Motb - Tumblr Posts

sort of a tribute to some of my favorite rpg games and their protagonists

quote source

papaer somniferum. . .

have yet another wip before i crawl to the bed

this time it’s the most handsome man that ever existed, the perfection made flesh, the snarky, sassy, stubborn asshole who absolutely wrecked my poor 13-year-old heart and continues to haunt my dreams each time i deside to have a go at the game again

Sometimes I think about things.

Is Gann’s mother supposed to be a hag, or specifically a night hag? Here’s some lore for u non-geeks (what are you doing on my blog): Hags come in a few different varieties, but they’re essentially all the same creature: monstrous humanoids that use magic and have claws and they can fucking sprint, they’re terrifying, that’s all u need to know. Also they eat people and rape human men and if the offspring is female it grows up to be another hag, but if it’s male it's called a hagspawn - a brutish kinda dull creature w/o any of mama’s perks. Supposed to be eye-meltingly ugly but in-game they just kinda look like dorks. i mean orcs. MotB and apparently everything that references it(??) says that Gann is a hagspawn; he’s the son of one of these hawt mamas and a mortal dude, only instead of rape they had consensual sex and for this reason Gann is a babe (?!! logic).

But theeeen there’s another variety of hags called night hags, which are apparently unrelated to the other kind, they're extraplanar outsiders (liek demons & devils… only NE instead of CE or LE). They put their victims to sleep and mindfuck them in their dreams, unraveling their psyche and whittling away their very self from the inside out. SWEET DREAMS. ok does that sound familiar? BUT WAIT there’s moar: the offspring of night hags aren’t automatically hideous and “ill-tempered” like their cousins on the material plane. They look like normal humans but with blue or violet skin. HMMMMM. SO WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU, GANN. You suuuure sound like the son of a night hag rather than just any ol’ hag… but there’s no reason for that many outsiders to be on the on Prime Material, let alone in Coveya Kurg'annis, and WHY ARE THEY CALLED THE SLUMBERING COVEN if they don’t have sleep powers. But then they are also guarded by ogres. Like normal hags. And night hags are apparently solitary… uuunlike other hags which form covens, it’s called the Slumbering Coven, but also Gulk'aush screams at you (during what can only be described as the most terrifying dungeon crawl ever) to “sleeeeppp…SLEEEEEPP!!” (ur welcome) Gann doesn’t seem to think he’s anything but a normal hagspawn (albeit one blessed in the looks department). And yet he does the dreamwalking thing and is not a hideous brute and what the hell does he know about it anyway, he was raised by spirit animals. Is he rly a half-fiend and doesn’t know it? Or is he really just pretty because mommy and daddy loved each other very much? If Gulk'aush really was a night hag, why did the other hags give a crap if she fell in love (apparently this is a common occurance that hags have to actively guard against, they crave it, falling in love is described as “giving into appetites”. Strange words from women who eat people). And if Gulk'aush wasn’t a night hag… WHY WOULD THE DEVELOPERS DO THIS TO ME. why. …

why.

I was talking with idreim  about how I’ve misread the name of the book as “Gann of Dreams”, and she said that it’d be awesome to have MotB novellas like in T:ToN and I just

MotB companions backstories in novellas

“Red Thay Hogwarts”: Safiya growing up in the Academy of sorcery and slavery, trying to learn the art of magic in the middle of intrigues from teachers who try to use her as a leverage against her mother. Bright and lonely girl, refusing to participate in power plays and atrocities of other wizards and choosing the symbol of Creation as her emblem, creating homunculi  because it’s the only true friends she can have, and always wondering - what is wrong with her, why she isn’t so cold-blooded and violent as others, and the voices in her head don’t help either.

“Lost Paradise” - Kaelyn growing up on Celestia with such strong unquestioning belief in good vs evil that she loses ability to see colors, just black and white, and then being sent to the mortal world only to discover that she gives a false hope, an Angel of Despair. Rebelling against it and leaving her family, her god and her Paradise for the doomed Crusade against the biggest injustice of the universe. 

