Twits, Bhaalspawn, CHARNAME - played or not.

[mimi-sardinia.livejournal.com]

This is long and only of interest to someone who knows Baldur's Gate - or wants to take a look at some of my thoughts on old character ideas.

I have a lot of Bhaalspawn in my BG-playing history, most of whom were never played in the game and were more character ideas for fanfic than gameplay, not that I would have ever got most of them written either, but anyway...

To start with There's the BG1 CHARNAMEs. I didn't really think hard about their personalities, they were just game pieces with names and portraits really.


I don't recall her name, I don't recall her class, or her alignment, or her race either, but I suspect she was a Chaotic Good half-elven fighter/mage - that was always my favourite combination as I thought it to have as much versatility as I wished for. That race/class/alignment combo will come up again in the played characters, repeatedly, as will various parts of it. The unplayed characters have somewhat more variety, but not spectacularly so.


Bluefyre
Considering the effect gained from my amateurish photoshop job on the icon, the name is damn descriptive. Again, I recall very little about her - my main BG1 play-throughs date back to the time that I was playing the game on Noddy's computer - 1999 (Noddy is my brother, BTW - 4 years older than me. I also have another brother, Grey, who is about 18 months older than Noddy - and those are the only names I ever give for them online). That's a long time ago to have to recall details of play.
I do know she had a Good alignment and suspect that despite later alignment preferences, she was actually LG. She was most likely a half-elf fighter/mage.

Noddy left Brisbane when Mum and I were approved for a Department of Housing place. The computer stayed with us for a few months, due to Noddy not wanting to risk it on interstate transport, but it eventually followed him south - I think it was at some point Mum had cause to go down there and she took it with her when she drove.

When that compy left, so did all internet access until in 2000, when I enrolled in Tafe. I was able to get onto the Tafe computers and hang around online - especially on the Sevilian Board, and it around then I first touched the edges of the Attic. I didn't go into the Attic board at that time - I spent ages that I shouldn't have reading the Sevilian board as it was and I didn't want to get immersed in another message board. I did however get to reading Bethphel's Diary, a long novelization of BG1 by the original webmaster of the Attic, Leo.
My time in Tafe ended however, as did what internet access it allowed. I think I got into another course the next year, but I was a bit more circumspect about my internet usage then.




Aliya Flit
Yes, this is where my icon comes from - it was originally a BG portrait that I cut down to 100x100. Aliya was really my first BG2 CHARNAME, and yes, fighter/mage half-elf, but she was originally Chaotic Neutral.

I didn't actually play her all that much, I'd got Fëanor (my compy) in July 2001, after my grandfather's will had cleared and the money split between the family - it resulted in Mum getting 14k and that was just enough to get a new (second-hand) car and a computer. I'd got BG2 months beforehand in hopes of having a compy and started playing it almost immediately, but I got bored quickly, and annoyed at things like De'Arnise Keep and Anomen's annoying boastfulness and desisted playing for the better part of the rest of the year. I also had a tendency to dump Ano quick - har har.




Narrienna Gorionchild
I didn't really take up play again until the end of 2001, when Noddy came up from Sydney for Christmas, bringing with him a strategy guide for BG2. He let me keep the guide when he left and while reading it, I found out about the romances available in the game. That piqued my interest enough not only to start playing again, and to be more patient with Ano and his attitude, but also the venture into the Attic.

Narrienna was a name I made up for the CHARNAME I started at that point, one who like many of her predecessors was a half-elven fighter/mage, but this time I was a bit more thoughtful on the subject of alignment and picked the one that was the best match for my ideals and my gameplay and made her CG - an alignment that has become almost standard for me since.

As you might note, she's had a few different portraits over time. The Aliya Flit one was a holdover of playing Aliya Flit - actually, a lot of early Narri was a holdover of Aliya, up to and including the first ficlet I wrote about Narri (which was really an ad-on to someone else's fic, one about Sarevok and an undignified moment in his first life).
Narri in fanfic started properly with a thoughtful piece that was partly me defining who she was, that outlined how she considered herself to be a lot of opposing characteristics. She took form over the period when I had pretensions of epic-writing, and her later life when I developed a thing for Sarevok/Imoen and thought up quite a bit of Imm's post-ToB life.

