Rachel ✨

Lumiel Dekarios

This is their girl, a very special one, who looks more like Deia yet acts a lot more like Gale (and a younger version of Deia, the one that was still bright and joyful). Lumiel is the name Deia had decided on, for that is Deia's birth name that she found out a lot later in the story (late Act 3). Deia wanted to give that name to the girl to sort of break the cycle, give Lumiel (part of her that died) a chance to live a good loving life. Lumiel grew up to be extremely curious about things, asking one too many questions, and talking non-stop. She would follow Gale like a small shadow, not because she likes her mother less, but because Gale would satiate most ideas or thoughts she would have. It would destroy Gale each time, just a little. Not only because their daughter is curious and fascinated by things that Gale is too, but because this is the version of Deia that never got a chance to live because of the blood rituals and stolen years. Lumiel still has Deia's temper, however, and perception. She knows when people lie and speaks up when someone is acting absurd. She is also blunt, for that wouldn't be Deia's daughter if she wasn't. She is a funny mix.

Moren Dekarios

Now, for a boy, the name was a difficult one to decide. Deia suggested to turn Morena's name into something that would be fitting for a boy, because she knew how much Gale's mother means to him, which nearly brought tears to his eyes. So, Moren is a spin on that. The boy is a lot more timid. Not spineless, gods forbid, you can't be in this family and be spineless, but softer. He is a lot more like Gale in that regard, warm and welcoming, but also too smart for his own good. Not loud-smart or boasting-smart, the quiet kind. He knows too much, sees too much, feels too much. Growing up, Moren was a little awkward and shy. Endlessly curious too, of course, but more as an observer. He would follow Deia, seek her out for comfort, often not talk and more gesture that he needs something. Deia recognizes herself in him, too. The older Moren became, the more confident he would become. He also inherited Gale's ''scholarly hand'' gestures, and a bright little sparkle when he gets to talk about things that fascinate him. So, while he would usually be quiet, in those moments he would brighten up and talk non-stop. I HC Gale to be a rather awkward child too, because kids like him, who are too smart, too bright, too ambitious, usually become a black sheep (which all changed when he properly got into magic and became Mystra's pupil, of course). So Moren has that part in him.

Now, for their sibling dynamic... it's a lot. Being twins, of course, they understand each other the most without speaking much. But Lumiel, having Deia's temper, is usually loud and expressionate, all raised eyebrows and narrowed eyes, which may clash with Moren's more timid personality. Though, of course, if Lumiel has a go at him, he would always have things to say back with that small infuriating smile of his. They never truly fight, it's all bark and no bite, but, one day, Gale and Deia nearly choked on their tea hearing them argue, and, after looking at each other, realized that this is probably how they used to sound to their companions during one too many debates and banter.

The twins are close, all things considered. As small kids, they would often curl up together to sleep, like you would, probably, imagine small dragons to do. They both adore Morena and Tara, though Lumiel would often banter with Tara and poke fun at her. Astarion also becomes an uncle, though he would rather die than accept such a title. It became something that didn't need to be spoken about, since Deia always considered Astarion her brother. Astarion may grunt and complain, but should anything happen to these kids, you already know he would go on a murder spree. Karlach becomes Lumiel's godmother, Shadowheart becomes Moren's. Wyll becomes "the noble uncle", Lae'zel becomes "the scary aunt". Ghaedrath is, technically, a grandfather, which is certainly a strange thing to explain to others. Both kids live a life entirely different to Deia's childhood, which often hurts as much as heals something deeper in Deia.

Thank you so much for the tags, @rdekarios (post here) @doomedlamb (post here) @deianestormborn (post here) <333333. I feel like more people tagged me, but I can't find more mentions, so if I missed you - letme know T_T

Ok, about the photos: Nim would be horrible in this scenario, because it's finally a perfect recipe to keep those she loves around her forever, 24/7. But it is all a fairytale, I promise. You know Nim, she wouldn’t even hurt a fly :3 *psycho-stares at you through the screen*.

Ok, not sure who hasn’t done this yet, tagging those whose vamps I haven’t seen yet :3

Gale notices her before she notices him noticing. It is a small mercy. Deia stands beneath the pale spill of moonlight, her hair tied back from her face, black waves gathered without their usual silver chains and sharp little ornaments. No dark paint on her mouth. No shadow around her eyes. Nothing dramatized, nothing arranged to strike first.

