A New Tav Has Entered the Scene
May. 13th, 2025 04:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rocky41_7Dark Urge run here we gooooo
This is Haranatavna ("Tav") and much of her backstory is on hold until I've played more and understand more about Durge's background. I've only just made it to the Emerald Grove but I'm already enjoying this origin.
She's a barbarian class but on the whole pretty chill. She's willing to help people as long as it doesn't conflict with or endanger her core goal: never to be under the control of anyone else. She's very curious and loves to learn, and is pleased to engage in philosophical discussions about death with Withers. She can be a pretty solid traveling companion. Unfortunately, she also spends large portions of her time in a dissociative state trying to convince herself that it does actually matter if she hurts other people. She's not always successful.
She will be romancing Minthara, for which I will recruit Minthara the "right" way so...sorry tiefling refugees and druids. But the Grove slaughter will be a turning point for Tav to become a true resist!Durge and she and Minthara can work on being better people who overcome their worst instincts together <3
Can We See Some Evidence? Or SOMETHING?
May. 12th, 2025 12:25 pmrocky41_7
Varric: Me, take down the Dread Wolf? I'm flattered.
Varric: No, I just came to ask you a question. So, you rebelled against the other gods, and it was a disaster.
Varric: Then you imprisoned them and created the Veil, and that was a disaster.
Varric: So how is this time gonna work out any better? Can you tell me that?
Solas: I understand your hesitance, but what I do now must be done, despite it being past your comprehension.
Varric: I'm not saying you're evil. But if you really believed in what you were doing, you'd be able to give me a straight answer.
Solas: You would rather cast aspersions than admit that this is mine to solve.
Varric: No mistake is worth killing innocent people over.
Solas: The question is what lives, and how. My ritual will heal the world, and restore what was driven out of balance.
Varric: C'mon, Chuckles. Who are you trying to convince here? Me, or yourself?
Solas: Varric…
Varric: You're not the first good man I've seen talk himself into a bad decision. The question is whether you can admit it.
This dialogue makes me so crazy and I mean that in a deeply pejorative way. This exchange between Solas and Varric at the start of Veilguard (which you can't actually really hear in-game) goes right to the heart of my biggest problems with the game, which is that it refuses to honestly engage with Solas and his motivations.
Varric, the terminal centrist, seems to suggest that Solas was in the wrong to rebel against the Evanuris for being tyrannical slavers. Which, given Varric's general attitude towards injustice in Kirkwall, isn't totally out of character. Except that Veilguard posits him as the moral heart of the game, so...not sure where we go with that. Is Varric suggesting they'd be better off if the Evanuris had been allowed to continue ruling until the present day?
Then, Solas refuses to give an actual reasons for why he's doing what he's doing. At least in Trespasser, he hinted at why he needed to bring down the Veil. Here, where the writers are given a chance to actually, clearly lay out Solas' motivations, they just...don't. Veilguard won't honestly interrogate either side of the debate, which results in incredibly circular dialogue throughout the game to the effect of:
Solas: I must do this. It's my mistake to fix.
Varric: You're going to drown the world in demons!
Repeat ad nauseum.
No reasons from Solas on why he needs to bring down the Veil--nothing like his Trespasser comments or even his Inquisition dialogue hinting at what the world was before the Veil. Nothing about how spirits suffer being confined exclusively to the Fade. Nothing about how the elves have suffered and been degraded since the Veil went up. Nothing at all about the uthenerai, who may have just been entirely reconned. Just "I made a mistake. I have to fix it." And then later we mix in his grief for Mythal and that's meant to explain it all.
Varric can't argue with Solas because Solas gives Varric nothing to argue against, and therefore nothing for the player to agree or disagree with. We can't have an opinion on what Solas is doing because we're never given concrete reasons why he wants to do this, except that apparently Mythal wanted this (which she never gives any indication of in any of the material we have about her)? (Demonstrably Flemythal disagrees, so this sentiment is at best out of date and at worst completely baseless.) And I've already talked about how making Solas' desire to remove the Veil stem from his personal grief for an individual rather than his desire to do justice for his people weakens his character.
