathander’s pet cleric. Oh, well. Beggars couldn’t be choosers.                                               

Astarion had sheathed his dagger and agreed, layering on his best smile for good measure.

Yes, his luck was certainly on the upswing.     

---

Astarion may have not been a fully-fledged member of society in two hundred years, but that didn’t mean he’d forgotten how to make conversation. A skill the wizard apparently lacked. It had taken less than ten minutes of Gale’s rambling about the wildlife he’d noticed on their journey so far for Astarion to determine that, at the first chance, he was pushing the wizard off a cliff. The half-elf, Shadowheart, wasn’t much better. She was quiet and somber, glaring at him every time he so much as looked her way. Astarion gathered enough to know that she, too, was a cleric, but she wouldn’t say who her patron was.

That was fine enough for Astarion. The only confirmation he needed was that Shadowheart was not another Lathanderite. Her lip had curled when she denied the accusation, and Astarion had the sneaking suspicion that, for all Shadowheart’s bristles, she may have been a kindred spirit.

Then there was Tav. Early on in their trek, had had bounded to the front where she was walking. It was obvious the other two were looking to Tav as some kind of leader, and damned if he wasn’t going to weasel his way into her good graces as soon as he could.

“So,” he had drawled as he sidled up to her side. “What’s a woman like you doing in a place like this?”

He almost bit his tongue from cringing at his own line, but it had gotten an eyeroll and a small grin out of Tav, which he counted as a win.

“A mindflayer ship, same as you.”

“Ah, yes. Of course.”             

He waited for Tav to say something, but she let the attempt at conversation lapse into an awkward silence only broken by Gale’s whistling from behind them. Astarion had cleared his throat and cast a glance at Tav. She was pretty, even with the roping scars across her face and neck.

“What were you doing when the mindflayers got you?” she finally said, obviously feeling his eyes on her. He smiled, slipping into the persona he’d been ready to use on his victims.

“Just some late-night paperwork. I’m a magistrate, back in Baldur’s Gate. Tedious work. I’d stepped outside to stretch my legs when those heathens snatched me up.”                                                         

“Baldur’s Gate?” Tav said, and he had caught a curious look in her eye. “I was heading that way when the mindflayers got me."         

“What buisiness do you have in the city?”

Tav had paused, swallowed, bit her lip.

“Visiting friends.”

Astarion knew a lie when he saw one but hadn’t pressed his luck.

Shortly after that, shouting from up ahead and drawn their attention. Astarion stood back and watched as Tav had jogged up, and when he and the others had caught up with her, they saw Tav speaking to two other tieflings who were pointing at something hung in a cage nearby. Upon closer inspection, Astarion saw it was a gith woman, looking very much like an angry toad, glaring at the crowd below.

Tav was talking in low tones to the tieflings, but the words that reached his ears were in a language he didn’t recognize. The two tieflings had exchanged a glance with each other before walking away. Shadowheart had turned on Tav the moment they were out of earshot.

“You are not freeing are, are you?” she had snapped. Tav had already angled her fingers in the direction of the rope holding the cage above the ground.

“More the merrier, Shadowheart. We need allies.”

“Not if those allies are gith.”

Tav hadn’t waited for any more dissention. She let loose a small flicker of brilliant gold flame that seared the edge of the rope. With a crash, the cage had collided into the ground, freeing the gith inside. Almost immediately, Shadowheart broke into an angry rant that the gith wasted no time in joining. Tav nudged in-between the two, attempting to cool the situation.

“Well, she seems delightful,” Gale had quipped from beside him.

Tav had eventually explained that she and Shadowheart had met the gith woman on the mindflayer vessel, and that apparently the gith had been very adamant on leaving Shadowheart to burn alive in her pod, something Shadowheart was still very clearly upset about. There was some bickering, some swearing, and some mild threats of violence, but both Shadowheart and the gith had eventually fallen into a tense calm.

The gith had introduced herself as Lae’zel before explaining that her people knew a cure for their current predicament, and that the cure was located somewhere she called a creche. Whatever the hells that was. Lae’zel had apparently heard her tiefling captors discussing someone who had seen githyanki nearby, and that must have meant one of their strongholds was in the area.

Tav had then revealed the details of her conversation with the tieflings. Under the guise of needing a healer—which Astarion figured wasn’t quite a lie—she had gotten the tieflings to reveal the location of their encampment: a druid’s grove near the top of the incline, around a mile away. However, the tieflings had mentioned something about the grove not being open to strangers, especially not after dark, so the group had decided to make camp and visit the grove in the morning.

That was almost an hour ago, and the sun was giving out its last bit of light before dipping beneath the horizon. As it turned out, only Tav, Lae’zel, and Shadowheart had the supplies to set up a tent, but the two clerics had extra bedrolls to spare for him and Gale. Lae’zel had found an open patch of grass near the beach that was far enough away from the trees to ease fears about wild animals finding their little camp. It was far from luxury, but anywhere Astarion could lay down without Cazador breathing down his neck was good enough. 

Astarion was setting up his bedroll around the fire Gale had started and found his eyes wandering to Tav. Out of solidarity, she had refused to put up her tent and elected to sleep out in the open with him and Gale. Shadowheart and Lae’zel had not followed her example and were putting their tents up on opposite ends of the clearing. Gale meanwhile had begun walking the perimeter of the camp and was setting up protection spells for some extra insurance against attacks, leaving just Astarion and Tav by the fire. Astarion watched her removing her armor piece by piece, first the large chest plate followed by the tough leather shirt underneath, leaving her in just a loose shirt and leggings. The more she stripped away, the more it became clear how far down her scars ran. Her arms, hands, and upper chest were all mottled with puckered tissue, interspersed with patches of white flesh.

“It’s vitiligo,” she said suddenly. He blinked. Apparently he wasn’t being as subtle as he had thought.                      

“Sorry?”

Tav looked up, and in the dark her infernal eyes almost seemed to glow. She pointed to a spot of white skin just above her elbow, stark against the surrounding red flesh.

“These little patches. It’s a skin condition. My body doesn’t make enough pigment, so sometimes the color gets washed out.” She looked up with a crooked smile. “It’s not contagious.”

Astarion hadn’t even realized he was leaning away from her.                  

“Ah. Yes, of course. I knew that.”

Tav gave him a look that he wasn’t sure was a good one.

“Besides,” continued, looking back down to where she was running a cloth over a crossbow. “You’re so pale already, I doubt it would make much of a difference.”

Astarion huffed and rolled his eyes.

“Don’t blame me for wanting to keep all this,” he gestured up and down his body, “looking its best.” He blinked. “Not that the spots don’t suit you, of course. They’re charming.”

“Thanks. I guess.”

Astarion shot her his best smile, but only saw a slight scrunch form between her full brows. Tav was speaking again before he had a chance to take control of the conversation. 

“Speaking of, not to be rude of course, but I couldn’t help but notice you are rather…pallid.” Tav turned to face him fully, crossbow abandoned in her lap. “Don’t get a lot of sun?”

Astarion met her gaze. There was something in Tav’s expression, a pinch in the corners of her eyes, that he couldn’t put his finger on. So, he shrugged and let an easy grin fall over his face.

“I spend my days in an office, darling. Not a lot of time for sunlight when the Fist have you pouring over every minor case this side of the Chionthar.”

“Are you sick, then? The paleness could be due to…lack of blood flow, perhaps? Poor circulation?” 

Astarion caught the suspicion in her eyes this time. An arc in her brow as she worried the skin of her lip between her front teeth. He cursed himself. Tav was a cleric of Lathander. They were bloodhounds when it came to sniffing out the undead. Combined with the other events of the day, she was definitely on high alert.

So, he smiled. Leaned back onto his hands, purposefully catching the fading sunlight that was streaking into camp past the trees. He didn’t need a mirror to know the rays were directly on his face now.

“Alas, I am but one victim in a long line of porcelain elves. Just be grateful you got me and not my father—staring at him in this light would blind you.”

He wasn’t sure if that was a lie or not. Astarion couldn’t remember his father’s face.

“But I do appreciate your concern, dear. Should I feel under the weather, you’ll be the first I call.”

Tav took a long moment, staring at him in the sun, obviously fighting some internal battle. Astarion watched, begging her to let the matter drop, to turn away, to give him his first easy night in two centuries.

At last, her lips curled up in a slight grin, but he could still see a sliver of hesitation in her eyes.

“Of course. I didn’t mean to be nosey. Cleric’s instincts, you understand.”

“Water under the bridge, darling."

There was a clatter and a shout, and they both turned to look over at where Shadowheart and Lae’zel were bickering over what looked like a broken crossbow. Tav sighed and stood, brushing dirt off her pants as she turned away to calm the storm once again.

“I’ll take the first watch tonight,” he called after her. Tav glanced back, a question in her eyes, but she simply nodded. He watched her go, her tail curled up high against her back, shoulders strong, hair well-combed.

An uneasy feeling stirred in his stomach. Tav was suspicious, and watching him walk in the sun was only going to stop her snooping for so long. Eventually, she was going to start digging like Lathander’s lapdogs always do, and the game would be up when she inevitably found out the truth.

Astarion drew his brows together. Vampires were far from the most well-liked creatures in Faerûn, and he didn’t trust any of the people in camp to let him stay if they found out what he was. At best he’d be cast out, at worst he’d be staked. And as much as Astarion hated to admit it, he knew he’d be useless by himself. Two hundred years deprived of freedom led to rusty survival skills. He needed this group, if for nothing else just to keep him safe for the time being.                More importantly, he needed Tav. Her approval was a necessity to earn his place in her makeshift party. It was just a matter of how to earn that approval.

His stomach growled, and he was once again reminded of how hungry he was.

Tav’s favor was a tomorrow problem. For now, he was going to find himself a godsdamn rabbit for dinner.

Break of Dawn, Chapter 2 (Astarion x Tiefling! Tav)

A/N: Okay second chapter and Astarion finally shows up lol. Featuring Tav's spidey sense immediately clocking something is Weird about this random elf and Shadowheart being really good at making friends. Feedback is, as always, greatly appreciated!

Warnings: None except for Shadowheart's snark. Expect smut and violence in later chapters.

WC: 5k

Thankfully, while she did wake up with a headache again, it wasn’t nearly as severe as the one that had roused her early. Tav groaned, feeling like she had just been at the receiving end of a rothé stampede, before remembering that what had actually happened wasn’t much better. It took a moment for her to wonder if the fall had killed her and she was now laying there waiting for Kelemevor’s judgement, but the distant sound of birds and what felt like sand beneath her fingers convinced her otherwise. With a great amount of effort, Tav peeled her eyes open, only to be immediately met with sunlight. It took everything she had not to curse Lathander and to instead be grateful that at least she was being blinded by the actual sun and not Avernus’s hellfire.

She let out a deep sigh and sat up. Looking around, she noticed that she was, in fact, on a beach, which explained the sand. The beach was also on fire. Or, at least, the wreckage scattered about the beach was on fire. Tav was almost shielded by the burnt remains of the illithid ship, now sinking into the tide, and she couldn’t help but think the mindflayers could have at least had the courtesy to crash the ship in a way that would’ve protected her eyes from the sun.           

