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User Name/Nick: Jaq
User DW: NA
E-mail/Plurk/Discord/PM to a character journal/alternate method of contact: Email: jacqui.larson84@gmail.com | Plurk: ImpureTale | Discord: impuretale | PM open
Other Characters Currently In-Game: None
Character Name: Enver Gortash
Series: Baldur’s Gate III
Age: 37
From When?: Gortash dies at the end of the game and can a number of ways. In this particular writing, the main PC allied with him and met him in the Underground to try and subdue the Netherbrain once all netherstones were brought together. When efforts were failing, he panicked and attempted to wield them himself to force it to heed them. In the end, it overpowered and killed him.
Inmate Justification: Enver Gortash is certainly an example of nurture creating a monster over nature. His decisions, born out of ambition and a lifetime of abandonment, extortion, and abuse did not exactly teach him the best lessons, and he certainly never had it in his head to do anything differently once he was the one in power. When he has been in the hands of other people, they could not be trusted; he naturally views his own as more deserving, and since he has always been known to be clever, he has enough reason to be cognizant of his own assets as a problem-solver and decide they are best applied at the top. Ruling solves a number of issues in the society he hopes to lead to glory and places him in the most secure position that he at any age could have dreamed of. The problem is that he long ago lost the ability to put that want for personal safety toward other people, and the Chosen of the god of Tyranny is just going to have a blind spot there. That does not mean he is incapable of feeling it out.
If the saying is true of the Barge is that just one person needs to want better for you to wind up here, then he’s lucky: Karlach, his former bodyguard whom he sold to the Hells for experimentation, saw through her travels the circumstances that led to his betrayal, and that cooled her fire enough that at least in the end, there were not only thoughts of revenge left in his wake.
Arrival: Oh, this was absolutely an agreed-upon arrival. See, for all his faults, Enver Gortash takes his agreements seriously. He does not lie when he makes deals. His becoming the Chosen of Bane, and thereby a follower, the deity now in possession of his soul, was also a contract. And that was with a person who was, frankly, not straightforward with him. Bane’s part in the Absolute plot was NOT, as Gortash believed it, to orchestrate domination with his Chosen at the top. The god meant to see the whole world become mindflayers because these creatures have no souls, which would mean millions of souls that no longer existed for other gods to have. Our boy does not stay in agreement with people who betray him – this is a betrayal. He graduates here, and even in death, he is denying Bane the one soul in all this he was practically guaranteed to own at the end.
Abilities/Powers: While Enver Gortash had some abilities granted to him by Bane, none of those are coming with him – not just because it is the Barge but because he is leaving Bane behind entirely. So there is nothing supernatural to nerf.
In terms of combat capabilities, he tends to prefer putting traps (which are many and often deadly, the guy can make something from anything if you give him enough time) and enforcers between him and a threat. That does not mean he is a slouch with a bow in hand or that he is incapable of defending himself hand to hand. It's just not his first instinct to resort to those.
Inmate Information: https://bg3.wiki/wiki/Enver_Gortash ←Link to a complete not still not-too-long wiki entry on him. Everything it lays down in his history will be present pretty much verbatim in an Inmate file.
Crimes: As a black market arms dealer, Gortash in his effectiveness and intelligence created and moved the means to ruin or end many lives, and because his competition had no qualms with ending conflicts violently, he saw no problem doing the same. That was only the beginning of a long line of deals and alliances that either directly or indirectly led to much of the strife in the city.
He then oversaw the infection of countless people in the mindflayer colony, including eventually his own parents. While most infected seem to not remember the horrors of the colony and only the elation of loving and serving their god, his parents were different. To anyone who finds their humble little shop, they seem to be the doting kind, singing the praises of their son who rose well beyond his roots to serve and protect the city of Baldur’s Gate. Inside, they are begging for death and spitting at the ungrateful, needy, too-smart child that betrayed them. Other victims include a number of government officials, including Lord Ulder Ravenguard.