The second portrait was one I butchered for another LJ icon, one for bhaaltwit - my RP journal for Narri. The third icon is one I ended up using for Varda Elentári (Elbereth Gilthoniel - a "goddess" in LotR) and is apparently the one in my most recent attempt to replay BG1, if the savegame is anything to go by.


These are a couple of pics I drew of her, because frankly, after Irenicus' treatment, Narri didn't really care for outfits that left her midriff bare like she used to wear - she had quite a lot of really bad scars she preferred not to show the world and even endured southern Tethyrian and Calishmani heat in preference to letting those scars be seen by anyone other than Anomen.

Which reminds me, Narri's first game was from well before any major romance mods were available, so Narri is always linked to Anomen in my head - she ended up married to him and they eventually had 4 kids. She eventually got involved in Amnish politics, where she tried her best to reform the Cowled Wizards from the inside, with help from Nalia, who eventually gained control of Spellhold.

A profile I once wrote a long time ago has this to say:
She has a mischievous sense of humour, a hot temper and swings from one mood to another like a drunken sailor.
She loves having fun of the low brow type and isn’t very comfortable amongst nobility.

...

Narri is fast becoming the embodiment of the best and worst of myself given free reign. As such she is likely to always be my favorite.

ETA 09/09/08: Dear Fragging hell, that quote sounds so slagging Mary Sue! In my defence, it dates back from when I originally created Narri, back in my first year online, and Narri is a bit Sueish at the best of times anyway.



While I was hanging around the Attic, I had quite a number of character ideas. As I mentioned above, most of these were more fanfic ideas, not ones I actually intended to play.


Arroc
Arroc was the first male character idea I ever considered. I think he was a blade bard, probably NG because bards have to neutral, and definitely half-elven.
Arroc never got much development in my head, the only thing that remains of him really is an idea of him being stuck in the middle of at least two of his female companions vying for his affections - Aerie and Viconia, I think.


Caella
She's insane. She's evil. She's a sorceress.
Actually, that's pretty-much everything there is to say about Caella. I'm not good at getting into the mindset of evil characters in general, something that wouldn't help if I did want to write fic.

Cae was a bit of a running joke between me and a friend I made on the Attic - a lurker named Blade. Still see him online once in while.


Hala
I kinda felt sorry for the short stick half-orcs are served with teh Ano romance and Hala was really something that came from that. She's a half-orc who grew up in a community dominated mostly by humans, elves and half-elves, so she developed a self-image problem, and she also suffered a terrible crush on Ano, even though he never noticed.
She also became friends with Aerie, becoming a guardian figure for her like Minsc does in the game. A little of this relationship is evident in the fic I wrote that had Hala in it, though I was just a little annoyed by the Attic's usual anti-Aerie attitude when I posted it.
Hala one of only two of the Twits who got fic written about her.


Dorian
Dorian is my other evil character idea. She was based heavily on the anti-paladin kit that was originally packaged with the Valen mod, but is now packaged with Tactics. As per that original packaging, she also had Valen as a companion.
She is one of about two of my Bhaalspawn who eventually became a god - Caella was going to accept it, but Imoen stabbed her in the back before she could. Dorian had better sense than Cae and left Imm behind in Suldanasellar because their outlooks differed too much but she was unwilling to hurt her sister.

Dorian is a Lawful Evil Anti-Paladin Elf, her patron while she was mortal was Iyachtu Xvim (the reasoning for this choice was simple - Dorian would end up an ally (more like subordinate) of Bane when he returned).


Kalli
Kalli has an interesting origin actually, she was based on a dream I had. The original dream-version of her had far curlier hair than the Callisto portrait gives her, but none of the frizzy-haired portraits I had in my collection pleased me so I settled for something that worked with Kalli's personality, if not her true looks.
Dream-Kalli also was a Barbarian/Sorceress in job class, but that couldn't be made in BG2 so I scaled her back to just being a barbarian. Now that I know 3E a bit better from my manuals, I suspect a sorceress/barbarian could maybe be wrangled on paper.

The character idea of Kalli was basically that she has two settlings, childishly fun-loving, or out-of-control berserk. No in betweens.

I still have flashbacks to her whenever I hear a certain Savage Garden song - fault of the fact that at the time she was invented I was listening to the radio a lot and that song was on frequently.


Bunny Wymrr
Bunny wasn't so much a character idea herself as a story idea of how her companions reacted after she chose to become a goddess - the abandonment and who decides to convert to become her first worshippers.
Unlike Dorian, Bunny is good-aligned - CG I think, and I vaguely recall she was a straight fighter. Still a half-elf though.