Tav pulled herself to her feet and did her best to brush the sand and dirt from her clothes. Her breastplate was dented but intact, but her leather pants were ripped up and her boots needed a good repair. The tips of her hair were also singed, though she had needed a trim, anyways. After a general once-over, Tav determined that, while she was probably bruised from head to toe and would likely be walking with a limp for the foreseeable future, she had no grave wounds. She channeled some healing magic to patch together a gash on her upper arm, but the effort left her so drained that she didn’t bother with any of the other cuts. Tav knew she needed time and rest for her magic to replenish itself, and she could only hope she wouldn’t be tussling with any mindflayers before she got a nap in.

After gathering some herbs she’d noticed on the shoreline, Tav began the journey forward. She didn’t have a clue where she was but knew answers wouldn’t present themselves if she stayed in one place. However, she didn’t make it far before she stumbled on a familiar figure.

There, sprawled in the sand further up the beach, was Shadowheart. 

Tav jogged forward, hoping she was finding an unconscious ally rather than a dead one, and was relieved when she saw the slow rise and fall of Shadowheart’s chest. As Tav bent down to wake her, she took note of something clasped in the half-elf’s hand. Tav leaned closer to get a better view and realized it was a small, angular object, covered on all sides in what she recognized as gith script, though Tav couldn’t recall if it was of githyanki or githzerai origin. She figured that the object was what Shadowheart had paused to gather from her pod, and while her curiosity tempted her to snatch the artifact, Tav stamped the urge down and instead did gave Shadowheart’s arms a shake.

She woke slowly, grunting at the light much like Tav had, and when her green eyes focused, Tav caught a flash of surprise.

“You’re alive,” Shadowheart said, not sounding fully convinced. “I’m alive. How is this possible?”

Tav shrugged and helped Shadowheart to her feet, watching as she tucked the artifact back into a pocket.            

“Your guess is as good as mine. What matters is that we survived.”

Shadowheart huffed and began to dust off her armor, though the details were still smudged over with grime. “I suppose you’re right. Do you know where are?"

“I was hoping you may have an answer to that,” Tav replied. “I don’t recognize the area, though I haven’t gotten the chance to really look around yet. Maybe we’ll find something familiar.”         

“We?” Shadowheart raised an eyebrow. “You want to stay together?”

“It makes the most sense,” Tav said. “We’re both infected and need to find a cure. We stand a better chance surviving out here if we travel together.”

A wry smile crossed Shadowheart’s face, and it was only then, in the light and away from the turmoil of battle, that Tav took note of just how pretty the young woman was.       

“A logical plan. If you hadn’t been running around with that gith, I’d say you were pretty smart.” Tav snorted, but Shadowheart’s words did bring up something she hadn’t noticed yet.

“Speaking of, where is she? I saw you fall off the ship but I lost sight of her.”

“I wouldn’t worry about her,” Shadowheart said. “She wasn’t going to spare the energy to help me, so I won’t spare any energy on her.” Something flashed in Shadowheart’s eyes and she seemed to hesitate slightly before continuing. “On that note, I did want to thank you for that. Staying behind to free me. You didn’t have to, and it would’ve honestly been the smart move to save yourself instead of risking your neck for a stranger, but you did anyways. I’m grateful for that.”     

Tav smiled and tucked a wayward strand of hair behind a pointed ear.

“I wouldn’t have just walked away and let you die. I don’t think I could’ve lived with myself if I did.”

“Not many people would’ve shared that sentiment,” Shadowheart mused, and Tav couldn’t help but wonder if Shadowheart counted herself amongst that crowd. “Regardless of your reasoning, you saved my life. I won’t forget that.” 

Before Tav could say anything, Shadowheart looked around the beach and let out a deep breath.     

“Well, enough with the heart-to-hearts. We’re losing daylight. We should find somewhere to make camp for the night.”

Tav looked towards the horizon and noticed Shadowheart was right. With how low the sun was, she figured they maybe had a few hours before dark. In unfamiliar territory, Tav didn’t relish the idea of getting caught in the wilds when the sun went down. 

“Agreed. Let’s get moving, then.”   

The pair began moving up from the beach towards the tree line, taking note of a large stone door that appeared to lead into some kind of temple, but it was locked and neither could pick it, so they continued on. Tav said a small prayer to herself every time they passed the body of someone who had clearly been caught in the crash, which earned her a look from Shadowheart every time.

“You’re a cleric too, aren’t you?” Tav asked, to which Shadowheart nodded. “So then you know it is only natural to want to lay the dead to rest.”

Shadowheart paused a moment, pursed her lips, and said nothing.    

As they passed through the smoldering remains of the illithid vessel, Tav attempted to make small talk, but the conversation was stilted, with Shadowheart seemingly uncomfortable discussing herself. When Tav had pressed on which deity Shadowheart served, she had clammed up, stating that it was a private matter. Tav attempted to ease her worries by affirming her own worship of Lathander, but that only seemed to make Shadowheart more wary. After taking care of a few rogue intellect devourers in the wreckage and picking over the bodies, Tav began to run down a list of patrons in her head that would’ve commanded such secrecy. Kelemvor wasn’t off the table—given how nobody was particularly eager to befriend someone that hung out in cemeteries all day, Tav wouldn’t be surprised if Shadowheart wanted to keep that to herself—or perhaps her god was simply less popular. Loviatar, perhaps? Or Mask, maybe, though Shadowheart didn’t seem like much of a thief.

While Tav was pondering, she watched Shadowheart reach down into the pockets of a corpse and retrieve a piece of fabric, which she used to begin wiping down her armor. In the sunlight, Tav caught a glimpse at the front of Shadowheart’s breastplate. Blazoned right in the center was a large black circle decorated with golden arches almost resembling a setting sun. It wasn’t familiar to Tav, though as she began to take notice of Shadowheart’s other accessories, namely those revolving around more big black circles, a sick feeling curled up her spine. Shadowheart couldn’t be…could she?

“Are you just going to stand there and gawk or will you actually do something useful in the near future?”                   

Shadowheart’s quip broke Tav out of her train of thought. She blinked and smiled up at Shadowheart but could feel that it didn’t quite reach her eyes.

“Sorry, I…I think the tadpole is eating at my brain.”    

Shadowheart didn’t look entirely convinced but seemed not to care about what had caused Tav’s lapse in focus, since she just shrugged and hopped down from the ledge she’d been on.

“Alright, but if you plan on dying a horrible death, please do so from a safe distance away. I’ve fought enough mindflayers for one day.” 

Tav laughed. It didn’t shake the worry and suspicion that had started brewing in her stomach.

After looting what parts of the ship they could access, the pair started up a small cliff only to come across a large sigil sputtering against the side of the mountain. They glanced at each other before raising their hands and creeping closer, ready with magic if the situation called for it. Tav moved right to the front of it, while Shadowheart stayed further back. When Tav gave her a look, she said, “In case you need backup, of course,” accompanied by a wry smile. Tav curled her lip, but wasn’t able to say anything in response, as it was at that moment when a hand suddenly shot from the depths of the sigil. She yelped and stumbled back and the hand and its accompanying arm began to wave erratically.

“Hello?”

A voice called out, seemingly from deep within the rune itself. Tav approached, head tilted in curiosity, watching the hand move.

“Some help? For a wizard in need?"

Tav turned to look at Shadowheart, who seemed just as confused, before looking back at the hand.

"Are you okay?” she called, at a loss for what else to say.

“I assure you I will be, once a potentially kind soul helps me out of my current predicament!” the voice yelled back, sounding far more chipper than Tav would’ve expected for someone apparently stuck in a mountain.

She gave the rune a look and reached out with her own magic, asking Lathander for his guidance to lead her around the spell and calm its wrath. She followed his direction until she felt confident to raise her hands and began to channel a countercharm. Tav watched the jagged edges of the sigil begin to soften, and from inside, she heard the voice call out again.

“Whatever it is you’re doing, it’s doing the trick! A good tug should do it now."      

Tav grabbed the hand and, with Shadowheart behind gripping her shoulders, began to pull backwards. She could feel the sigil fighting back until, with a pop, its power sizzled out, and the pair fell backwards as the individual inside the rune sprang loose. Shadowheart stumbled away, but Tav landed in a heap—for the third time that day, she snarked to herself—with the stranger on top of her. She looked up and met the very surprised gaze of a man, who immediately began to stutter.

“Oh! By the Weave, I am so sorry, that was most unbecoming of a gentleman, I apologize, my lady.” He continued to ramble as he stood, reaching down to help Tav up in a reversal of their previous position.

“Really, I don’t normally tackle people who save my life by way of thanks. Not that my life is often in need of saving, mind you, I promise I am not some wayward adventurer, I’m just a humble wizard who got themselves into a spot of trouble with an errant group of illithid, and, well, we can all see how that went—”

Tav glanced over at Shadowheart, who looked like she really wished they had just ignored the rune, before turning back and holding up her hands.

“Hey!”

The man clamped his jaws shut, and Tav noticed a blush high on his cheeks. Whether out of embarrassment or from their earlier close proximity, she had no clue.

“Don’t worry about it. Seriously, it isn’t a big deal.”   

A smile broke out onto the man’s face, deepening the lines around his eyes and lips. He was handsome, in a scholarly sort of way, with dark hair curling around curved human ears and bright brown eyes indicative of all overly curious wizards.

“Oh, I think rescuing a rather unlucky wizard is a rather big deal, actually. But,” he held up his hands, “I can assure you that I am most grateful for your kindness. I just wish I had something in the way of thanks.”

Tav smiled. This man was odd, even for a wizard.

“Thank me by explaining how you wound up in that stone. Not a normal location to find someone.”

“A most unusual circumstance, to be certain,” he replied. “One in a long series of most unusual circumstances I have experienced today.” He raised a brow. “Circumstances I believe all three of us share? I saw you. On the mindflayers’ ship, I mean.” 

Tav glanced at Shadowheart, who very clearly did not want anything to do with the current situation, and realized she was going to have to do the talking.

“Yes, we were both on the ship, along with a gith woman who seems to have been lost in the crash.”            

The wizard’s eyes widened.

“So it was a gith attack that brought the ship down? I had my suspicions, but…” He trailed off before shaking his head. “Anyways, it was a tumble out of that ship that put me in the situation where I needed to find a way to spare myself the particularly quick death I was facing as the ground approached. When I sensed the magic in that stone, I reached out, hoping to slow my fall, which I was successful in doing so, at the cost of sending myself across the Weave and into the stone itself.” He shrugged. “Magic, eh? Never know where it will take you.                         

"But, sudden real life applications of the forces of gravity aside, since we were all unwilling passengers on the nautiloid, I imagine all three of us were at the receiving end of a spontaneous and unwanted insertion in the ocular region?”

It took a moment for Tav to decipher what on earth the man had just said, but when she did, she grimaced.        

“If you mean the tadpole, then yes. I take it you got one too?”               

The man smiled, but there wasn’t much mirth behind it.               

“Indeed. As much as I love getting firsthand experience with the lesser-known cultures of Faerûn, I can say this was one encounter I would have rather avoided. Are you aware of the…eh, shall we say violent conclusion such an infection brings?”     

Tav’s scowl deepened.

“Unfortunately. We have days, a week at best, before we’re mindflayers ourselves.”      

