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closeyourfisthttps://bg3.wiki/wiki/Letter_from_Hope (The state of the House of Hope post-Raphael)
The suggestion to ask a blacksmith to come along had come from Kael and several others in his party, but Gortash immediately saw the logic in it. Dammon had experience with Avernus as a former citizen of Elturel, but more importantly, he knew how to work with Infernal metal and engines. In fact, he'd been in charge of Karlach's upgrades since her return from the Hells. The once-human, however, had only knowledge of the initial prototype, so he didn't have a complete base to work from, much less a desire to get within swinging distance of the Tiefling, for both their sakes. It created a comfortable bridge, and a possible go-between if information needed to be relayed and couldn't without a potential fight.
Distance was the only way Gortash was going to survive Avernus if she was there. He had no easy answers for her, nor any real desire to make anyone feel as though his presence was a burden. Dammon was therefore an easy solution, and Gortash found himself more at ease with someone to just bounce ideas off of.
Then there had been Hope. Hope, who was the same as she had been all these years. Never aging a day. Neither her nor her sister. She was a distant facet in the House of Hope he had known in his youth, but Raphael had kept his page close once or twice when visiting her. She was defiant and as ever, hopeful, and her refusal to break, even as the edges of her mind frayed, was what kept Raphael from killing her.
But she had looked on a little boy abandoned with pity in her eyes. Even as she could see how a child like him survived under the yoke of his Infernal keeper -- through careful observation, and not lying so much as knowing when to speak, whom to speak to, or speak of, and much too young to have already mastered such things -- Hope herself kept her light burning through the exact opposite. She was straightforward, just as much in her open disgust for the cambion as her platitudes.
He would never understand her bravery. To this day the sight of her filled him with confusion and awe. Not only did she risk torture and ruin at every step for her own sake, but she even once had the means to escape forever. He never knew how she came to have it -- perhaps, he would think later, that Raphael had left it within reach on purpose, knowing she would never leave without her sister. A portal that would carry only one.
When Raphael sent him to feed her a supper, laced with nightmares, after hunger striking, she slipped salvation to him and for the first time in nearly two weeks ate her fill.
Enver Gortash, like too many others in the planes, had been soured to the idea of heroes when he went too long without one to come for him when it was most needed. Until the very last, it seemed. It left him with a quiet, secret reverence he never really came to terms with. Probably because when he saw her again after all those years, and she recognized him, tearfully welcomed him and the rest, with space promised to do their work, he realized what he had needed had not been a hero at all.
He had just been a child who needed someone to act like a parent, for once.
The suggestion to ask a blacksmith to come along had come from Kael and several others in his party, but Gortash immediately saw the logic in it. Dammon had experience with Avernus as a former citizen of Elturel, but more importantly, he knew how to work with Infernal metal and engines. In fact, he'd been in charge of Karlach's upgrades since her return from the Hells. The once-human, however, had only knowledge of the initial prototype, so he didn't have a complete base to work from, much less a desire to get within swinging distance of the Tiefling, for both their sakes. It created a comfortable bridge, and a possible go-between if information needed to be relayed and couldn't without a potential fight.
Distance was the only way Gortash was going to survive Avernus if she was there. He had no easy answers for her, nor any real desire to make anyone feel as though his presence was a burden. Dammon was therefore an easy solution, and Gortash found himself more at ease with someone to just bounce ideas off of.
Then there had been Hope. Hope, who was the same as she had been all these years. Never aging a day. Neither her nor her sister. She was a distant facet in the House of Hope he had known in his youth, but Raphael had kept his page close once or twice when visiting her. She was defiant and as ever, hopeful, and her refusal to break, even as the edges of her mind frayed, was what kept Raphael from killing her.
But she had looked on a little boy abandoned with pity in her eyes. Even as she could see how a child like him survived under the yoke of his Infernal keeper -- through careful observation, and not lying so much as knowing when to speak, whom to speak to, or speak of, and much too young to have already mastered such things -- Hope herself kept her light burning through the exact opposite. She was straightforward, just as much in her open disgust for the cambion as her platitudes.
He would never understand her bravery. To this day the sight of her filled him with confusion and awe. Not only did she risk torture and ruin at every step for her own sake, but she even once had the means to escape forever. He never knew how she came to have it -- perhaps, he would think later, that Raphael had left it within reach on purpose, knowing she would never leave without her sister. A portal that would carry only one.
When Raphael sent him to feed her a supper, laced with nightmares, after hunger striking, she slipped salvation to him and for the first time in nearly two weeks ate her fill.
Enver Gortash, like too many others in the planes, had been soured to the idea of heroes when he went too long without one to come for him when it was most needed. Until the very last, it seemed. It left him with a quiet, secret reverence he never really came to terms with. Probably because when he saw her again after all those years, and she recognized him, tearfully welcomed him and the rest, with space promised to do their work, he realized what he had needed had not been a hero at all.
He had just been a child who needed someone to act like a parent, for once.