Anghraine

I nobly spent most of today advancing the dissertation chapter I'm working on to 10 pages rather than praying to Mystra to kill suffering hyenas for Gale approval points. Ugh.

So Larissa doesn't have enough friendship points approval from Gale to unlock much conversation on Day 1, and he's the only one who didn't have anything to say at the end of the day, but she asked him about himself to round out the set anyway. I did figure this might be one of his favorite activities, lol.

Gale:



[Let's see. I hail from Waterdeep, the City of Splendours. I'm a wizard of considerable acclaim, and scholar of exceptional accomplishment.]



[Gale: I have a cat, a library, and a weakness for a good glass of wine. And if the mood takes me, I'm known to try my hand at poetry.]

afd;kjadfkad;j

(I'm pretty sure that Larissa, trying to take all this in, is like "Oh! What's your area of stud—wait, you have a CAT?!" /visibly jealous)

(Also, in the f!Gale AU, I think she simply assumes from this conversation that Gaila is a great poet, too. Gaila is great at everything, obviously!)

That's about all he's willing to say despite approving of Larissa more than anyone else in the party, but I don't think it'll take long for more. :D In any case, I continue to love him with zero irony.

(Oh, another also: Waterdeep is one of my favorite locations in Faerûn, so I appreciate how much he loves his giant decadent hometown.)

And after Lae'zel, Astarion wanted to chat with Larissa. Or "chat." Or perhaps actually chat. Hard to say, really.

( Read more... )

Oh, and Withers said something about the ( Read more... )

So the short version of my last f!Gale fic-sketching-out post is that Larissa saves Gaila per Tav canon, is attacked by Astarion per canon, and I think he inadvertently snaps the chain Larissa's Mystra holy symbol is on. It tumbles to the ground not far from Gaila, who immediately realizes the helpful cleric is a cleric of Mystra. For a wild moment, she longs to believe that it's not a coincidence and Mystra sent Larissa to her, ergo she still cares.

Anyway, I was sort of choreographing it in my mind and nailing down details. I think that when Astarion releases Larissa and agrees to join up, Gaila instinctively snatches up the holy symbol—Larissa's focus for drawing on divine power—and would feel the traces of Mystra's magic within it.

I think Gaila's fingers close around it and for a(nother) moment she desperately wants to keep it for herself. But instead, she forces herself to place it in Larissa's palm.

(Larissa has high enough wisdom to pick up the Gaila is reluctant to give it back to her, but she doesn't know why and assumes it's some wizard thing. I think it's also Gaila who supplies her with another chain to hang it on and helps her put it on again. She even keeps her hands steady, if barely.)

I've never noticed how dirty your face gets if you don't long rest, lol.

(Shadowheart and Gale just look better that way tbh, but Larissa is gross!)

The Book of Lost Gods scene is genuinely delightful to me, given that Larissa is a sage, and a knowledge cleric of Mystra—so she's like, ooh, a mysterious book! ( Read more... )

I guess my BG3 custom character headcanons could be de-canonized in-game, but I doubt it, so here's one for Larissa:

She loves magic. She always has. Her parents are both spellcasters (her father a less-obnoxious-than-usual sun elf, her mother a human sorcerer) and she grew up with magic all around her. She's longed to have magical power for as long as she can remember.

...but she's also always been bad at it. Really bad. After years of practice with her father, she managed to learn exactly one(1) cantrip—and while the ability to summon fire felt like a great achievement at the time, she couldn't do anything else no matter how hard she studied, how much she learned, how much she practiced.

But her fascinated study of magic and its lore took on an increasingly spiritual awe, and she developed an intense devotion to Mystra, goddess of magic. She swore herself to Mystra's service and as one of her priests, worked steadily towards greater knowledge, greater understanding of the mysteries of the world, greater preservation of magical lore, and over time, Larissa became one of the sages at her temple.

And she still sucked at magic.

She's personally kind and caring, if a little abrupt, but at heart, she longed to be acknowledged as one of the most devoted, most respected, most learned, most favored of Mystra's priests. Yet her near-total lack of facility with magic made it clear to her that she was not particularly favored.

Still, she continued to faithfully serve her goddess—and a year before the BG3 story begins, Mystra herself appeared to her in a dream and granted Larissa her blessing.

Larissa wasn't sure what that would mean until she woke to light flickering around her hands—and a distant sense of approval and power. She still can't use magic the way her parents can, can't feel the Weave properly: but when she prays, Mystra answers. In her thirty-nine years, Larissa has never felt anything to compare with the sensation of divine power flowing through her, and her devotion to Mystra has never been stronger.

what could go wrong

I did the whole conversation with Healer Nettie, and got another Mystra-specific option!





Well, I'm sure this could in no way go badly.