ohh grace

[bawdylanguage]

OOC Info
Name: Laura
Age: 29
Contact: jojoveller
Current Characters: n/a


IC Info

Name: Astarion
Canon: Baldur's Gate III
Age: well over 200
Appearance: very overtly a vampire & full body
Canon Point: end of early access
Background: incredibly brief thing here and a much longer walkthrough here for what the whole party gets up to; for some Astarion specifics:

• 200 years ago, high elf Astarion is turned into a vampire spawn by a vampire called Cazador
• Cazador treats Astarion terribly as his slave, including but not limited to: carving poetry into his back (and other implied physical abuses), forcing him to eat only rats to survive, manipulating his obedience through the vampire lord connection
• While in Baldur's Gate seducing a young man to take back to Cazador (likely not the first time), Astarion is captured by the mindflayers
• The brief plot summary follows, with the nautiloid crashing and Astarion meeting the player character on the beach and eventually agreeing to join the group
• Astarion's motivations vary throughout the quest to deal with the parasites, vacillating between not wanting to turn into a mindflayer and wanting to control the parasites in some other way to take advantage of their power
• He is more invested in self-serving choices than helping others throughout the adventure, up to and including encouraging the group to leave people to die if they can't look after themselves and declaring it just awful when he's thanked and fawned over for his efforts in saving the tieflings from the hostile goblin forces
• The quests can more or less be done in whatever order, but by the end of early access/Act I, the group has some leads and various goals to get the parasites out of their heads, and that's where they're at, broadly

Personality:

Astarion is everything one would expect from a vampire (spawn)-- he's vain, arrogant, dismissive, callous... but on the other hand, he's paranoid and a little bit broken, ground down from 200 years of servitude and abuse under his vampire master. It's hard to get through to him, for this reason; why should he trust anyone at all in the world, when he couldn't for actual centuries and had to look out for himself? Hard, but not impossible! Still, it's a work in progress.

The face Astarion presents to most people is one of two: the mean one, or the flirty one. If he considers someone a threat or an enemy he will make it clear, up to and including outright threats and eagerness to rip someone's throat out with his teeth, and not just because he's hungry. His anger runs deep and cold, twisted up in his resentment and paranoia left by his old master, and he isn't a fan of giving people first chances, let alone second ones. He's got a bad temper you could spot a mile away, expressed in violence and just plain rudeness; insults, threats, etc. If he doesn't see an advantage to being kind or at least civil to a person, he straight up will not be; why should he waste his time on civility if he won't get anything out of it? Useless!

That's the one side; the gentler side is flirtatious, equal parts to ingratiate himself with flattery and to keep the upper hand. Flirting, innuendo and the like are a power play-- to wit, he will suggest in various different ways to the player character that they make their own fun and go hook up in the bushes in his romance conversation, but in that very same conversation, if he's the one who's pursued first, there's a chance he will laugh it off and turn it down for not being on his terms (but if you're lucky you can still persuade him to say please, which he is pleasantly intrigued by, go figure). In general, though, the nicer outer shell of Astarion is flirty and talks in circles a bit, to circumvent particular truths should they come up (the vampire thing), but not malicious like he is to others. If he chooses to be kind it's because he's impressed, or sees value in a person, and he's not shy about admitting this outright, nor does he refuse to help out around the camp or keep watch, etc. He doesn't like traveling with a team or working with a group, at least not at first, but his snobbishness extends only as far as pouting about lying on the ground.

That said, he isn't exactly subtle about being the obviously evil friend, even if he's playing nice. He'll encourage cruelty to strangers, he'll laugh at misfortune, he'll casually threaten to eat his companions if they get under his skin enough-- Astarion has no qualms about making people uncomfortable for fun when they've hit his inner circle. In fact it's almost a rite of passage, to reach the level of intimacy (or at least friendship) with him where he'll casually discuss his guesses about how your blood might taste, or which of the teammates he'd like to eat and/or sleep with the most. Some of this could be argued to be another power play, but the closer you get to him, the less likely he is to hold back and try as hard to keep the upper hand-- for better or worse. Worse, usually, for him, as it makes his skin crawl to be vulnerable; he doesn't like to be pitied or fussed after or taken care of with tenderness, it makes him feel weak and insulted, and he doesn't much like to confide in others either, as it will probably lead to the fussing and the pity. Earnest, honest affection, without underlying malice or mockery, is a stranger to him after 200 years under his old master Cazador's cruelty, and he admits even after a night of intimacy that he's been holding back for some reason; he claims it's because he doesn't want to lose control of himself and cause pain (or, you know, bloodloss), but his refusal to talk about his past in anything but clipped summaries and how he physically recoils from sympathy touches tell another story. He's prickly, when it comes to genuine kindness. It doesn't seem real.

