Young Halsin, Because I Haven't Been Doodling Him For Waaay To Long

Young Halsin, because I haven't been doodling him for waaay to long

D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai, the first indigenous actor nominated in any lead category, attends the 2024 Emmys with a red handprint over his mouth, the symbol for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women (MMIW). September 15, 2024.

Posting wips again, I shouldn’t have tried to start so many of these at once… RIP my executive function 🥲

It's always funny to me that Rogues get this stereotype of being dark and edgy PCs. But then you remember THIS is the inspiration for all Rogues:

If you don't know, now you know:

Bilbo Baggins was the inspiration for the Rogue class in D&D

Fun Halsin/Tav Idea because I finally got Baldur's Gate 3 and it's totally subsumed me. Also, I just got to Act III, so please don't spoil anything:

- The dopplegangers at the circus are dead, the dryad has just tested Halsin and Tav’s love, and they passed. Her palms are still sweaty.

- Halsin goes off to negotiate with a kobold for potions with Wyll, and Gale is trying to sweet talk the necromancer into letting him read some of their books. So Tav goes to look at the statues over in the corner.

- A few things happen before she can fully control the situation: the offering to make a statue of herself or one of the “brave heroes” is made and there’s a discount. Tav heard 25 gold. The merchant said 2500.

- A statue definitely felt tacky to make of herself or one of her companions, but the merchant was being particularly pushy about it, and Halsin really had won this fight. In his bear form he alone took down the evil Dribbles the Clown and another doppelgänger before they could kill any of the onlookers, while Wyll and Tav were busy with the beasts and Gale was ushering people away.

- “I will make this for you!” The female fiend—beast? Demon? Tav had never seen its like—declared, and the image that popped into Tav’s head at the mention of a statue of Halsin was not a statue of him vanquishing enemies. More like him standing in that copse of trees a few nights ago, bare in the moonlight and staring at her nakedness with fiery longing.

- Tav blames that distraction on missing the sensation of the Detect Thoughts spell until it’s too late.

- She tries to explain a better option for the statue, with armor and birds (ducks ideally), and Halsin looking proud and wise and gentle. The artisan clearly didn’t listen to her.

- She tells no one in the camp of her absolutely abysmal merchant experience and suggests moving into the city as soon as possible. Tav imagines she can jsut stuff the statue into her bag and throw it into the river at the next possible change. Assuming it doesn't take months to make, which a proper hand-carved one would.

- It showed up later that evening:

- A life-sized, 6ft+ Halsin made of stone. Naked. Slightly erect. Not a duck or stitch of clothing in sight. Dead center of the camp.

- Yenna is the one that notices it and calmly asks why a stone Halsin is naked, as everyone is gathered around the fire. Withers can be heard chuckling like the sound of dry grass rubbing together behind them.

- When they all troop over to what she’s pointed at, Halsin is, for the first time they’ve ever seen him, genuinely at a loss for words. His cheeks darken, and Tav suddenly feels absolutely awful. She embarrassed her love in front of their whole group, and this is entirely her fault.

- “Well, someone really likes you, huh, Halsin?” Karachi jokes, and saunters off to finish her food. Shadowheart just shakes her head.

- “You may want to watch your back, Tav, as you have competition,” Jaheira jokes. No one makes an off color remark to Halsin about it or comments on his considerable size, though Tav suspects the expression on Gale’s face is slightly envious. Astarion snorts and says, “Cazador has a hundred like this. All better made too.”

- Halsin eventually manages a sound. “I—” he clears his throat when it’s just the two of them. “I cannot fathom how this—”

- “It’s my fault,” Tav blurts out, and then the whole story sounds so much worse as she quietly explains.

- “By the Oak Father, I have never seen someone so had by a merchant. I would joke the best of them would trick you into selling your very socks, but it seems this one did not care for… socks.” The statue looms over Tav the rest of the dinner.

- The sex that night is incredible though. Halsin makes a number of remarks about going back to the artisan to “correct” the half-erect cock, so he can put Tav on it while he fucks her other hole. Gale ends up casting a silencing spell on their tent so everyone else can get some sleep. Tav leaves the tent the next morning with a bow-legged stride to see Karlach inspecting the stone cock then commenting loudly that, “it sounds like the sculptor got it right!”

- They plan to leave the statue hidden under vines when they break camp that morning. Halsin casts the spell and everything. Except when they set up the next camp it appears.

- Karlach tries to move it. Not only is it stone, but it’s magical. It does not move.

- Lae’zel and Gale put together a rig to move it. Nothing. Halsin magnanimously offers to destroy it, but Call Lightning does nothing. Shatter does nothing. It is as impenetrable as stone. Vollo takes a chisel and hammer to it and might as well have been trying to chisel infernal steel.

- It becomes as much a part of their camp as the campfire itself. So much so that every time someone new joins up and awkwardly glances between it and Halsin, Halsin just shrugs. “It is not by my doing that it stands there,” is all he says.

- He never tells anyone Tav was the one who ordered it.

- Someone hangs a vine wreath off the cock. Tav suspects Dame Aylin. No one fesses up.

- Astarion, however, loves to tell everyone more and more outrageous stories about the statue. His favorite is that it is, in fact, a petrified version of Halsin, and the one they see here is a construct, or illusion, or a doppleganger. Or it’s a manifestation of the druid’s celibacy vow. Or, in fact, Halsin refuses to travel without the visual manifestation of his best features.

- Tav quietly saves up the money in a side pouch for the day they are all free from the tadpoles, and she can commission a nude statue of Astarion to haunt him.