Tav questions 3, 7, 13, 24, please and thank you!
13 and 24 were answered here and here, respectively, so I've slid ahead to 17 and 25, the next unanswereds!
3. Did your Tav receive any formal or informal education? If yes, how well did they learn? If no, why not?
She received an excellent formal education until her parents died. She was always a little hard to wrangle into the books - she'd much rather be with her friends - but she was reasonably capable and they wanted her to learn. After they died and she killed her aunt, she learned the rules of the street very quickly.
Tangentially, part of the reason she's a slow reader is that I think she lets her mind wander constantly; she's literate, but distractable, and she'll skip paragraphs at a time and wonder why something doesn't make sense. This is part of why the Headband of Intellect is literally life-changing for her; so many previously alien connections and inferences become suddenly effortless for her, and even when she would benefit more from other items she never takes it off. She's not dumb without it, but so many logical leaps become so much easier with it on, and she deeply enjoys that facility of intuition.
7. What circumstances led to your Tav becoming their Class/Subclass?
For the record, Tavish is a Rogue Thief with the Criminal background. When her parents died, her mother's sister took her in. They lived in her childhood home for a few months, then sold it and moved back to the aunt's house in the slums. The aunt was very bitter about having to take in this sad child, so she roped her into her cons and schemes, swindling the softhearted of the city whenever possible. Sometimes Tav was the face of the con, pleading sadly for help; sometimes she was the hands (she feels VERY protective over Silfy), though she was never as good as her aunt wanted her to be. This is when the aunt sold off most of Tavish's family's belongings and wasted the rest of her inheritance on liquor and [insert moderately ruinous Faerunian drug here].
When she was fourteen, her aunt came at her in a drunken rage, and Tav shivved her with a kitchen knife. She hid the body and lived in the shack as long as she could until taxes came due, around six months, and then when they repossessed the house she fled to the streets. This is where she picked up her survival skills and decent Charisma, though she'd prefer to avoid detection in the first place. She had a small group of similarly aged children she ran with here, mostly other orphans and refugees. No burglary work if she could help it either - strict pickpocketing and occasional begging - but she wasn't good enough to get into the Guild and as her friends improved one by one, she was left behind.
17. How good of a liar is your Tav? How do they feel about lying?
She's a good liar, though her persuasion is better. She doesn't have any compunction about lying as a concept, though as the game goes on, the lies she tells for strictly selfish reasons twinge more and more on her conscience, especially against innocents. She'd rather be honest and just persuade you to give away your belongings than deceive you into it; in her experience, people tend to be a lot less willing to employ the Fist to chase her down for the former.
25. How does your Tav feel about what others think of them?
Initially, she only cares as an academic exercise in getting what she needs; people are more likely to be nice to her if they like her, so she does what she can to be liked. Later, especially with Wyll and Karlach, she finds herself desperate for their approval (they're so Effortlessly Good and it's been a long time since she's been around anyone like that), so she engages in a lot of performative altruism to make sure they like her. She's surprised herself when she starts really caring about the gratitude from the people she helps in the process.
Post-game, unless it's Astarion or one of her friends, she doesn't care at all what people think. The pendulum actually swings too far in this direction for a while, with her almost deliberately shutting out anyone not in her "circle;" it's not until Karlach gives her (and Astarion) a good talking-to about making other, normal friends like Fitz that she goes to a bit more of an effort to genuinely connect with others. I'm not sure how many friends he ends up with outside their group, but she does develop some, and she makes sure to put effort into those relationships over the years. (This includes one of her childhood friends, a girl named Juniper, who grew up to become Lady Ague in Ninefingers's Court.) It's a much healthier dynamic than what she's used to, honestly, and in a lot of ways it's a positive influence on everyone. Thanks, Karlach! :D
