#wyvrambles

- archmage. not an arbitrary title - awarded to 18+ level wizards. meaning he could cast spells through 9th level.

- chosen of mystra. akin to demigod-level status. slowed aging, chosen-specific abilities, direct access to the depths of the Weave, plus more.

- lover of mystra AND protégé of Elminster Aumar. privy to the most advanced Weave manipulation and magical tutelage.

imagine a situation where tav/his partner falls in battle and gale loses it. magic explodes out of him in raw waves. his grief/rage calls on the Weave without verbal control. he reduces the battlefield to cinders. blood pours out of his nose as he casts far more than his body can currently handle. his eyes glow. runes appear and disappear across his skin.

and the party remembers that oh shit. this wizard who cooked them stew and rambled about planar theory used to be a living magical weapon. and still has the capacity to be.

he can’t leave because he needs you to help him find artifacts so he doesn’t literally explode and die. you need to help him find artifacts so he doesn’t literally explode and kill you. narratively, you also can’t let him leave because if he leaves he’s almost guaranteed to die anyway, which still might kill you.

in that situation you are both:

- hostage negotiator

- hostage

and the guy you’re negotiating with is:

- the bomb, and

- terribly sorry about the inconvenience.

I posted about this a while back, but I love the idea of Tav falling in battle and Gale erupting, razing the battlefield with uncontrolled raw Weave, overdrawing and destroying anything that threatens them. Channeling more Weave than his body can handle, becoming again, for just a few minutes, the divinity-touched archmage he was when he was Mystra’s Chosen. Forcing life back into their body without a spell, pouring Weave into them until their breath returns. The party tries to approach and a blast decimates the ground at their feet—not meant to hurt, not meant to wound, just a warning. Don’t come closer. Don’t touch them. He doesn’t look up.

It’s not meant to be romantic. It’s not meant to be a “good” decision. It’s just who he is. He loved Mystra with the intensity of a devotee and a lover, and that’s the same framework he applies to other loves. His devotion IS terrifying. His love is deep, intense, and it is beautiful, it’s the same love that makes him attentive to Tav’s needs, the same love that makes him a romantic and someone who feels deeply and poetically. But it also makes him incredibly dangerous when someone crosses that line. Calm, with the certainty of a man who knows exactly what he will do for the person he loves. It IS scary. It IS something that probably makes the party wary afterward. He’s not sorry. He would do it again. It’s a price he will pay every time.

the man Tav falls in love with is someone different. body damaged by the orb—the circular mark at his sternum, tendrils swirling up the side of his neck, into the veins under his left eye. down to the right, across his ribs, hip, right leg. Damaged muscle in the right leg, mildly compromised mobility, pain, occasional neuropathy. A recovery body after being severely ill and in pain for a year.

he is broad, visibly strong, but not dehydrated, not aesthetically sculpted. Soft in places, padded with the warmth of someone who uses his body strenuously daily, but also enjoys the sensual pleasures of good food and wine. Naturally olive-toned, tan, solid and sturdy. Visible hair on his chest, lower abdomen, forearms; thick beard (kept extremely short, neat and trim through careful maintenance). Earthy. Present.

- astarion who is skeletally thin. think: runway models, ethereal, otherworldly beauty. lived on the edge of starvation for centuries while he was still a child in elven years. even consistent feeding only fills him out slightly. he moves with a predatory, lithe grace.

- shadowheart who is subtly shorter, built like a dancer or gymnast with soft curves that she hides in clothing. she is designed to be a force, disciplined through the Faerunian equivalent of the Red Room from Marvel. she is covered in scars. the wound on her hand never fully disappears.

- gale with a stocky, strong build. not ripped or sculpted, but functional and capable, an academic’s build. the orb’s damage cascades down to the right and up to the left with arcane scarring. His right leg is weaker, muscle permanently damaged - he uses his staff on the left side to stabilize.

- lae’zel with sharp edges and a lean frame. her body is a weapon, honed to combat precision. her muscle is evenly distributed, coiled power visible in her every movement. cold blooded, she struggles to regulate her body temperature.

- wyll with a hero’s build. sculpted and conditioned over years of living in the wilds. his coordination is off from losing an eye, but he overcompensates, leading to headaches and dizziness. his skin is weathered and marked by hardship.

- karlach with a towering build, musculature terrifying. her chest is covered with scar tissue from the engine implantation. her blood burns to the touch, making bandaging her wounds difficult.

Prior to meeting him, he spent a year alone in self imposed isolation with only his cat, and before that, a relationship with an intangible goddess who doesn’t seem the type to be gently affectionate. He also tells you he had very few friends.

He’s used to big romantic gestures. He’ll read you poetry and canonically literally magics stars into the sky for you. To try to impress you. Because he knows how to do that, how to perform to earn love, earn praise.

What he doesn’t know how to do is accept affection that’s everyday and simple. Running your hands through his hair soothingly just because. Bringing him tea, making it precisely the way he likes it. Holding hands, leaning against him, settling your head in his lap as he reads. Caring for him when he’s sick. Without asking anything of him, without there being a reason. That would undo him, I think.

The issue with the relationship was never necessarily either person, it’s the inherent unbalanced nature of mortal and deity relationships. Gale loved Mystra like a moth loves the sun; all encompassing, complete, the axis around which his world turned. Mystra, simply by nature of being a goddess, “the sun” in this analogy—outside humanity, outside mortality, seeing things on a cosmic scale—was never capable of returning that kind of mortal, wholly devoted love. A mortal simply, physically, cannot be her whole world (in the way that Mystra was Gale’s whole world) with how grand her perspective is. Whether or not she loved him relative to how a god could love a mortal is up to interpretation.

Of course Gale got his heart broken. Of course he made extremely poor decisions trying to prove himself to Mystra, because she is cosmic and untouchable. He knows logically that he is small and fleeting compared to her, but that doesn’t stop the heart from wanting. That doesn’t stop the very human desire to mean something, to matter to her in the same huge, seismic ways she mattered to him, to be more than just a moth compared to the grandeur of the sun.