“Right you are,” the man responded. “Now, I can’t help but notice you bear the symbol of Lathander,” he pointed to the center of her breastplate where the Morninglord’s sun blazed, “which leads me to hope that you are perhaps a cleric skilled in the ways of much needed cerebral surgery?”        

“You seem to know enough about our condition to know that we’ll need more than a cleric to solve this problem,” Shadowheart suddenly butted in. The man gave a halfhearted chuckle.

“No harm in asking, I suppose.”

"Well, we were on our way to find some kind of civilization,” Tav said. “Since we’re all in the same boat, do you want to tag along?”

At the same moment, the man’s face split into a broad grin as Shadowheart scowled deeply.

“I did not want to impose on your hospitality—”            

“Then don’t,” Shadowheart muttered, to which Tav shot her a glare.

“—but I must admit I was rather worried I was going to have to figure this out on my own. It is a great relief to have found allies in arms. Or, tentacles, perhaps.”

Tav rolled her eyes and watched Shadowheart do the same before smiling.

“Great. I’m Tav, this is Shadowheart. And you are?”

The man’s eyes widened.

“Oh goodness, where are my manners?” He thrust out his hand. “Gale of Waterdeep, at your most grateful service.”                      

“Waterdeep?” Tav said as she shook the wizard's hand. “That’s where I’m coming from.”

"Ah!” Gale responded, his face bright, clearly happy to have someone else from his city nearby. “A resident of the Spires of the Morning, I take it? A beautiful temple indeed. Once, when I was a young and rather unwise student at Blackstaff, I spent the festival of Sornyn within those walls, and, well, perhaps got a little too indulgent in the celebrations, and…”

Gale continued to recount stories from his time at Blackstaff as the trio resumed the trek up the mountain.     

“Are you just going to pick up every stray we come across?” Shadowheart hissed out the corner of her mouth as Gale suddenly switched from stories about his student days to ruminations on illusion magic. Tav let a smile cross her features.

“I picked you up, didn’t I?"          

Shadowheart opened her mouth, probably to bite out a reply, but found no words, causing Tav to laugh.           

“Besides,” she continued, “a wizard is always useful to have around.” She glanced behind her, where Gale continued to ramble seemingly without the knowledge that he had no real audience. “Lack of social skills notwithstanding.”     

Shadowheart huffed. “Fine, but the moment a fireball gets too close to my eyebrows, I’m putting him back in that stone.”

Tav had rejoined Gale’s one-sided conversation about Waterdeep when, about half an hour of walking later, the sun now hanging low on the horizon, Shadowheart suddenly stopped up ahead of them and held up a hand.   

“Hold on,” she called back. “Someone’s up ahead.”          

Tav jogged up to Shadowheart, Gale hanging back with a quick excuse that he was the only one of them without armor or a big threatening weapon, and looked over her shoulder.        

Shadowheart was right. Further up the road, a lone figure stood in front of a few broken illithid pods. All she could make out from a distance was a deep maroon overcoat and a shock of white hair.

“Everything look alright?” Gale called, which apparently drew the stranger’s attention. The figure turned, causing Shadowheart to grumble.

“Great. Now we have to talk to him.”

“Maybe he’s another survivor?” Tav mused.

“Or maybe he’s a petty thief hoping to make a quick payday."

Tav sighed. “Only one way to find out.”    

Her grip tightened on her mace and she began to cross the gap between her and the stranger. Behind her, she heard Gale talking to Shadowheart.                      

“A rather brave soul, that one.” 

“You call it bravery. I call it idiocy.” 

“I’ve found the two often work hand in hand.”                           

Tav was too far away to hear Shadowheart’s inevitably rude reply.

As she got closer, she was able to make out more details of the stranger. He was a man, slightly shorter than both Shadowheart and Gale but taller than her without including her horns, with prominent elven ears poking out from beneath curly white hair. He was dressed in well-made clothes, complete with a ruffled collar and elegant belt, leading Tav to wonder if she’d stumbled across a hapless patriar.                 

“You there!” he called. Gods, even his accent was posh.

“Yes?” Tav replied, stopping once she was close enough to talk without yelling but not so close he could reach out and grab her if he felt inclined to. “What’s wrong?”

The elf gestured into the grass. “I’ve got one of those wretched brain things cornered in the brush, but I don’t have anything to kill it with. I hoped you may be a fair bit more capable than me.”      

“What’s going on?”

Tav turned to see Shadowheart and Gale approaching.

“He says there’s an intellect devourer in the grass. Must’ve escaped the crash.”

“Ah!” Gale said, a slight wince to his features. “Nasty things, intellect devourers. It’s said the greater the intelligence of a person, the more intellect devourers are drawn to feast.”

“Sounds like you won’t be having much trouble, then,” Shadowheart replied, earning an immediate stutter from Gale. Before they could bicker, Tav turned back to the elf, who was watching with a mix of amusement and confusion.

“Let me handle this."

She stepped forward, keeping a close eye on the man as he flashed her a charming grin and extended his arms in a mock bow. This close, with the setting sun shining directly on them, Tav got a better look at him. Unlike Gale, who was attractive in the same way that old libraries were—warm and comforting with an air of refinement earned with age—the elf was every bit a stereotypical lady-killer. Strong jaw, sharp nose, high cheekbones. He was a handsome man who clearly knew it, radiating confidence and oozing charisma. It was almost enough to distract her from his eyes.     

Tav stuttered in her steps when she met his gaze. It was piercing like the rest of him, but far from the usual greens or blues she’d expect from an elf. In the sun, his eyes were like wine, deep rich red. It was enough to make her heart stumble, but not from attraction or even arousal. Not when she was certain she caught a glimpse at a sharp tooth between his full lips.

“Losing your nerve, darling?” His voice was low, layered with a charm Tav knew was meant to ease her mind, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that had shot up her spine. All her training under her Dawnmaster, learning to spot the enemies of the Morninglord, telling her to be on her guard. There was a prickle behind her heart, and she almost let her instincts convince her that she was looking at a beast. But the sun was up, and the elf was standing directly in its light. She blinked. False alarm.

“No, of course not.” She stepped forward, shaking the feeling of everything she’d ever learned at the Spires crawling up her spine and nudging the parasite aside to scream into her ear that there was something wrong here—

A rustle in the bushes, and a boar sprinted out from the foliage. Tav let out a breath she didn’t know she’d been holding, and suddenly there was a knife at her throat and she was being pulled into the dirt.   

She saw both Shadowheart and Gale’s hands raise, fire blazing at the tips of their fingers, as the elf clutched her close to his chest, the silver of his blade digging into her scars.       

“Don’t move,” he hissed into her ear. “We don’t want to mark up that pretty neck of yours, now do we?"

“Watch yourself,” she heard Shadowheart call. “You’re outnumbered.”

“And I have your friend at knife point,” the elf responded. “You’ll stay back if you want her blood to stay inside her veins.”

Tav’s brain finally caught up with her. She shook herself and heard the elf bickering with Shadowheart and Gale. Her horns dug into the ground, her tail pinned beneath their combined weight. Tav scowled to herself. She was really off her game today. Even if the elf wasn’t what she thought he was, he still had a blade to her throat, and that made him a threat regardless.

She threw her head to the side while the elf was distracted with her companions and her horns collided with his chin. He hissed, and she took his moment of distraction to slip loose, coming to her feet with hands outstretched. She let holy fire spring to her fingertips despite how low her reserves were running. She really needed a nap.

The elf sprang up to mirror her, his knife clutched in his hands and his pretty face marred by a scowl.

“No weapon, huh?” Tav quipped, nodding to the blade. “If you wanted to rob us, you’re off to a bad start.” The elf’s expression went darker and she watched him squeeze the handle of his dagger.

“Don’t play games with me, tiefling” he growled, and once again Tav was sure she saw pointy teeth. “I saw you on the ship. Walking about without a care in the world. What did you do to me?” 

“What did I do?” Tav balked. “Do I look like a mindflayer? I was abducted just like you. Infected with one of their tadpoles.”           

“Do you think I’m an idiot?” he hissed back.                                      

“Do you really want me to answer that?” she responded with a smile.

Before he could snap back, the pain she was becoming begrudgingly familiar with flared up. She saw streets illuminated by streetlamps, the flash of sultry smiles. There were sheets under her hands twisted in ecstasy, lips against her neck, and...

Fear. So much fear that it was clogging her throat. A light against her eyes, terror in her heart, a pair of red eyes, the glint of something sharp—      

The connection severed and Tav was back in her own mind. She looked up and met the confused gaze of the elf.               

“What…what in the hells was that?” he said.

“The tadpole. It’s what the illithids put in our heads,” she replied. “It connects our brains, lets us see into each other’s minds.” 

The elf took a moment, staring at her and clearly wondering if she was telling the truth, but he eventually lowered his knife.              

“Well, that certainly…explains things.” He sniffed. “Is that all these worms do or are there other…side effects that you know of?"

“They are actually the first stage in the illithid life cycle,” Gale piped up from behind her. “Mindflayers require hosts for their larvae, given they do not have the biological requirements for sexual reproduction. After a brief but agonizing gestation period, the host body is consumed and a newborn illithid takes its place.”  

The elf blinked and turned to Tav. She sighed.

“They’ll turn us into mindflayers if we don’t remove them.”         

The man’s pale skin went even paler, and he opened and shut his mouth like he couldn’t believe what he’d just heard.

“Turn us into…?” He cut himself off with a harsh laugh. “Of course they will. Why did I expect anything different?” The elf shook his head and a wry smile crossed his face.     

“And here I was ready to decorate the ground with your insides. Apologies."          

Tav scrunched her nose and nodded, not quite willing to openly forgive him but having no stomach for another fight.             

“So, have you lovely people made any headway in figuring out how to control these things yet?” the elf continued. Tav drew her brows together.

“We need to remove them, not control them.”

The elf rolled his eyes. “Well, yes, obviously, but first things first.” 

Tav looked back at Shadowheart and Gale, who were already looking at her, clearly waiting for her to make a decision. She let a breath hiss through her teeth.     

“We only just got this problem, same as you. We were trying to find some sort of civilization to see if they’ve got a healer that could help, if you…” Tav trailed off, and she could practically feel Shadowheart’s glare against the back of her head. “If you wanted to tag along.” 

Shadowheart sighed.

The elf perked up, clearly pleased and surprised with the turn of events.

“Well, I was ready to go this alone, but who am I to turn down such wonderful company?” The charmer’s smile returned as he lowered into a half bow. “My name’s Astarion.”

“Tav,” she replied. “That’s Shadowheart and Gale.”

“A pleasure to meet your…well-armed acquaintance,” Gale said from behind them.

“Yes, well,” Astarion said, fully tucking away his dagger, “I suppose it is.”

He grinned, wrinkles creasing around his bright red eyes, and Tav was again struck by that feeling in her chest, like her Dawnmaster was somehow yelling at her all the way from Waterdeep that she was missing something. She frowned. Maybe he just had drow somewhere in his heritage. No reason to jump to conclusions.

“Well, that was lovely,” Shadowheart said, sounding like the past fifteen minutes were anything but, “though I feel the need to remind everyone that we are on a rather tight schedule and we’re running out of daylight. Shall we continue, or are there any more wayward vagabond you plan to pick up?”