He sold Karlach into slavery to an Archdevil, who used her to experiment – eventually seeing the effects of replacing a living heart with an Infernal Machine. He has never disclosed what he got for this, and while he briefly insists to Karlach when she faces him later that there was more going on than she understands – and at the very least that he does not know if he would do differently, when pressed with her anger he is quick to respond in kind, insist that he never liked her, that everything that happened to her she caused by agreeing to work for him, and he will not miss her.
He wrested control of the black market from the Knights of the Shield but worse still, captured their leader, revealed to be a free mindflayer, and returned him to mental bondage under the elder brain.
His Steel Watch, for all his own devilish intellect that has been poured into them, are also perfected and run through a mixture of technology and necromancy, as well as the forced labor of the Gondians, who must add their ingenuity to his or risk their families being murdered (with many members kept prisoner with other governmental dissidents in the Iron Throne).
Political opponents have a tendency to disappear, be found guilty of a myriad of crimes and executed, or imprisoned. Think of every dirty thing a politician CAN do to seek power, and Enver Gortash at the very least had a hand in such things if he did not carry them out himself.
Defining Personality Traits: Enver Gortash is smart and he knows it, cunning to a fault and willing to put all of that to use to forward himself by whatever means necessary, and he does not care who his deals harm otherwise. That having been said, he sees the value in forging and maintaining alliances, and if he will lie and cheat in some places, he won’t when there is a contract on the line. If he makes an offer, his words are his bond and he will keep to them as long as everyone else does.
Nothing about his history suggests that anything short of total dominion will satisfy him. In control at the highest level is safety, and no one is going to bring that to him but himself.
Path to Redemption: Gortash has to learn to start choosing to break the cycles that made him. That means respecting that his decisions affect other people and making them with that in mind. He must also find safety in something other than complete and total control, especially when for now, at least, he is willing to sign off on some very unscrupulous things to maintain it.
Clear milestones will include: 1) An ongoing willingness to figure someone’s wellbeing other than his own in his decisions. If he is to be a leader then it cannot be just the odd ally, either, but that is a start. 2) Opening up to trusting people. Not just as long as an agreement is in place on paper. He need not be blindly placing his life in the hands of others, but there is a difference between having and enforcing clear personal boundaries and scorched earth as soon as it is most expedient. 3) He starts forming standards that do not allow for “any means necessary” as a byline. He is smart enough to get where he needs to without that, and it’s time he started acting like it.
A Warden will have greater success the more he is approached as someone who can reason out what is being done. If he is expected to do something, then you need to be prepared to answer why he should. Tell him how the machine is working, make the accord between the two of you clear, and he will be less resistant. However dismissive and commanding he appears, if he continues to hold counsel with you, then progress can always be made.
The subject of his past will be difficult to broach, the further back you go, and there are certain things he won't budge on. That does not mean they do not need to be addressed, but he is not going to be especially receptive. Expect to be shut down.
Don’t try to rule him unless it is unavoidable. He is much more cooperative with an ally, so don’t make yourself an enemy.
History: Born to Dravo and Sally Flymm, cobblers by trade and plagued with poverty and debt, seeking profit and one less mouth to feed, the two sold their child to who they thought was a Warlock but was in fact the cambion Raphael, son of the archdevil Mephistopheles. He was kept as a Pageboy in the House of Hope for years until his eventual escape, and in that time was under the direction of Nubaldin, a rock gnome in Raphael’s employ who greatly resented him and used every opportunity to take that dislike out on him.
After his escape, he returned to Baldur’s Gate and made his start as an arms dealer, but he eventually expanded into other enterprises. He hired Karlach as a bodyguard, who served him loyally and appeared to have greatly admired and adored him until he sold her to the Archdevil Zariel (it is never revealed what he got in exchange). He eventually supplanted both the Knights of the Shield as well as the Zhentarim in the region for control of the black market – eventually becoming known as a military advisor among the Gate’s wealthy and powerful.
At some point in this time, he returned to the Hells to steal the Crown of Karsus from the vault of Mephistopheles.
