artisan fartisan

First of all, I should say that I absolutely love Raphael and the way he’s written. I’m the kind of player who, every time that line comes up during a playthrough — “I think he likes us” — always chooses the reply “I like him too, but I’d never tell him to that smug face of his.” Lol.

Now, we all know Raphael is a devil: lawful-aligned and highly refined. He has his own particular way of being evil — almost gentlemanly, logical, cognitive, even alluring. Yet he remains evil nonetheless. And in this scene he shows his worst side.

Cruel and gratuitous, though not entirely unexpected, because Astarion gives him the opportunity when he proposes a bargain. “Before you go, I have a proposal on my own.” As we know, Astarion needs someone to decipher the infernal writing on his back.

Raphael makes his position clear right from the very beginning. He doesn’t take Astarion seriously, starting with his sophisticated and theatrical remark about wyvern whisky (I love the way he delivers that line!!!). He calls him vampling, and when Astarion does not refer to the one who carved the markings as his master, the devil is quick to point it out himself, even mentioning a contract of ownership — almost as if he wanted to remind him who he is.

In short, it is obvious that he sees him as inferior. And that, automatically, grants him certain rights in his eyes.

Of course, we are talking about a scene that can only occur if the romance with Astarion has not been triggered. In that case, the player — and therefore Tav/Durge — does not yet know that Cazador carved those markings into Astarion’s back.

And the moment the devil realizes it, he completely exposes Astarion — without his consent — leaving him fully bare for everyone to see, in his most vulnerable place: the body he has only just begun to reclaim as his own, the scars that bear witness to his humiliation.

And not only that. What Raphael says while performing this vile gesture makes the whole thing even more painful.

“You didn’t tell them? And you’ve kept your clothes on this whole time. How unlike you.”

And then:

"Why not let them see? Don't be shy."

It’s awful. The subtext hits like a punch to the stomach. Raphael points out that Astarion chose not to speak about it with anyone — only to dismiss it completely moments later. On top of that, he adds with sarcasm that Astarion has managed to keep his clothes on for more than five minutes, which is supposedly very unlike him.

In essence, he treats him like a prostitute who gives himself away instantly.

The even more dreadful thing is that “don’t be shy” — with those words Raphael claims the right to do whatever he pleases with Astarion, with his body, with his trauma. But we know that embarrassment or modesty have nothing to do with it. They are not the point. Reducing everything to that essentially means minimizing everything else — the real implications of what is happening.

And that, perhaps, is the most insidious cruelty of the moment: not the exposure itself, but the way Raphael reframes it as something trivial, almost playful. By turning a violation into a joke about modesty, he strips Astarion not only of his clothes, but also of the legitimacy of his pain.

The screenshots show Astarion’s reaction. The first two are the spontaneous one, unfiltered. He is frightened. He doesn’t want this to happen. But it is happening, and there is nothing he can do about it. Once again, someone powerful has made a choice for him and is humiliating him.

His eyes are wide, fixed on Raphael, filled with disbelief and an implicit plea for him to stop. His shoulders are drawn in, his arms lifting in a futile attempt to bring his hands up to cover himself.

The third shows how he immediately reacts: his features harden, he regains a sort of composure, hides his vulnerability behind sheer stubbornness, and faces the devil despite everything. With a simple:

"Gods damn it."

This is very significant, in my opinion. Imagine being suddenly stripped in the middle of the street, in front of your friends, by someone who is treating you with open condescension. How far would your protests go? The shouting? The insults? The hands? That is, assuming there weren’t laws and a justice system that would send that person straight to trial, lol. I think you can easily imagine it.

But Astarion’s line is not something you say when you are truly trying to stop someone. He doesn’t say: “Don’t touch me.” “Stop.” “You can’t do that.” “How dare you,” and so on.

Why?

Perhaps out of pragmatism. Astarion knows perfectly well that Raphael controls the situation. He is a devil, he has information Astarion wants, and he is negotiating from a position of superiority. A stronger protest might risk ruining the opportunity he is trying to secure.

So the reaction remains restrained.

Or perhaps it suggests something deeply consistent with his past: Astarion’s ability to openly oppose a powerful figure is limited. For two centuries he lived in a system where saying no achieved nothing — at best. At worst, it was directly dangerous. Painful.

So the protest remains brief, almost automatic, but it never turns into real opposition. But even though the reaction is minimal, Raphael still has something to say about it.

"Don’t pout, spawn. Just destroy the beast and I will happily reveal your secrets instead of your skin."

That’s how Raphael continues.

And when he tells him not to pout afterward, it only makes the whole thing worse. Because at that point Raphael is no longer just exposing Astarion — he is policing his reaction to it. As if Astarion’s anger or humiliation were the real impropriety, not the violation itself.

