Baldur's Gate Gift Exchange '24

[seikasoter]

Dear Author,

Continuing to bring my classic aura of grumpy grognard to the exchange this year, albeit with a mostly refreshed slate of prompts. I'm very glad for anyone who's matched with me on this increasingly eclectic series of requests, so I wish you all the best and look forward to whatever you produce!


Some general preferences

Rating – from General to Explicit, it's fine. Whatever feels right for your inspiration and story. Serious gore or fetishes (vore, scat, et al.) are a turn off, but I can handle most of what you’re throwing at me. My prompts generally don't stray too far toward the sexy side of things but, if you’re going unprompted or just feel like it fits your story, I can definitively say I have no objection to smut.


Yes, please:

• extra/missing scenes which fit the gaps of canon;
• unbreakable friendships;
• teamwork;
• standing battered but triumphant;
• character introspection;
• a touch of the bittersweet.

No, thank you:

• In general, a lot of the common plug-and-play AUs which significantly alter the background of the setting (e.g. ABO, D/s, vampires/werewolves, Hogwarts/school, daemons, total de-powering rather than just backgrounding supernatural elements) – I like BG not just for their characters but also for the specific journey everyone's going through here, so it's difficult for me to get into something which would upend that. If you’re hit really hard by a generic modern AU, that’s something I can take though.
• Character bashing: a villainous story role is fine; it’s when the author is clearly frustrated with a character and taking it out on them that I tune out.
• What I understand specifically by 'futa' or 'G!P' - that is, sticking a penis on a cis woman for the sake of making sure there's dick involved in sex - is not my kink, though actual trans women are fine.

Specific no-thank-yous for this exchange
I haven't played the BGEEs beyond the first one's truly awful release state, so characters and situations from them (including SoD) will pass me by. Heroes of Baldur's Gate/Minsc & Boo's Journal of Villainy were not to my taste, and I'd rather their takes on the characters/history were not included. I'm also reserving judgement on BG3 until I might someday play it, while holding something of a grudge for it co-opting the Bhaalspawn Saga's name, so I won't twig to anything from that either. I haven't prompted for anything from them, but just in case. In short, nothing post-2001, please.


I'm Seika on AO3, and I have my works, my previous gifts, and some of my bookmarks public, often with notes on them, so you can glance through those if you're inclined to keep researching my bad taste.

Obviously, by the terms of the exchange, everything here is optional. I'm very happy for you to remember that, and to take advantage of it: please don't strain anything trying to fit your writing into my ideas. I'm trying to help spark off some thoughts if you aren't immediately seized by one, not to confine you. That's why my prompts often throw out a scattershot of questions and instances at you, even contradictory ones - you're free to pick up as many or as few threads as you'd like. If a single phrase inspires you, I'll be content.


Request set 1: 'fic only


Character Prompts

Imoen
I'm kind of interested in something looking at very nearly the first thing we ever learn about Imoen: that she sneaked into Gorion's correspondence and read that he was going to be leaving with the PC. Why was she there? Is that regular for her, or was she following up on some sort of suspicion she had? What was her immediate reaction and how did she work through what she felt about it? When she started planning to leave - and did leave - what was that like?

Alternatively, and on the darker side, poor Imoen is ripe for some hurt/comfort situations, giving and receiving. Imoen looking after a distraught Charname for the first day and night in the wilderness after Gorion's death, or after a breakdown at the FAI; Charname, Jaheira, Minsc, or other old companions trying so hard to get through to the dazed and confused Imoen in Spellhold; their more conscious reunion after Irenicus has left Charname soulless too, and they're dumped bleeding physically and spiritually into Bodhi's maze; Imoen trying to help Charname when she's taken her soul back from Bodhi, but Charname is still struggling with Irenicus' theft...


Viconia
A fairly simple one: Viconia and Ust'Natha. I'd love to see some digging into Viconia first figuring out that they're going to have to infiltrate a drow city, her despair at the idea she'll have to guide all the surfacers through drow culture and not get them killed, her fear at confronting Lolth worshippers again, the mix of nostalgia and disgust at coming back home to a place she grew up in but also came to hate. Finding the remnants of House DeVir. If you'd like, you might also dig into the unused plot line that Viconia would betray the party when they entered the city, leading to their capture, before realising that she didn't have a place among the drow any more and coming back to help out.

Alternatively, I have some prompts on Viconia's relationship with faith from last exchange, if you'd prefer to fill those in instead.


Yoshimo
A periodic request of mine in BG exchanges is filling in some of the content we knew was brainstormed or plotted but which never got into the game for one reason or another. In this case, I'd be interested in the plans for Yoshimo to return in ToB - as a sort of revenant, raised by Ilmater to seek redemption by helping the ones he'd betrayed, who knew he'd be returning to death (and whatever afterlife he'd earned) after the War was done.

Besides just the major plot point, if you'd like something narrower to concentrate on:

• There will obviously be strong feelings on both sides when it comes to him and Sarevok. Can they understand each other, these two half-dead men brought back to life for a greater purpose? Does the memory of Tamoko bring them together or drive them apart?


• The reactions of those who were directly betrayed by Yoshimo (Charname, the rescue party), those who saw him mostly as either helpful or else pitiful (Imoen, from Chateau Irenicus to basically throwing himself on the party's swords under a geas), and maybe even those who'd never known him but have to cope with his story and everyone else's emotional reactions (say, those who were recruited after Spellhold).