When he became a Chosen of Bane, god of tyranny, hate, and strife, his ambitions turned a good deal more lofty, and he began seeking greater political power in Baldur’s Gate. His control of the Flaming Fists and the implementation of his Clockwork Steel Guard cemented him as a figurehead in the city’s perceived safety and prosperity.
He also forged an alliance alongside the chosen of two other gods, who with Bane made up the Dead Three. They formed a plan to enslave an Elder Brain using the crown, dividing its stones between them. With the brain's influence over tadpole-infected people (including his parents, whom he found and enacted his revenge against by making them puppets trapped in their own heads). Their dominion over the brain created a cult of a deity that was their shadow: The Absolute. The Chosen of Bhaal (god of murder) would carry out a series of gruesome attacks within the city to sew fear and distrust of current power structures, giving Gortash the means to move in and seize greater control. The Chosen of Myrkul (lord of bones and god of death) would raise an army of Absolutists to march on Baldur’s Gate. Gortash, given greater mastery of the city, would order his Steel Watch to battle in what would have been a fixed conflict that would leave him as the apparent Hero and savior of the city. From the ashes of this conflict and with the Elder Brain still under their control, they could take over the world and rule it as gods, populated by a world of infected people compelled only to obey.
He would not have known that Bane never intended for the plan to play out this way. He knew that the Elder Brain, evolved into a Netherbrain, would break free and turn the world’s population into mindflayers, restarting the Ithilid empire. Since these creatures as a forced part of a hive mind do not have souls, it would mean millions of them, if not more, that Bane would be denying any other god from having, and in that he finds victory, leaving not even ashes to conquer.
When a group of rogue True Souls managed to kill the Chosen of Myrkul and take his stone, what tenuous control the three had over the Elder Brain began to slip, and Orin, Bhaal’s chosen, became impossible to control. Gortash allied with the rogues, offering to let their leader rule at his side, as a partner, if they can kill Orin and reclaim her stone, meaning all three could be gathered in one place again. Together, they attempted to control the brain, but it overpowered them. Panicked, Gortash attempted to wield the stones alone to dominate it, but it proved too powerful, and he was killed with an order.
Sample Network Entry: [ The man who appears onscreen has a look of contained stress about him, the sort best worn by people far too accustomed to quietly putting problems off because there is work to be done. Not at all unusual if he's just arrived, really. He has a handsome face, despite the appearance of some superficial scars, with a shock of black hair with a sort of devil maycare style that given the finery he is otherwise adorned with suggests it is probably deliberately coordinated.
His brown eyes immediately betray an analytical mind -- he is clearly taking in each feature of the journal has he's discovering it. When he decides to address the camera, there is an immediate diplomatic shift to something warmer, an easy smile, still authoritative but still more open body language. ]
Well, careful observation tells me that at this juncture, custom calls for introductions!
[ And he's certainly not a stranger to utilizing cold distance to communicate. It's sometimes quite necessary, and whether that is the case here remains to be seen. But since everyone appears to use it so casually? ]
And who am I to ignore tradition, even as a guest? My name is Enver Gortash, and I'll forego any titles for the time being. I hazard to guess they will be quite meaningless here, but no matter. We'll be passing time together for the foreseeable future, the lot of us.
Sample RP: The initial plan had been to wander and learn as much of the layout of his current abode as as possible, but it is no wonder to anyone that a new arrival might step outside and find reason to pause. Stars are certainly nothing new to see in the sky, but to see them moving at such a rapid pace is something else entirely for a human of Faerun. It certainly lures him toward the edge, to remove any other parts of the ship from his field of vision so he can observe the sky unobstructed.
It is a ship, so why can't he feel it moving? Not the slightest pull of inertia, gust of wind, but surely they must be going at quite a speed.
Being unable to truly feel it does not stop him from grasping at the railing to balance himself. The sight if it is enough to fool his mind, and he can feel his stomach clench.
Special Notes: Anything else not covered here that you'd like us to know!