Once again the responsibility is shifted onto him: don’t be shy, don’t pout, don’t make a scene. The message is clear — whatever has just happened is supposed to be trivial, almost amusing, and the only unacceptable thing would be refusing to play along.

It’s a subtle but deeply cruel form of control: not only taking possession of Astarion’s body for a moment, but also trying to dictate how he is allowed to feel about it.

"Scars tell such wonderful stories — I think yours might be truly exquisite."

And this is the line Raphael exits the scene with. But let’s analyze it more closely in its possible meanings.

The sentence itself might almost sound elegant, even poetic. But context matters: said immediately after stripping him without consent, humiliating him in front of everyone, and telling him not to pout, it takes on a far more cruel meaning.

There are several layers to it.

1. The aestheticization of violence Raphael takes something that is the mark of abuse — the scars carved by Cazador — and turns it into an object of aesthetic contemplation. He does not speak of pain, torture, or enslavement. He speaks of “wonderful stories” and something “exquisite.” It is a form of refined dehumanization.

2. Predatory curiosity The line is not empathetic; it is curious. Raphael is not interested in what Astarion has suffered, but in how interesting the story might be to him. It is the gaze of someone observing a wound the way one might examine a rare object.

3. The pleasure of power Raphael enjoys the moment because he has complete control over the situation — all the more so because Astarion needs something from him. Not only can he expose Astarion’s body, he can also comment on it calmly and with irony, as though he were savoring something refined.

4. Continuity with “don’t pout” After denying him the right to anger (don’t pout) or to shame (don’t be shy), Raphael immediately reframes the scars as something fascinating. It is a double violence: first he minimizes the trauma, then he turns it into spectacle.

That is why the line is so disturbing: it is not brutal. Quite the opposite. It is a cultured, elegant, almost courteous cruelty that treats Astarion’s suffering as a narrative curiosity worthy of admiration.

In the screenshot we see Astarion’s facial and body expression — his reaction to Raphael’s cruel words. He is simply resigned. Completely slack. He’s just waiting for it to be over. That’s all.

His arms, shoulders, and facial features all seem to droop, as if they were bearing an enormous weight. And yet they are not tense — they are still, almost inert.

It’s worth noting how Astarion’s head remains upright despite everything, his back straight, his chin slightly raised as if in a reflex of pride. But none of that pride is visible on his face; it feels more like a remnant from his time under Cazador.

“Don’t slouch before me, boy,” almost — as if, for a moment, he had been taken right back there, standing in front of his master.

And Raphael’s cruelty echoes that same dynamic. Not in the same form — Raphael is not Cazador, and his violence is not the same. There is no intimate bond between them, like the one between creator and creature, master and spawn, almost father and son in a twisted way.

Raphael is neither possessive nor sadistic toward Astarion. He simply wants to amuse himself. Yet he shares certain traits with Cazador — for instance, the aestheticization of violence. To the vampire lord, the scars are a poem; to Raphael, they are a story worth admiring. Both also take pleasure in holding power over others.

In that sense, the structure of the moment is disturbingly similar.

Once again someone powerful takes control of Astarion’s body without asking, turning his humiliation into spectacle and expecting him to endure it without protest.

The methods are different. The intentions are different.

But for Astarion’s body — for the instincts he learned through two centuries of survival — the situation must feel terribly familiar.

A bit like when, despite his obvious contempt for her, he immediately reveals his name to Araj Oblodra the moment the drow asks for it: an automatic reflex, almost as if he were responding to an implicit command from someone who, as usual, sees him as lesser.

It hardly matters that he corrects himself immediately afterward with “But hold on…!” By then, he has already given himself away.

BUT let’s return to the moment when Raphael disappears, after laying out the terms of his bargain with Astarion.

At that point, the spawn’s focus shifts to Tav/Durge, the involuntary witness of the brutal scene. As it should be, the player — and the game’s main character — is shocked by the situation, by what has just happened and by the revelation of the scars.

They are horrified. But not because the marks on Astarion’s back are repulsive. They are horrified because of what Astarion had to endure, because of the pain he must have suffered, and so on.

In short, there is emotional connection.

And unlike Raphael’s curiosity about the “wonderful stories” those scars might tell, Tav/Durge is far more interested in why Astarion never told them before, or in how painful the process of carving them must have been.

That is, of course, assuming one chooses to roleplay a Tav/Durge who is genuinely involved with Astarion.

But again, it is interesting to observe Astarion’s body language as he speaks with Tav/Durge. He has been exposed, the truth revealed; now the main character knows. And this is how Astarion presents himself before them.

In the moment when he awaits their verdict, his posture rises once again into perfect rigidity. “Don’t slouch before me, boy,” again. It is in his head. It is in his muscles, which have learned the lesson well.

His back is straight, his head held high, his chin lifted upward — yet the expression on his face communicates anything but pride. On the contrary, his wide eyes convey only one thing: terror.