“Vagabond?” Astarion gasped. “I am no such thing. Merely a simple bastard.”

Tav shook her head and turned the way they had been heading.

“Yes, let’s keep moving. We don’t want to find out what sort of monsters are out here at night.”

She couldn’t stop herself from looking at Astarion when she said that. He responded only with another salacious grin as the group began their journey again.

Tav mentally kicked herself. She’d been hoping for vampires all day. And as she looked up at Astarion’s back, she couldn’t help but wonder if perhaps she’d finally gotten her wish.

Break of Dawn: Chapter 1 (Astarion x Tiefling! Tav)

A/N: Ahhhh okay first ever fic posted here. Yes, it's 5k words. I only somewhat promise future chapters won't be so long, but idk we'll see. This is a fic idea I've had bouncing around for awhile and I've finally gotten around to writing it! My inbox is always open for feedback, especially if you notice any weird formatting errors since I'm not super familiar with tumblr's layout yet. I hope you all enjoy the first chapter of my special little baby :)

Summary: Tav, a cleric of Lathander, finds herself as the unfortunate recipient of a mindflayer tadpole with limited time to cure herself. She finds help in a group of fellow infected and mildly insane individuals, including a vampire who takes every opportunity to drive her up the wall. A vampire she's totally not falling in love with. Between cults, the literal gods of death, and the looming threat of turning into a mindflayer, Tav has to navigate both the end of the world and her increasingly complicated feelings for a creature she's pretty sure she's sworn to kill.

What could possibly go wrong?

Warnings: None in this chapter I don't think? But expect a lot of smut, trauma, and canon-typical violence down the line.

Dividers from @saradika

It was the headache that woke her. The pounding, throbbing pain in the front of her skull that threatened to seep into her veins and drain her strength. Tav shook her head, attempting to clear the dull ache, but only succeeded in making herself exceptionally dizzy. She was upright, that much she could tell, but it didn’t feel like she was propped against a wall or a bedpost. The surface against her back felt oddly…wet? Fleshy, almost. Tav could feel her horns scraping into something unsettlingly soft. Gods above, she hoped she wasn’t in a bathroom. That would be a new low for her, waking up in some muggy stall with who-knows-what seeping into her clothes. Every twitch of her fingers and toes brought a new wave of subtle nausea into her bones. 

Where was she?

The last thing Tav remembered was the ratty pub in Daggerford, stuffed elbow-to-elbow with farmers so drunk they couldn’t even bring themselves to care about the strange tiefling in their midst nursing a bottle of the sourest wine this side of the Dalelands. The clerics at the Morninglow Tower, the only Lathandarian monastery in the area and her main reason for stopping in Daggerford in the first place, had assured her that the Happy Cow was the best inn the city had to offer, but if her frazzled mind could remember anything, it was the swill in her glass and the grouchy halfling behind the bar.  

Why was she in Daggerford again?

The more Tav sat, trying to remember and simultaneously suppress the urge to vomit, the more the details came back to her. A summons to Baldur’s Gate, one that had been dispatched to the Dawnmaster of her monastery from a group of Selunites just outside of Rivington. Something about an increase in activity from a suspected group of Sharrans nestled within the Gate, a fear that the fanatics of the Nightsinger were planning something. A cry for help to any nearby allies of the Moonmaiden, a cry that reached as far north as Waterdeep, just for insurance in the event of an open conflict. Her Dawnmaster had selected her and only her to make the long journey south. Handpicked amongst hundreds to go alone to the Gate with little explanation why. A test of faith, she was told, despite her record of loyalty to Lathander. It was that loyalty that drove her to leave the safety of the Spires and go anyways, that made her push past the doubt, with little more than a traveler’s pack and questions about what exactly she was getting into.

Tav’s eyes were blurry when she opened them and she barely got a moment to assess the thick glass panel in front of her before it lifted away suddenly. She had a heartbeat to throw her arms out to catch her fall, though it did little to stop the shock and pain arching from her head down to the tip of her tail. She laid there on the ground, in a heap, trying to catch her breath, and was able to string enough of a thought together to realize it was probably the least dignified position she had ever been in.

Morninglord, help her.

Tav pushed herself onto her elbows and gave her surroundings a gander. The room was large and domed, with arcing metal ribs supporting the ceiling. Or what was left of it. Because, as she quickly realized from both the heat and her clearing vision, the room was positively ablaze. A shudder ran down her spine as she attempted to make out details past the gray smoke. Her scars prickled, and she had to double check to make sure she wasn’t on fire.

More memories. The thick air in the tavern, sweaty arms and faces and hands intruding into her personal space. The foul wine in her throat. The need to fill her lungs with something that wasn’t flavored with dwarf musk. Cool night air against her skin when she’d stumbled out of the pub, pulling her robes against her body, the breeze filling her chest. Flashes of suspicious looks from the locals on the streets, like she was a proper devil and not just a tiefling. Another breath in her lungs, soothing the burn that the tavern air had left on her throat.

Then there was screaming.

Quick, high-pitched. A moment to spin and try and assess the situation. Something black, blacker than the night sky, against the horizon, moving towards the city. A writhe of tentacles against the stars, a prayer to Lathander to lend her strength for what was to come, and then…nothing. She remembered heat against her skin, light against her eyes, and now she was laying in a burning room with the biggest headache of her life.       

Had her drink been spiked?

No, because now she remembers the mindflayers. Great ugly beasts looming outside the pod she’d just faceplanted out of. A bit of green skin a few pods down from hers, something small and pulsating in one of the illithid’s taloned hands. Then, the mindflayer rounding on her, holding up a wriggling worm with a circular mouth and too many teeth. She remembers the terror and the pain as the larva was held up to her eye. The ache as it found its target and slithered its way into her skull.

She took her studies at the monastery seriously. Lathander valued a sharp mind, and while he mostly called his followers to hunt undead monstrosities, she made it a point to familiarize herself with all manner of beasts and devils. Mindflayers were a rare threat, mostly occupying themselves with the Outer Planes in their eternal grapple against the gith, but they were important enough for the temple library to have a whole section dedicated to illithid and their ilk. She knew what had happened—what the squirming tadpole pushing into her brain meant about her current condition—and she knew her days were now decidedly numbered.

There was a pulse inside her head, a wriggle behind her eye, and Tav wished it had just been vampires instead. At least then the silver dust in her pocket and the holy water against her hip would have done her some good. With a groan, she rose to her feet, careful to keep her tail above the hot metal floor, and stumbled past the burning remains of the room around her, unhooking her mace from her back as she did. She noticed a few splayed mindflayer corpses, tentacles like wet pipes against her ankles as she slipped past, and wondered again what had caused the destruction. Tav was almost certain she was either in one of their colonies or on a ship, and the thought occurred to her that it was entirely likely she had been sucked into the middle of the war between the illithids and the gith. It was simply a question of which subset of the gith population she would potentially have to deal with in an escape. Githzerai were dangerous but reasonable and could maybe be swayed to help if Tav proved she was no threat. The githyanki were a different story, and she hoped she wasn’t bearing witness to one of their raiding parties, but she got the sneaking suspicion that her luck was poor on that front. Their red dragons would certainly explain the fire.

The next room was in less disarray, the flames having smoldered out to leave ash in their wake, and Tav noticed a large tear in the far wall, framed by daylight streaming in from the outside. Her heart leapt at her sign of freedom, but an uneasy shiver went through her at the sight of the tables lining the walls, topped by corpses. She gritted her teeth and sent a silent prayer to the less fortunate of the mindflayers’ abductees, followed by a reassurance to herself that she would not be joining them. On her way towards the makeshift exit, she bent and rummaged through the robes of a fallen mindflayer, gathering the assorted coins and gemstones she found, and hoped the souls of the victims appreciated her pettiness towards their killers.

As she straightened up to continue forward, the sound of something skittering, not unlike a rat inside a wall, drew her attention. Tav watched as a trio of creatures resembling brains on four legs pushed past a fallen piece of metal and scurried back the way she had come. She recognized them as intellect devourers, aberrations that served in the collective illithid hivemind. Her eyes followed the creatures as they left and couldn’t decide if she was more surprised or grateful that they hadn’t noticed her. Tav simply shook her head, deciding it didn’t matter, and made her way towards the exit.

The hope that had sprung in her heart at the chance of escape was squashed, however, when Tav managed to push through the wreckage and make her way to the gap in the ship’s hull. It became clear that, although there was heat radiating into the room from the opening, it did not come from a familiar sun. Instead, Tav saw only a scarlet horizon, the ground rushing past far below, and swarms of winged imps and devils thrashing in the air. There was a tingle down her spine, like her infernal heritage recognized the bloody skies of the Hells, and Tav cursed her increasingly sour luck. Of all the places she could have wound up, Baator would not have been high on her list. What she had done to get so far off track from her mission, Lathander only knew.

Tav was starting to wonder how she was ever going to escape the Hells and a burning illithid ship—because it had to be a ship, given how far she was off the ground and the speed at which they were moving—when she watched as, from underneath the vessel, a flash of crimson cut against the sky. A red dragon, flames billowing from its gaping jaws, curved against the shape of the aircraft, directed by the speck of a gith rider against its back. In her shock, she nearly dropped her mace—not helped by her sweaty palms—and Tav held her empty hand up to block the burn of the fire when the beast let loose a column of flame to beat back a horde of devils swarming the ship. She knew for a fact now that this had to be a githyanki raiding party, tracking an illithid vessel across the planes atop the backs of their red dragons. Tav was just unlucky enough to be caught in the middle with an unwelcome stowaway tagging along for the ride.

Before Tav could come up with a plan to escape the current predicament, an arc of silver crested over her head as a figure leapt from above, and she suddenly found herself face to face with a gith woman, dark hair and green skin made even more sharp against the red sky, covered in ash from head to toe. And while Tav only knew of the githyanki from her studies, she did not need books to identify the rage in the woman’s eyes and the greatsword the gith was pointing at her throat.

“Abomination,” the woman growled, leveling her blade until the tip was grazing the dip between Tav’s collarbones. “This is your end!"

Tav was just raising her hands to explain as fast as she could that she posed the warrior no threat when a sudden discomfort split her skull, almost like it was emanating outwards from the tadpole lodged in her brain. Tav did not recall closing her eyes, but it was like she was now in a dream, or recalling some distant memory that was not her own, as she watched the scales of a red dragon undulate over solid muscle, the glint of sunlight off a silver sword. Her ears were filled with the sound of clanging steel, her shoulders dipped beneath the weight of heavy armor. As quick as they came, the visions dissipated, and Tav blinked away the fogginess to see the gith woman clutching her skull, and Tav realized with a jolt that she had just taken a peek inside the woman’s mind, witnessed her memories, which likely meant the connection had been two way. The soldier drew her brows as she shook her head against an apparent pain, before looking up and meeting Tav’s gaze again.

“What…what is this?” she hissed, more to herself than to Tav. A dozen emotions crossed the gith’s face—confusion, discomfort, anger—before settling on what Tav hoped was happiness. “You are no thrall,” the warrior said. Tav watched as, thankfully, the woman lowered her blade and sheathed it against her back. “Vlaakith blesses me this day!”

Tav kept her hands raised, ready to channel Lathander’s dawn if needed, but took a cautious step towards the gith as she said, “A thrall? Like a mindflayer’s servant?”