Michelaea Pridain
Mich is a rather interesting idea - she was an attempt to convert one of my old pre-internet characters into a BG protagonist.
The original Mich was actually an avatar for a powerful goddess-like being, but with BG-Mich I kinda flipped that on it's head, making Mich the "dominant" persona and Harliquin one of her aspects.

See, Mich has multiple personalities. On a whole, Mich could be branded as being Chaotic Neutral, but that's kind-of a composite alignment as her personalities vary in alignment right across the spectrum. A lot of her skills are also spread across her separate personas, something that was covered in one of her two ficlets, where she was pissed off because her sword skills had been reduced due to Harliquin all but disappearing.

Only a few of her personalities were ever named - Harliquin the jester, Shankill, Milani, Fraarec and Gorred are the names that remain. From what the ficlet has in it, Shankill is very sensible and understands Mich's mind quite well, Milani was very hurt by what happened in Irenicus' keeping and is still crying, Fraarec is rather violent, Gorred is someone even Shankill fears, and Harliquin has vanished into the utter depths of Mich's mind-scape and won't return until certain items are repaired - particularly her porcelain mask. I had this mental image of Mich collecting all sorts of trinkets through her adventures and eventually, when the play that is part of the bard stronghold is staged, she puts everything she's collected together - including the repaired mask - into a costume that finally brings Harliquin out again. After that, she's ready to face Irenicus.


Mimi Fish
The original Mimi Fish was a character I made up who was connected to the original version of Harliquin. She's been made over several times in my online life and the latest version of her is my current online identity - Mimi Sardinia.

There was a RP started on the Attic at one point that I tried to get involved in but I kinda flaked out quickly. One of my proposed characters was Mimi, a planes-traveller who ends up on the Sword Coast during a war.

Her class is sorceress/fighter/thief, race human, alignment CG.

She was also paired up with Caella, whose backstory is that after being killed by Imoen to prevent her from becoming a goddess, her spirit was obtained by Mimi's superior, Nemesis, and kept for the amusement Nemesis found in her. She and Mimi argue a lot.
Nemesis was named after a friend I had from the Sevilian Board at the time.




The FunLovers
I know, daft name - fits them though.

I ended up thinking up approximately 20 years of Narri and Imoen's lives after the end of ToB - mostly Imoen's though, because that was about the time I was at the hight of my Sarry/Imm thingie.

Both Sarevok and Imoen stayed around long enough for Narri's wedding but Imoen wanted to visit Candlekeep and Sarevok wanted to do something about the disservice he'd given his lover Tamako in his first life. The result was that Imoen ended up travelling north with Sarevok and decided that she'd go to Baldur's Gate with him and head back south to Candlekeep after he'd found Tamako's remains.
After seeing Sarry off, she did as she intended and went back to Candlekeep and spent several months there, putting together a comprehensive account of the Bhaalspawn War, made up of accounts from her own diary, Narri's diary, the accounts of their team mates and various other documents collected through their adventures. One of the lucky parts of that is that Narri had mailed her first diary to Winthrop - the nearest she had to family left alive - when she'd filled it, so Imoen had that to refer to while working on the Sword Coast part of the account (in other words BG1 events).

While there, Winthrop gave her what information he had of Imoen's family - Imoen was actually a blood relation of both Gorion's and of Winthrop's wife Danera. The fic I wrote about that is here - one of the few that I posted to FF.net. Danera unfortunately was one of the Candlekeep residents that didn't survive the doppelganger invasion, but Winthrop did. Imoen decided to track down what she could about her mother, heading to Waterdeep and eventually find her mother's one-time friend Adaina Rivlin.

After than, she decided to take up adventuring again, but she already had a reputation from the Bhaalspawn War so she dyed her hair back to it's original red and assumed the pseudonym Danera Rivlin. She met up with a pair of young paladins who lead a small group of adventurers, who were in need of thief and joined them.

The FunLovers team was something I put together from some interesting class ideas I got from the Forgotten Realms campaign setting manual. The role call is as follows:

Danar Anatu, an Aasimar paladin of Sune (well if you want to get technical, he's actually quarter-celestial - his planar heritage is still quite close). Danar's mother was unimpressed by her son's choice of vocation, worried he'd hurt himself - and his looks - out adventuring. She was argued down by her father, the celestial in her and Danar's family, a Ghaele (CG - described as a "knight errant" of the planes in the Monster Manual).

