#htsysc

Astarion was able to turn his fate around because he realized more power would never be enough. Ascension wasn’t enough, he got the tadpole. After being freed from the Absolute, he was claimed by Myrkul. Through Shadowheart, he saw the gods could be defied, even when they thrust their “blessings” upon someone. Where Tebryn was unable to save his soul, Astarion was able to at the last minute by refusing the Dead Three.

This was always going to be how the story went, but the very ending went through a few iterations (and yeah, Gortash was always gonna die, sorry about that). The first ending was that Astarion went back to the Bhaal Temple and buried Tebryn, creating a subservient spawn. The epilogue was a year of Tebryn’s life in misery, reflecting on his failures, and killing himself by walking in the sun. Depressing! Then it changed to spawn!Tebryn behaving like the failed Bhaalspawn ending, just a mindless, feral killing machine. Astarion had experimented on him, trying to get him lucid because he wanted to take something from Bhaal as a final slight. He would have succeeded by giving him a drop of his own blood. Tebryn was then brain damaged, half-forgetting the events of the story, but somewhat at peace with his situation. Something would remind him of Gortash, and he would feel a flood of emotion, but unable to truly place it.

So it could have been a lot worse!

But I just didn’t like how much Astarion had truly “won” in this situation. Yes, he beat Tebryn, yes, he saved what’s left of his soul from the Dead Three, but none of that absolved him from the awful shit he’d done to get there. Again, he rose in status, but fell from grace. Tebryn fell from status, but gained some grace. (And to be clear, it’s not a lot of grace. It’s more a stumble from grace. Gaining a thimbleful of grace.) So I wanted a proper punishment for both of them, because Astarion doesn’t just get to walk away from the Dead Three after forsaking them. Tebryn being bound to him for eternity and neither of them having the spoons to kill the other due to a master-spawn bond headcanon explored earlier was perfect. (I might expand on this headcanon in another post, tbd.)

Whether or not Tebryn coming back as a vampire spawn is the doing of the Dead Three is up to interpretation! I think it’s feasible, especially since Myrkul was closest to Astarion and has domain over the undead, but I don’t have a big explanation or the gods’ thought process for it. Tebryn and Astarion suspect it was divine intervention, but it very well could be an unlucky coincidence. It’s only a narrative consequence for them.