One of the gith’s eyebrows raised, clearly surprised Tav was at least familiar with illithid.

“The very same. We are fortunate we retain our senses.”

“But I’m infected,” Tav said, and she suddenly remembered the look she’d gotten from inside her pod. Green skin a few spaces down and a flash of dark hair. She realized it must’ve been the woman before her that had been imprisoned, as well. Tav drew her brows together. “And so are you, aren’t you? Given that look I just got inside your head.”

The gith scoffed and tossed her hair over her shoulder. She started to turn like she intended to walk away.

“Yes, we both carry ghaik tadpoles. But for now, we have our wits, and I intend to keep them.” She glanced over, eyes trailing up and down Tav’s figure, before continuing. “You are a cleric, yes? An experienced one, from what your memories told me. You may have your uses. Come, we must make haste to the helm.”

The gith did not wait for a reply as she began to walk away. Tav stood, slightly dumbfounded, and watched the gith make confident strides down the wrecked platform they stood on.

“Wait!” she called when her brain finally caught up with what was going on. The gith stopped and turned, irritation spiking her gaze when she saw that Tav had not moved. “That’s it, then? We just team up and move on like we weren't in each other's minds?"

The warrior huffed, saying something in her language under her breath.

“What just happened to us will not matter if we die on this ship. I intend to escape and make my way back to my people. Your best hope of survival is to follow me. Unless your god commands you to burn to a crisp here?”

Deep in the Hells, Tav’s connection to Lathander was flimsy, but she could hazard a guess that he did not, in fact, want her to die here. And for as much as she would love to not owe her life to a bloodthirsty githyanki, Tav had enough common sense to know her options were slim at best. So, with a huff, she tightened her grip on her mace and followed the gith.

“I’m Tav, by the way,” she called up to the woman. She received no response. Tav sighed. “Nice to meet you, too.”

The next room crawled with around half a dozen invading imps, the tiny beasts gnawing at the corpses of both illithid and the poor souls that had been abducted, but their attention was quickly drawn when Tav and the gith made their way in. Tav had barely blinked before the warrior had notched an arrow into her longbow and sent it flying into the neck of one of the imps, and Tav managed to eliminate another with a burst of holy flame from the tips of her fingers. The remaining imps screeched and began to flap towards them, but failed to do any damage before the two of them brought them down with a mix of arrows, steel, and magic.

“You are quite adequate in battle,” the gith remarked as she pulled her arrows from the twisted corpses. “Perhaps our odds are not so poor.”

Tav bent to collect a crossbow from one of the imps, figuring a ranged weapon would come in handy, and replied, “You aren’t too bad yourself.” What was meant to be a compliment was clearly received differently when the gith’s expression somehow got sourer, her eyes squinting in a harsh glare.

“I am githyanki. If you think I cannot handle imps, then you are more uneducated than I thought.”

Tav opened and closed her mouth, attempting to stutter out that she had meant no offence, but the gith had already moved on to the next room. With a sigh, Tav followed, wishing more than ever it had just been vampires instead.

By the time Tav caught up to the soldier, the woman had nearly spanned the entire length of the room, which Tav noticed was empty save from a ring of what looked to be stretchers in the center, each holding an unresponsive body, and a pod against the far wall. Upon closer inspection, Tav’s heart dropped when she realized there was someone inside. She jogged up to the prisoner and saw the vague features of a woman inside banging against the glass. 

“Hey!” the woman yelled, fingers clawing at the walls of her prison. “Hey, get me out of here!"

“Don’t worry,” Tav replied as she began to look over the pod for any sort of latch that might open it, “I’m not leaving you behind.” She turned to look at the gith, who was already at the far end of the room. “Help me out here!” she called.             

The gith turned, her eyes narrowing when she saw what Tav was doing.

“I do not intend to stop for every prisoner we come across. We must reach the helm if we hope to escape.” Tav scowled.

“The more help, the better,” she responded. “I’m not abandoning anyone.”

The gith scoffed and said something in a language Tav did not know and walked back over to where she was now pouring over the panel next to the pod.  

“Do you truly mean to die for a stranger?” the gith growled. Tav ran her hands over the console, picking at the depths of her memories to recall any illithid sigils she might know.

“Nobody is dying today,” Tav said. With a huff, she resigned herself to the fact that she was a poor student of illithid script and had no clue what any of the symbols meant. She thought about asking the gith, but already knew the soldier would likely be no help. Tav felt the humming of magic around the console, and she winced when the tadpole in her brain seemed to squirm in response. That caused a thought to pop into her head, and she focused her mental energy on the worm. If anything could help her understand the mindflayers’ language, it was one of their young.

It was like grabbing a fish in a river the way the tadpole slipped about her mind’s grasp, but at last she got a hold on the parasite and forced it to yield. With what felt like a click inside her mind, the tadpole obeyed, and the console in front of her roared to life. Tav’s next thought was how she was supposed to use the panel to open the pod, but it was like the mere idea itself made the console obey, and the pod suddenly snapped open. Tav had just enough time to step in front and catch the woman inside before she had a similar landing against the floor like Tav experienced earlier.   

The pair stumbled, but Tav helped the woman right herself. She was taller, with dark hair braided down her back and deep green eyes framed by a scar across the bridge of her nose beneath a blunt fringe. Tav noticed the tips of pointed ears poking from her hair, but the woman did not have the typical angular features of a full elf, meaning she must only be half elven. Her silver armor was covered in soot, but it was clear that beneath the dirt her plate was well cared for.

Tav lifted her arms and let the woman step back. The half-elf shook her head, black hair swinging about her face as she raised a hand to her forehead.

“Thank you,” she said. “I thought that damned thing was going to be my coffin."

Tav only had time for a nod before a now-familiar pain burst behind Tav’s eyes, and once again she found herself in someone else’s brain. Unlike the gith, the half-elf’s memories were like murky water, swirling around inside her mind without any clear features. The only thing Tav picked up on with clarity was a spark of suspicion—aimed at the gith standing beside her. Just as quick as their minds linked, the connection snapped.

The half-elf drew her brows together, confusion marring her features.

“It’s the tadpole,” Tav said before the woman could voice her obvious question. “You’re infected with one, same as we are.” She gestured to the gith, who did not even look remotely happy at the turn of events. “They let our minds connect.”           

“Yes, that much is obvious,” the half-elf replied. Her gaze turned to the gith, and her expression pinched to match the anger on the warrior’s face. “I was not aware Lathander’s clerics kept such strange company."

Tav’s immediate question—how did the woman know she worshipped the Morninglord? —was squashed before she embarrassed herself. The woman had just been inside her head and Tav’s faith was the most important thing she kept in there. Obviously a peek in her skull would show that. Instead, Tav shrugged.

“Strange times require strange company. Besides, we’ll have to fight our way off this ship and an extra sword is always good.” The half-elf raised an eyebrow, but her shoulders relaxed slightly.

“I suppose you have a point there.” She turned to look at Tav. “I’m Shadowheart. And you are?"

Tav grinned at the novelty of knowing at least one of her companion’s names.

“Tav. It’s a pleasure.”

The gith suddenly scoffed.

“Are we done with pleasantries? The longer we dawdle the slimmer our chances of escape become.” She didn’t wait for an answer before she made her way back towards the exit.

Shadowheart glared at the gith’s back but said, “She’s right. Lead the way.”

They began to follow where the gith had gone, but Shadowheart suddenly stopped at gripped at her sides like she was feeling for something. She turned back, and Tav watched as she rummaged about inside her pod before pulling something small out and tucking it into one of her pockets, but it was too dark for her to get a good look.

“Everything okay?” Tav asked. Shadowheart laughed dryly.

“I’m trapped on a mindflayer ship with a parasite in my head surrounded by devils and burning wreckage.” She tossed her hair over her shoulder and began walking towards the exit the gith had already pushed through. “I’m having the time of my life."

Tav couldn’t help but chuckle and followed close behind.     

The two found the gith standing in front of a closed door, the fleshy material that seemed to line the whole ship pulled into a pinwheel. The soldier turned when they entered and rested a hand on her sword.                

“The helm should be beyond this door. Once inside, do as I say.” 

Shadowheart’s expression darkened. “Who put you in charge?” she snapped. The gith looked like she was about to bite back, so Tav stepped between the two and held out her hands.   

“Now is not the time for arguing. What’s important is that we make it off this ship.” She turned to Shadowheart. “I don’t like it, either, but githyanki are experts on mindflayers. If she says this is how we get out, it’s in our best interests to cooperate.”

“For an istik,” the gith said through a self-satisfied smile, “you are surprisingly competent.”

Tav blinked. “Thank you?”

Shadowheart huffed and shoved past them both. “Let’s just get this over with.”

Tav had hoped that the only thing that stood between them and freedom would be another swarm of imps, but as they entered the helm of the ship, she was instead immediately reminded that they were still in an active warzone. Mindflayers and devils clashed, tentacles and wings thrashing as each side tried to gain an advantage over the other. Imps and hellboars batted hoards of intellect devourers back, all while the flames licking against the walls climbed higher and higher.

Tav watched as one of the mindflayers wrapped its tentacles around the head of a cambion soldier, and blood sprayed when the illithid dug its teeth into the devil. The creature let the fiend drop and suddenly turned to face them. From the corner of her eye, she watched Shadowheart and the gith ready their weapons, but all three flinched when their tadpoles wriggled about as a voice not belonging to any of them ripped into their heads.     

“Thralls,” the voice boomed, sounding like it came from everywhere around them, “connect the transponders. Take control of the ship.”

Tav watched the mindflayer raise one long-fingered hand and pointed to the front of the room, where a tangled mass of blue tentacles squirmed over a console similar to the one that had opened Shadowheart’s pod. With a jolt, she realized it was the illithid speaking to them, giving orders through the tadpole.   

The gith grunted and raised her sword. “Do as it says. While it thinks we are under its control, we have a chance at escape.”

“It won’t be easy getting to that console,” Shadowheart said. “We’ll need to be—"

She was cut off suddenly as the gith surged forward, sword arcing downwards through a pair of imps that had swarmed an intellect devourer. They watched as the soldier pushed through the fiends before her, grappling with devils like it was nothing.

“—careful,” Shadowheart finished. She turned and looked at Tav, giving a slight shrug as she said, “Guess we follow her, then?”

Tav mirrored her shrug, and they followed the gith into the fray.       

It was tough work pushing to the back of the room. For every imp or cambion that fell from a burst of holy radiance, another devil entered her vision with a raised sword. If it hadn’t been for well-timed arrows from the gith or Shadowheart’s own divine fire, Tav was certain her fortunes would’ve gone sour. In the back of her mind, she made a note to ask who Shadowheart’s patron was. Tav recognized the work of another cleric but couldn’t put her finger on the origin of her magic. It wasn’t the holy fervor her own Lathanderian magic possessed, and wasn’t familiar like the magic of Selunites she’d met in the past, but she figured, so long as it was keeping devils off her back, whichever god was fueling Shadowheart’s spells had Tav’s thanks.