User DW: NA
E-mail/Plurk/Discord/PM to a character journal/alternate method of contact: Email: jacqui.larson84@gmail.com | Plurk: ImpureTale | Discord: impuretale | PM open
Other Characters Currently In-Game: None
Character Name: Enver Gortash
Series: Baldur’s Gate III
Age: 37
From When?: Gortash dies at the end of the game and can a number of ways. In this particular writing, the main PC allied with him and met him in the Underground to try and subdue the Netherbrain once all netherstones were brought together. When efforts were failing, he panicked and attempted to wield them himself to force it to heed them. In the end, it overpowered and killed him.
Inmate Justification: Enver Gortash is certainly an example of nurture creating a monster over nature. His decisions, born out of ambition and a lifetime of abandonment, extortion, and abuse did not exactly teach him the best lessons, and he certainly never had it in his head to do anything differently once he was the one in power. When he has been in the hands of other people, they could not be trusted; he naturally views his own as more deserving, and since he has always been known to be clever, he has enough reason to be cognizant of his own assets as a problem-solver and decide they are best applied at the top. Ruling solves a number of issues in the society he hopes to lead to glory and places him in the most secure position that he at any age could have dreamed of. The problem is that he long ago lost the ability to put that want for personal safety toward other people, and the Chosen of the god of Tyranny is just going to have a blind spot there. That does not mean he is incapable of feeling it out.
If the saying is true of the Barge is that just one person needs to want better for you to wind up here, then he’s lucky: Karlach, his former bodyguard whom he sold to the Hells for experimentation, saw through her travels the circumstances that led to his betrayal, and that cooled her fire enough that at least in the end, there were not only thoughts of revenge left in his wake.
Arrival: Oh, this was absolutely an agreed-upon arrival. See, for all his faults, Enver Gortash takes his agreements seriously. He does not lie when he makes deals. His becoming the Chosen of Bane, and thereby a follower, the deity now in possession of his soul, was also a contract. And that was with a person who was, frankly, not straightforward with him. Bane’s part in the Absolute plot was NOT, as Gortash believed it, to orchestrate domination with his Chosen at the top. The god meant to see the whole world become mindflayers because these creatures have no souls, which would mean millions of souls that no longer existed for other gods to have. Our boy does not stay in agreement with people who betray him – this is a betrayal. He graduates here, and even in death, he is denying Bane the one soul in all this he was practically guaranteed to own at the end.
Abilities/Powers: While Enver Gortash had some abilities granted to him by Bane, none of those are coming with him – not just because it is the Barge but because he is leaving Bane behind entirely. So there is nothing supernatural to nerf.
In terms of combat capabilities, he tends to prefer putting traps (which are many and often deadly, the guy can make something from anything if you give him enough time) and enforcers between him and a threat. That does not mean he is a slouch with a bow in hand or that he is incapable of defending himself hand to hand. It's just not his first instinct to resort to those.
Inmate Information: https://bg3.wiki/wiki/Enver_Gortash ←Link to a complete not still not-too-long wiki entry on him. Everything it lays down in his history will be present pretty much verbatim in an Inmate file.
Crimes: As a black market arms dealer, Gortash in his effectiveness and intelligence created and moved the means to ruin or end many lives, and because his competition had no qualms with ending conflicts violently, he saw no problem doing the same. That was only the beginning of a long line of deals and alliances that either directly or indirectly led to much of the strife in the city.
He then oversaw the infection of countless people in the mindflayer colony, including eventually his own parents. While most infected seem to not remember the horrors of the colony and only the elation of loving and serving their god, his parents were different. To anyone who finds their humble little shop, they seem to be the doting kind, singing the praises of their son who rose well beyond his roots to serve and protect the city of Baldur’s Gate. Inside, they are begging for death and spitting at the ungrateful, needy, too-smart child that betrayed them. Other victims include a number of government officials, including Lord Ulder Ravenguard.
