Unsure whether you would prefer this method over a DM but I digress.
I just want you to know that I randomly stumbled across your Tumblr after having organically discovered Whispers of Scarlet and Midnight Blooms on AO3. It was so good and I love the way you wrote each character, even side characters. In that particular area I thought your monologue for Orin was very in-character for her.
I write on my own occasionally, and though it’s nothing grand, seeing other people like yourself devoting your passion to write really inspires me to keep going. I really do mean all the praise and after seeing your artwork I can tell you really do dive deep into your interests. I hope to see more of your work in the future but I just felt the instinct to send you this.
P.S. Also had a question I promised myself to ask in case I ever did find a way to contact the writer of your story. Toward the end, with the letter from Sarevok, I thought since Withers purged Baenrahel/Durge’s blood of Bhaal’s influence, would his children (and their children thereafter) still be considered Bhaalspawn? Or is this something else entirely?
Oh thank you so much! I truly appreciate you reaching out to me about my fic, I do love talking about it tbh 😅 I hope to continue writing again soon as I got in a hiatus due to work and school.
As for the question, this entirely on how I understood what was given in game and some homebrew shit I thought of. So it may be purely just applicable in my own fic’s lore 😅. It is true that Bhaal had taken away his “gift” ie the dark urges, but I personally think that is what is only taken. Think of it as something about the parts of a person which is the Mind, Body, Heart and Soul thing. In Mind, obviously the madness of the Dark Urges. In Heart, there are hints in the fic that Bhaal had purposefully influenced Balehrys to lose any sense of empathy or care to any living creature by subjecting him to the worst side of people when he was still a kid (being a beaten up street urchin, isolated by society by intentionally making him a half-drow which is more often frowned upon by both surfacers and drows, getting thrown into a war as a squire, forced to break his oaths, hence getting isolated again by other paladins, etc. And Soul obviously is one where all children of Bhaal are tied to him, especially those who were loyal to him. If you reject him, Durge soul is automatically meant to be in the Fugue Plane, meaning totally abandoned.
In a Redeemed! Durge path, he basically reversed all those three parts which bound him to Bhaal. He fought his madness, found a family in his companions and literally fell in love with Shadowheart, grew back his emphatic self before Bhaal, and the evident part of Bhaal casting him off when he rejects him after the duel with Orin. In addition to that he even had Jergal’s favor.These three parts of his being are what I imagined Withers was pertaining to when he told Durge that ‘something in him had grown in his travels that Bhaal could not extinguish’. Hence, allowing him to bring him back completely because he had remade those three parts of him.
All except the last part which is the Body. In Body, Durge is still purely made out of Bhaal, even more so than other well known Bhaalspawn. He’s essentially like Bhaal 2.0, in that case, his whole DNA is still actually Bhaal’s. I doubt Withers would magically conjure him a new body lol. So that said after Wither’s revived him, he is technically still a Bhaalspawn, only lacking the dark urges and any divine connection he initially had with Bhaal. Essentially, his Body still carries Bhaal’s blood but everything else is free from his taint.
So when his children at the epilogue were born, they still has Bhaal’s blood. And by definition, still a Bhaalspawn. Except this time, they do not have the innate ties to Bhaal that came with a Bhaalspawn by birth, ie the bloodlust, the divine connection, and the potential influence of him can be mitigated if done right. Which is why I hinted in the end that Withers ‘blessed’ his kid, as he intended to guide him the way he guided Arabella in the game.
As for Sarevok’s letter, I think it’s more of that he didn’t truly care for any of that. He believed that even if Durge’s kids may not have complete connection to Bhaal, there will always be a chance that they might be lured back to Bhaal. So he is betting on how cruelties and even loss in the realm, like how he and Durge had experienced, would still somehow bring them back to Bhaal. A bit of a bitter sentiment from him, but yeah. That’s how I imagined it.
So the kids will end up fine, as long as they are guided well and raised well. His only concern at the moment if said kids inherited the Hallowleaf’s wolf blood 😂😭
I hope that made sense? Sorry this was a mouthful lmao. But I do enjoy talking about these things really. I don’t mind answering them!