Tav didn’t know how long they had been fending off Avernus’s forces before she looked up and saw an opening. The gith had felled a cambion that had been blocking the way to the helm, but her attention had been diverted by a pair of hellboars. Tav took her chance and broke into a sprint, narrowly dodging the body of a mindflayer that was thrown her way by a cambion before Shadowheart brought it down with a bolt of sickly green necrotic magic. Tav only had a moment to ponder over that—perhaps she was a cleric of Kelemvor? —as she slid to a halt in front of the console.

She let the tadpole guide her hands, following its instincts on which tentacles to grab, but a sudden blast of heat above her drew her attention away. Tav looked up to find the gaze of a great red dragon, its head having pushed past a gap in the ship’s roof. Distantly, she heard the gith yell something, but Tav couldn’t make out the words as she ducked to avoid another column of fire. Her scars prickled against the flames, and she had to push down the hint of panic and rely on her infernal heritage to keep her skin safe from the fire.

The ship suddenly tilted, and Tav’s feet fell from under her as her balance shifted with the new angle. She watched the dragon retreat and forced herself back up, but only had a moment to right herself when another great shudder passed through the ship. As fast as she could, Tav brought together two spindly tentacles. The parasite squirmed about her brain, and she watched through the windows as Avernus’s skyline blurred. She blinked, and where the hellfire had once been there were now stars. She realized they had to be back in the Material Plane, but still very high above ground.

“Again!” she heard the gith yell.

Tav looked over her shoulder to see the soldier now grappling with the mindflayer that had given them orders earlier. Shadowheart was closer to the middle of the room standing off against a trio of imps and a cambion. She met the gith’s eyes and the warrior yelled something about taking control of the ship, but the words were lost in the roil of combat. Tav didn’t need the details, though: she knew they were in a losing fight and were running out of time. So, with a prayer to Lathander she hoped he could hear, she grasped the tentacles again and brought them back together.  

The vessel shuddered again, and Tav lost her grip as the whole ship seemed to invert on itself. Her feet scrambled for purchase but did little good, and she could do nothing but gasp when the room went sideways. In a heartbeat she was suddenly against the far wall, then falling forwards again. She watched the metal siding of the ship splinter and tumble away and she knew that while they may no longer be crashing in the Hells, they were still crashing regardless.

Another yank of gravity and Tav was scrambling for purchase against the floor. She slid back the way she’d come, towards the nose of the ship, and she caught a glimpse of Shadowheart falling through a new hole in the side of the craft. Tav didn’t even have the energy to call out. She could only hope Shadowheart’s god was kind enough to spare her from the fall.

The ship tilted, and Tav realized with a lurch that she was now sliding towards the same gap that Shadowheart had just been flung out of. She only had a moment to grasp the jagged wall to avoid a similar tumble. The wind lashed against her cheeks, sending her hair flying about her face, and it was through the strands that she met the gaze of a mindflayer, slumped against the opposite side of the gash and holding its side. Its eyes were cold and unblinking, and Tav got the distinct sensation of something prodding against the back of her head, but the feeling broke when a piece of debris suddenly hit the side of her skull. It was so abrupt that Tav had no time to regain her slack grip, and before she knew it she felt the wind now pummeling her from all angles.

It took an embarrassing amount of time for her to realize that she was falling. With how her luck had been, Tav wasn’t even surprised. She could only hope that, when she inevitably met the ground, Lathander would spare her a bit of good fortune and keep her from breaking her neck.

Her last thought before things went white was that she really, really just wished it had been vampires instead.

Welcome In!

Hey everyone! Thanks for stopping by my little corner of the internet. My name's Blue. Here, you can find all my writing in one place, as well as my rules for requests. I hope you enjoy your stay!

FYI: This blog is 18+. If you do not have your age in your bio, I will block you.

Rules:

This blog is my safe space, and by extension, I want it to be other people's safe space, too. I will not tolerate any sort of hateful messaging or discriminatory language. If you have critiques of my writing, I always love feedback, but remember that I'm human too, so please be kind to me and others. I'm down for a healthy debate on any fandom topic, and I love hearing other people's opinions about characters or plot elements. Let's just keep it civil!

I'm currently writing for just BG3, but that may change in the future.

Requests: Currently open

Character List:

Astarion

Gale

Wyll

Lae'zel

Karlach

Shadowheart

Raphael/Haarlep

Rolan

Zevlor

Gortash

Halsin

Minthara

What I will write:

Character x Reader

Fluff

Angst (but expect happy endings lol, my heart can't take unresolved conflict)

Smut (see list of kinks below)

Canon compliant

Non-canon compliant

What I will not write:

Dubcon/Noncon/Incest etc.

Any smut involving body fluids that aren't usually present during sex

Roleplay (unless the request interests me)

Character x Character

I'm open to writing about character death, but nothing involving death of major characters

Kinks I'm cool with writing (including but not limited to):

Bondage

Breeding

Spitting

Consensual hitting/spanking etc.

Voyeurism

Dom/sub situations

I'll write situations involving suspected cheating, but nothing involving actual cheating

Just like the Bill of Rights, just because it's not listed above, does not mean something isn't included. If you have questions about what I will/won't write, just ask!

Masterlist

Astarion

Break of Dawn

Ongoing longfic following the adventures and really complicated feelings of a Lathanderian tiefling cleric and Astarion refusing to admit they're in love

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

NERD CORNER‼️

Two different Shads in one place? Crazy.

Still waiting for my Karlach funko pop :( (It’s been 4 months I’m starting to lose hope man.)

Started second play through to romance Gale

Accidentally started going towards Astarion again

Reeled back and went towards Gale again

Some how accidentally almost started dating Karlach

I’m not allowed to have this man apparently

It's finished 🥳✨️

My WWDITS Nandermo Fix-it fic is finished. I'm free.

I loved writing this fic, but I'm glad it's done haha. 😂

ao3 link

Now I'm back on my usual bullshit with beloved Mr. Ancunin 😁

But I'm pretty sure this is isn't going to be my last work in the WWDITS fandom. I love them too much 😂

Stay safe, my darkest darlings 🥰

I did it! I found the secret pet sheep 🤩

Chapter 19 of "Spawn Me the Details" now online 🥳

In which you find a dead spider, lick it, and get distracted by succubus saliva.

"Spawn Me the Details" on AO3 - Summary

As Astarion is snatched from the streets of Baldur's Gate, another one of Cazador's spawn gets taken. You.It can't have been more than a few months since that fateful night at the tavern, and now you find yourself hiding behind a bush while he gallivants through the forest with his new allies. As the group is passing by, a voice pierces through your mind. Follow them. You need to stay close. It's the last thing you want to do - follow the man who led you to your doom. But it seems like you have no choice in the matter, if that tingle in your brain is anything to go by...

https://archiveofourown.org/works/59600707/chapters/152008468

Hope you have as much fun reading as I had writing it. 💕

Give it a read if you're up for vampire shenanigans and emotional damage 😎✨️

Feels like falling and snuggling in a bed made of poetry

The Art of Not Admitting a Thing (1/2)

Summary: Something's going on between Gale and Astarion... you're sure of it. So naturally, you decide to investigate. Who knew that one simple question would reveal such a mess of longing, denial, and a master class in emotional avoidance?

Rating: T Word Count: 1177 Pairing: Astarion x Gale Content: First Person Gale POV, interview format, mutual pining, yearning, denial of feelings, character study, Gale is bad at feelings, fluff, a teensy bit of angst but not much!

A/N: So here we have my first ever Bloodweave! I am both exceedingly nervous, and very excited about it. I've had ideas in mind for Bloodweave for months, but actually writing these ideas and sending them off into the big, wide world has been a rather intimidating affair. But we're finally doing it! And what better way for me to dip my toe into Bloodweave waters than by being incredibly predictable and writing yet another first person fic?

Chapter 1: "What do you think of Astarion?"

What do I think of Astarion? Well, that's a rather loaded question, is it not? Not that I don't have an answer, of course. No, quite the opposite, actually. I have too many answers, all vying for precedence. Because, you see, Astarion is not the sort of person one can sum up in a single sentiment. He is… how shall I put this? He is an equation with variables that simply refuse to behave. Utterly unsolvable.

Come now, don't look at me like that.

It’s just that Astarion is - well, to put it plainly - a lot. A relentless force of nature wrapped in silk and a layer of his own smugness. He walks into a room and suddenly you're aware of him. No, not just aware - attuned. It's all deliberate, of course. All part of the performance.

Yet, somehow, despite knowing it's all a performance, I still find myself watching.

And it's not just his presence. He's also clever, which is, dare I say, the most irritating thing about him. Not just sharp-witted, but… strategic. He understands people, knows exactly where to sink his teeth. Not just the literal ones - though those certainly warrant consideration - but also the more subtle. A smile, a look, a well-placed word. He plays people like instruments, plucking their strings just so, and I… Well, I have spent a great deal of time telling myself that I, of all people, should be immune to such things.

Alas, I am not immune. 

Which, of course, presents something of a metaphysical conundrum. Feelings, after all, are best understood when dissected. Laid bare and examined like lines in an ancient tome. One does not simply experience something without questioning its nature, its source, its… implications. No, the wise approach - the rational approach - is to study it with the same rigour that one would apply to any magical phenomenon. To categorise it, to determine whether it is genuine or merely some arcane anomaly. A peculiar resonance of the heart, if you will.

And so, in pursuit of intellectual honesty, I find myself studying Astarion with perhaps more dedication than strictly necessary. Any lingering thoughts are purely academic, I assure you. Elminster once told me that understanding the world means understanding its people, and what is Astarion if not a mystery to be unravelled? The way he moves, the way he speaks, the way he wields his beauty like a blade.

… Yes, he is beautiful, but that is besides the point. The point is–

…

I've lost the point.

That's what he does to me, you know. He derails my thoughts. I'm speaking perfectly rationally one moment, and the next, I'm somewhere else entirely, wondering if that grace comes naturally to him. If, behind closed doors, he rehearses those cutting remarks, those honeyed words.

Of course, I’m hardly special in that regard. I’ve seen him turn those honeyed words on just about everyone. He gives people what they want with such artful sincerity that they can’t help but believe him. He doesn’t mean it - not truly. And I would be a fool to imagine I’m any different. The world is his stage, and he is quite the performer.

And yet…

There are things about him. Real things. Beneath those rakish charms. I see them sometimes, in the quiet moments, when he doesn't realise anyone's watching. A weariness. A wariness. He's always aware, it seems. Of every room he walks into, of every person in it, of where the exits are. I recognise that sort of awareness. It's the kind you learn when you have been made someone's pawn for too long. When you've spent years convincing yourself that you're the one holding the strings, only to realise the strings are wrapped around your throat.

It unsettles me.

Dare I say, it even hurts me.

Not that I would ever say so. I doubt he would ever want to hear it. I doubt he would believe it.

And, anyway, it's not as if–

Not as if what?

No, truly, what was I about to say? That it's not as if I care? That would be a lie. That it's not as if I think about him more than I should? That would be another.

Perhaps I should stop talking.

…

You know, there was a time where I thought myself above this sort of thing. I thought I understood love completely. How could I not? I had experienced love in its most divine form - quite literally, in fact. My devotion to Mystra is… was… something transcendent. Something cosmic. I thought that was all love could be. All it should be. That anything less would be settling for a pale imitation of true devotion.