He sold Karlach into slavery to an Archdevil, who used her to experiment – eventually seeing the effects of replacing a living heart with an Infernal Machine. He has never disclosed what he got for this, and while he briefly insists to Karlach when she faces him later that there was more going on than she understands – and at the very least that he does not know if he would do differently, when pressed with her anger he is quick to respond in kind, insist that he never liked her, that everything that happened to her she caused by agreeing to work for him, and he will not miss her.
He wrested control of the black market from the Knights of the Shield but worse still, captured their leader, revealed to be a free mindflayer, and returned him to mental bondage under the elder brain.
His Steel Watch, for all his own devilish intellect that has been poured into them, are also perfected and run through a mixture of technology and necromancy, as well as the forced labor of the Gondians, who must add their ingenuity to his or risk their families being murdered (with many members kept prisoner with other governmental dissidents in the Iron Throne).
Political opponents have a tendency to disappear, be found guilty of a myriad of crimes and executed, or imprisoned. Think of every dirty thing a politician CAN do to seek power, and Enver Gortash at the very least had a hand in such things if he did not carry them out himself.
Defining Personality Traits: Enver Gortash is smart and he knows it, cunning to a fault and willing to put all of that to use to forward himself by whatever means necessary, and he does not care who his deals harm otherwise. That having been said, he sees the value in forging and maintaining alliances, and if he will lie and cheat in some places, he won’t when there is a contract on the line. If he makes an offer, his words are his bond and he will keep to them as long as everyone else does.
Nothing about his history suggests that anything short of total dominion will satisfy him. In control at the highest level is safety, and no one is going to bring that to him but himself.
Path to Redemption: Gortash has to learn to start choosing to break the cycles that made him. That means respecting that his decisions affect other people and making them with that in mind. He must also find safety in something other than complete and total control, especially when for now, at least, he is willing to sign off on some very unscrupulous things to maintain it.
Clear milestones will include: 1) An ongoing willingness to figure someone’s wellbeing other than his own in his decisions. If he is to be a leader then it cannot be just the odd ally, either, but that is a start. 2) Opening up to trusting people. Not just as long as an agreement is in place on paper. He need not be blindly placing his life in the hands of others, but there is a difference between having and enforcing clear personal boundaries and scorched earth as soon as it is most expedient. 3) He starts forming standards that do not allow for “any means necessary” as a byline. He is smart enough to get where he needs to without that, and it’s time he started acting like it.
A Warden will have greater success the more he is approached as someone who can reason out what is being done. If he is expected to do something, then you need to be prepared to answer why he should. Tell him how the machine is working, make the accord between the two of you clear, and he will be less resistant. However dismissive and commanding he appears, if he continues to hold counsel with you, then progress can always be made.
The subject of his past will be difficult to broach, the further back you go, and there are certain things he won't budge on. That does not mean they do not need to be addressed, but he is not going to be especially receptive. Expect to be shut down.
Don’t try to rule him unless it is unavoidable. He is much more cooperative with an ally, so don’t make yourself an enemy.
History: Born to Dravo and Sally Flymm, cobblers by trade and plagued with poverty and debt, seeking profit and one less mouth to feed, the two sold their child to who they thought was a Warlock but was in fact the cambion Raphael, son of the archdevil Mephistopheles. He was kept as a Pageboy in the House of Hope for years until his eventual escape, and in that time was under the direction of Nubaldin, a rock gnome in Raphael’s employ who greatly resented him and used every opportunity to take that dislike out on him.
After his escape, he returned to Baldur’s Gate and made his start as an arms dealer, but he eventually expanded into other enterprises. He hired Karlach as a bodyguard, who served him loyally and appeared to have greatly admired and adored him until he sold her to the Archdevil Zariel (it is never revealed what he got in exchange). He eventually supplanted both the Knights of the Shield as well as the Zhentarim in the region for control of the black market – eventually becoming known as a military advisor among the Gate’s wealthy and powerful.
At some point in this time, he returned to the Hells to steal the Crown of Karsus from the vault of Mephistopheles.