She looks almost unarmored. The thought catches somewhere beneath his ribs and stays there, stubborn as a hook. He has seen her dressed in black silk and fire. He has seen her with blood on her face and a blade in her hand, with her horns crowned in silver and her smile honed to a killing edge. He has seen rooms bend around her simply because she entered them already knowing they would. This should be gentler. Easier. It is not.

“What?” she asks.

Gale blinks.

“Hm?”

Her eyes narrow, but there is no true threat in it.

“You are staring.”

“Yes,” he says, because lying seems both pointless and unwise.

Deia’s mouth shifts, reaching instinctively for a smirk and finding, perhaps, that she has left the sharper version of it elsewhere.

“Should I be offended?”

“No.”

“Should I be concerned?”

“Possibly.”

That earns him a look.

“Gale.”

He steps closer. Slowly, though not with hesitation. He has learned the difference.

“I have seen you look like a queen of ruin,” he says softly. “Like a storm given manners. Like every warning in every old story decided to become beautiful out of spite.”

Her expression stills. His hand lifts, then pauses, asking the question without words. When she does not move away, he touches one finger lightly to the tip of her nose.

“But this,” he murmurs, “may be the most dangerous you have ever looked.”

Deia stares at him. Then, to his quiet triumph, color rises faintly beneath her pale skin.

“That was absurd.”

“It was sincere.”

“Worse.”

He smiles.

“I know.”

She looks down, briefly, as if the ground might offer her a weapon against tenderness. It does not. Traitorous ground.

“I am not dressed for anything,” she says.

“No.” His thumb brushes near her cheek, careful as the turn of a page. “That is rather the point.”

Her eyes lift again. There is something wary in them, and something painfully soft beneath the wariness.

“Do not make a holy thing of it.”

Gale’s smile fades into something quieter.

“I won’t.”

“You are about to.”

“I am about to be very brave and restrain myself.”

A small laugh escapes her before she can catch it. There they are: the dimples, sudden and devastating, appearing like two secrets the night has no right to keep. Gale’s breath leaves him.

“Gods,” he says, helplessly.

Deia points at him.

“No.”

“I said one word.”

“You said it like a man about to write poetry.”

“In my defense, I am suffering.”

“Good.”

But she steps closer when she says it, fingers curling lightly into the front of his shirt. Her smile lingers, shy and wicked and gone almost as soon as he sees it. Gale catches it anyway. He always does.

I ate the stew because my body required nourishment.

I wasn't hungry but I had begun to understand that meals served purposes beyond merely sustaining the body. Sharing food was an act of companionship, a ritual of closeness people performed almost instinctively. It mattered to them, and increasingly, that meant it mattered to me.

The wizard had spent a surprising amount of time preparing the stew and appeared even more invested in everyone's reaction to it than strictly necessary. He informed us—twice—that it was based upon a family recipe, though circumstances had forced him to substitute several of the original spices. He spoke of this as though it were a tragedy of moderate significance.

I nodded dutifully, thanked him for the meal, and refrained from mentioning that the combination of rosemary and thyme reminded me vaguely of bathwater. Some observations are best kept private.

Besides, he was so pleased with himself that I lacked the heart to diminish it.

After dinner, I gathered the dishes and carried them to the stream.

The water was wonderfully cold. The summer air still lingered warmly around camp, but the stream flowed down from higher ground and carried with it a pleasant chill that numbed my fingers as I worked. I knelt by the bank, cleaning bowls and spoons while the sounds of conversation drifted faintly from the fire behind me.

And, despite my best efforts, my thoughts wandered once more to the lute. The instrument rested in my tent, yet I found my gaze seeking it whenever the opportunity arose. Even now, separated from it by distance and canvas, I was thinking about it again.

The fascination annoyed me. Something about that lute lingered. Not insistently or aggressively, simply present, like a half-forgotten thought refusing to disappear entirely no matter how often I turned my attention elsewhere.

I rinsed the final bowl, set it aside to dry, and stared into the water for a moment.

Perhaps there was magic involved. Perhaps not. Whatever the cause, I found myself increasingly curious in a way I could neither explain nor dismiss.

The reality was simple enough: we might die tomorrow.