But lately, I find myself wondering if perhaps I’ve been rather short-sighted about the whole thing. Mystra herself appears in many forms; adapts to what her followers need. Perhaps love is similar - not always a grand, cosmic force that reshapes reality, but something more… subtle? The way a person looks at you when they think you aren't watching. The way their voice changes when you say their name. The way they make you feel like you are something more than what you were before. 

But if I did feel something - hypothetically, of course - it would hardly matter. Because what could I possibly offer him? A man who’s spent centuries under the control of another, only to find himself finally tasting freedom… What could he possibly want with someone like me? A wizard with borrowed time, carrying within him a responsibility so great that I am expected - destined - to lay down my life for it?

I’ve seen the fire in his eyes when faced with that which threatens to cage him. That fierce, burning defiance - the look of a man who has faced centuries of servitude and vowed never to be chained again. And what would I be, if not another form of binding? Another tragedy waiting to unfold? No. No, I wouldn’t blame him if he wanted nothing to do with such complications.

And yet… sometimes, I wonder.

If things were different - if I were different… If my fate weren’t already destined to end in sacrifice, would he look at me differently?

If he did - and that’s a big “if” - would I be so willing to accept that fate? To willingly embrace my end, if it meant never knowing what this - what we - might have become?

I was so sure the answer was simple. But then he looks at me, and for just a moment, I feel something I thought was long beyond my grasp. A foolish, reckless thing. It makes me hesitate.

And hesitation, well… that’s dangerous, isn’t it?

But stranger things have happened.

… Perhaps I have rather a lot to think about.

But I believe I’ve taken up quite enough of your time with these philosophical meanderings. No doubt you have better things to do than listen to a wizard ramble about matters of the heart. Besides, I have some rather important reading waiting for me. Something about… well, anything other than this conversation, really.

Masterlist can be found here!

No Pressure Tags: @roguishcat, @davenswitcher, @silverfangmarks, @sparrowbard, @chonkercatto, @stokzr , @trafalgarussy , @asterordinary , @bite-me-tonight , @transparentkittenheart , @vividiana (thank you for being so supportive with this one <3), @bg3-fanfic-reblogs

Favourite Sentence Game

Rules: Share a sentence or two you've written recently that you really like!

Thank you so much @amoremagnificentbastard for tagging newbie-me ♥️

It's been incredibly hard to choose, but I found my favourite(s).

It's from my latest chapter of "Spawn me the details" with Gale as leader of the group talking to you/spawn/Melody ♥️

"Do believe me, Melody, when I say: I guarantee that no harm will come to you. I'll personally see to that."

It's just so wholesome and I especially cherish it because two very precious people told me about the goosebumps they had at the scene ♥️

Very absolutely non-pressure-ly tagging @obsessedwhyyes (I personally hope it's going to be a Gale sentence, but honestly, everything you write is magical ✨️)

Happy to be here 💕

Howdy fellow writers 🤓

I'm new to tumblr but definitely a fanfiction veteran. After the early teenie Animexx days, I rediscovered my passion in 2019 - and haven't stopped since. 🤭

I currently have two ongoing Baldur's Gate longfics (Astarion/Original Female Tav, Astarion/You-Spawn Tav), and a What We Do In The Shadows fix it draft brewing 😎

blessedly ignoring all my other crackfic drafts

Looking forward to engaging with all of you!♥️

("CosyBlue" on ao3)

Боже ну яка ж вона гарна, я не можу 🥰🥰🥰

Нє, Чахлий, ти не поняв, я нарізала кола навколо Астаріона і сподівалася, що от коли я вб‘ю Казадора - він охуїє та закохається в мене, але здається що я трішки проєбалася і тепер мені світить тільки френдзона 😭

Нічо, в мене вже є ідея персонажа на друге проходження 👌

Подруга: *розказує мені усі бурхливі події свого особистого життя і питає чи мені ок це все вислуховувати*

Я, яка їй щойно навалювала про те що я не знаю кого мені романсити: ельфа-вампіра, чи ельфа, який може перетворюватися на ведмедя чи узагалі гарячу пекельну жінку: 😅😅😅

Слухаю всі версії «I want to live» перед сном ніби я засинаю десь в таборі біля вогнища і завтра мені не треба на роботу

Я не збиралася романсити Астаріона, я просто випадково його знайшла перша 😅

А потім він такий «Ой ми з тобою - дві душі що рухаються в одному напрямку… ДАВАЙ ОЧОЛИМО КУЛЬТ?»

Ну от як, ну от шо

The Embrace of Love and Death - A Short Rest: All Tied Up and Nowhere to Go

This short rest takes place between chapters 6 and 7 of The Embrace of Love and Death! Catch the full fanfic here

Lae’zel had been glaring at them from across camp all afternoon, Miss Fortune noticed. That wasn’t unusual by itself, but her facial expression was what caught their eye. In place of the usual disdain, she seemed to be trying to dissect them, as if they were a mystery she was trying to solve.

They suspected it had something to do with how easily they’d gotten out of her rope bindings yesterday, as she had scowled when they remarked on her shoddy ties. Reveling in their growing confidence as a leader and fighter, they decided to give her a hard time.

“You’re giving me a different grimace than usual, General,” they said with smug satisfaction as they ambled over to where she was whacking away at her training dummy. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you can’t stand the thought that I’m better than you at something.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she said tersely without pausing in her maneuvers.

“It’s eating you up inside how quickly I got out of those ropes, isn’t it? You want to know how this pathetic little soft boy did it.”

“Chk. Perhaps,” she conceded.

“I could tell you, but it would be more effective to show you. Taking hostages hasn’t been our style so far but any of us should be able to if the need arises.”

“You speak sensibly.” Lae’zel lowered her fists and cocked her head, considering. “Show me.”

Miss Fortune knew that smiles didn’t get far with Lae’zel, so the half-elf simply turned on their heel and walked off, beckoning her to follow with a wave.

“Meet me around the fire pit. I’m going to see if the others would also like a demonstration.”

Shadowheart and Astarion both accepted the invitation, though Miss Fortune suspected their primary interest was to watch Lae’zel get humbled. Gale declined as if he found the whole idea of physically binding another human repulsive. Seeing as he could accomplish the same effect with magic they couldn’t quite blame him.

“All right, I’m going to demonstrate on you first, Lae’zel. So you can see for yourself I know what I’m doing. Hands behind your back,” Miss Fortune instructed once everyone had assembled.

Lae’zel crossed her arms in front of her chest, unmovable as a boulder.

“I guess you don’t want to learn after all. False alarm, friends, let’s disperse,” they said to the others, fatigue creeping into their voice.

“Chk. Fine,” Lae’zel relented.

“A wise choice, General.” Miss Fortune uncoiled the length of rope they’d grabbed from their tent, silently lamenting that they didn’t have silk cord. She would never be able to rip through that with brute strength. Instead, they had to make do with the limited bounty of what they’d scavenged so far on their adventure.

The half-elf made quick work of cinching the rope around her wrists in a tight figure eight pattern. “The trick - which you failed to do with me and Astarion - is to ensure the rope sits below the thumb joint,” they explained. Shadowheart and Astarion sidled over and leaned in to observe.

Miss Fortune continued wrapping the rope tightly before double-tying the knot higher up, well out of the reach of the Githyanki’s fingers. “You don’t want to leave any room for prying fingers to find purchase, or you’ll come back to an empty chair, room, what have you. Normally I’d bind the ankles too, but this will suffice for a beginner’s demonstration. Now, try to get out.”

She tried grasping at the rope first with her fingers, then attempted to wriggle her wrists loose. Her face contorted with rage and she began to swear when she realized she could find no purchase with her bindings. Miss Fortune took several steps back, crossing their arms over their chest and grinning like a fox who had just snared a rabbit. They took sadistic pleasure watching her struggle for once.

“Just imagine if I had tied your arms behind a tree or perhaps to a chair,” Miss Fortune mused cruelly. They chose to mimic Astarion’s languid pose and bored expression, pretending to inspect their nails as they spoke. “In that scenario I would have bound you at the waist and ankles as well, and you’d be a lost cause by that point. And if I really wanted to make sure you stayed put, I’d gag you too. Maybe even tie your ankles and hands together. Can never be too careful, can we?”

“Tsk’va, you’ve made your point,” Lae’zel spat, still wriggling wildly like a worm freshly dug up from the ground. “Untie me now!”

Miss Fortune drew closer, their expression darkening as they stared down their nose at her. “I don’t think I have yet. I’m tired of you calling me a ‘soft boy’ like it’s something I should be ashamed of. Keep it up and next time I tie you up, I’ll leave you like that. Do we have an understanding?”

Loathing danced in the Githyanki’s eyes as she glowered up at them. Her shoulder looked about ready to dislocate as she continued to struggle to make progress with the ropes, as if popping her arm out of its socket were preferable to conceding defeat. Knowing her, it probably was.

“Remember I don’t heal stupidity, Lae’zel,” Shadowheart called out.

Miss Fortune looked over their shoulder to shoot a grin Shadowheart’s way. Their eyes locked and she nodded, returning the grin with a wicked smile of her own. The half-elf rogue glimpsed over at Astarion as well, and their chest felt a touch lighter when they saw approval in his ruby gaze.

“We have an understanding,” Lae’zel rasped at last, tearing Miss Fortune’s attention away from the vampire.

“Wonderful!” Miss Fortune made quick work of untying her, making sure to step back quickly with the rope stretched between their hands to create a barrier in case her anger got the best of her. The warrior stretched her arms and rubbed her sore wrists but otherwise made no move to lunge for her antagonist.

With the demonstration-turned-warning complete, Miss Fortune spent a while longer showing everyone how to replicate what they did to Lae’zel on each other until everyone felt confident they could remember how to do it on their own.

“Class dismissed,” Miss Fortune announced. “I hope you all enjoyed rope play for beginners. Now I believe Astarion and I have a date in the woods with whatever animal is unlucky enough to encounter us. See you later, ladies,” Miss Fortune added with a wave as they casually sauntered off. Astarion followed close behind.

When they were out of earshot, the half-elf leaned in and murmured mischievously to the vampire “If you play your cards right, someday I might give you the more advanced lesson.”

Astarion guffawed in delight. “Is that a promise or a threat, little bird?”

“Both.”

Look at this handsome lil devil!! 😈

I spent the last two weeks crocheting a Raphael doll so here he is in his insufferable smugness. He's around 9 inches/24 cm tall.

I freehanded him but I'm considering writing down the pattern... If you're interested, keep your eyes peeled for that. It's not super technical, just very long.

A very polite gentleman.

"Alone on a Friday night? Pathetic."

"Get yourself a date, loser."

Some details below the cut

The Embrace of Love and Death, Chapter 6: From Liability to Menace

Chapter Summary: Astarion and Miss Fortune are rudely awoken by sacks being thrown over their heads as they are spirited away for a final test of their combat skills. They must work together using a blend of stealth and brutality to free themselves before time runs out. Should they succeed, the companions will be able to resume their adventures. Fail, and Lae’zel threatens to gut them and take Miss Fortune’s role as leader.

Read the full chapter on AO3!

