i love stealing. i love taking things.

12/20/2024

this session started off strong with ryker and company coming across the final of the main six companions, karlach. though wyll had said she was a demon, it became immediately clear that this wasn't true. everyone got along in the end, and karlach was welcomed into the party... sort of at ryker's behest. the camp is getting crowded and every new person is a new potential annoyance - AND potential grisly murder. i wonder if anyone is going to tell karlach about the alfira incident, or if everyone's agreed to forget it because of ryker's great smile and winning personality.

she asked everyone to help her get rid of some so-called "paladins of tyr" who had been hunting her down on zariel's behalf. after some convincing, they went, and proceeded to get absolutely curbstomped before barely pulling through. everyone was walking around like this - bloodied and bruised. even when mizora showed up to punish wyll for doing the right thing. that wasn't fun to watch, but now he looks really cool, even if he doesn't think so. ryker has some feelings about wyll making a deal with a devil for powers, but there's no point in rubbing salt in the wound. good people get swindled and suckered all the time - they know that because they love doing it to people (...)

the next day, after the smoldering building became safe to raid, ryker and co. went back into the building they'd gotten beat up in before to raid it for food. there was actually a lot of good stuff in there, probably at least enough food to last another night or two, so it was worth returning. ryker draws the ire of everyone when he tries to bang out some tunes. he's not good at it. ryker is now banned for life from playing these ear-splitting symphonies. sad! god forbid a guy have a hobby.

the party continued on their way. the quest to find and karlach had been completed, so it only seemed right to keep looking for leads as to where halsin could be, or where those goblins could be gathering, or where those cultists could be congregating... there's a lot of leads to chase, and the only way to find them is to keep looking. when everyone stepped into an odd-looking cave, they all failed their investigation checks and promptly got crushed half to death by a giant boulder, indiana-jones style. i'm not sure how clear the image is, but the boulder also completely blocked me off from leaving when i tried to. now, regardless of what danger might lie ahead, they have to just keep going.

and danger there was. ugh. the party came across a grisly scene at the other end of the cave - two lone men being attacked by a pack of multiple gnolls. they were doing their best to hold them off with firebombs, but they were severely outnumbered and outmatched. that end of the cave just so happened to be the only way out of the stupid thing, so everyone joined in. it was an extremely tough battle, and as usual, everyone nearly died. but they didn't! the guys we rescued were grateful, and told us that they were currently on their way to waukeen's rest to deliver a certain shipment. and look - one of them even has the same bandana as ryker. they're basically best friends now, especially since they told us how to get into a secret invite-only hideout. how fun!

these two could make strong allies in the future. ryker and company saved their lives, after all. they could forge a great friendship from this, especially if they continued to help them out by escorting them to waukeen's rest. it's a strong basis for a friendship, saving a stranger's life. something good could come of this, maybe even a lead into solving their tadpole problem, just as long as they don't squander that goodwill. but that would be difficult to do. ryker would have to do something stupid and reckless.

hopefully this won't have any negative consequences in the future - he didn't really think twice about the fact that they're definitely part of organized crime. or, he did, he was just more concerned with the fact that whatever they were carrying must be valuable if a syndicate of bandits were the ones transporting it. ryker got away with his loot before either of them could process what was happening, and he hauled it all the way back to camp.

hopefully it's something good. it was a big risk to take it all the way back.

thankfully, some distraction from the comically evil looking flask (which probably contains some terrible curse) comes in the form of gale gazing longingly at a strange holographic woman. his and ryker's conversation quickly takes a turn into just a general one about magic, and gale offers to teach him some. ryker's never used magic - his memory is poor, to say the least, but he's not convinced he's ever used it in any big way. even so, with gale's guidance, he does some cool flashy purple light-y... something. they have a fun little bonding moment that brings them closer as friends and companions. it's nice - gale's probably the first 'friend' he can remember, what with the rest of his life being missing and all. as ryker lets his mind wander, he's blissfully ignorant of the fact that the weave has connected his mind to gale's. by the time the bizarre and definitely unprecedented thought of "should i kiss this guy with tongue" flits across his mind, it's too late. gale has already seen it.

something just happened. ryker is mortified and has to go run away immediately to punch the training dummy repeatedly. this is not happening. ryker is not gay. or at least, he's pretty sure. if he was gay, he would REMEMBER such a thing. ryker has nothing against the 'gays' so to speak. it's just that he's not 'gay.' the thought of kissing gale was a trick of his horrible mind. his horrible mind that makes him kill people cannot be trusted with matters of sexuality. this incident never happened. ryker blackstag is not GAY.

ryker's long day

12/17/2024

super long entry spanning several hours of gameplay. ryker crawled through the crypt with his buddies, got attacked by zombies, and ran into peepaw withers. yay!

it's good that i found him, because on a dime i changed my mind to reclass him from a fighter to a rogue/fighter. rogue is more befitting of his thieving ways - but i still wanted to keep his fighter class because it's 1 - fun to play and 2 - still quite fitting for his kind of... knight-ish charm. tragically, i had to change my difficulity in order to multiclass (why?) so now i'm no longer playing on easy mode for litle babies. le sigh. i will be killed. ryker left the crypt and found the grove, which is where the main quest of the first act starts. he finds himself thouroughly unimpressed by the druids, antagonizes kagha and saves arabella, has a fruitless visit with nettie, and then gets wyll on his team. that means i've got all but one of the main companions, and i've gotten the three main partners i want to have for this save - being gale, shadowheart, and wyll.

