Well hello there! It’s been a while!

My own fault, of course. In part because I had nothing to post about, particularly — but also because, from a few weeks of Early Access prior to its August release and then for OVER 750 HOURS SINCE THEN, I’ve been playing Baldur’s Gate 3.

Shush. I know I have a problem, but I ain’t gonna stop!

Anyway, the game didn’t interfere with my writing schedule; I hit my targets every week. I can proudly say that I’ve checked off all three of my Writing Goals 2023, which were 1) Main draft of Tzimayat Book 2, 2) Rough draft of Tzimayat Book 3, and 3) Finally publishing War of Memory Book 6.

This update is to celebrate the completion of Item 2 on that list: the rough draft of The Goddess Revenant. It’s currently (as of yesterday) out with my alpha reader. I’m fairly happy with it, even though I made the biggest error of my writing life when I was writing the epilogue.

You see, I keep my story files in several cloud folders as well as a folder on my hard drive, and usually I copy-paste-overwrite the cloud files once I complete a day’s work.

Well, that day, I unwittingly wrote the epilogue in the cloud file.

And then overwrote it with the hard drive file.

After several long minutes of internal screaming and attempting to stop the sync…I had to admit that it was gone, and I needed to rewrite it. Fortunately I think the new version is better, and it led me to improve some events in the chapters directly preceding it.

Still. Holy crap, me, how could you do that to us?

I’m proud to say I’d never done it before, nor otherwise lost so much material, and hopefully this will teach me to pay attention and not do it again.

Anyway, overall, the Tzimayat Plan continues on schedule. Since I cleared my 2023 list, I have to make up some new goals for the remainder of the year, but I have plenty to do. Book 2 (The Fading Saint) is getting some beta edits done now, I need to finish the short stories for the pseudo-prequel, and I have a WoM post-series-1 project starting to nudge me for attention. Those and further edits will easily take me into 2024. I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned this before, but I want to get all three (4 with prequel?) Tzimayat novels into Main Draft status before I start pitching them. I hope to traditionally publish this story and want everything to be solid and internally consistent *before* I try to sell it to someone.

Now, with that out of the way…

BALDUR’S GATE 3.

I won’t say too much. I know all us nerds are playing it, some slower than others, and spoilers would be rude. I played BG2 back when it came out, finished like 15 runs with various classes and LOTS of mods, realized I hadn’t actually played BG1 so did that and then played BG2 again, did all the expansions… I have had the boxed sets sitting in pride-of-place beside my computer for decades.

Fucking literal decades. Yeesh.

So. Yeah. I was ready for this.

I have just today (like, I just shut the game down to start writing this post) completed my third full run, entitled The Bastard Rallant. Name might be familiar to WoM readers; Savaad Rallant was one of the minor villains (?) in the series, and a prime target for running around with a tadpole in his head and a Dark Urge in his heart.

Started as an Archfey Warlock, for series-end reasons. Finished as a full Champion-subclass Fighter, for game-story reasons. Had a bad romance, an unusual tangle with a bear, a magnificent relationship with his ‘father’, a series of nasty betrayals (with him the betrayer, of course), and then…an epiphany, when it was far too late to be having such foolish things. If any of my characters deserved the Bad End, it was him.

And it was glorious.

I salute you, Bastard.

But he wasn’t my first Dark Urge. Nor even my second.

In line before him was the Murder Wizard, Shaidaxi Enkhaelen. Whose name should also be familiar, because he was one of the major villains (?) in WoM. Not to mention a general plague upon every player, character and NPC in every game I ever play, because I’ve been importing him between groups and games ever since I was 13. Which was a long time ago.

Here he is, possessing yet another body and pretending to be an innocent tiefling wizard.

The facade didn’t last long. This maniac found a mask, put it on, and refused to let me take it off — so for the next 100 hours or so of gameplay, he was Totally Not A Serial Killer Wizard.

(Spoiler: he’s a serial killer.)

He ended up an Abjuration Wizard/Tempest Cleric (thus the heavy armor), and I realized that I absolutely loved that build. For the game, that is — I’ve been told it doesn’t work so well in tabletop. But he breezed through most every encounter he met, wrecking monsters and ruining lives, while gathering a collection of darling fellow-villains to his side. By the end, I was calling the run Papa Shai and the Murder Elves, because…well…

Papa Shai and his Murder Elves.

He also attempted to adopt one of the main BG3 villains, but…alas, it didn’t go well. You might still find him yelling at a corpse through Speak With Dead, telling it to quit fucking around: power-sharing means actually sharing!

It was really fun. He proudly ascended to the Evil End, his Dark Urge under control. Pretty much just like he is in the books (if much taller and more burly — he could be jealous of this variant self).

But before him — and now, curiously, after him — was my first Dark Urge. The Penance Cleric, Aethan.

He’s based on the secondary protagonist (read: sidekick) of the Tzimayat series, if that darling boy was desperately confused and damaged and also a half-elf. He tried to be a good boy. Really he did. But he tripped a few times, and then…

Well. And then I read that Larian (the game publisher) was putting out more scenes that he’d already passed, and considering expanding some of the companion endings, so I rolled him back from Act 3 to Act 2…

And then I saw another scene online that he’d missed…

And I couldn’t take it. I deleted his 120+ hour nearly-at-endgame run and started over. It’s currently at 3 hours, waiting. He will be the one to finish the Astarion romance, I fucking swear.

…Sorry, let me just put my Astarion Enjoyer badge away again…

Which brings me to my very first run, here at the bottom of the page: The Disaster Rogue, Draskar.

Who was not a Dark Urge, but probably screwed things up even more than the three Durges did, at least before the endgame stage.

It’s not his fault. He didn’t know what he was getting into, and he tripped into some dramatic events by accident and just let the ball roll from there. Except it was one of those huge stone boulders in trap dungeons and it crushed quite a lot of people in its path. Whoops!

He’s pretty though, so I forgive him. And he got a Good End with his girlfriend, so good job Disaster Rogue. (Technically Disaster Assassin, but shhhhhhh.)

I have too many runs still planned, not to mention just tinkering in the character creator trying to make all my book people. I really love this game, and I can imagine coming back to it repeatedly with the potential for mods, expansions (by the publisher and the players both), and multiplayer. Just…a really good time. I’m still discovering items and events that I missed, plus I’ve barely scratched the surface of the romances — and the gameplay, particularly in Tactician Mode (which I’ve been playing in since Murder Wizard) is quite fun. I’m not sure about challenging anymore, but I am still entertained even this deep into the hours.

And I have literally 750 screenshots as well. Don’t judge me! I like to document my experiences!

In painstaking (and, for the Bastard, agonizing) detail.

Thanks for reading.