Varric says that if Solas believed in what he was doing he'd give a straight answer, but that would require the game to give us a straight answer, so that can't happen. Veilguard suffers from being a game with a significant moral quandary at the center which determinedly refuses to ever interrogate that quandary.
A New Blorbo Debuts
May. 11th, 2025 05:21 pmrocky41_7I said this in the tags of a tumblr post but I'll share it here too: One of the things that took me by surprise with Minthara's character is how openly she talks about her fear. When she talks about being taken captive by Orin, she doesn't try to make it sound like nbd and doesn't even omit how Orin laughed at her apparent fear. It's not something I would have expected from her initially and it's very intriguing.
Turning Minthara down after she was "disappointed" to realize Tav only thought of her as a friend is hands down the hardest thing I've had to do in this game ;A;
But also - the vulnerability!! "Without Lolth, without the Absolute, without my home, I do not know who I am" "show me who I am through your eyes, let me see myself" !!!!!!!!!!!!!! HOW CAN I BE NORMAL ABOUT HER
I'm just losing my mind about Minthara practically begging to share minds with Tav so she can see herself through someone else's eyes because her sense of self is so tenuous and poorly-understood by her that she needs someone else's view of her to try to understand herself. If Tav says she'd rather just say what she thinks of Minthara aloud, Minthara (gently) pushes back, insisting that the only way for her to get the real truth is to see it in Tav's mind. This woman is so lost and desperate to understand herself, but even now with someone she trusts enough to admit this to, she cannot bring herself to trust Tav's word on the matter.Tavarezzyn
May. 9th, 2025 10:36 amrocky41_7In a grim finale to yesterday evening, Tav helped Astarion complete the ascendance ritual only to hear his unhinged monologue afterwards and then side with the Gur to off him.
Really fascinating to see the cycles at play here: knowing how Cazador abused and tortured Astarion, hearing the memories of how Vellioth abused and tortured Cazador...seeing the horror that Cazador wrought on his spawn, seeing Astarion bend Cazador over and carve the ritual symbols into his back (and they do not skimp on that scene, it goes on a while with Cazador screaming as Astarion does to him what he did to Astarion - I wonder if Cazador's screams sound sweet to Astarion?) I can only assume how this moment with Astarion throws Cazador back to being helpless at Vellioth's hands, and it's easy to imagine even at his age how his pursuit of power felt like a pursuit of control over his own life, of freedom from fear...so to hear Astarion claim as soon as the ritual is over that he'll never have to fear anyone again...boy the cycles do cycle.
Interestingly, Lae'zel opposes this course enough to interrupt the cut scene pleading with Astarion not to do it, and after she seems genuinely sad that he succumbed to desire for personal power (which she contrasts with power for the collective). Minthara, predictably, supports Astsrion's ascension, although she has nothing to say afterwards. After killing him with the Gur, she's frustrated we offed a powerful ally. Lae'zel continues to be disappointed, but seems to believe we had to do it. From a monster-hunter perspective, we aced the day by ending with zero vampires.
I heard murmurs online that ascendant Astarion is just as bad if not worse than Cazador and even the brief glimpse I got of him does resonate with that. Makes me wonder who Cazador was before Vellioth got to him. Someday I'll do a Durge playthrough and let Astarion live out his ascendant vampire dreams.
Astarion was inspired by our betrayal.
Tavarezzyn
May. 4th, 2025 05:28 pmrocky41_7Encouraging Shadowheart to defy Shar as a githyanki Tav who defied Vlaakith feels particularly powerful. Shadowheart insists this is her duty, her life's purpose to follow Shar's orders, and Tavarezzyn is like "Like it was my purpose, Lae'zel's purpose, to follow Vlaakith?"
Initially when I started this run I expected Tavarezzyn to support or at least not oppose Shadowheart's goal of becoming a justiciar, just because Tav was so focused on her own goal she wasn't overly concerned with everyone else's, and because morally she's less opposed to the idea of killing than other companions and Tavs, but her experience with her own god-queen radically altered her views on Shadowheart being effectively bound to Shar's will without the chance to really consider what that means. She sees in Shadowheart herself and Lae'zel, giving their loyalty, even their lives, to a ruler who could not care less about them except as they serve her purpose, and she can't support putting Shadowheart in that position.