Mella

The entire Coronation audience at Wyrm’s Rock: …

Duke Ulder Ravengard: *holding the Coronation sword over Gortash, lowering it uncertainly* …is it true, sir? *leans in, whispers* You really can’t clear five minutes out of your schedule to kiss?

Gortash:

*reluctant sigh*

*scrolls back up*

Lightbringer

wanted to make my own version of the poster gortash has littered around baldur's gate.

procreate, 9.5 hours

It makes such a fun contrast to Gortash's 'started from the bottom and now I'm here' vibe if the Dark Urge started at the top and let himself fall from grace.

Gortash clawed his way up from nothing. He taught himself to talk like a gentleman and to dress like a gentleman to hide the fact the he's common as muck. He technically only has a grammar-school education, but you'd never know it because he reads voraciously. He's not ashamed of his background, but he also wants to make it very clear that he's risen above it. It galls him more than anything to be mistaken for poor.

Meanwhile, the Dark Urge had everything handed to him from birth, and willingly gave it up to embrace his role as the prophet of the mad and the forgotten, who lives in a sewer and is constantly covered in gore, because that's what his father demands of him. He rejects his background as much as Gortash does, though for very different reasons. Death is the great equalizer. What does he need airs and graces for? Why should he mind his manners? He is Death Itself. He doesn't need to be polite or cultured. He only needs to kill.

But he remembers. Occasionally, he will thoughtlessly correct Gortash - the kind of little things you tend to pick up when you grow up rich. That's damask, not brocade. The fork goes on the left. It's pronounced Ahm-nian.

It both infuriates Gortash beyond reason and makes him wonder about his partner's background.

Once, when he was waiting for Gortash to finish writing a letter, the Dark Urge went over to the piano in Gortash's office - the one he only keeps around for the look of it and has never touched - and played a few perfect, measured scales, like someone remembering an old lesson.

On the other hand, it's Gortash, in his gold-embroidered clothes and expensive boots, who will steal an unattended apple from a grocer's cart on instinct, because a part of him has never forgotten what it feels like to go hungry.

The Dark Urge is the one who sits with perfect posture and occasionally, unthinkingly, says 'please' and 'thank you' to those he is in the process of murdering.

Gortash is the one who, when weapons and guards fail him, will put up his fists and swing for the throat or the stomach, because he knows from experience that punching someone in the face risks splitting your knuckles on their teeth.

Gortash lives in the Upper City and surrounds himself with luxury because he thinks he deserves better than the poverty that he was born into, but he can't entirely cover up the stain of the Lower City.

The Dark Urge inherited a mansion but chooses to sleep among rats and filth because he thinks it's where a creature like him belongs, but the gore he surrounds himself with cannot entirely hide the Upper City underneath.

He's a monster lover. He wants a monster relationship. Monster shared business ventures and monster shared bank accounts. Hells, he's even down for some monster hand-holding and monster cuddles in a sketchy dark ally where their gods can't see. Monster stolen glances and affectionate purring if you will.