At that point in our journey, death felt less like a distant possibility and more like a scheduling conflict we were attempting to postpone. We carried mind flayer parasites behind our eyes. We had no cure, no answers, and only the increasingly fragile hope that one existed somewhere ahead of us. For all I knew, I might transform during the night, and whatever remained of me by morning would have very little interest in lutes.

Under those circumstances, there seemed little reason to ignore a mystery simply because it was small.

I placed the cleaned bowls into the crate we used for storage and rose to my feet.

The lute had occupied my thoughts all evening, it seemed only fair that I finally discover why.

And if the answer proved disappointing—well. There were certainly worse ways to spend what might potentially be one's final night as oneself.

I lowered myself onto a log someone had thoughtfully placed near the fire and began to tune.

The instrument was out of alignment, each string a little too sharp or too flat, as though it had been neglected for some time. I closed my eyes and leaned in, adjusting by feel more than thought. It came as naturally as breathing, familiar in a way I could not yet account for or even understand.

Around me, the camp remained still, no one spoke.

Only the fire did—its steady crackle, the occasional shift of embers—accompanied by the distant sounds of night settling into itself.

I heard movement at the edges of perception. Fabric brushing, careful footsteps, the soft clink of dishes being set aside with exaggerated caution. They were trying not to disturb me.

It was… unnecessary and oddly considerate.

When I was finally satisfied with the tuning, I rolled my shoulders back, stretching my neck until it gave a sharp, unceremonious crack. A few heads turned at the sound.

I did not care.

My fingers found the strings before any conscious thought could intervene and the first melody arrived without invitation. Not chosen or constructed, simply remembered, as though my hands had been waiting for permission my mind had not yet given.

The lute felt familiar beneath my fingers in a way that unsettled me. Not because I remembered it, but because I did not. Every movement came naturally, every adjustment of my hands instinctive, yet I could not recall learning any of it. There was no memory attached to the knowledge.

I plucked a few strings, listening to the notes ring through the evening air. A simple melody followed, my fingers finding it without instruction or conscious thought. The motions felt as natural as breathing.

And then did I open my mouth.

Singing, too, was not a decision.

It simply… happened.

I tested it cautiously at first.

I had not intended to. My mouth simply opened as the melody unfolded beneath my fingers, words rising unbidden from somewhere buried deeper than memory. A soft ballad emerged, gentle and melancholic, carrying the sort of longing that seemed older than I was. I could not recall where I had learned it. I could not remember hearing it before.

Yet I knew every word.

Every note.

Every pause.

The realization stole my breath for a heartbeat.

My voice carried effortlessly, rich and clear in a way that startled me. It was not merely pleasant. It possessed weight, presence. The sort of voice that naturally drew attention without ever demanding it, capable of filling a room not through volume but through simple certainty.

I felt it immediately. Not in my throat or my lungs, but in my soul.

The sensation struck with such force that my hands nearly faltered upon the strings.

I had done this before.

Not once or twice or even hundreds of times, but thousands. I knew it with the same certainty I knew how to walk or breathe. This was not something new. This was not a talent discovered by accident beside a cold stream on a night that might have been my last.

This was a piece of myself. A piece I had lost.

The realization settled over me slowly and all at once, the way certain truths do—arriving gradually until suddenly they are simply there, fully formed and undeniable.

For so the last days, I had stumbled through my own life surrounded by fragments; missing years, missing names, missing pieces of myself that existed just beyond reach, close enough to sense but never to hold. Every discovery had felt foreign, like uncovering evidence of another person's life and being told it belonged to me.

This felt different.

This did not feel like a stranger.

This felt like me.

Before I could stop myself, I smiled. A genuine smile. The sort that arrives before you realize it is there, before you have decided to allow it.

My fingers continued moving effortlessly across the strings. My breathing adjusted instinctively to support the song. My back straightened, my shoulders relaxed and every part of me settled into place with the ease of something returning to where it had always belonged.

For the first time since waking aboard the nautiloid, I was not discovering something I had lost.

I was remembering who I had been.

And for one brief, precious moment, I was not lost. Not a woman carrying a parasite behind her eye and a lifetime of missing memories behind her smile.

I was simply a musician.

And somehow, despite everything, that felt more like myself than anything else.