the party has a lot to do. lae'zel wants us to find her creche, nettie wants us to find halsin (ugh), kagha wants us to kick out the tieflings and the tieflings kind of want us to bash kagha over the head, ryker wants to expose her for political corruption, and we STILL need to get the worms out of our heads. we've got a million things to do, but first - new clothes! i can't play this game without giving everyone fun armor. my favorite mod, the basket of equipment, is totally broken with patch seven, which is a huge shame. i do miss it something awful, but i found a few cool custom item + dye mods to fill the void. here's the starting equipment for our party.

for ryker, i gave him a sleeveless bandit's outfit and scarf. i like it a lot, it's pretty evocative of how he dresses in his own story, even if not exactly the same. i'm also glad it fits - a lot of the outfits for body type 2 don't fit them because i've got them modded to look a little more androgynous and less ripped. (it's this one, if you're curious.) i'm also EXTREMELY fond of the chunky gloves. gale has a funny little nerdy suit which makes me laugh. my friend ash says he looks like a random guy that got dropped into a fantasy world, which i agree with. i think it's cute, though. none of the screenshots i took of shadowheart are particularly good, unfortunately, but she has a really cute dress that i dyed with a shadowheart specific dye from a mod. wyll's got a badass bandit's outfit from the same source as ryker's. i think it's going to look particularly cool when... you know. we'll get there.

after spending like two hours trying on different clothes and dyeing everything, i got back into the game and continue ryker's adventures. he makes friends with the local tiefling kids. despite being so unfriendly, they've got a soft spot for the youngins. he can't even bring himself to be angry when the baby's first crime syndicate tries to rob him. side note, the responses and actions exclusive to rogues are super fun and a lot more in line with ryker's character than the fighter options. being able to show off to the thief kids was really cute and super sweet. his kindness to these kids (and prior rescue of arabella) earns him the friendship of mol and her crew.

things quickly start sucking, though. astarion is a vampire and sucks ryker (confused) like a juicebox! gale informs ryker (still confused) that he needs to eat magic shoes or he will die. evil ryker takes over and kicks a squirrel to death, ruining normal ryker's day. ryker's entire party gets lured and suckered by harpies. he and the party come across a dead guy and his (alive) siblings in the middle of the woods, and they inform us that ryker is a "true soul..." whatever that means. it's probably for the best to play along, though, and so we do. between nettie and this guy, we now know that people have been worshipping this "absolute" figure, and it's got something to do with the tadpoles. we continue our hunt for halsin (UGH) but we don't make much progress because even more things start happening to me against my will.

maybe this one isn't against my will. ryker, physically unable to stop causing trouble for two seconds, walks into a barn where an ogre and a bugbear are getting it on. shadowheart and wyll hate them for doing this, the ogre and bugbear hate them for doing this, they get beaten within an inch of their life for this, but it was funny. so it was worth it. nevertheless, the party carries on. they find a dog, too! ignore his owner's dead body. it's probably fine.

but things get worse when a surprise visitor joins the party. it's alfira, a tiefling from the grove that ryker spoke to earlier. she insists on staying, despite ryker's demands to leave and go back to the grove. if only she had listened - but it's not her fault. she couldn't have expected the night's horrific events, and neither could anyone else.

ryker immediately tells everyone what happened. he makes no effort to hide it. everyone's trust in him takes a hit - understandably so. he wouldn't expect anything else. the guilt of murdering alfira, despite not remembering even a second of it, eats him alive. it'll take some time to recover from the shock of seeing firsthand what he's capable of deep down - but he'll probably never truly move past what he's done.

ok anyways raphael. i don't really care that much about him right now. ryker is smart enough not to trust literal demons, especially when they look soooo schtewpid. he stuffs his face with hellfood instead of listening and immediately forgets whatever he was offered as soon as he's out of there. he's also visited that night by a second rude spectre, sceleritas fel, who is a weird little freak and refuses to tell him anything about his past, despite clearly knowing full well who he was. after the one-two combo of incredibly rude interruptions, the party comes across a group of gnolls. the battle goes well and it's easily won.

joke. poor half-starved gale had to revive everybody one by one. that's three revivify scrolls that are gone forever - but at least everyone else has been brought back to life. we're all in working order to go take on our many quests - but maybe in smaller chunks, next time.

making NO friends

12/16/2024

while it's not my first time playing BG3, it is my first time playing it on a functional PC. up until now, i've been playing it on my school-issued laptop that was never meant to run such a big game - but i moved everything over to an actual PC meant for gaming. hooray! i decided to wipe all of my old saves (which were barely functional due to a combination of having mods broken by patch 7 and being on an old mac) and start over anew. this save is my first one.

as is typical for a dark urge origin, ryker was given a rude awakening when he found himself aboard the nautiloid with no memories. cowabummer! the first thing i noticed is his deeply unserious portrait. he looks like he's going to go "ermmm, well THAT just happened..." when he inevitably snaps and rips someone's heart directly from their ribcage.

anyways shortly after waking up, he met lae'zel, and then shadowheart. (and us, of course...) after antagonizing both of them as much as humanly possible, they got the hell outta dodge and crashed the ship into the beach. they tried to rob shadowheart because they thought she was unconscious. not nice! he also made multiple attempts to just walk away, but was peer-pressured into bringing her along. it's probably for the best. ryker may not care for shadowheart but i sure do. the next character he met was astarion, who he ruthlessly bullied. he will never stop ruthlessly bullying him for as long as they're in this party together. he also rescued lae'zel without any bloodshed, and saved gale from the portal.

so that's four party members down - there's still more to meet, but ryker doesn't know that. i streamed some of my gameplay to my friends and made sure to do laps in underpants. game of the year. i don't know what that top piece is. probably some sort of harness...? but it doesn't look functional as that, either. after fooling around, ryker came across some weird, crumbling temple and headed inside. that's where i ended for the day, though, so i guess we'll see what comes of that later.