Tag Game: What If? | Evil Endings for Your OC
Thanks so much for the tag, @deianestormborn (I’d be happy to add you to my taglist, too, if you want)! This was a fun little thought experiment. I wanted to write out my thought process behind the ending some, but for the ending itself I’m borrowing your little narrator-style description of it. I thought that was a nice touch and I wanted to try my hand at it, too.
For context, Wander is my tiefling druid Tav and information/screenshots of them can be found here.
So, Wander is someone who I would describe as being Neutral Good for the most part and very resolute in their morals, which makes thinking of what would drive them into an evil ending a bit tricky. However, I do think there’s a great thematic root for it in the game that’s already a big part of their story: the Shadow Druids. In Wander’s canon story, they help defend the Emerald Grove from the Shadow Druids, saving both the druids and tieflings and being named a Faithwarden in the process. It’s an incredibly impactful event for them and makes them even more determined to protect both nature and those they care about than they were before. While they understand why the Shadow Druids want to go scorched earth on civilization, and while they’ve had their fair share of problems with people and with how cities and large settlements impact the wilderness, they are a caring and compassionate person at heart and that’s more than enough of a reason for them to side against the Shadow Druids.
However, if the events of their and their companions’ stories in Baldur’s Gate 3 turned out very differently (and very poorly), I can see a universe where Wander might be swayed by the Shadow Druids’ philosophy. They would still side against them in Act 1, of course, but their reasoning would still linger in the back of Wander’s mind. But that wouldn’t be enough to turn them evil—they would have to fail at almost everything they considered important and lose almost everyone they hold dear, one way or another. Wander has been hurt deeply by other people, leaving them closed-off and reluctant to trust, and their relationships with their companions play a large part in them starting to heal, but what if some of their companions weren’t there to help them or hold them back? If Halsin died in the Shadowfell, leaving the Shadow Curse intact, if the Last Light fell and killed the tiefling refugees, if Shadowheart became a Dark Justiciar, if Gale threw everything away in the pursuit of godhood and ambition, and if Karlach was determined to let herself die (or especially if she did die at some point in Act 3 pre-Netherbrain fight)… that’s a world in which I can see Wander’s grief and lingering bitterness taking over. The so-called civilized world has taken everything from them. They will not let that stand. Everything will be returned to nature, the only place they have ever felt safe.
You stand atop the Netherbrain, breathing heavily, hands still slick with the Emperor’s blood, and every nerve in your body humming with psionic might. You’ve done it, bent the Absolute to your will, become it. Your mind feels vaster than it ever has, threads of connection branching out to your entire cult the way the roots of a tree does. All of this is yours, yours to do with what you wish, what you’ve known you will have to do since the Emperor revealed how the Netherstones would be used.
You stagger to the edge and peer down at the city below. It’s already burning, the streets ruptured and several of the buildings crushed under the corpses of the githyankis’ red dragons. Even from here, you can sense mind flayers wreaking havoc on the population, feasting on the people who despised you as much as they despised the land they lived on. You smile. Good. Let the wretched place fall; it was nothing but forest and mountains once, and by your hand, it will be again. Everything will be as it was meant to be. The use of such unnatural means to achieve it is… regrettable, but it’s no matter. The illithids’ corpses will make as fine a fertilizer as any other, once they’ve fulfilled their purpose and the concept of ‘civilization’ is nothing but a blighted memory.
Your enthralled companions—those of them who still draw breath—come stand at your side. Eyes blank, faces slack and drained of any personality they once showed. It’s kinder this way, you think. They won’t have to see the end of all that they mistakenly hold dear, and you will make sure their deaths will be swift when the time comes.
Gathering yourself, you focus yourself on your newfound powers and on the twisted remains of your magic. They echo back and forth, amplifying each other, and titanic vines burst from the ground at the same time as nautiloids tear through the fabric of the sky and into the Material Plane. Baldur’s Gate continues to crumble, but not nearly fast enough. With barely a thought, you order one of your summoned nautiloids to lay waste to the Lower and Outer Cities, the places as of yet most-untouched by the battle. Despite the destruction, you feel almost numb as you watch it work, detached and clinical. Cycles of destruction are common in nature, after all. That is, until a swipe of one of its tentacles reduces the graveyard next to the Elfsong Tavern into nothing but churned, barren earth and piles of rubble. Even the old willow tree is gone. No doubt the graves beside it are, too. You flinch, some part of you wondering what she would have thought. She had wanted to be buried there, she told you, and you would have done it if there was anything left but cinders and smoke. Unbidden, your hand comes up to rest over your heart, feeling its drumbeat under your fingertips the way she always loved to do. But you close your eyes, balling your hand into a fist. None of that matters because she isn’t here. Gone means gone.
You open your eyes, squaring your shoulders. You shouldn’t pay your memories any mind. You have a world to restore, after all.
Oh boy, that hurt to write! No pressure tags for @quinthebard and @optimisticgrey.