“So, we flag every story that’s even remotely curious,” he grunted, hoisting a crate and thumping it onto the low table between them. “I’ll have some recruits search these for stories about nautiloid crashes, survivors, landings, anything unusual. We’ll narrow them down from there.” Morena grabbed one of the broadsheets and flipped the pages, before setting it back on the stack. “Okay, why do you think they crashed?” “Because knowing how the other Chosen operate, Gale would have fought his way off the ship,” he explained.  Morena nodded her head, thinking about her son’s tenacity and knew he was right. “That’s if they both survived the crash and ceremorphosis in this scenario.” Kyle raised his hands. “Morena, let’s put that aside for a moment, they are still within the window.” “Okay,” she swallowed, but happy that Kyle was taking this more seriously than she’d expected. “Now, obviously Faerun is enormous and shit happens all the time. Cities fall into Avernus, five-headed dragons threaten populations, flying castles, what have you. So, we need to narrow that scope,” Kyle expertly explained. “My son is a wizard, that’s pretty rare,” Morena offered.  “Exactly!” Kyle clapped his hands. “I’ll have my group focus on witnesses mentioning a wizard or even better, a sun elf.” Morena gave him a curious look. “If Gale isn’t casting a spell, he is just going to look like some bloke tripping over his own feet. But your grandmother is a sun elf,” he explained. “With a few exceptions, they rarely leave Evermeet. A rural town is going to remember seeing a sun elf, especially your grandmother.” Morena smiled, thinking of how radiant her grandmother looked, even battle worn and exhausted, as she walked toward her and her eldest brother outside Marissa’s wedding venue. “I can see that.”

Share a snippet or visual from your current project that you’re quietly proud of.

I am anxious about sharing fic snippets at the moment because everything feels spoilery so I'll share the almost final draft of the contributor posters for the zine! This one has a few things on it I fixed up last night, so you're not getting the Final Version, but close to holy SHIT Tumblr fucking ATE the res quality SO BADDDDD 😭

What’s something you’re looking forward to creating or finishing soon?

God. Um. Well, the zine is about to start the assembly phase, so I'm excited slash anxious about starting that. I'd really like to finish Rhyme's fic in the coming months but I'm just SO slow 😭 I'd like to finish her next chapter, at least!

What’s a fun or silly tradition you have with your OCs/Tavs?

I apologise to them constantly just as I'm about to do something new and awful to them. "I promise it'll be worth it in the end!" I say, as I walk towards the blender once again

What’s a BG3 NPC you’d love to see in a completely different outfit or setting?

Hmm, hmmmmm.... well, Lae'zel is basically already in a remake of Alien, it's just that nobody else on the spaceship is taking this seriously, so that'd be a cool concept

What is a BG3 collab project that you would want to do?

Does running an entire sapphic zine count as collab enough???

I don't know what to say to this one, I'm not IDEAL as a collaborator because I get too selfish with my toys and don't like sharing. I have plenty of things I wish I could commission - I don't have a computer capable of modding, but I'd love to commission someone to do custom faces for Kass Heron and Rhyme. Custom bodies too. Or, at least, VP with Kass and Heron using the Plus Size Tav mods. In a dream scenario, they'd have the plus size body but also the Dark Urge autopsy scars. I'd love to have Uncomfortably Skinny Rhyme too, something with barely any boobs and ribs showing... like, I have ideas for things but I wouldn't call them collabs

What’s a tiny headcanon or detail you’ve added to your Tav/OC that brings you joy?

I like Kass and Heron being fat. I like Kass still being the hottest bitch in Baldur's Gate even while being fat.

There's also a lot of me in Rhyme, which took me a long time to realise. It wasn't an obvious thing, but like, her thought patterns? The way she needs things to make sense, the way she processes information, I've realised over time that she's doing it the way I do. When she gets mad about the rules of magic not making sense, she's being my mouthpiece

What is something you want your followers to know about you?

I'm so bad at answering comments oh my god I get paralysed with anxiety about answering comments ALL THE TIME and it's not me ignoring you, I promise I am awake at 3am staring at the phone and SWEATING BUCKETS about the fact that I haven't replied to your comment from 16 months ago. Sometimes I get a burst of panicked adrenalin and can make my way through a bunch of them in an hour and then it runs out and I'm back to being stuck again