ETA 09/09/08: Just as a point of amusement, a recent discussion on fanficrants had me thinking of Danar again, and I came to the conclusion that he's a total metrosexual. The fact that he is, has a great deal to do with being Sunite, of course, because a Sunite being concerned with their looks? Umm, like, total foregone conclusion?

Kiana Roné, human paladin of Kelemvor. Kiana has a deep distaste for undead, having lost family to vampires. She met Danar while clearing out a nest of undead - he was there hunting for treasure and when he saw that she was a rather gorgeous redhead he immediately latched onto her. Kiana mostly holds him at arm's length, not really sure she wants to go any further than the friendship they currently have, though Danar remains in hopes she'll eventually change her mind.

Karnaron Harnos, half-elven monk of the Shining Hand and the team's designated mage. He hails from Athkatla's secretive Shining Hand monastery, having taken to the road of adventuring because he found the secretive life in his monastery (due to Athkatla's anti-magic laws) stifling. This drove a wedge between he and his lover (who was another male) but did not totally drive them apart. Their relationship is currently a long-distance affair.

Roryn Rockqueller, a simple dwarven fighter out to make a name for himself. He's probably the one of the group I had the least background for.

Jhaelrnya Istilyn, a surface-born Eilistraeen bard, just starting out. Jhae is young - very young, she'd be the equivalent of 16-year-old human. She's out to see the world and have some fun. She comes from the Dales area, where her parents live in a small secluded village that has accepted Eilistraeen drow into their community.

Jeminar Tüb and Grey, a Mielikkian cleric/ranger and his wolf companion. Jem comes from the same village as Jhae does. He's an older, experienced man - human, 42 years of age. He made a promise to Jhae's parents to protect her.
There's issues with these two - Jhae has huge crush on Jem and Jem is a bit more than just fond of her, but he knows he's already too old for her and their lifespans are also a serious issue so he does his best at keeping nothing more than friendship.
Grey is actually a dire wolf, Jem's long-time companion and a ready defender of Jhae.

This is a larger version of the portrait set above. This is where Jhae's current portrait was harvested from - they were my first tries at making drow sims. The name "Jhaelrnya Istilyn" was the basis of the naming of those two sims - Jhae's the teen while her mother is Vierna. Jhaelrnya and Istilyn came straight from the name list in the front of the campaign setting, Vierna came from the writing of Weyoun, one of the writers on the Attic, who once wrote tales of the daughter of Viconia and her ex-bhaalspawn husband (the name of that character I forget). I think the name was also in some of the early drow novels.




Moria and Quayle
As I mentioned above, Narri ended up having four children, her eldest was a girl named after Anomen's sister - Moria. Due to events, Minsc and Aerie (who Narri was forced to leave behind in Umar Hills) ended up having to relocate and ended up on De'Arnise land (where Narri and Anomen, with Nalia's acceptance, ended up living). Aerie named hers and Minsc's first child after her foster father, Quayle.
That RP that started on the Attic that I was going to enter Mimi in? I was also going to enter Moria and Quayle.

The basic background is, Moria developed spellfire. She ended up leaving home and heading for a hidden cabin Imoen had gain ownership of during her adventuring. Quayle, her long-time partner in practically everything goes with her.

Moria's basically a fighter/thief, Quayle is a ranger/mage.




Blaise Draconis
Blaise was started so I could play the Imoen mod out. Never did get that done though. His name can be blamed on some unremembered HP thing at the time I started the game - it's derived from the names of Blaise Zabini and Draco Malfoy.

Human, male, wizard slayer. NG I think, I don't recall exactly. I wanted to try at least a little difference from my usual half-elven fighter/mage, but I like hitting things with swords so I stuck to a fighter. Chose the kit to make things a bit more difficult.

Blaise didn't have a hell of a lot of personality in my head to start with, and I got bored of the game pretty quickly, because if one is doing practically everything before going to Brynlaw it takes quite a bit of time. Blaise's persona developed real quick however after I took up the game again when I found a male could romance Solaufein.