Following this, Astarion has a very "look out for number one" policy about himself and most other people. He says that since he had to look after himself and no one came to his aid, why should he want to help others? Directly bringing up the fact that he understands what it's like to be left in peril is what inspires him to say this, too, so it's a pretty solid foundation: he believes in every man for himself, and spitefully leaves strangers to suffer because he was left to suffer. Cazador abused him physically, carving an Infernal poem into his back for an entire night just as one example, as well as magically compelling him to obey and forcing him to subsist on mostly dead rats for 200 years; expecting Astarion to be empathetic to the plights of others just a few weeks out of servitude (and while expecting his master to pop up and drag him back at any moment, if he doesn't turn into a mindflayer first) is... a lot. He's not really working on it, but sometimes it happens accidentally, anyway.

In high stress situations he lashes out, verbally and physically, depending on who's in front of him, and in low stress situations he tends to be... petty. He's easily made jealous if he's turned down for a roll in the hay, especially in favor of somebody else, and he'll pettily mock other people's relationships and dismiss whoever turns him down with a comment about how they could have had someone with class, but no, they chose not to have any taste! Their loss! He definitely has a sensitive ego and doesn't take kindly to dismissal or rejection.

While he won't talk about his past in detail and lashes out about that, too, if pressed by someone not close enough or just asking at the wrong time, what he will talk about he does in a very laissez-faire kind of way; oh, you know, just torture! Just living under a master who called his slaves his canvases and carved into their skin for his art! No problem! He tries to distance himself from this and other things that upset him, to limited success; it's clear from his body language, other behavior, and the nightmares he has when he does bother to sleep that he's deeply traumatized by his time with Cazador even when he's out of his immediate clutches. Cazador has a hold on him that's mental, from the abuse, and literally magical, from the effort to turn him into a vampire spawn in the first place; this leaves Astarion in the precarious position of constantly wondering just how far that influence reaches and whether or not he can compel himself in turn to disobey, and this makes him a liar. He lies-- by omission, mostly, but still-- to the player character when trying to bite them in the dead of night, saying that he needs human blood to feel stronger, as only eating animals leaves him sluggish and weak. This is objectively true, but his primary motivation for trying to bite a companion in their sleep is the compulsion to see if he even can, as Cazador forbade him from biting sentient creatures some 200 years ago. The lie both paints him as more sympathetic and covers up what he perceives to be his weakness; it's a mess.

That all said, when in a good place both physically and mentally, when having a decent time, Astarion isn't unpleasant to be around. He's charming, he's witty, he's easy to banter with if you don't mind a few overt suggestions of casual biting. He's clever quick, and definitely someone you'd rather have on your side than not. His trust and loyalty are hard to earn but his appreciation is honest, and if you need a token mean friend around, he's not a bad choice. He just wants to have a little fun with his newfound freedom, good company and time in the sun, before something inevitably pulls him back into the endless dark.

Weaknesses/Temptations:

▶ The opportunity to be rid of Cazador once and for all, definitively, permanently; this is his main goal underneath the rest of his lesser goals in canon, and so a no-questions-asked, all-results-guaranteed... guarantee that he could be rid of his old master in exchange for something? That could sway him.

▶ Similarly, the opportunity to not be a vampire spawn anymore... or at least to permanently do away with the ill effects, i.e. the burning in sunlight and so on. He's missed the sun in particular more than anything else in his 200-odd years as a vampire spawn, and while the tadpole in his head seems to be subverting that problem, a less dangerous and more permanent solution would be killer.

▶ Similarly... 2! The ability to conquer the mindflayer tadpole's inevitable trend towards transformation, but still reap the benefits of its powers. It gives him advantages and extra strengths in combat, but it will slowly transform him into a mindflayer if not dealt with or if its powers are used too much, too quickly. It also makes him sick sometimes, so... screw this worm, basically! Would love to put it in its place!

Sins:

🖤 murder
🖤 lying
🖤 lust
🖤 leaving others to suffer
🖤 greed
🖤 attempting to suck blood without consent
🖤 providing unwilling thralls for vampire masters (before and after becoming one, even!)
🖤 corruption (while a magistrate)
🖤 envy
🖤 incredibly petty gossip
🖤 hedonism

Powers/Abilities:

▶ He's a rogue, so he's generally good at stealth and lockpicking, disarming traps, etc.
▶ He's proficient in using a bow as well as daggers/short swords, but he prefers the bow.
▶ As a high elf and vampire spawn he doesn't need to sleep, and instead goes into a sort of trance. He can choose to sleep, though.
▶ He technically doesn't need to eat anything besides blood, but caveat: everything else tastes like shit to vampire spawn if he got the urge for a glass of wine or something.
▶ As a vampire spawn he has pretty much none of the benefits of a full vampire, but he can bite and drain a person of their blood pretty easily! Woo!
▶ The mindflayer tadpole in his head allows him to get around most of the inconveniences of being a vampire (spawn), e.g. he can be out in the sunlight and doesn't need permission to enter a home.
▶ The tadpole also allows him to communicate telepathically and read the memories of others, but only if they also have a tadpole, so this one is irrelevant unless some castmates app.

Items: A shortbow, a quiver of arrows, two daggers, a single healing potion.


SAMPLES

Network: here from the tdm
Log: the rest of the tdm toplevel, this other bonus thread