Enver Gortash (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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blueprints_bloodstains2024-09-18 08:31 am
closeyourfist) wrote in blueprints_bloodstains2024-09-18 08:31 am
Avernus Interludes
https://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.
no subject
And this is before any words are even said. The only reason she doesn't seem intent on tearing the room apart are likely factors that have little to do with him. She could damage something that stalls progress on her engine, and probably more to the point, she doesn't want to offend Hope.
Enver doesn't stand from his workstation, but he indicates another seat if she wishes to take it -- he doubts she will and opt instead to pace and loom at her leisure.
"Based on the schematics Dammon has shown me, I've been making adjustments to the next revision. Once he's back with the necessary materials, it shouldn't take long to finish."
Opening with business seems the easiest place to begin. Something is said and if Karlach wants to change the subject she can, but at least they are not sitting in silence.
Of course Why? was the first question asked, and he did not insult her intelligence by assuming she meant the project at hand. He takes a breath -- he left the door open for this, so he needs to answer with something. But he knows whatever comes too quickly is not going to be sufficient.
This is time enough for her to press.
"You said, at your coronation, that there was more at play than I could understand." Her voice simmers, that memory coming to the forefront to tamp down that initial blaze that led her all the way back to Baldur's Gate from the depths. "Maybe I won't. But say it anyway." Something pulls at her expression then, a thought occurring? "Can you?"
He blinks, "Pardon?"
"I know sometimes when people make deals with devils, part of the agreement is not being able to talk about it. Was that part of yours?"
The artificer shakes his head. "Even if it had been, I imagine that would have effectively ended when--" He looks at his hands and around himself. "That seems to be the case with most pacts I made before. But that would have been a believable lie to escape an uncomfortable conversation, wouldn't it?"
Karlach glowered. "Am I supposed to take that as a promise you've been telling the truth?"
"No. If I were going to promise that, I would do so directly. You don't come out of a plot where you were posing as a god and then claim to always be honest; that's ridiculous." He crossed one knee over the other, turning to fully face her. "But I promise I can think of no reason to lie right now. It is your decision whether to accept or reject that."
The fact that she doesn't leave says enough of where she stands. "So what made you decide to do what you did?"
There's a long, pregnant silence. Each answer that comes to mind feels incomplete, and there is nothing new to supply hidden in her gaze, or in the room around them. "I wish there was just one what to answer that, Karlach. I truly do. And partly I only know that because when I try to bring it down to one thing, it feels dishonest."
She finally sank into the chair across from him. "Then we'll start with one and keep going until we've both had enough."
And that was what they did. He started with the most blatant answer: It meant revisions made to his prototype that would eventually lead to the completion of the Steel Watch, and Infernal materials with which to fashion them. For her there seemed to be some satisfaction in that -- confirmation that things were just as slimy as they could be when she imagined the worst.
In an hour or two, with Dammon returning but quietly sequestering himself elsewhere to give them privacy, they reach a conclusion. But the contents of that exchange are...exhausting.
Over time, the less obvious reasons started to feel comfortable enough to peek out. Enver mentioned that he very likely could have gone another way to get the same result; he could have not made a deal with a devil to carry this out. But he'd had it impressed upon him that it would afford him some manner of protection.
He didn't say everything, but she did interject enough to say that she knew about his parents and Raphael, so he didn't need to put more of that in than he wanted to. With some reprieve there, he didn't need to recount the sordid tale of childhood things that he was trying to avoid. He also did not open the door to the revelation that Bane likely nudged him in this direction so he wouldn't question why Raphael never pursued him until he was good and desperate enough to take a risk.
You didn't go reaching for old, broken toys when they could be possessed by an angry god of Tyranny.
But they did stay on the subject long enough for him to acknowledge that said past, perhaps, had some bearing on why it felt like a matter of "how things are" to let go of Karlach so easily. Karlach, who had done her work admirably, and had been an addition to his entourage that he had liked. He would not have kept her as close as he did if he secretly did not like her.
And inwardly he had to wonder if Bane believed that to be reason enough to want her gone. Until the alliance, all of Gortash's ties maintained a careful amount of distance after that.
What he never said in that time, that took some doing for her to accept, was that while it would be easy to tell her it was something she had done? That she had failed him in some way? (And he would have resorted to saying that, as a weapon.) It just wasn't true.
It didn't exactly reassure anyone; that meant that no matter what he was accepting he was responsible for his own decisions and not placing any of the ownership on her, sure. But he could. At his worst, he would have. Just to brush it off as quickly as possible to stop thinking of it. To hurt so that the discussion would be closed. Let her wallow in it.
That didn't serve either of them at this juncture.
Flames crackle around her impressive frame as she stands. A huff of breath through her nostrils like an agitated bull. "I still hate you. I'm probably always gonna, but you ain't wrong about shit being complicated. Just one more question."
He nods stiffly, feeling a little drained, but he gestures for her to go on.
"Can you get me home? You're not just biding time here."
"There would be no point." If he comes up empty-handed, it will be known, especially if there is evidence he knew from the start it was going to come to nothing. "It was my design. Or it was, once. If anything is going to work, this is where it has to begin."
That seems to satisfy. Seeing Dammon hovering nearby, sensing now is about as good a time as any to interject, Karlach removes herself without much more to say.
Enver waves the tiefling smith in. Work to continue, and he's glad of it.
He can do this. He just has to get as close as he can to what he was back then. That's the hardest part. Is he even anywhere near that?