One of the things I noted while playing was that for a lot of the stage 1 romance dialogues for both Jaheira and Aerie, the dialogue options I thought a reasonably nice guy would say were the ones that kept both romances going. The idea that got into my head after I started playing the game again was that nothing was really going on with Jaheira as she already knew Blaise preferred men, but Aerie was totally oblivious and kept persuing him, thinking Jaheira wanted him too.

Anyway, I got Blaise together with Solaufein, though there were some lines I think were written with a female PC in mind, not a male one.

I tend to imagine Blaise's patron god as being Helm. He trained to join the Candlekeep guard but Gorion deciding he wanted Blaise to go with him put an end to that. Blaise's protective beliefs came out in how he acted while adventuring - he tended to want to protect people, mainly by dealing with problems that threatened them - a kind-of proactive protection.

That village I mentioned as Jhae's origin? Same one Blaise and Sola eventually settle in post-ToB, as per the romance epilogue for Solaufein that I got.


Merric Thorn
My current boy, and my second male ever played. I originally was going to use the left pic as his portrait, but it refused to show in the game so I ended up using Kain as Merric's port instead. That has an effect, Merric in my mind favours a spear now, and has long hair he keeps in a ponytail. The sim I made up of him has blond hair and a ponytail, though I'd still like to track down one I like better.

Merric is CG, fighter (no kit, and a half-elf. Back to basics there I guess.

Unlike Blaise, Merric never really considered a romantic relationship with a male before he met Nathaniel. He had no issues with such relationships - there were a couple of cases in Candlekeep while he was growing up - but he never really considered it from the point of view of being involved in such a relationship himself. This is something I decided when I ran across a dialogue from Nathaniel where he asked if Merric had ever been with another man before.




Avaril and Avarin
These two date back to the time I made up most of the Twits - mainly from the latter period I was hanging around on the Attic - about early to mid 2002. The basic concept was this: what if CHARNAME was a twin?

Avarin and Avaril are fraternal half-elven twins. Avarin was originally though up as a mage but as I decided to use Avaril to try out the Kelsey romance, I have revised my opinion on that and now he's a ranger. Avaril has not changed, she remains a bard. They're probably both NG in alignment.

Something that got transferred to Avaril from Mich is an ability to imitate sounds - particularly animal sounds. This is one of the reasons Avarin is now a ranger, because he also learned this skill, but for purposes to do with tracking animals. He and Avaril have nicknames for each other - Avaril is songbird and Avarin is seahawk, and they sometimes will use the sound of those birds instead of the names. They also occasionally revert to twinspeak.

The twins get split up when, after Sarevok's defeat, Avarin has to stay behind in Baldur's Gate and promises to catch up with his sister in a few days. In that time however Irenicus' hirelings capture Avaril and her companions, leaving Avarin to have to try track her down. He manages to find out that she's been taken to Athkatla, but once there can find no clue where she's being held. He spends his time taking odd mercenary jobs between attempts to find her, eventually gathering a few new companions.

Avaril eventually escapes and starts working on a way to get Imoen back, finding new friends of her own. Ironically, Avarin is out of town the day the disaster in Waukeen's Promenade happens so he initially misses Avaril, but starts hearing about a half-elven bard doing stuff around the city and starts hunting her down.

They eventually join up and head for Spellhold to free Imoen.

Now I can hardly play two CHARNAMEs at once, but I am playing Avaril at the moment. I was originally going to play out Kelsey, but now I have another variable waiting in the wings - Tsujatha - and it's really a matter of which I find more facinating as to how Avaril ends up with.

One of the narf-ups about these two is Avarin's portrait - it's Squall Leonhart, protagonist of Final Fantasy VIII and he's definitely not blond. Thing is, at the time I chose that portrait, I had no idea who it was of, and thought it looked blond. Better fandom knowledge makes me think it's the fault of two possible things: either the picture was colour altered by the original portrait-maker, or (and I think this more likely) it was capped from the opening FMV, where the scene has an overcast sky and lighting flashing, and the pic was capped when the lighting was not normal so Squall's a bit washed out. Danar has the same problem, Karl Urban is not blond either but the picture I made that portrait from was sepia so I could fudge it. Urban's good-looking and that's what I wanted for Danar.

Comments

Polgara

[(Anonymous)]

Your first one is Polgara from the David and Leigh Eddings books.

Re: Polgara

[mimi-sardinia.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I'm aware of that, it's probably one of the reasons I used the portrait. The CHARNAME I used it for I have long since forgotten the name of however - it wasn't Polgara.