• The last act. When he finally is released again by his god. Or ... is it his god? Does Charname intervene, one way or another? Is it as a mortal making a request of Ilmater, or is it as a god, perhaps more forcefully?
  

Edwina
I'm going to show my age here a bit, but ... just the Ranma 1/2 trans fanfic classic? Turn the genderbending a little more sincere and a little less comic. Get transformed by magical accident, get extremely touchy about it because society has ingrained into you a bit too much chauvinism and attachment to your rod, but gradually find yourself seeing things from another perspective, casting off assumptions, taking comfort in the new form that there wasn't in the old form, and refusing to turn back. (If you want to bring back some comedy, I personally think it would be very funny for Viconia to respond an awful lot better to the uncertain f!Edwin than to vanilla Edwin's terrible attempts at seduction via "erotic onslaught").



Relationship Prompts

Aerie/Haer'Dalis
If you take your time with this one in the game, it will always explode, one way or another. But the difference in the way it blows up is what I'd like to look at here.

If you take your time in SoA, Aerie will decide - after seeing everything Irenicus has wrought - that she needs to step up and be more proactive about fighting evil. Haer'Dalis rejoices over the fading of her innocence and her closer relationship with destruction, which causes her to snap at him that she's not an object lesson in his philosophy and he's clearly not a good match for her new course. Haer'Dalis is sanguine about the matter, seeing it as more or less just another ending, and another proof of the Doomguard's truth. (This conversation makes Aerie "hardened", and it gives her a new voiceset when you transition to ToB).

Conversely, if you don't trigger this argument, you have to wait for Aerie to harden until after the sack of Saradush and the destruction there. It does always happen, regardless of Haer'Dalis being in the party or not, and regardless of their romance status - but if she is romancing him, it again leads to their breakup. He considers the sack of Saradush a wonderful thing, and hearing that is what prompts Aerie to realise that they're fundamentally incompatible, that she wants to go out and stop this, where he adores it. This time, Haer'Dalis is more upset, trying to win her back and calling her his "love". He still is glad to see her hardened, but it's much more resigned than in the SoA version.

So ... I'd like to see something about the development between, towards, and around, and after these two points, whichever you decide to use.

• Haer'Dalis as he observes Aerie's gradual progress in self-esteem and initiative and will to fight;
• him slowly finding her more lovely and more entropic as this continues, and also knowing that this makes the eventual loss all the more inevitable, and beginning to actively mourn its loss in a way he wouldn't have before;
• Aerie on her side as she makes these gains in confidence and conviction both thanks to Haer'Dalis and opposite him, and similarly perhaps starting to twig to their differences.
• The way people see Aerie, differently, perhaps, and especially if she finds this determination in herself in SoA, rather than clinging on to a gentler character until the fall of Saradush.
• The sharp point as the relationship finally disintegrates, from one or both sides, actually in their heads rather than just getting their dialogue.
• The aftermath, with all the jagged edges and relief and regret and near-backtracking that break-ups can bring.

Request set 2: 'fic or art, unleash the crack


Safana/Skie
Horrifically self-referential, but ... when I wrote To Follow And To Lead last year, I ended up finding I shipped this, because they're so similar, but just different enough. Both rich daughters who wanted to run away from overprotective fathers for adventure - but Safana found someone to steal her away, and Skie was seduced into it by Eldoth. Happy to see anything like Safana replacing Eldoth as Skie's original seducer, Safana taking Skie under her wing before or after Eldoth is dealt with and giving her a lesson in proactivity, both meeting later in life and comparing their similar stories. Also, because I find this very amusing, anything to do with Safana as a marriage candidate for Skie - because if you charm Duke Entar (as with Safana's innate ability), then despite his alleged overprotectiveness, he makes a broad hint at Skie being beautiful and marriageable, with no gender check.


Winthrop/Gorion
Old man yaoi? Old man yaoi.

No, literally, I have no particular excuse for this, I just thought it would be cute if the PC and Imoen's foster parents also got together, and got to see their kids growing up and being friends. Besides copious fluff, maybe you can explore a little the how and why of the two children coming to Candlekeep, and how the PC ended up with Gorion and Imoen with Winthrop. Or maybe, finally, we get to resurrect Gorion at some point after the saga (wish ahoy) and get to see the whole family reunion.


Ulcaster
But actually, what would it feel like if some rumour spread around got you to collect these weird artifacts from weird places, half of which it was a complete matter of luck you stumbled upon or found in time, and you brought them to the ghost of the founder of a great school of magic, and he forged them into a powerful magic sword ... and it was cursed and terrible? What would the PC think, what would the party think, what are their reactions, what do they do to Ulcaster? Enjoy the silliness.


Elminster and/or Volo
These two are pretty much the only two people outside the party who can actually watch us develop over the course of the entire saga, from just after Gorion dies, through Nashkel, through the entry into Baldur's Gate, through the mess with the Harpers in Athkatla, through the Siege of Amkethran, and finally through to very near the end itself, as the last of the Five are falling and ascension draws near.

Either singly or in mutual discussion, I'd just like to see their reactions to the Saga as it plays out, the ups and downs, the comings and goings from the party, the development of Charname, the ever-rising stakes and power involved. It's a bit of an excuse to do some freeform selling on your Charname, and the way your party went through the games.

If you'd like, you might make this epistolary, patterned off their interactions in the BG manual (or various other tabletop media, like Volo's Guide to All Things Magical).