Excerpt:

The ropes binding Miss Fortune’s hands behind their back cut into their wrists as they squirmed to get free. They had no idea where they were. Several minutes ago they’d been awoken suddenly this morning to a sack being thrown over their head as Lae’zel pulled them roughly to their feet. Their reward for several days of hard training, she explained, was a final test. Pass, and she’d declare both them and Astarion as no longer being liabilities, and they could get back on the road looking for a cure. Fail, and she’d gut them both and lead Gale and Shadowheart onwards herself before their bodies even had a chance to grow cold.

“No, no, this is just a friendly assessment,” Gale had interjected. “The only negative consequences for failing will be extra training!”

Miss Fortune was led forward with a rough hand against the back of their head for some ways until the hand gripped harder, stopping them. Someone else pushed them down into a chair and bound their hands behind their back.

“Your armor and weapons are in the room with you,” Lae’zel began.

“Room…? Where have you taken-“

“LISTEN, istik! You will free yourself, arm yourself. Astarion is already in your same predicament somewhere else nearby. You must find one another and fight your way out before Gale’s illusion spell wears off. Understand?”

“I have so many questions, foremost being ‘What the fuck?’ But sure, I understand the general instructions,” Miss Fortune had groaned. Their companions must have grabbed them early because they were so exhausted they could barely process the situation. Their suspicions were confirmed when Lae’zel tugged the hood off of them and they saw that dawn was only just beginning to break. “This couldn’t have been a midday test?”

Lae’zel elected not to answer that last question, instead turning on her heel to leave and motioning for Gale to follow. They shimmered out of sight as they presumably left the range of whatever illusion spell Gale had woven.

This left Miss Fortune alone and bound, but knowing this was an illusion helped stave off any panic. They wondered if the companions had grabbed Astarion first and then come back for them or if they’d left poor Shadowheart to “capture” him on her own.

A smile tugged at their mouth as they imagined how absolutely livid the vampire must be right now. Interrupting his beauty trance? Messing up his hair with that awful sack? Risking a broken nail to wriggle free of the ropes? They could picture his scowl and the vitriol spewing from it so clearly in their mind. The image of threats of violence issuing forth from such a beautiful man was delicious, especially seeing as they would be directed at other people and not them. Focus, they scolded themselves. You can daydream later.

Miss Fortune never thought they’d be glad for their history as a courtesan in their new life, but as luck would have it they were well-versed in the art of rope play. A wicked smile spread across their face as they tested the bindings. Lae’zel would have to try harder than that to keep them tied up. After all, they’d had their entire body intricately trussed and bound more times than they could count - oftentimes while suspended from the ceiling - and they’d been taught to find their way out of any ties. They were free from Lae’zel’s shoddy knots in no time at all.

The half-elf made a mental note to teach her how to do a better job tying up prisoners after this. Or better yet, to make sure they always did it themselves.

Once they had dressed and armed themselves, the next step was to survey their surroundings. Gale’s sage advice from the last few days replayed in their head: deep breaths, take time to note your exits and your advantages, use all your senses. They were in a small stone room with slits for windows and one door. The only things inside were the chair, the chest their gear had been in, and themselves. Which was to say, not much to take in. Putting their ear against the door, they paused. At first, they heard nothing. But then came the sounds of footsteps drawing nearer - it sounded like two sets.

They waited and listened, breathing as quietly as possible, as the footsteps passed right by their door and then began to recede on the far side of it. Some kind of patrol then, it seemed. Once the sound had completely faded, they took a chance opening their door. Relief flooded their veins when they found it unlocked. That would save them time and reduce the chances of getting caught mid-lockpicking.

The door opened into a short hallway with two other doors to the left of theirs. Clinging to the wall they crept over to the middle door, once again cupping an ear against it to listen inside. No sounds of struggle inside, so they moved on. Miss Fortune felt thoroughly confused when they got to the last door because they could smell Astarion’s perfume - Rosemary, bergamot, and a touch of brandy, he’d recently revealed - before they even reached the door.

Lae’zel had mentioned that this was some sort of elaborate illusion Gale wove. Could the perfume smell be part of it, designed to trick them into opening the wrong door? No, they decided. They hadn’t ever noticed Astarion and Gale in close enough contact for the wizard to replicate the vampire’s scent this well. Putting an ear to the door revealed shuffling sounds, confirming their hunch that Astarion was behind door number three.

Hearing distant footsteps once more, they quickly ducked inside Astarion’s room and shut the door as quietly as possible. The sight that greeted them was one they hoped they could commit to memory. The vampire was on the last clasp of his padded armor, muttering what sounded like foul Elvish curses under his breath. His hair was a beautiful mess with curls going in every direction, but the best part was his facial expression. His eyebrows were downturned slashes over his fiery eyes, and his mouth was twisted into a livid grimace; the very paragon of anger. It took everything Miss Fortune had to stifle their laughter; this was even better than they had imagined.

Read from chapter 1: https://archiveofourown.org/works/64221298?view_full_work=true

Astarion’s simple plan

The Embrace of Love and Death, Chapter 5: Playing with Knives

Chapter summary: Lae’zel puts Astarion and Miss Fortune through the paces, training them relentlessly until they learn to work together better. Things get flirtatious between the rogues as they get to know each other better, and Shadowheart puts Miss Fortune on the spot to reveal their past.

Read the full chapter on AO3! https://archiveofourown.org/works/64221298/chapters/166716742

Excerpt:

“It’s time for the two of you to start warming up,” the warrior commanded as soon as she noticed Miss Fortune was done eating. There was no room for bargaining or arguing in her tone. “You will go to the clearing, you will stretch every muscle, do push-ups, sit-ups, and squats to exhaustion twice, and lastly you will run until I decide to come stop you. Then, I will train you until I am satisfied that you’ve learned the lesson at hand.”

Miss Fortune could hear Astarion complaining under his breath the whole way to the clearing, and when they arrived he turned on them with a huff.

“Why don’t you just leave me at camp to watch the cook pot?” He demanded, waving his hands wildly. “Why put us through all this just to keep me on the road with you?”

“Is that what you want? To stay in camp?” They asked as they began to stretch their arms and shoulders.

“Wha—I didn’t say that,” the vampire countered, beginning his own stretches. “It’s just, wouldn’t that be easier?”

“And miss out on your witty banter and gorgeous face all day? Doesn’t sound easier to me,” Miss Fortune grinned.

“Oh, well in that case…” Astarion feigned sheepishness, brushing a curl behind his pointy ear. “Glad to see someone around here has good taste.”

“And you would know after last night, wouldn’t you? How good my taste is?” Miss Fortune dropped to the ground to begin stretching the lower half of their body. They chanced a quick glance up at the vampire and noticed an almost imperceptible shudder of ecstasy as he presumably recalled the taste of their blood. The half-elf had to look away quickly, hoping he didn’t catch sight of the hot blush razing across their cheeks.

“Aha! How delightful. Yes, you were scrumptious, my sweet. But to whom am I speaking today? Because it’s certainly not the same sad little bird who was ready to curl up and die last night.” Astarion followed suit, practically bending himself in half with seemingly no effort. Miss Fortune tried unsuccessfully not to let their eyes - or mind - drift too much at the sight. There was no denying that he had a great body, and the incredible flexibility had them feeling some type of way.

I made a dumb thing 🙃

The Embrace of Love and Death, Chapter 4: Bite, Bite, Baby

Summary: It’s Bite Night! Miss Fortune awakens to find Astarion’s fangs a breath away from their neck and suddenly all the signs they dismissed before snap into place: their companion is a vampire. Astarion is caught off guard by Miss Fortune’s unexpected reaction.

Read the full chapter on AO3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/64221298/chapters/166132147

Excerpt:

“Were you about to-“ they cried out.

“Shhh! Keep your voice down. It’s not what it looks like,” he pleaded. There was a haunted look on his face as he shuffled back from where he crouched, his hands held up in a placating gesture. “I wasn’t going to hurt you! I just needed - well, blood.”

“So you came to cull the weakest of us first. I understand. I didn’t realize you were a vampire, but in hindsight the signs were all there.” They hugged their knees, resigned to their fate. After all, what hope did they have of fighting off a vampire at night in such a tight space?

“You find a vampire in your tent and your first reaction is numb resignation?!” He asked, incredulous.

“Did you want me to be mad?”

“Yes! No! I-I don’t know!” He paused for a few moments. “There is a lot to unpack here. You and I are going to have a long talk later about your lack of regard for your own life. I need you alive, you know. We all do,” he said with a huff. “Secondly, I didn’t come to you because you’re the weakest but because I thought you’d be the most understanding. The least likely to stake me on sight.

“And lastly: What do you mean you didn’t know?!” Astarion whisper-shouted, gesturing wildly. “After you made a big show about reading that book about ‘vampyrs’ where you knew I’d spot you? Or the hint you dropped about how I haven’t been eating? You shivered at my cold, undead touch earlier. I thought for sure I’d been found out and you were working your way up to blackmailing me o-or…driving me out.”

“Pure coincidence,” they shrugged. “Why didn’t you just tell me if you thought I’d understand?”

“It was still a big risk to take, you know, when a wrong guess would spell my demise.” He shook his head. “No, I needed you to trust me. And you can trust me.”

Miss Fortune considered his words for several moments. Studied his face. The arch of his white eyebrows, raised in concern. The deep set eyes, wide with fear. The way his nostrils flared and his mouth hung slightly agape. The man was terrified, ready to flee at a moment’s notice and never return.

“…I do,” they said at last. “I trust you.”

Meet Miss Fortune

Race: High Half-Elf

Gender: Non-binary

Real name: ??? They’ll tell Astarion eventually

Birthday: Elesias 30

Class: Arcane trickster rogue

Background: Entertainer

Alignment: Chaotic neutral

Voice: 6

Scent: Sandalwood, vanilla, and jasmine

Favorite food: strawberries

(Accidental) aesthetic inspiration: When making Miss Fortune in Baldur’s Gate 3, the options limited me from perfectly matching the image in my head so I went for something as close as possible to my idea of a beautiful masculine-leaning person. It wasn’t until I showed my spouse and bff that they both pointed out I’d basically made half-elf Chris Motionless from Motionless in White. Oops? 😅

Backstory: Miss Fortune is one my favorite DnD characters I’ve ever played. They were a smart, sassy, and chaotic spy master who had a hand in every secret, scandal, and plot. They were the life of every party, their melodic laughter filling whatever room they were in. As a drag queen they trampled over gender norms and played a pivotal role in helping me realize that I am also non-binary - so Miss Fortune will always occupy a special place in my heart 💛🤍💜🖤. So of COURSE when I was making my first bg3 character I had to make them!

The Baldur’s Gate 3/fanfic version of Miss Fortune starts out significantly more traumatized. They grew up as a pretty bird in a bird cage with clipped wings until finally leaving their old life behind two moons (months) before getting abducted by mind flayers. “The Embrace of Love and Death” will reveal more specifics about their backstory as they get to know and trust Astarion. The parallels in Miss Fortune and Astarion’s backstories are completely coincidental! I knew nothing about Astarion going into the game, and when I created Miss Fortune I 💯 intended to romance everyone’s favorite muscle mama, Karlach. But Astarion landed a crit sneak attack on Miss Fortune’s (and my) heart and the rest was history.

Follow along with Miss Fortune’s story and healing journey with Astarion on AO3:

https://archiveofourown.org/works/64221298?view_full_work=true