Baldur's Gate 3 - Rise of the Dark Urge - part one

Welcome, welcome! Are you prepared for a grand adventure? Yes? Good! Because today we start a grand adventure in Baldur's Gate 3.

Prepare to read a lot of words! And if you don't want to read, at least you can enjoy the pretty photomode pictures that will be spread throughout this and many more upcoming posts. ❤️📷

Meet Oriana. The Dark Urge. A bard from the city of Baldur's Gate who now has absolutely no memory of her past life. All she knows is her name, what city she came from, and her... feelings.

_{If you're familiar with BG3, you'll see that I've made her look somewhat similar to Orin. For reasons.}

She feels a deep-seated lust for murder and to play many melodies with her lute as she bathes in the blood of her foes. Oriana doesn't know why she feels this way or who she was before being abducted by mindflayers, but she loves her lute. Lute is love, lute is life.

After mocking the dead mindflayer that had dared jam a parasite into her eye, Oriana sought her escape from this crashing and burning ship.

Now was not the time to sate her urges. She befriended Lae'zel, a gith, and Shadowheart, a goth, and with a walking, talking brain creature they successfully took over the ship's helm and crash-landed back in the mortal plane.

While she was there, she discovered that there was another way of sating her desires - using her parasite's connection. It was... intriguing, to say the least. Something to keep in mind.

The ship crashed somewhere wholly unfamiliar, but Oriana soon found Shadowheart and together they went searching for help.

Along the way they discovered many more people also afflicted with their unfortunate problem — they had been infected with a mindflayer parasite and would soon transform into mindflayers themselves... unless they could eradicate the little beasts, or learn to control them instead.

A twisting desire to kill someone, something, burbled in her chest but was soon sated — there were goblins. Plenty of goblins. Plenty of goblin blood.

The goblins had been chasing some adventurers who were keen to get into a druid grove. It was a place that brought great inner turmoil and conflict to Oriana.

The part of her that enjoyed music and the life of the Bard helped a young Tiefling talent to imbue her melodies with her grief. The part of her that indulged in mayhem slam-kicked a squirrel against a tree then encouraged a snake to kill a child. It was odd, but both of these parts were hers.

There was a great healer in the grove by the name of Halsin, but he had gone off with the adventurers and hadn't returned. Oriana didn't bother speaking to his apprentice. It was doubtful she would know anything about removing this parasite.

Lae'zel stressed the need to find a gith creche to remove the parasite, but Oriana wasn't too sure she trusted the vicious gith. She would explore other options first.

As they searched for the missing Halsin, they stumbled across a crypt being ransacked by bandits. A crypt that had once belonged to worshippers of Jergal, Scribe of the Dead. They camped here for the night, enwrapped by the cool blanket of undeath.

It was quite interesting, really - in this dark, forgotten crypt lay a wonderful necklace that would allow her to speak with the dead. How entirely morbid and glorious.

Halsin was not in the crypt and there were no corpses lying around of a bearish elf, so they travelled onward. During their travels, they came across a dying man alongside his two siblings... worshippers of an 'Absolute.' The parasite in her brain allowed her to talk to them as though she were one of their own...

She was apparently something called a 'True Soul.' Was this the mindflayer's doing? Or was this something else entirely?

Further inland, away from the Grove, Oriana and her group stumbled upon a kindly old lady who had been selling her potions at the Grove... being hassled by two young men.

She tried to get them away from the old lady with the powers of her Bardiness, but they refused to listen to reason and soon succumbed to her blade.

The old lady -- Ethel -- thanked her and bade her welcome to her home further onwards. Oriana would go there soon, first she had to find this Halsin fellow. Or his corpse.

That night Alfira, the Bard Oriana had helped in the Grove, waltzed into camp. She wanted to join up with them! Oriana welcomed the girl with open arms and together they played their music well into the night.

At some point, however, Oriana last track of her thoughts, of her being, and as the sun began to rise she began to come to... to a bloodbath. Her hands were stained. The girl's innards were pulled from her stomach. Her blood had been used as a makeshift offering.

Oriana knew she had some dark urges... but so far she had been controlling them. Unleashing them upon goblins and bandits. This was... disturbing. What else could she do — had she done — without being aware of it? Had an entity of some sort taken her over? Was it the creature living in her brain?

Her fellows were rightly horrified and now distrusted her.

She had to get to the bottom of this.

Absentmindedly, she dipped a finger into the pool of blood and licked it clean.

 

Until next time!!

 

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_{All screenshots in this post are courtesy of me, @kaelci and are from the game: Baldur's Gate 3.}