And Gann, before he turned into cocky self-sufficient heartbreaker, scrawny kid dressed in fur and stolen clothes, with long unkempt hair because spirits of dead animals are unaware of the concept of haircuts. Watching people from afar, because he’d be shooed away if he got noticed, seeing parents play with their children and wondering what it’s like and why his own parents left him. Discovering dreamwalking as the only way to be closer to people and try to understand them, and becoming sure that it’s the only way he can get any illusion of other people’s warmth

Gann: In such places as these, dreams are strong - as long as one rides the current and does not fight it, we may find ourselves at our intended destination.

PC: And what is our "intended" destination?

Gann: Why, *truth* of course. A greater understanding of oneself. Swimming in one's own dreams often reveals many secrets.

Gann: For me, of course, I will do what I can to help you by observing your secrets and storing them for my own amusement.

Reasons I love Gann #3216 - screwing with gender stereotypes. He’s impulsive, dramatic, he talks a lot and a lot of what he talks is about how beautiful he is. At the same time, he’s a survivalist, practical, opportunistic and ruthless, and basically the only way to get under his skin in first dialogs is to insinuate that he’s useless and incompetent.  And narrative doesn’t make *any* of these traits gendered.  

While anywhere else every time we have a male character who as much as DARES to acknowledge that he’s pretty - not ~dashingly handsome in a manly bro way~, he has to be 1) obsessed with clothes 2)effeminate 3)made fun for 1 and 2 by other characters

and it’s not that being obsessed with clothes is bad by itself, but this “unbreakable” link between it and being able to be proud that you’re beautiful is super fucked up? because, like, self-love doesn’t need to have anything to do with gender or the way people dress, and especially it shouldn’t be mocked. Because to be able to say you’re beautiful, you don’t have to spend lots of time and effort on making it more conventionally “hot” and “fashionable” and then pay for it with being considered shallow and weak

Gann’s narcissism has nothing to do with being pampered or clothes for that matter, his default outfit is just practical armor for his class and he never comments on outfits of any kind. His gender or identity is never mocked. Contrary, when he once makes comment of how “women of our kind are known for their talkativeness”, party cuts this bullshit quick bc “there’s no way anyone can talk more than you, Gann” and joke about it lightheartedly without making it into “you’re so girly har-har” thing. He’s just bubbly and it has nothing to do with invalidating his gender. (it’s not even about him being ~super-male~ or anything, I personally headcanon him as genderfluid, but the great thing is that you can headcanon just about anything, because in MotB personal traits aren’t gendered and stereotyped. See also: Super Smart and Logical Scientist Safiya Who Still Isn’t An Icy Emotionless Bitch)

Instead, it’s all about self-expression, the game even illustrates it in the mechanics - when you gain Gann’s loyalty, he gets perks for Charisma for being *more himself* and being accepted with it

he’s not one of the wolves who has to flaunt his roughness and wildness to prove his strength, and not a tropical fish or bird of paradise who flashes bright colors in hopes to scare predators

he’s one of the monsters, beasts out of realms of common predators, he doesn’t need to prove that he’s capable or dangerous, and his stance of “i don’t care what you people think, my combination of claws, wings, fangs and weird fluorescent glowing is super pretty!”

“I see that your feet find the patterns of dirt and sand beneath them uncomfortable, as if you are used to stepping in dreams, not earth. You toss about words like a wind around you, in the hopes that their speed and flurry will deflect questions and prevent you from being seen for what you are. You are hurt… And that pain drives you to hurt others, for you have been taught that that is the wheel that turns the world.”

— Neverwinter Nights 2: Mask of the Betrayer

papaer somniferum. . .

Finally finished Baldur's Gate 3, so here's my Tav! Her parents are my Kalach-Cha and Gannayev-of-Dreams from Neverwinter Nights 2. Mildly bummed out that BG3 only allows for infernal tieflings, so in game terms she is just a funky looking human. And yes, she did inherit the gradiant hair from her dad ;D