When he became a Chosen of Bane, god of tyranny, hate, and strife, his ambitions turned a good deal more lofty, and he began seeking greater political power in Baldur’s Gate. His control of the Flaming Fists and the implementation of his Clockwork Steel Guard cemented him as a figurehead in the city’s perceived safety and prosperity.
He also forged an alliance alongside the chosen of two other gods, who with Bane made up the Dead Three. They formed a plan to enslave an Elder Brain using the crown, dividing its stones between them. With the brain's influence over tadpole-infected people (including his parents, whom he found and enacted his revenge against by making them puppets trapped in their own heads). Their dominion over the brain created a cult of a deity that was their shadow: The Absolute. The Chosen of Bhaal (god of murder) would carry out a series of gruesome attacks within the city to sew fear and distrust of current power structures, giving Gortash the means to move in and seize greater control. The Chosen of Myrkul (lord of bones and god of death) would raise an army of Absolutists to march on Baldur’s Gate. Gortash, given greater mastery of the city, would order his Steel Watch to battle in what would have been a fixed conflict that would leave him as the apparent Hero and savior of the city. From the ashes of this conflict and with the Elder Brain still under their control, they could take over the world and rule it as gods, populated by a world of infected people compelled only to obey.
He would not have known that Bane never intended for the plan to play out this way. He knew that the Elder Brain, evolved into a Netherbrain, would break free and turn the world’s population into mindflayers, restarting the Ithilid empire. Since these creatures as a forced part of a hive mind do not have souls, it would mean millions of them, if not more, that Bane would be denying any other god from having, and in that he finds victory, leaving not even ashes to conquer.
When a group of rogue True Souls managed to kill the Chosen of Myrkul and take his stone, what tenuous control the three had over the Elder Brain began to slip, and Orin, Bhaal’s chosen, became impossible to control. Gortash allied with the rogues, offering to let their leader rule at his side, as a partner, if they can kill Orin and reclaim her stone, meaning all three could be gathered in one place again. Together, they attempted to control the brain, but it overpowered them. Panicked, Gortash attempted to wield the stones alone to dominate it, but it proved too powerful, and he was killed with an order.
Sample Network Entry: [ The man who appears onscreen has a look of contained stress about him, the sort best worn by people far too accustomed to quietly putting problems off because there is work to be done. Not at all unusual if he's just arrived, really. He has a handsome face, despite the appearance of some superficial scars, with a shock of black hair with a sort of devil maycare style that given the finery he is otherwise adorned with suggests it is probably deliberately coordinated.
His brown eyes immediately betray an analytical mind -- he is clearly taking in each feature of the journal has he's discovering it. When he decides to address the camera, there is an immediate diplomatic shift to something warmer, an easy smile, still authoritative but still more open body language. ]
Well, careful observation tells me that at this juncture, custom calls for introductions!
[ And he's certainly not a stranger to utilizing cold distance to communicate. It's sometimes quite necessary, and whether that is the case here remains to be seen. But since everyone appears to use it so casually? ]
And who am I to ignore tradition, even as a guest? My name is Enver Gortash, and I'll forego any titles for the time being. I hazard to guess they will be quite meaningless here, but no matter. We'll be passing time together for the foreseeable future, the lot of us.
Sample RP: The initial plan had been to wander and learn as much of the layout of his current abode as as possible, but it is no wonder to anyone that a new arrival might step outside and find reason to pause. Stars are certainly nothing new to see in the sky, but to see them moving at such a rapid pace is something else entirely for a human of Faerun. It certainly lures him toward the edge, to remove any other parts of the ship from his field of vision so he can observe the sky unobstructed.
It is a ship, so why can't he feel it moving? Not the slightest pull of inertia, gust of wind, but surely they must be going at quite a speed.
Being unable to truly feel it does not stop him from grasping at the railing to balance himself. The sight if it is enough to fool his mind, and he can feel his stomach clench.
Special Notes: Anything else not covered here that you'd like us to know!