Terror for what he has just endured, for what he endured in the past, and for what he might be forced to endure next — if Tav/Durge’s reaction turns out to be different from what he hopes.

But let’s analyze Astarion’s body language more closely in the moment when Tav/Durge shows empathy and points out that it must have been an excruciating experience.

At that point, Astarion agrees and feels safe enough to explain how it happened — to revisit that moment.

I want to emphasize that this sequence is very different from the one in the romance path. In that context, Astarion is noticeably calmer, more secure. I’m referring in particular to the morning after saving the druid grove, and therefore after the tiefling party, within the player’s heroic route.

It’s morning, and the sun falls warmly on Astarion’s ivory skin as he enjoys the warmth of the dawn. He and Tav/Durge have shared an intimate experience, and it is along that line that Astarion’s story unfolds.

He is not hiding. He is there with his back exposed — a sign of trust. And when Tav/Durge asks, Astarion answers. Simply. Painfully. He shares it quite naturally, even if he soon afterward cuts the conversation short and shifts the topic.

In this other scene, however, things are different. The context is different. The relationship with Tav/Durge is different — companions in adventure rather than lovers. And the previous interaction with Raphael matters; it inevitably leaves its mark.

Personally, I find Astarion’s account and demeanor truly painful to watch. For him, reliving the moment when Cazador carved into his flesh with the dagger he called his “needle” is a horrific experience — as if he were suddenly back there again, under his master’s blade.

There is pain, there is shame, there is anger — everything is there, and it’s terrible.

And yet, how does he face it?

Look at his body. Astarion’s real emotions slip out only in brief flashes beneath the mask. He tries in every possible way to downplay his own pain and his own experience, much as Raphael had been minimizing it up until that moment.

He jokes, he laughs — and all the while the true horror surfaces in spite of him. And that hand, gradually closing over his chest? It suggests vulnerability and a need to feel protected.

But the lightness he tries to infuse into the story is only apparent; the account of the experience remains chilling. And behind that attempt to soften it, several defense mechanisms emerge — mechanisms that have likely accompanied Astarion for centuries.

The first is what we might call defensive humor, or gallows humor. It is a very particular form of irony, common among people who have lived through extreme situations: one laughs about something terrible not because it is truly funny, but because humor creates an emotional distance from the pain. For a moment, he is no longer just a victim remembering a trauma — he becomes someone telling a story.

Alongside this there is a second mechanism, even more painful: internalized minimization. After two centuries under Cazador’s control, Astarion lived in a system in which his suffering was constantly diminished, ignored, or reinterpreted. In such a context something paradoxical often happens: the person ends up internalizing the same language that was used against them. And so, when Astarion recounts what happened, he instinctively tends to downplay it with a laugh.

And we should remember that Raphael had just done exactly that in the very same scene: “Don’t be shy”, “Don’t pout.”

Astarion falls in line with that same framework of denial and non-recognition. And that is perhaps the most painful part, because he is repeating against himself the very same mechanism that once wounded him — hurting himself even more in the process, without even realizing it.

The third mechanism is what we might call anticipation of judgment. When Astarion tells this story to Tav/Durge, he does not yet know how they will react. He does not know whether they will feel disgust, pity, embarrassment, or something worse. They might even mock him and say it was nothing at all.

So by trying to treat the experience with a certain lightness, he sends an implicit message: it’s not such a big deal, you don’t have to react too strongly. It is a way of protecting himself from the risk of yet another humiliation.

This ties perfectly into the way he chooses to end the scene.

“But what’s done is done. So how about we stop discussing it and just kill this beast?”

And then he adds, with a little chuckle at the end — a chilling one, considering the context and everything that has just happened:

“Although I should probably get dressed first... Ahah.”

Enough talking. There’s no need to remember, no need to linger on the episode or on what it meant, on what it left behind. What would be the point of facing it now? It’s already done. Let’s just kill the beast and move on.

Run from the pain, from the trauma, and make a silly, slightly flirtatious joke about the fact that I’m still completely naked — as if nothing violent had just been done to me, by Raphael and, in a way, by myself as well. Come now, what’s the big deal?

And with that I conclude with the last two screenshots, where Astarion’s body language perfectly accompanies these ideas. After the forced opening — far less spontaneous and genuine than the one in the romance scene, because Raphael compelled the revelation — Astarion closes himself off completely and brings out his familiar, hardened seducer’s grin.

Alright, I’m done. Well — honestly, there’s probably still more that could be said, but it’s better if I stop here. I have scripts to memorize, pages and pages of them. Argh.

And to think I was just taking a few screenshots to pass the time… then the brain gremlin took over and everything spiraled from there. Oh God, animated GIFs would have been more appropriate, but I didn’t have the time. I just hope the text isn’t too confusing and that there’s still a logical thread you can follow, because at a certain point even I was struggling to keep track of it.